Sunday, March 17, 2024 PM

Sunnyside Baptist Church

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different kind of man compared to the priest and the king.

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However, all three of those that I mentioned were all anointed. The high priest was anointed, the king was anointed, and the prophets were anointed.

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And that is why when we think of Christ or Christos in the

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Greek, translated Messiah in the Hebrew means anointed.

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The great high priest, he's the great prophet, and he is the king of kings. And so he is the anointed one, all three offices simultaneously together.

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And we thought about the prophet as well as an external operative. The prophet needed to stand outside of the systems of religion and righteousness, the systems that upheld holiness and justice.

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The prophet needed to be able to point at the priests and call them to repentance and to conform to the covenant.

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The priest needed to stand and point his finger in the face of the king and say, you are the man.

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He needed to say to the king, thus says the Lord, you better obey God. Imagine that.

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Nobody could tell the king what to do. None of his servants dared cross him. Even when we think about David and the crowning of King Solomon, Bathsheba didn't even dare command the king, but she appealed to him about the promises he had made concerning Solomon to become king.

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Nobody could tell the king what to do except God. And he would say to the king what needed to be said through his prophet.

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So the prophet had to have an external operative. He had to be an external operative coming in from the outside.

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We thought about that pattern even with John the Baptist and him being the forerunner of Christ.

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So Jesus himself was an external operative.

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He was one of us. He became one of us. He did things yet without sin.

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But he came in among us in order to bring us to God. He came from the outside in and among us as the

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Word of God in the flesh, John chapter 1 says.

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So now we're going to think about the prophets, their nature, that they were ecstatic occasionally.

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Ecstatic meaning a very special and perhaps startling and overwhelming way of receiving the

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Word of the Lord and declaring it to others. In that, I hope you've done a little bit of homework as we encourage you to do from previous two sessions.

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But who would you nominate as the oddest of the odd ducks of the prophets in the

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Old Testament? What would you say? You're guessing Ezekiel? Does anybody have a nominee weirder than Ezekiel?

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Yes. And tell us why Hosea was potentially more odd than Ezekiel himself. Yes. Yeah.

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Hosea, go marry a harlot. Wow. What an instruction from the

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Lord. And then of course when he married the harlot and she started giving birth to children, what did he name those children?

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I don't know how much thought you gave to the names that you gave your children. Becca and I were always thinking about the meanings of the names and so on and so forth.

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And Hosea named his children names like Unloved.

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That was the girl. Wow. How about Not Mine?

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How's that for a name? Wow, that's rough. So Hosea, you know, did some strange things, but God commanded him to do those things.

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Now what about Ezekiel? Why is Ezekiel a little bit odd? Remember in Ezekiel chapter 4 we read that Ezekiel lay on his left side for 390 days and he laid on his right side for 40 days and he prophesied against both

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Israel and Judah. Isn't that strange?

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You read along in Ezekiel 4, he also built little scale models of Jerusalem and played out in action figure status the siege that came up against Jerusalem.

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He ate bread that was baked over dung, having measured things out very, very carefully as if he himself were in the exile, as if he himself were starving to death along with the exiles.

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So Ezekiel gets a lot of nominations for being the weirdest among the prophets.

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We remember Elijah, while he was a fugitive, he ate food that was dropped to him by ravens.

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I'd be a little suspicious where the raven got the food, you know what I'm saying? But that's all he had to eat.

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We remember a lot of odd situations regarding the prophets.

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How did the prophets receive their messages from the Lord? Was it always the same way?

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It was rather a variety of ways, wasn't it? There was a lot of unique incidents about the way in which that the prophets received the word of the

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Lord. In Hebrews chapter 1 and verse 1, we are reminded about this variety.

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Hebrews 1 verse 1, God who at various times, we think about the scope of all the prophets and how they lived at different times,

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God who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets.

