Prophets, Prophecy, and Prophesying — Emanuel Esh

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Prophets and Prophecy in the Old and New Testaments

I'd like to preach a message this morning on something that has been on my heart many, many years, I should say, and I believe a message that is needed in our day, something that I have pondered for many years and watched and studied and thought about, and that is the title, I'd like to call it Prophets, Prophecy, and Prophesying, and maybe a secondary title would be The Role or Their Role in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.

What is the role of the prophets in the Old Testament? What is their role in the New Testament? And prophecy and prophesying, all kind of flows together. So I would like to, if I may, do some teaching on that and preaching.

Maybe we can look at what prophets are or what they have been in the past and are there prophets today and how do we look at prophecy today and so forth. That's some of the questions that I have and that I would like to teach on and maybe answer this morning, if we can.

Maybe one of the first questions that we could ask is, what is a prophet? What is a prophet? What comes to your mind? Anyone? Somebody that hears from God? Someone who proclaims. A seer. One who sees.

That's right. Anyone else? One that speaks forth the mind and will of God. That would include His Word. Speaking of His Word, I have some notes here this morning, but I don't know if the Lord wants me to use them or just to preach from His Word and from my heart.

It's something that's been on my heart a long time and so I want to mind the Lord in all of that. I do have a burden that we as a congregation would be able to discern the prophets of today, what their role is and how they function in the church today.

And I believe it's good for us to look at the prophets in the Old Testament a little bit to get a good solid foundation of what a prophet is and what he does or what he did do in the Old Testament. I do believe that the prophets in the New Testament play a different role than the ones in the Old Testament.

And there's a difference in them. A prophet basically is one that foretells, often one who is divine inspired to communicate God's will and His message to the people and also to disclose the future. That was specifically, especially true in the Old Testament.

If we were to put ourselves back in the early days of, say, Genesis and Exodus, after the fall of man, we would have to conclude that man did not know much about God. Man certainly did not know much about God.

After the fall in the garden, I believe Adam and Eve, they knew God. But after the fall, after sin entered into the world, it seems like man lost their view and their vision of who God is and who God was.

And so God ordained men of old, holy men of old, inspired by the Holy Ghost to proclaim who He was, what He is like, what He does, and to look and to prophesy of the coming one. The great job that the prophets of the Old Testament had was exactly that.

First of all, it was to proclaim the coming Savior, the Christ. And what He would do and how He would live and where He would be born. And so many of the prophets, they looked down there prophetically, anointed by the Spirit of God, and they proclaimed the will of God.

And they made God known to His people by their means of prophesying. That was the means whereby the people got to know who God is and what He is like. And we today have much of that written in the Old Testament.

We have major prophets and minor prophets, and most of us are familiar with many of them. These prophets were men of God. Many of these prophets received their call or their appointment to prophesy directly from God.

Some prophets were even called before birth, like John the Baptist and Jeremiah. The authority of their message came from God alone. We have Isaiah, who prophesied beautiful things of the coming Christ.

We have Ezekiel, Daniel. Many of these prophecies have already been fulfilled. There are yet some that will be fulfilled in the future. Some are perhaps being fulfilled today in the church era and so forth.

Many of the Old Testament prophets, they acted out their message dramatically. Like Isaiah, he went naked for three years. Naked and barefoot for three years. Ezekiel lay on his side for 390 days, and he lay on his other side for 40 days.

They did some of these things. They not only spoke the Word of God, they also acted it out in a sense that people could see. I'm sure they would have called them weirdos today. They appeared from all walks of life.

Shepherds, farmers, princes like Abraham, priests like Ezekiel. Women and children became prophetesses. And sometimes God even used ungodly men like Balaam to proclaim His Word. I don't know that I have all the answers to that.

And even Saul, King Saul, who was prophesied when he was in wickedness. But God still, it still says that he prophesied. So that's a little bit about prophets. If we think about prophecy, it is simply predictions about the future, end time, special messages from God.

