“In the past, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to
our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He’s spoken to us by His
Son”
Hebrews 1:1
In a recent Tuesday night men’s Bible study, we saw how a
long time ago God promised to Israel’s leader Moses that there was going to one
day be a “prophet” who would speak all of God’s words to God’s people, and they
would listen (Deuteronomy 18:15-18). The
context of the statement is this: when Moses was on Mount Sinai delivering
God’s Law to Israel, the people of Israel couldn’t bear to hear God’s voice, so
they contracted Moses to do all the listening and then delivering to them (see
Exodus 20:18-21). They made him a
mediator between they and their God, because in their fallenness they couldn’t
take the voice of God in its fullness.
Moses relays later that when this all went down on the
mountain, God had responded to their request, saying to Moses, “They’re right –
they can’t take me” (cf. Deut. 18:15-18).
There is a clear breakdown between God and people, such that they can’t brush
shoulders with God – they must stay separate.
So God promises to the scared people and their leader Moses that He’d
send a prophet “from among them” one day, who would speak all of His words
(18:18). This is because even though God
is holy and man isn’t, and the lines of demarcation are drawn, God does want to be known, heard, followed,
and enjoyed. So a Mediator is needed,
and God promised to Moses and Israel a specific man would come one day to
fulfill the promise.
Many prophets after Moses then came and spoke God’s word to
the people until the fulfillment came.
Finally came Jesus of Nazareth, a man with words and works that were (and
are) unlike anyone in history. People
marveled at Him and hung on His every word (see Matt. 7:28 and Luke 4:20). He was repeatedly referred to as THE Prophet (John 1:21, 6:14,
7:40). The idea is that He is the one
who was born among God’s people but who was Himself from God, who speaks God’s
Word to them. He can be trusted as the
Prophet who has come into the world.
This has profound implications for our late modern times
today. Today the battle is for authority
– i.e., who should be in charge? Who can
we trust to tell us truth without us being afraid of their agenda? I don’t know if you know this or not, but
it’s an election year in America. And
every campaign is a smear campaign against the opponent – less important is a
candidate’s promise to do this or that right; more important is a candidate’s
saying what his or her opponent is doing wrong.
Who can be trusted?
I remember being in college suffering through an
excruciating bout with depression. I’d
never experienced anything like it. It
affected schoolwork, my jobs, my relationships, etc. I went to professors for help and guidance,
and they, being the godly men they were, did the best they could. But I was in a dark place. I began not feeling like I could trust anyone
to give me rock-solid truth upon which I could stand to start walking
forward. All truth was like quicksand. As I’d start to stand, it’d start to give way
and I’d sink.
Then I started reading the Bible as a Christian. I had grown up in church but never read the
Bible as a Christian. What I mean is
that I never read it seeking God and His truth.
By His grace I started believing what I read. It made sense. It penetrated into my psyche – I started
thinking about it when I wasn’t reading, and started thinking and acting out of
belief in it. I started believing that
even though I couldn’t trust myself or anyone else, it seems like I can trust Jesus, because He died for my problem which
neither I nor anyone else could fix.
My life’s never been the same. I
came alive there in my early 20s reading the Bible. Since then I’ve been learning how to obey,
love, serve, and trust, trying to help others do the same.
We all want there to be rock-solid truth. But we often assume we as individuals are
clear-thinking enough and unbiased enough to see it more clearly than everyone
else. And when you have millions of Westerners,
millennial and boomer alike, who all know the truth, but seem to disagree, who
can be trusted? Are we all lying?
These questions are why what God said to Moses on that
mountain is so important. He was saying,
“Truth is accessible to the one who wants it.
But they can’t get it themselves.
I have to bring it to them.” And Jesus was God bringing truth to us. That’s why Jesus called Himself “Truth” (John
14:6). He was saying truth itself is
embodied in His person. He speaks
rightly, judges rightly, is unbiased, and isn’t swayed by appearances or
sympathies. At one point, a group of
people said to him, “Teacher, we know that you
are true, and do not care about anyone’s opinion. For you are not swayed by appearances, but
truly teach the way of God” (Mark 12:14).
What kind of man is this?! The
Prophet whom God said would come with His Words to lead His people into the
light.
One time in Jerusalem, after Jesus’ resurrection and when
the early believers in Jesus were just getting organized, the Apostles Peter,
preaching a sermon to skeptics, quoted the Deuteronomy promise of Jesus being
the Prophet, attaching it to a promise of refreshing
as well as God’s earlier promise to Abraham of blessing the nations (Acts 3:21-26, cf. Gen 12:3, 22:18). God wants to refresh all peoples with the life-giving
truth His Son speaks. He doesn’t want
them to remain fumbling around and arguing with one another aimlessly, only to
die separated from Him and destined for His anger for forever (although perfect
justice requires it if they don’t repent and believe). He wants to meet them in their mid-day desert
sun and give them the cool water of His Word, that they’d be revived,
nourished, and ready to continue on.
This is why Peter had earlier told Jesus that he and the disciples would
never leave Him because His words were the words of eternal life (John
6:68). When Jesus spoke, their hearts
leapt. He was the Prophet.
He is the Prophet
still! Through Him God speaks to us
still today, giving life by His word to the lost, hopeless, and broken. When one sees Him for who He is, their hearts
leap when He speaks.
And this is why Matthew’s Gospel, the first of the New
Testament, and the one most purposefully written to Jewish people, opens
telling of how:
-
Jesus is the seed of Abraham (1:1-17),
-
Jesus is the Immanuel promise of Isaiah the
prophet (1:23),
-
Jesus was born in Bethlehem, as Micah the
prophet had said (2:6),
-
Jesus went to Egypt as a baby, to show how He is
the true Israel who would obey His Father (2:15),
-
Jesus’ way was prepared by the Isaiah 40
prophet, John the Baptist (3:3), and
-
Jesus fasted under testing for forty days and
nights, like Moses (Ex. 34:28), quoting Moses’ writing in the Scriptures to
withstand Satan’s tempting (4:1-11)
Because after all this is laid out, Matthew then tells us
that Jesus then went up on a mountain and began speaking the Word of God to the
people of God (5:1-2). God’s promise to
Moses had come full circle: On the mountain, the people knew they couldn’t take
God’s voice. So God said He’d send a
prophet from among them who would speak His words so they’d listen. And Jesus, from Heaven, came as a lowly
Galilean Israelite, and showed His being the promised Prophet by speaking God’s
Word from a mountain. And one of His first
statements was, “I’ve not come to abolish the Law and Prophets, but fulfill them”
(5:17).
Stand on this truth and see how it helps. Jesus might seem like just another option for
those curious about religion. But if you
lean in to Him, you’ll see He’s not. He
speaks the words of God, because they are His own words. He can’t lie and you won’t sink.