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Various ways. What were some of the ways in which the prophets received messages from the

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Lord? Sometimes they would be asleep, they would have a dream, and they would know there was something qualitatively different about this dream than any other experience they had had, and they would wake up and bring forward the word of the

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Lord. What are some other ways in which they would receive the word of the

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Lord? A vision. So they would have a waking, like a waking dream, but they would have a vision in which their senses would be overtaken by the

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Holy Spirit and they would receive vivid messages from God to declare to the people of Israel.

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They would be completely overwhelmed by the power of God and they would receive messages.

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They would see things that they couldn't explain, they would perceive themselves to be in places that they couldn't possibly be, and of course that is connected, isn't it, to our study of the book of Isaiah, chapter 6, where Isaiah is in the throne room of God suddenly, and there's the altar, and he sees the

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Lord high and lifted up, and the train of his robe is filling the temple, and the seraphim are flying around him with six wings.

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With two they flew, with two they covered their face, with two they covered their feet, and they cry out, they never cease crying out, holy, holy, holy is the

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Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory, and Isaiah suddenly is transported to this place, and in this moment he's hearing this word of God, he's seeing all these things, and clearly he understands this to be the word of the

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Lord, that he then brings and he writes down and then declares to the nation of Judah, this is the word of the

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Lord. So we have dreams, we have visions, any other ways that we might think of?

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Yes, sometimes God just spoke directly to them, and it seems to be a little bit anti -climactic, you know, after you read the vision in Isaiah, then later on it said, well the

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Lord said this, and it was, well, I guess it was just a direct communication there, there wasn't a necessity.

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We see a variety in the way, let's put it this way, we see a freedom in the way that God communicates, right?

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Nobody's gonna tell God you have to communicate in only this one particular way, but there's a freedom in the way that God communicated to his prophets, through his prophets, to his people.

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So it was not always ecstatic, occasionally it was.

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Ecstatic experiences among biblical prophets are characterized by intense spiritual encounters.

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They would have altered states of consciousness, and they would receive divine revelations in these experiences.

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They often involved visions, hearing God's voice, sometimes there was physical manifestations, you'd see the prophet sometimes trembling, falling down, being unable to speak, they'd be like dead men.

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And from Samuel to Daniel, you find those experiences among the prophets.

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But being whisked away and overcome are not the only means of revelation, as Dean said, direct communication.

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Remember, God spoke with Abraham and with Moses in direct ways.

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Visions, dreams, but then angels sometimes would show up, and they would have a word. After all, their name simply means messenger, and they would bring the word of the

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Lord to his human messenger to declare it to others.

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We have the audible voice, as it was with Samuel, but far and away,

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I would say, it's safe to say this, that the most common way that God brought about his special revelation was through the inspiration of the

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Holy Spirit. You can think about how much material we have in the

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Old Testament that's been written by prophets. How did we receive this word?

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Why is it that when we read the New Testament, that Jesus and the

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Apostles point back at a variety of different passages among the prophets, and they would say things like, thus says the

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Spirit. When you go back into those same contexts in the Old Testament, and the prophets are saying, thus saith the

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Lord. Well, who was it? Was it the Lord, or was it the Holy Spirit?

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Yes. Yes, indeed. One of those areas where we recognize the truth of the

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Trinity. So, we have God speaking through his prophets in the

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Old Testament. We should recall that passage in 2nd Peter. In 2nd

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Peter, in chapter 1, in verse 21, it simply says, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men, holy men of God.

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Remember, man of God is a turn of phrase that often speaks about prophets.

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But holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the

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Holy Spirit. So, holy men moved of God spoke as they were, holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the

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Holy Spirit. The seers, the prophets, when we think about Ezekiel and Daniel and so on, sometimes we can think about their exciting experiences, and we should, but that was not the norm.

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Very often, as you read through the Old Testament, you go through vast eras of time, and you have to recognize that it was, in their life, they weren't having a major miracle every other day.

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These things would come about, and they were particular for the needs of the time.