Being uttered by humans to indicate, make known, reveal the mind and will of God. The focus of all prophetic truth is Jesus Christ, who was destined to be the greatest prophet. He declared God's truth in this age and the age to come.

He is the embodiment of truth. He is the fulfillment of many, many prophecies. And so forth. Well, let's look a little bit at the role of prophets in the Old Testament. They were to communicate the will in the heart of God to the people.

They were to foretell the coming of Christ. They were to warn of sin and of danger. And to predict the future and to encourage God's people. That was the role of prophets in the Old Testament specifically.

When you think of prophets in the Old Testament, which ones come to your mind first? Isaiah, Elijah. Often times we think of them, but we don't often think of David as a prophet, do we? In my mind, I think of David as king.

But most of the Psalms seem to have been penned by David and those are prophetic. David was a prophet without a doubt. Abraham was a prophet. Noah was a prophet. Enoch was a prophet. Moses was one of the greatest Old Testament prophets and so forth.

And almost without fail, and I think it is without fail, they all would speak of the great day of the Lord that is to come. Almost all the prophets. And most of them spoke surely of Christ. What about false prophets?

Are there false prophets today? I believe that there is. We'll look at some scripture later on. But Jesus warned much about false prophets and false Christ. But there were false prophets in the Old Testament.

Testing True and False Prophets

Let's begin by going to Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 18 is one of the clear pictures of yea or nay on prophets, true or false. Here we have Moses declaring in chapter 18, verse 15, that the Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet.

Deuteronomy is the fifth book of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. This is the book where Moses once again brings the law. Adut means to, and it's the second time that Moses brings the law to Israel before he dies.

And so he's telling them that after his death, he's giving them some direction what's going to happen. He says in verse 15, the Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me.

Unto him ye shall hearken. According to all that thou desirest of the Lord thy God in Horeb in the days of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire no more, that I die not.

And the Lord said unto me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken. In other words, Israel was saying to Moses that on the day that God spoke from the mountain, they didn't want to hear his voice, they were afraid of that, so they said, Please Moses, you go talk to God, then you come and talk to us.

And God is simply saying, Because of that, I'm going to send them prophets, I'm going to speak to them that way. And then he says in verse 18, Again, I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.

And it shall come to pass that whosoever will not hearken unto my words, which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. But the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die.

Moses is telling the people, or God is speaking to the people through this, and he's saying, I'm going to raise up a prophet amongst you, one like yourselves, him you shall hear. And the people, of course, they question, How do we know if this is the true prophet?

How do we know which one is the true prophet, and how do we know that we have to listen to him? He gives some direction there. Verse 21, If thou say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the Lord hath not spoken?

Verse 22, When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken, it presumptuously thou shalt not be afraid of him.

This prophet that God is speaking of here, here is Christ. Christ, this prophet is going to come, him shall you hear. Listen to this one that is to come, Moses is saying. That is Christ, the greatest prophet of all.

But the picture here is that there will be prophets who speak presumptuously. There are men who say things that are not true. There are men who say things with wrong reasons and so forth. You can see it through the Old Testament again and again, which we want to look at some of those.

One of the things that I would like to do is to help us to understand the nature or the character of false prophets and what they do and what they say. Maybe some of you have been in circles where there has been congregations or church services where there has been prophetic utterances given.

Someone would get up and they would prophesy and speak in the name of the Lord and prophesy something. Many times they will maybe say things that will be happening or be coming or maybe they will be speaking specifically to you and in some circles that is very much the picture of spirituality is when you can get up and you can say something in the name of the Lord and prophesy over another person.

Some of those some of that may be right in a good place today, but I do believe that most of it is not from God. And so I believe it is important for us to understand some of these things. In 1 Kings 18 we have the story of Elijah who had a showdown with the 450 prophets of Baal.

Elijah said there shall be no rain until I say and for three years and six months it did not rain because of what Elijah said. And Elijah knew the word of God and the word of God in the law had said that if God's people fall away then he is going to shut the heaven off, there will be no rain.

