Dear Elim Grace,

Let’s be honest: Are you your own prophet?

These are days in which we are being taught neither to listen to God (“There is no god or transcendent truth, anyway,” we’re told) nor to any external authority (all structural authority is suspicious at best). We are taught to listen to our own desires. We are taught all purpose, meaning, significance, truth in life is discerned or divined by the self. In other words, everyone is their own prophet. Everyone is their own mediator: I speak from myself, to myself, for myself. But as the people of God, the church of Jesus Christ, His bride and body, we must tune our ear and turn our ear to God when He says in His Word: “Listen to him!” (Luke 9:35)

God throughout His Word warns His people to not listen to “the nations”. But to not listen means to not learn. For the people of Israel, listening to the nations involved learning from the nations their practices and customs of worship. In other words, more than information being passed along, listening involved formation of the heart. 

God was jealous for His people whom He had saved and delivered from slavery. He loved them and had chosen them as His treasured possession. He didn’t want their hearts to wander away from Him, so He gave them His Word and warned them to not listen to the words of the nations. He gave them His prophets like Moses and Elijah to speak and mediate His word to His people.

In these “last days,” though, God “has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things” (Hebrews 1:2). In Jesus He has given us a greater prophet and mediator than both Moses and Elijah. Jesus possesses a greater glory than either Moses or Elijah saw of God during their life. The glory Jesus possesses is a glory given to Him by God. Jesus is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power” Hebrews 1:3). Jesus is the very image of God, the Word of God made flesh. When God spoke from heaven on the mountain, “This is my Son, my Chosen One; listen to him!” He was neither speaking of Moses nor Elijah who in that moment had appeared with Jesus. He was speaking of Jesus Christ alone. 

Dear Elim Grace, once more, our culture does not believe in God. Our culture is suspect of any voice of authority. The sole prophetic, divine, authoritative voice is “the self”. Yet we must not absorb that “leaven”. We must not assimilate the “learning” of the nations by “listening” to them in this way. We must not become our own prophet. We must not ascribe to any “voice,” whether ours or any other’s, the title and authority of the Word, the Prophet, the Mediator.

Acts 12:21-22 serves as an appropriate warning to us today: “On an appointed day Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, and delivered an oration to them. And the people were shouting, ‘The voice of a god, and not of a man!’” Let us neither clothe ourselves in Herod’s robes nor clothe another. 

Rather, let us take to heart the words of John the Baptist. When asked with great anticipation whether he was “the Prophet” long expected, he answered without hesitation, “No.“ But he didn’t stop there. He went further. “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ as the prophet Isaiah said.” (John 1:21-23) And then the prophetic moment John had been waiting for his entire life was fulfilled. “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.’…I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.” (John 1:29-34)

Let’s be honest: Are we really our own prophet? Or will we hear God’s voice and “listen to him!,” to Jesus? He is our true prophet, our one mediator, the Word of God.

Pastor Jonathan