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And just because we can read about ten major miracles in one sitting in the Bible, doesn't mean that they were having that on a daily basis.

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But all throughout their lives, we see God's faithfulness in bringing his word. ...experiences

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occurred, but they are part of the various ways that God spoke by his

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Spirit of his Son. When we think about the prophets, they were moved by the

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Holy Spirit, and they modeled the covenant concerns of their creators.

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That's what we're going to see, also, that they exemplify often, exemplifying often.

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So the strange behavior, why did the prophets have to act in certain ways? What did it have to do with preaching the message?

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I mean, it'd be kind of hard to preach sermons laying down on your side.

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When we were in Memphis, we had a very refined

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Southern Belle. She was, I don't know, she was, I think, in her mid -sixties, and she was appalled that some preacher had come to her church, and it was one of these very large churches in Memphis, and they were very stately in all that they did and said and thought.

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And this guy is a rather unique Old Testament scholar, and he has a lot of scholarship to his name and so on and so forth, but his favorite book in the

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Bible was Ezekiel, and he was known for teaching on Ezekiel.

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So he came to their church, and he laid down on the stage and preached his whole sermon laying down.

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I think his goal was that they would never forget, and he succeeded. But she couldn't remember a single thing that he said.

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She was just, she'd been offended for years. That man had come and preached laying down on the stage, and that the authorities of the church had allowed such a travesty to occur.

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And he said, could you believe that? I said, well, I think maybe he's just trying to be authentic. It's horrible. I'm like, okay.

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But I think it'd be difficult to preach laying down on your side just one sermon, let alone 390 days.

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The prophet not only mediated God's truth to the people, but he often modeled it in his conduct.

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This is not simply a practice what you preach, which is very good, but he made himself by God's command the illustration for the message that he was bringing.

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And so Isaiah, we read in Isaiah chapter 20. Since we are studying that book, we'll use that as our particular example.

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Let's go over to Isaiah chapter 20, and we can read, and it's the whole chapter, just verses 1 through 6.

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In the year that Tartan came to Ashdod, when Sargon, the king of Assyria, sent him, and he fought against Ashdod and took it.

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At the same time, the Lord spoke to Isaiah, the son of Amoz, saying, go and remove the sackcloth from your body and take your sandals off your feet.

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And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. Then the Lord said, just as my servant

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Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a wonder against Egypt and Ethiopia, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the

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Egyptians as prisoners and the Ethiopians as captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.

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Then they shall be afraid and ashamed of Ethiopia, their expectation in Egypt their glory.

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And the inhabitant of this territory will say in that day, surely such is our expectation, wherever we flee for help to be delivered from the king of Assyria, and how shall we escape?

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In other words, the people of Israel had got it into their head, oh, we don't have to worry about Assyria.

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We can always call up Egypt and Ethiopia for help. God says,

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I'm going to divest you of that confidence. You are not going to have confidence in that anymore, because my prophet is going to walk around naked in your midst, saying, this is what's going to happen to Egypt and Ethiopia.

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This is what's going to happen to Egypt and Ethiopia. They're going to be taken away as slaves. You know, and I was thinking about that Southern Belle from Memphis, you know, that if, yeah, good thing it was an expert in Ezekiel, not

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Isaiah, who come to preach at her church. But to get the point across,

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God had Isaiah illustrate the message, you see. So often the oddities of the prophets were that they were embodying the message in and of themselves, not just preaching it, not just writing it down, but also modeling it in and of their own persons.

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Remember, Hosea married a promiscuous woman to showcase the nature of God's relationship with Israel, that Israel was unfaithful.

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And of course, Ezekiel's sideshow in Ezekiel chapter 4. But then we also have him doing other things in addition to that, even shaving off all of his hair to show himself as a slave and a captive, which is why some of the older artists, when they portray the prophet

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Ezekiel, they always make him bald and no beard. And so, because of that passage in Ezekiel chapter 5.