And in one sense Elijah simply put the word of God into effect by speaking those words and therefore the rain was stopped for three and a half years. Then he met there on Mount Carmel with the 450 prophets of Baal and there they had a showdown and Elijah believed in the true God and God answered with fire there and then they took those 450 prophets, false prophets or prophets of Baal and they slew them.

In that sense there was false prophets. We have also the story of Balaam. I believe that he was a prophet, but he was not a man of God and how do we reconcile all of that I'm not even sure, but God did seem to speak through him even though he was not walking in righteousness we would say.

We have other stories of false prophets in 1 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 18 where King Ahab and King Jehoshaphat went out to battle together and there Ahab was the king of Israel, Jehoshaphat was the king of Judah at that time, the kingdom of Israel had been divided and there Ahab called up his 400 prophets to tell him whether or not they would win the battle.

Ahab and Jehoshaphat were together against some other nation there, I'm not sure what it was. Ahab's prophets, the 400 prophets, they said that he should go up and they should prophesy. Let's turn to that in 2 Chronicles 18 and see if we can find some, take the time to look at that.

2 Chronicles 18 and in this story Ahab called for his 400 prophets and they prophesied and said that he should go up and they would win the battle. In verse 9 of chapter 18 of 2 Chronicles And the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah sat either of them on his throne clothed in their robes, they sat in a void place at the entering of the gates of Samaria and all the prophets prophesied before them.

And Zedekiah the son of Jinnah had made him horns of iron and said, Thus saith the Lord with these thou shalt push Syria until they be consumed. And all the prophets prophesied so saying, Go up to Ramoth Gilead and prosper for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king.

And then King Jehoshaphat was not satisfied with those men so he called and said, Isn't there a prophet of God amongst their people? And so they called for Micah and the messenger that went to call for Micah said, Micah this is what the false prophets have prophesied.

Make sure you say the same thing. And so when he first spoke he did say the same thing. And then in verse 15, the king said to him, How many times shall I adjure thee that thou say nothing but the truth to me in the name of the Lord?

Then he said, verse 16, I did see all Israel scattered upon the mountains as sheep that have no shepherd. And the Lord said, These have no master. Let them return there for every man to his house in peace.

And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, Did not I tell you that he would not prophesy good but evil? Jehoshaphat wanted to have a true prophet speak. And so then he said again, and the picture he gives there is that an evil spirit that the Lord said, I saw the Lord in verse 18 sitting upon his throne and all the hosts of heaven standing on his right hand and on his left.

And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab king of Israel that he may go up and fall at Ramoth Gilead? And one spake saying after this manner and another saying after that manner. Then there came out a spirit and stood before the Lord and said, I will entice him.

And he said, How? Wherewith? And he said, I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets. And the Lord said, Thou shalt entice him and thou shalt also prevail. Go out and do even so.

Now, therefore, behold, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of these thy prophets. The Lord has spoken evil against thee. And the picture there we have is that the Lord simply allowed these evil spirits.

The Lord seemed to ask the question amongst the spirits and said, Who will go and deceive King Ahab that he might go into battle and fall? And one spirit after another came up and gave a reason why he should be allowed to go and deceive and convince the king.

And finally one spirit rose up and he said, It is. I will speak in the mouth of the prophets. And the Lord said, OK, you have the right to go do it. You'll be able to do it. And so by that spirit speaking through the mouth of those 400 false prophets, they convinced the king to go.

This is quite a picture of what happens, you might say. But let's not take too much time on that. You can always study it later on. But they did go out to battle. They did lose the battle. The king of Ahab, he did fall in battle there.

Jeremiah's Warnings Against False Prophets

Then let's also turn to Jeremiah for some other pictures of prophets. And we could look at Isaiah and I want to also make mention of the beautiful things spoken in the word of God by Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 40 to the end speaks a lot about the kingdom of Christ, the church and so forth.

Beautiful, beautiful things that are spoken. Many of them, a picture of Christ and those are beautiful things that we need to look at. Ezekiel, Jeremiah. In Jeremiah we have a little more, also a picture of Isaiah, Jeremiah, sorry, of prophets.

