“Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers; to Him you shall listen to everything He says to you. And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people. And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also proclaimed these days. It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.” (Acts 3:22-26) It is my desire to walk us through the three offices Christ holds in these next few articles. We begin today with Christ as our Prophet. There is a false misconception among certain religious groups that Christ was merely a prophet, even regarded as a great prophet but nothing more than this. Taking away from His deity, denying His sovereignty, His holiness, His transcendence, His majesty, His beauty, His splendor, His authority, and ultimately in all of this, they reject Christ as Lord and Savior, thereby setting themselves up for further damnation. “For it would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn away from the holy commandment handed on to them.” (2 Peter 2:21) “For if we go on sinning willfully after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries.” (Hebrews 10:26-27) Christ Jesus was not merely another prophet. He did not come to us to be merely a moral example. He was not simply a good teacher or a wise man. These claims are outrageous, especially when you examine the words of our Lord in Holy Scripture. He claimed to be God in the flesh, now either He was a liar, a lunatic, or He was speaking truth. This claim to be God was what He was crucified for, having been accused of blasphemy, tried in the night, and brought forth to Pontius Pilate whereby the Jews persuaded Pilate to crucify Him. Now if He was a liar, knowing that He was to be put to death by crucifixion, He would have reneged on the claim; if He was insane, He would have come to some form of clear thinking upon realization of the death penalty and sought to nullify His statement; however, being truly God in the flesh, this was the plan of God, that He would be given over by His own and raised up for our justification.
Jesus is our Prophet, the true Prophet of God, but He is also God, we must be very careful not to stop with His individual offices and thereby neglect His deity in all of this. So, what is a prophet? They were men called of God to proclaim the word of God to whomever He called them to deliver it to. They were a herald of God’s word, sent forth to deliver the kerygma that God had called them to proclaim. These proclamations were of God’s truth and revealing God’s plans for the future. It could be messages of doom impending for an unrepentant people, or messages of hope for the future of His people. Some of these prophets were enabled to perform miracles and healings to accompany their message, that the people would believe all the more that this was indeed a man called of God to deliver the message received them. This means that the Holy Spirit, He was at work in the lives of these men called of God, these prophets chosen of God. For none can do any miracles apart from the Spirit of God. And so knowing these things, we come to Christ, who was often referred to as a prophet by those in His day. However, He would take this title on Himself at times, not rejecting the claims of such. Think of the story of Jesus having raised the widow’s dead son, what was told us in Holy Scripture immediately after this resurrection miracle? “And fear gripped them all, and they began glorifying God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and, “God has visited His people!” And this report concerning Him went out all over Judea and in all the surrounding district.” (Luke 7:16-17) Going back to the Old Testament, we see the prophecy from Moses pertaining to Christ as the fulfillment of Prophet. “‘Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers; you shall listen to him.’ ‘I will raise up a prophet from among their brothers like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And it will be that whoever will not listen to My words which he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.’ (Deuteronomy 18:15,18-19) Peter and Steven speak of Christ being the one to fulfill this prophecy from Moses. “And now, brothers, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also. But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled. Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord; and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you, whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time. Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers; to Him you shall listen to everything He says to you. And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’” (Acts 3:17-23) “This is the Moses who said to the sons of Israel, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.’ This is the one who, in the congregation in the wilderness, was with the angel who was speaking to him on Mount Sinai and with our fathers; the one who received living oracles to pass on to you.” (Acts 7:37-38) “‘You men—stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears—are always resisting the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. And which one of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who had previously announced the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become; you who received the Law as ordained by angels, and yet did not observe it.’” (Acts 7:51-53)
Jesus would often teach the word of God through parabolic language. “And the disciples came and said to Him, ‘Why do You speak to them in parables?’ And Jesus answered and said to them, ‘To you it has been given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given. For whoever has, to him more shall be given, and he will have an abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has shall be taken away from him. Therefore I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. And in them the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says, ‘You will keep on hearing, but will not understand; you will keep on seeing, but will not perceive; for the heart of this people has become dull, and with their ears they scarcely hear, and they have closed their eyes, lest they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them.’ But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. For truly I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.’” (Matthew 13:10-17) Jesus’ teaching, His revealing of God’s will was not simply received as a normal prophet’s message, but as if He were far greater than the prophets. “And they were astonished at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (Mark 1:22) Jesus not only taught the word of God, but He prophesied of future events. He prophesied of His own death and resurrection. “And while they were gathering together in Galilee, Jesus said to them, ‘The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men; and they will kill Him, and He will be raised on the third day.’ And they were deeply grieved.” (Matthew 17:22-23) “And as Jesus was about to go up to Jerusalem, He took the twelve disciples aside by themselves, and on the way He said to them, ‘Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn Him to death, and will deliver Him over to the Gentiles to mock and flog and crucify Him, and on the third day He will be raised up.’” (Matthew 20:17-19)
He prophesied of Judas Iscariot betraying Him, Peter denying Him three times, the Holy Spirit who was to come upon His own, the persecution of the church, the destruction of the temple, and of His own second coming. “And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky with power and great glory. And He will send forth His angels with a great trumpet and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.” (Matthew 24:30-31) Let us look now to this very question from the Westminster Shorter Catechism. “Q. 24. How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet? A. Christ executeth the office of a prophet, in revealing to us, by his Word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.” He has made known to all the will of God for our salvation. After all, He is the visible image of the invisible God. “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. And He is the head of the body, the church; Who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross—through Him—whether things on earth or things in heaven.” (Colossians 1:15-20) This negates the teaching that Christ was nothing more than a prophet, even a great prophet. He is God in the flesh, truly God and truly man. Praise God that we’ve such a Prophet, who has revealed to us the will of God for our salvation, and not only this, but He is our salvation.
Christ Jesus also performed many miracles, far more than the Old Testament prophets. Having healed the sick, open blinded eyes, enabling the mute to speak, causing the lame and paralyzed to walk, and resurrecting the dead. “And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written one after the other, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25) Christ is not simply another prophet, no matter how great you want to declare a prophet He was. He is the Word of God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1) He did not merely speak as another prophet the word of God, but is Himself the very Word of God made flesh. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14) He is the final Word, the ultimate and special revelation of God. “God, having spoken long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days spoke to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds, who is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power; who, having accomplished cleansing for sins, sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become so much better than the angels, as He has inherited a more excellent name than they.” (Hebrews 1:1-2) So let me encourage you this day, to be more adamant about being in the word of God; reading, studying, and meditating on the Scripture. Don’t rush your time just to get it in and check a box, we aren’t simply trying to get in the word, but to have the word get into us. We aren’t seeking to simply know the word of God, but to know the God of the word. Let us fix our eyes upon the great Pearl of immeasurable value, the Prophet Redeemer, our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, let me close with a quote from William Spurstowe, who has said, “The promises are the field—and Christ is the hidden pearl which is to be sought in them.
He who truly expects glory—earnestly pursues grace.”