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Deuteronomy 18:14–22 ESV

14 for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners.

But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this.

15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— 16 just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’

17 And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken.

18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers.

And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.

19 And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.

20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’

21 And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the Lord has not spoken?’—

22 when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously.

You need not be afraid of him.

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A recently passed theologian named, R. C. Sproul said this in his book “Who is Jesus?”

Who Is Jesus?

Chapter Five: The Offices of Christ

When we look at the offices held by Christ in the drama of redemption, we see that He has a munus triplex, a threefold office, for He fulfills all three of these Old Testament offices in one person.

Christ is our Prophet, our Priest, and our King.

This advent season we are studying these three offices of Christ.

The Munus Triplex.

Christ is our True and Better Prophet, Priest, and King.

Last week we saw how Jesus, as our true and better priest, gives us a sure hope by the fact that he fulfills perfectly our need of having a priest who can atone for our sins, give us courage to approach God, and provide us with eternal salvation.

This week, we are looking at how Jesus is our True and Better Prophet.

This week, the main idea we will be addressing is that...

“Jesus is the pinnacle of God’s prophetic words to us and deserves to be completely trusted.”

The question I hope to answer for you today is...

“How is Jesus the pinnacle of God’s prophetic word and why should I trust Him?”

I ask this question because, whether you believe it or not, you are inundated with prophetic voices every day.

The grand majority of them are false prophetic voices.

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Strong’s Systematic Theology says this about how we must view the idea of prophesy and prophets...

Systematic Theology 1.

The Nature of Christ’s Prophetic Work

Here we must avoid the narrow interpretation which would make the prophet a mere foreteller of future events

Prophets not only were used by God to foretell the future, but their accurate foretelling of the future necessitated that all who heard them should take their warnings, directions, and rebukes seriously because God was speaking through them.

The prophetic voices you hear almost every day are voices saying “you need this”, “I am the answer to your problems”, “the world is going to end in 12 years”, “This is the way you should think”, etc.

Most prophetic voices we encounter are liars!

And Cause incredible heartache and anxiety!

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Knowing who you should listen to and trust is extremely important.

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Acts 3:22–24 ESV

22 Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers.

You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you.

23 And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’

24 And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days.

Moses told the Israelites that there was going to be a covenant giving prophet like him who they must obey or they would be destroyed.

3:22a - He was going to be someone God raised up - Appointed

3:22b - He was going to be someone who related with God like Moses and gave a covenant like Moses

3:22c - He was going to be someone from within their ethnic nation

3:22d - He was to be trusted completely

3:23 - Disobeying him and not trusting him will have terrible consequences

Many prophets came after Moses, but none of them gave a new covenant like Moses did.

3: 24 All other prophets who spoke proclaimed the days when the people were to listen to the true and better prophet Jesus

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Listen to how Jesus talks to Pharisees about God’s prophetic scriptures:

John 5:39 ESV

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,

The scriptures are God’s words to us!

They are God’s prophetic voice to us made up of several different genres!

Jesus completely believed that the Old Testament Torah was speaking about and pointing to him.

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Luke 24:27 ESV

27 And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Application:

It’s good to read the Old Testament with a Christ-Centered Lens.

Don’t allegorize every little item, but read it knowing that it’s supposed to point you directly to Jesus.

I recommend using a good study bible when you read the Bible: ESV, NIV Zondervan, Gospel Transformation Bible - all of these are available at Lifeway.com or Christianbook.com

Parents, teach your children that scripture is meant to point us to Jesus.

Don’t overburden them with the law and make that your focus when sharing the prophets, but use it as an opportunity to show them that God was purposefully showing us that we can’t keep it and are meant to look to Jesus for salvation!

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As Our True and Better Prophet, Jesus...

Before I read from John 1, we need to go backwards a bit.

Listen to these Old Testament scriptures.

Genesis 15:1 ESV

1 After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

1 Samuel 15:10 ESV

10 The word of the Lord came to Samuel:

2 Samuel 7:4 ESV

4 But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan,

2 Samuel 24:11 ESV

11 And when David arose in the morning, the word of the Lord came to the prophet Gad, David’s seer, saying,

Isaiah 38:4 ESV

4 Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah:

Jeremiah 1:1–4 ESV

1 The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, 2 to whom the word of the Lord came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, king of Judah, in the thirteenth year of his reign.

3 It came also in the days of Jehoiakim the son of Josiah, king of Judah, and until the end of the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the son of Josiah, king of Judah, until the captivity of Jerusalem in the fifth month.

4 Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

Ezekiel

Jonah

Micah

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

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Listen to what Dr. Michael Heiser says concerning the first scripture I mentioned from Genesis 15 in his excellent book, The Unseen Realm,

The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible The Joy of Abraham

This is a fascinating text.

Notice right from the start that it is the “Word of Yahweh” who comes to Abraham in a vision.

As before, the encounter was a visible manifestation of Yahweh.

The Word here is something that can be seen—why else call it a vision?

In verse 4 we read that the Word “brought him [Abraham] outside” to continue the conversation.

This isn’t the kind of language one would expect if Abraham was hearing only a sound.

There are two terms scholars use to describe this amazing reality: Christophany and Theophany

The Lexham Glossary of Theology Christophany

Christophany — A manifestation or appearance of Christ either before the incarnation (OT) or after the resurrection (NT).