And Jeremiah lived in the time of the captivity, in the time that Jerusalem was besieged. And there was false prophets in Jerusalem that were saying that Israel is not going to be destroyed. Jerusalem is not going to be destroyed.

And Jeremiah was the true prophet. He was the only one standing up and saying this place is going to be destroyed. It is because of the sin of the people. God is going to destroy this place. And over and over again that happened.

Let's look a little bit at Jeremiah chapter 27. Just briefly verse 14. Therefore hearken not to the words of the prophets that speak unto you, saying, Ye shall not serve the king of Babylon, for they prophesy a lie unto you.

These men were prophesying lies. They were simply speaking prophetically and deceiving the people with their lies. And I believe that much of that happens even today when men today, they sometimes speak prophetic words over people and they convince the people that this is a message from God and the people will go and they will live their lives according to that prophetic utterance that has come upon them.

That I want us to be very careful of and I hope to be able to convince you or to show you from God's word why that should not be followed. That's one part of my heart. These prophets were prophesying lies.

Jeremiah 28. We have the story of Hananiah's false prophecy and of his death because he prophesied lies. Verse 8 says the prophets let's go to verse 6. The battle here was with the prophet Hananiah who prophesied that not only would the city not fall but that they would be able to go back, that the captives who had already been taken to Babylon would come back to Jerusalem and that the gold and silver and the goods that had been taken to Babylon would also come back.

That was what he was prophesying while the armies were outside the walls. But Jeremiah said that's not true. In verse 6, even the prophet Jeremiah said amen the Lord do so. The Lord performed thy words which thou has prophesied to bring again the vessels of the Lord's house and all that is carried away captive from Babylon to this place.

And Jeremiah said well that would be wonderful if that would happen but he said nevertheless hear thou now this word that I speak in thine ear in the ears of all these people. The prophets that have been before me and this is one of the pictures that I see how to discern true or false prophets.

The prophets that have been before me and before thee of old prophesied both against many countries and against great kingdoms of war and of evil and of pestilence. The prophet which prophesied of peace when the word of the prophet shall come to pass then shall the prophet be known that the Lord has truly sent him.

The picture that I see here is that the prophets God's men, holy men of old they prophesied and warned of danger they prophesied against the sin of the people and they warned them that if they don't repent then evil would befall them.

The evil prophets they often prophesied peace blessing. They speak great swelling words of blessing over people and by that deceive the people into thinking that they are hearing from God. But Jeremiah is simply trying to make a difference between the true and the false prophets here.

And down the end Jeremiah prophesied that Hananiah would die because he taught rebellion against the Lord. And the false prophets may I say they teach lies and they teach rebellion against the Lord. And there's other areas that we could look at there.

The New Testament Meaning of Prophecy

Old Testament prophets we're looking at. We love the prophecies of Christ and Christ fulfilled many of them. Let's go and look now at the New Testament. I think most of us would know and understand quite clearly the role of the Old Testament prophets.

They were to proclaim the mind and will of God. They were to bring revelation of who God was and they did that over and over again. But what role did the prophet have today in the church? Is it the same as it was in the Old Testament?

And I believe that we need to look at God's word in light of this and decide for ourselves how much should I be persuaded by so-called prophets today? And what is the role of prophets today? The New Testament opens up in the beginning of Matthew with John the Baptist.

It opens up in the beginning of Luke with Zechariah the priest who at the birth of John he spoke prophetically by the Spirit of God and it makes it very clear that the Spirit of God came upon him there.

He was filled with the Spirit and he spake. And also Mary. She also spake by the Spirit of God. Elizabeth likewise spake by the Spirit of God and the words that they said were words of truth. And basically the spirit of what they were saying was a confirmation of the prophets of old.

Let's look at that a little bit. Turn to Luke and notice what they were saying as they prophesied. Just very briefly if we could look at Elizabeth's prophecy. She simply says, blesses Mary the mother of her Lord and so forth.

