Who is Jesus - Day 4 - Jesus the Prophet

The Lord Jesus was emphatically 'the prophet of God,' whose coming was foretold in Deut. 18:15, 18. When on earth He said that the works which He did, and the words that He spoke, were not from Himself, but were what He had seen and heard of His Father. John 14:10, 24. He was the perfect exponent of God's mind to the Jews (Acts 3:22; Acts 7:37), and the proclaimer of God's grace to a guilty world. Luke 14:15-24; 2 Cor. 5:19.

But the Lord Jesus is also presented as the true prophet in the Gospel of Mark (compare Deut. 18:15). As such He announced the good tidings of God, the gospel. This key word appears eight times in Mark, four times in Matthew and not at all in Luke (except for the Greek verb „evangelize”) and neither in John. In Mark 1:38 the Lord Jesus explains with authority what His ministry was: announcing the Word of God as prophet: „Let us go into the next towns that I may preach there also: for therefore came I forth.”

The Prophet. — To hear His sayings and do them would be to build on a sure foundation. To hear them and to refuse obedience to them must land the individual in irrevocable disaster. His sayings (or more correctly, His words), He calls attention to. For He was the prophet foretold by Moses, to whom Israel were to hearken (Deut. 18:15-19). As such He addressed His hearers on that day. The people, hitherto shut up to the law given by Moses, were now to hearken to the prophet like to Moses (Deut. 34:10). For God, Moses declared, would put His words into that one's mouth, and He would speak all that God should command Him. Blessing, then, henceforth depended on men hearkening to Him. No wonder that people discerned a difference in Him, who taught, they said, as one who had authority, and not as their scribes (Matt. 7:29)! The prophet He was, but more than a prophet, He was God, the Son of God. He spoke not like those of old, with a "Thus says the Lord." He spoke indeed with authority, indicative that what He uttered was to be received as the voice of God speaking to them.

He indeed spake what was given to Him by the Father to speak; for He had become flesh to draw near to us. He was truly a Man amongst men, walking in grace and in dependence upon God. As the promised Prophet, the people had been told to hear Him (Deut. 18:15). They had been afraid of the voice of divine majesty, speaking amidst fire and tempest, from the smoking mount of law giving; God therefore promised to raise up One “from among their brethren,” who should speak in divine grace. He came to His own, but His own received Him not. All through John’s Gospel we find Him speaking as “that Prophet.” He could say, “The Father which sent Me, He gave Me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak”; and “As the Father said unto Me, so I speak” (John 12:49-50). Peter, in Acts 3:22, referring to the promise in Deuteronomy 18:15, said, “HIM SHALL YE HEAR.” Stephen also quotes it in Acts 7:37, “Him shalt ye hear.” Upon the mount which we have mentioned, from the excellent glory, when the bright cloud overshadowed them, a Voice is heard, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; HEAR YE HIM” (Matt. 17:5). Here Jeremiah and all others must stand aside. Favoured and faithful servants of the Lord all gladly give place to the PRE-EMINENT ONE, THE SON. We might well have esteemed it a privilege to listen to Moses or Jeremiah; but what high honour is ours, to be called to hear the Son; to receive His words, to listen to His well-known voice, speaking in divine grace. May our ears be attentive to His communications, as His were to the Father (Isa. 50).

In John 4 we have One like unto Moses, the blessed Lord Jesus, the Christ of God. What a Prophet He was! Just for the sake of brevity look at verse 19, "The woman says to him, Sir, I see that thou art a prophet"; and He was. A prophet gives forth the mind of God and "God having spoken in many parts and in many ways formerly to the fathers in the prophets, at the end of these days has spoken to us in [the person of the] Son, whom he has established heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds" (Heb. 1:1-2a). This is the One God speaks through, all that He has to say has been said through His Prophet. When the Lord Jesus spoke they were not His words and the works which He did were not His works, they were those of Him who sent Him, they were the Father's words and works.

Here in Galilee were simple souls, thirsting for the word of life, desirous of having the great problems of an active conscience toward God settled with authority. They perceived with amazement such authority in the manner of the Lord's teaching, even before that authority was demonstrated in their midst by the expulsion of a demon. It must be observed that this character was recognised although His word was not prefaced by the phrase so frequent in the prophecies which were read in their hearing every Sabbath, "Thus says Jehovah." Indeed, a false prophet might use such a formula, but here was One who spake in His own name and yet in the name of Jehovah of Israel and the God of all the earth also. He said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you"; "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time … but I say unto you," giving them thus, by virtue of His own right, the word of Him that sent Him. Can we wonder that it was said, "I perceive that thou art a prophet"; and again, "We have heard ourselves, and know, that this is indeed the Saviour of the world" (John 4:19, 42)? While even the officers sent to arrest Him excused their failure to execute their task by the statement, "Never man so spake."

No wonder the people took John for a prophet; for God was before Him. What is it that marks the prophet? The man that sees God's mind and makes it known. Other people may make known the truth, may preach the gospel; but the man that puts your conscience in the presence of God is the prophet. So the woman of Samaria, when her conscience was awakened to her sin, said, "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." It is the consciousness of God given to the soul that is the true test of a prophet. And so it was here. John the Baptist so speaks of our Lord that his own disciples turn from him to Jesus. He was right, and they were right. He was right to bear his heart's testimony to the Lord Jesus; and it is remarkable enough that it was not a long effusion that he spoke, but a few words that told. "Behold the Lamb of God!" In the delight of his soul John rendered that testimony to Christ, and the moment that his disciples heard it, they followed Jesus. They heard John, they followed Jesus, and the Lord invited them to remain with Him that day.

First, in reply to their query, "What sayest thou of him, that he hath opened thine eyes? He said, he is a prophet." Now a prophet is one who has the mind of God, an interpreter of His thoughts to man. The once blind cannot think of Him apart from thinking of God. Then next, Jesus is for him a holy person — a worshipper of God, a doer of His will. Such an one God hears. He must be of God, for otherwise He could do nothing.

He was frequently spoken of as a prophet. When He disclosed to the woman of Samaria her sin, she said, "Sir, I perceive that Thou art a prophet" (John 4:19). He had spoken for and from God. When He had fed the five thousand the people said, "This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world" (John 6:14). Moses had predicted that God would send such a Prophet: "A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you like unto me; Him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever He shall say unto you.

And it shall come to pass, that every soul which will not hear that Prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people" (Acts 3:22-23). The man in John 9, whose eyes had been opened by our Lord, when asked what he had to say of Him, answered, "He is a prophet" (John 9:17).

A prophet-see v. 16: 'A great prophet has risen among us'. The Lord Jesus was a prophet, but a prophet of a new order; one who spoke the truth. No other prophet had made such claims, but here and in John 4 the prophet is brought before us who is Himself the truth and in whose presence everything is seen for what it is. 'The woman said to him, 'I know that Messiah is coming' (who is called Christ). 'When he comes, he will tell us all things' (John 4:25). 'Jesus said to her, 'I who speak to you am He' (John 4:26). They had been talking about God and the true worship of Him. This prophet, referring back to Deuteronomy 18, would 'tell us all things' relating to these matters. But doing this He inevitably told her everything about herself: 'Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?' (John 4:29). It was indeed the Christ (John 4: 42). To come into the presence of God who is light means necessarily that we will know the truth about ourselves as we learn to know God. The Lord did not actually speak of everything about her, He just gave her one indication that He knew everything (John 4:16,17). here in Luke 7 Simon is the opposite of the woman in John 4, for he knew (or: 'did know') neither God nor himself!