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Jeremiah himself wore a wooden yoke and walked around with a wooden yoke around his neck to try to demonstrate the coming captivity brought on by Babylon.

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Let's think about that for a moment. Priests mediated God's holiness. They stood in the place of the people to make propitiation for the people.

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They're offering sacrifices as a picture of the sacrifice God would provide through his son

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Jesus, the true Lamb of God. Kings mediated God's authority. They stood in to perform the governance for the people and to establish peace for the people.

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If they did well, the people did well. If they did poorly, the people did poorly. Prophets mediated

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God's truth. They stood in to make pictures and model patterns for the people.

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In their person and work, the prophets took on the personas and the roles of God and his people.

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Sometimes the prophet would take on the model of God and they would do things that would say, this is how

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God is acting towards you. Sometimes they would take on the persona and the model of the people and they say, behold

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Israel, this is who you are. Look at my example. And so, they would model pictures and patterns for the people in their person and work, both of God and of his people.

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They demonstrated in their own suffering and humiliation the nature and the scope of God's judgment and the nature and the scope of God's salvation.

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When we think about Christ, he fully identified with his own and in a far greater and fulfilling manner,

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Christ suffered before God the judgment that we deserved, naked and humiliated.

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He was all his people before God's gaze as he is

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God revealed to us. Philip says, show us the Father. I've been with you this long and you say, show me the

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Father. If you see me, you've seen the Father. So, Jesus fully communicates God to us and he fully represents us before God.

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The prophets were, you see, a preparation for the people to understand that, for us to understand that.

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They were preparatory shadows of the incarnation and the atonement.

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Jesus, in his mediating office, he reveals salvation not just verbally, he reveals it in his own bodily suffering and in his bodily resurrection and ascension.

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We are reminded in the scriptures that truth is in Jesus, the entirety of his person, the entirety of his work.

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And so, we are reminded that the atonement, when we think about salvation itself, we are never to reduce the gospel or salvation to mere transaction.

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There is a transaction involved. It's not mere forensic. Yes, there is legal issues that are being settled before the throne room of God, but it is also revelation.

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We cannot conceive of the atonement and salvation without Jesus Christ, in and of himself, being fully man and fully

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God, suffering in our place and for our sake upon the cross, and being raised from the dead the third day.

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And the preparation for him standing in for us was even back amongst the prophets.

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And every time you see a prophet doing a weird thing, just remember, ah, the prophet is standing in for God or he's standing in for the people, and he is being that mediator that ultimately is fulfilled in Christ.

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Next time, we'll start talking about the prophets of the covenants and consider how it is that whenever God made a covenant with his creatures, whether Noah or Abraham or Israel or David, somehow there was always a prophet right there in the middle of it.

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And we're going to consider why that is, and that'll help us understand what the prophets are all about and the concerns that they have.

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Any questions or thoughts as we close? Yes? Well, I'm talking about the

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Apostle John. Yes. So that's something that's very interesting, isn't it? When we think about prophets in the new covenant, are they different or are they the same as in the old covenant?

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And to answer that question, we can ask similar questions and see what we think, okay?

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Doesn't the New Testament call Christians priests, right?

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But is a new covenant priest different than an old covenant one? Yes. And in some very important ways because of how

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Christ fulfilled the priesthood, right? Doesn't the New Covenant call us sons and daughters of the king, calls us a royal priesthood, right?

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And that we have some sort of authority as those who are in the Lord. Yes, but are we kings in an old covenant fashion?

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No. Something's different about it because Christ has come to fulfill that, hasn't he? And in the same way, when we read about prophets in the

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New Testament, the new covenant, we need to think about how it is that those as a different way of understanding that because of how

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Christ has fulfilled the Word of God and is the fulfillment of all those prophecies that have come before him and the prophets that came before him too.

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So it's an interesting thing to begin to think about. Yes, right.

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So that's a good question because it's on the docket to talk about.