And she says in verse 45 of Luke chapter 1, blessed is she that believeth for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. And then Mary also she prophesied and she basically prophesied Old Testament principles of how God works among his people.

His mercy is upon them that fear him from generation to generation. Verse 52, he put down the mighty from their seats, exalts them of low degree, fills the hungry with good things, the rich he sends away.

55, he spake to her fathers, to Abraham, to his seed forever. Basically she's prophetically speaking and acknowledging that the timing of the Christ is here. If you study her prophecy, that's what you will see.

She's acknowledging that now is coming the time of the Christ. And likewise, when Zacharias prophesied in the same chapter 68, he was still with the spirit and prophesied saying, blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people, raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies, from the hand of all that hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and so on.

This is the spirit of his prophecy. It's not something new, you might say, but rather it is an acknowledgment of the fulfillment of the prophecies that already have been spoken. This is basically the nature of prophecy in the New Testament.

A fulfillment of the prophets of old. And this is what the New Testament prophets are saying and prophesying in general. When we speak of prophets today, we don't necessarily think of them as prophets in the Old Testament, but rather prophesying is preaching.

And the preaching and prophesying of the New Testament is that of making known the mind and will of God, confirming the prophets of old, bringing them in and showing the people how God has worked through the prophets of old, prophesying of that which is to come, which is Christ, and that now we have the confirmation of that.

And Christ has come. And that is what is the preaching of today. Do I say that there are no longer, quote, prophets today? I wouldn't want to say that. There are gifts of prophecy given to the church.

But if we study the New Testament by itself or look at the prophets and the works of the prophets and what they did in the New Testament, we find very little that they actually spoke prophetically. Why is that?

What has brought the shift from the Old Testament prophets who, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, spake the mind and will of God and were revealing, may I say, God and Christ to come? What is different from that to today where we live?

We are living under the New Testament, the New Covenant, and this is what I see very clearly. That it is that the Spirit of God has been poured out in Acts chapter 2 at Pentecost upon all the believers.

And that all those who believe now have the Spirit of God within them and God communicates with them personal on a personal basis. Rather than just one or two men among the congregation as it was in the Old Testament where those men were the prophets and they were the ones who were divinely inspired by God to bring God's message to His people.

That's what the Old Testament prophets were. The New Testament is a different setting. There really, may I say, the need for someone for an Old Testament prophet today is really not here. Scripture has been written.

All that needed to be prophesied about the coming Christ has been written basically in the Old Testament. The New Testament is simply a demonstration or a proclaiming of the fulfillment of those Old Testament prophecies.

Preaching as New Testament Prophesying

So, what is the role of prophets today? That's the question we're going to look at. That's what we're going to come to. First of all, I would say that 1 Thessalonians 5 20 says, despise not prophesying.

But if we look at the word prophesying in the New Testament, it basically means one who proclaims the mind and will of God. The same as the Old Testament. And the word prophesying could also be used preaching.

And so the word preaching and prophesying is the same. Because prophesying what a preacher does is he preaches the word of God. He proclaims the word of God. He explains it to the people. He tries to reveal God to the people in a way that they can understand.

That's the work of the preachers today. That is prophesying today. And we know that that is right because we have the examples of the apostles in the New Testament. Now, some might feel like I'm not giving enough room for prophets today.

I want to give room where there is right room for prophets to function today. But I do believe that there is a great danger of error there. Think with me in this sense. Jesus, when He was asked about end times, some of His first words were be careful of false prophets.

Now, it's very clear that in the New Testament era, there are many false prophets and false Christs proclaiming themselves or proclaiming what they have to say. But there's really no place that Jesus as far as I understand, Jesus never told us to look to the prophets per se.

But there's going to be prophets who are going to reveal more of God's will per se than what is already revealed. That's what I would understand. But there are false prophets who will arise and do their thing.

Despise not prophesying. The office of setting forth the truth of God is to be the permanent office in the church. So don't despise preaching. And not only when someone is preaching from behind the pulpit, but wherever there is preaching.

