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New Years party animals?
I pray your New Years’ celebrations were beautiful and wonderful and fantastic.
We had a great day… and here was the highlight for me:
This (party picture) was us last night.
No… wait.
Wrong picture.
This was us last night.
In bed around 10 pm.
Party animals.
But this one time… in my 30s… we stayed up way past midnight.
New Years is a time of looking back across the year at what we have done… at what God has done.
And looking forward to what He has for us.
Look at what God has done in our church this last year.
Teaching us to love our community, to get connected, and today we have relationships with folks in our community we never would have dreamed of last year.
What’s next for Next Step Christian Church?
We continue to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, no doubt.
There is a verse out of our last series in Corinthians that just hasn’t let me go:
Pursue Prophecy
This will be our guiding text for at least a few months.
Pursue love - that’s to love God and love others.
It comes as a summary of all of 1 Corinthians 13.
This is fundamental to who we are at Next Step, to who we are as followers of Jesus.
By this they will know we are his disciples: if we love one another.
From there, we seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit that filled and empowered Jesus’ ministry, to be like our Master… and that means using the spiritual gifts He gives us.
And, Paul stresses, especially that we may prophesy.
And we don’t do that often.
And maybe we don’t know how.
So let’s learn.
How does one learn to be a prophet?
To prophesy?
How about from “the prophets.”
So we are going to dive in to all the prophets of the Bible.
Not every story, not every verse, certainly not every prophet… but we will hit most of them.
And on the way we are looking to learn: what does it mean to be a prophet, to prophesy, and how do I do it?
This is a year of bold witness.
This is a year of prophecy.
What is Prophecy?
Prophecy - hear from God, say what He says.
See God, show what you saw.
Super Hero Prophets
Now, there are lots of dangers as we enter into the world of the prophets.
One of which is that the prophets we are reading about are the super heroes of the Bible.
The famous ones.
There were hundreds and hundreds of prophets in different seasons of Israel’s life.
There were professional prophets, people who God used for a moment, people who God used for a lifetime, people of other vocations that God spoke through.
Jeremiah was a priest, Amos was a shepherd...
But these are the guys whose word remained for thousands of years.
The next prophets, Elijah and Elisha, they are prophets whose deeds, acts of miraculous power, super hero deeds… they echo through the ages.
That, in and of itself, is not prophecy.
A very real and present danger is for us to pursue this to get our spiritual merit badge.
To stand up and speak for God and everyone admire how holy and spiritual we are.
That’s not holiness, that’s sin in us.
Prophecy is not about me getting the glory… it is about God getting the glory however He wants.
Whether through my words, through my silence, through my actions, through my death.
The truly amazing thing is that God would use me at all: a broken, all-too-prideful, all-too-sinful vessel.
The Nameless Prophet
What’s this guy’s name?
We don’t know.
We know only this, he was a “man of God.” Sent by “the word of the Lord.”
Jereboam was a king, the king of Israel who led the 10 northern tribes in rebellion against Rehoboam, the son of Solomon.
Civil War and the Kingdom broke.
Jereboam was actually given his kingship by God… but He didn’t want his people going down to the temple in Jerusalem to worship, that would threaten his political power.
So he made his own altar to God to worship where was convenient for his own political goals and ambitions.
God sends this nameless prophet to rebuke him.
This is a function of true prophecy, by the way, God authenticates His own word.
That’s what all the cool miracles are about.
It isn’t the prophets cool super powers, God will show His Word to be true.
In that sense, you don’t have to worry about it.
Like this:
Jereboam stretches out to pit his power against God’s… and that hand withers.
Instant Zombie Hand.
How fast do you think Jereboam changed his tune?
“Quick, tear down the altar...”
But God had given this nameless prophet very specific instructions, and he was wise enough to obey:
Then here comes Nameless Prophet #2
And this is the craziest thing to me in this whole story.
Here’s this prophet, a true prophet as we will see.
He says this:
WHY????!
Why would he do that, just lie to him?
Was he jealous, speaking lies in the name of the Lord?
Why didn’t God strike Him dead on the spot?
And instead of rebuking and condemning this liar face… God actually speaks through the liar-face prophet, this time for real:
God spoke through the very “prophet” who tricked him into disobedience to call out his disobedience.
And this “your body shall not come to the tomb...” that isn’t a far-off prediction of where he will be buried.
Oh, Aslan!!!
Oh… no!
Instant penalty for his disobedience.
As Aslan says, “I am not a tame lion.”
No kidding!
God isn’t kidding around when He says He requires obedience.
More about that later.
Where is the focus here at the end?
Not on the prophet’s sin or failing.
The “word of the Lord” stands.
It is still true.
It is not less true because the man who delivered it.
And, wonder of wonders, the “man of God” is still honored because he did this one thing right.
He heard from God… and he said what he heard.
He was a faithful and bold witness, even if just for a moment.
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