Do not despise it. You see someone standing at the street corner preaching the word of God, lifting up his voice, never despise preaching. It is the duty, it is the office of addressing mankind on the great truths of religion and publishing salvation.

This is to be God's great ordinance for converting the world. It should not be despised and no man who commends his own wisdom, who contends it. For it is God's appointment. The means which he has designated for saving people is the preaching of the gospel.

There is nothing else that has so much power over mankind as the preaching of the gospel. There is no other institution of heaven or earth among people that is destined to exert so wide and permanent an influence as the Christian ministry or as the preaching of God's word.

This is what God has chosen to use to bring people to Christ, to himself, is the preaching of the word. It is an influence which is holy good. No man is made the poor or less respectable or more miserable in life or in death by following the counsel of the minister of God.

He who despises preaching or contends that which is designed to promote his own welfare, which is indispensable for salvation. It remains yet to be shown that any man has promoted his own happiness or the welfare of his family by speaking evil or by having contempt toward preachers.

In other words, do not despise preaching is all that it's saying. Here's a verse I want you to think about in light of the light of the change from the Old Testament, Proverbs to the New Testament. In Luke 16, 16, it says that the law and the prophets were until John.

Since that time the kingdom of God is preached and every man presses into it. It seems like the law, we understand that the law was until John. We understand that Christ came and brought the law of grace, you might say.

But the Old Testament law was until John and it says the law and the prophets were until John. Since then, the kingdom of God is preached. Since then, the kingdom of God is preached and this is the New Testament preaching.

This is the New Testament prophets work. It's that of prophesying and preaching the kingdom. This is a change and I see this verse as a change from one dispensation to the other. That of preaching in the New Testament.

So we understand that the New Testament work of the prophet is basically preaching or of prophesying, which means preaching. Paul said in Romans, so as much as is in me, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are at Rome also.

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believe it, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from heaven, revealed from faith to faith as it is written, the just shall live by faith.

For therein in the preaching of the gospel is the righteousness of God revealed against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men. In 1 Corinthians, Paul again is writing and Paul writes a lot about preaching and prophesying.

But it's called preaching in the New Testament basically. 1 Corinthians it says, chapter 1, verse 18 for the preaching of the gospel, the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness, but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.

The preaching of the cross is to them which perish foolishness. They laugh at it, they mock at it, they scorn at it, but to us it is the power of God. For after that in the wisdom of God, the world by wisdom knew not God it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

It has pleased God to use the foolishness of preaching. Visiting with a young man in South Dakota it's a fiery young man there who is just filled with passion for souls. They told me that in his town where he lives they were having a parade and he went to the head of the parade and the master who was setting this thing up and said, can I be a part of it?

Sure, he said, you can be a part of it. He said, is this a good parade? Is this a godly parade? Oh yeah, it's a godly thing. Okay, fine. But I'll take part in it. So he took part in this parade down through town.

Well he made up signs and and had some other brothers follow with him and they held these signs about gospel signs. They walked, took part in this parade through the middle of town. And the announcer who was announcing who each little group was, the ones in front of them were Harley Davidson's and he named them and they're Harley Davidson motorcycles and who they all were and what they represented and all that.

And then here come these guys carrying these signs, which everybody thought they were fools, of course. All he did was say, this is so and so, this is so and so. And they went right to the next one. He didn't say anything about them.

The foolishness of preaching. This young man walks up to a crowd of people there later on and said, is there any Christians here? Oh yeah, some hands went up. What is that? I need some help holding signs.

Would you hold a sign for me for a while? No. They didn't want to be involved in that. But yeah, we're Christians, but I'm sure it was a reproach to them. It's a reproach to me if something like that happens.

Someone comes to me, are you a Christian? Well yeah, I'm a Christian. Well, but you know, maybe I'm not willing to hold a sign up in public and be deemed foolish. But God has ordained that by the foolishness of preaching, men might be saved.