Wednesday, March 13, 2024 PM

And we are still working our way through the introduction to Isaiah, but as I was working through the introductory matters concerning Isaiah, I realized that we'd be talking about the prophets, and we may need a clear understanding of who the prophets were.

It's a word that is very familiar to Christians, familiar to people who have heard a lot of Bible preaching and teaching, but do we really know what a prophet is?

What in the world is a prophet? Why do they seem so weird?

These are questions that anybody would have reading through the

Bible in a year or coming across some interesting story.

So we're studying the prophets right now, and that's going to help us understand

Isaiah, the man, and his message. So last time we talked about prophets and their calling, and a good place to start is what does the

Bible call them? We have a limited amount of biblical words to describe them, but they all speak to different aspects of who the prophets were.

They were those who had insight and foresight by divine blessing.

God gave them sight. A couple of Hebrew words there that have to do with sight. They would have visions, and they would see things, but this sight was connected with words.

They would declare what they saw so that those who had eyes to see would see and those who had ears to hear would hear.

This is not a message that was optional for the people to hear, and it was not optional for the prophets to give.

The most common word for prophet is Navi, or in the plural, the

Nevi 'im, which is one -third of the Old Testament Hebrew name for the

Bible, the Tanakh. The N stands for Nevi 'im, the prophets. It has the word picture of an artesian well, pure, clean water bubbling up from the ground, not something that you have to dig down and draw up, but something that would come out all on its own.

We remember the stories of the prophet who decided, I'm done, I will not talk anymore,

I'm not going to preach anymore, but the message burns and burns within, and it has to come out. This is not a message that's optional to be heard and not optional when it comes to the need for it to be given.

The New Testament word for prophet is where we actually get our English word prophet from. It's prophetess, and it simply means one who stands before others and in the place of another.

Very much a word that means a mediator, but a particular kind of mediator, one who mediates the truth of God.

The prophet stands in the place of God and says, Thus saith the Lord, and he does so standing before those who are made in God's image, so as to declare

God's word to those who need to hear it. That's the calling of the prophets.

Now we're going to consider the nature, not just the names of the prophets, but the nature of the prophets. Their nature, first and foremost, we'll start with this, is that they have an extraordinary office, meaning extraordinary, not ordinary, ordinal, ordinary, where you have one right after the other in succession.

We have that with high priests. Aaron was the first high priest, and who got to be high priest after him?

Phineas, his son, and then all the way down the line. There was an ordinary succession of the priests.

Sons would be brought up by their fathers to be a priest, and then they would take over when that priest died. Hebrews talks about the priests in the

Old Covenant. Each one would die, and another would take his place. That's ordinary, each one after the other.

And you always are supposed to have a high priest around. There was always supposed to be a priest. Same with the king.

Well, there was a king on the throne. Who was expected to rule after him? His son, that's right.

There would be, once you had a king, you were expected to keep on having a king, and the next one would come, and the next one would come, and that would be an ordinary office.

Now, priests were anointed, kings were anointed, and prophets were anointed in the

Old Covenant. However, prophets were a little different. Sometimes there was no prophet.

Sometimes there was. Succession amongst the prophets was not ordinary.

Their office was extraordinary. Now, you wouldn't have four high priests at a time, would you?

But you could have four very important prophets at a time. You couldn't have four kings at a time, but you could have several prophets at a time.

So with priests and kings, you always had to have one, but one at a time in ordinary succession.

With the prophets, you could have a whole bunch, you could have one, you could have none, and succession was not normal.

Now, we do remember the story of Elijah and Elisha, though Elisha was not

Elijah's son. He was a spiritual son, you might say. But you can tell, even in the way in which

Elisha came after and succeeded Elijah, that it was not ordinary at all.

Because when Elisha asked for the blessing of succeeding Elijah and receiving a double portion of his spirit that he may continue on that ministry, there had to be an extraordinary sign.

There had to be some kind of wonder in order to clarify the fact that indeed,

Elisha was the successor of Elijah. So it was not an ordinary office. Now, of course, the priest had to come from the tribe of Levi, specifically, if you're going to be a priest in the tabernacle or temple, like a high priest, well, then you had to be from Aaron.

You had to be from the descendants of Aaron. If you were going to be a king, then, especially in Judah, you had to be a descendant of David.

And so it was very clear where the kings would come from, very clear where the priests would come from.

But prophets, well, they could come from anywhere. One of those verses that gets half quoted a lot is from Amos 7 and verse 14, where Amos says to Amaziah, he says,

I was no prophet, nor was I the son of a prophet, but I was a sheep breeder and a tenderer of sycamore fruit.

Then the Lord took me as I followed the flock, and the Lord said to me, Go, prophesy to my people

Israel. So Amos says, I was minding my own business.

I had a happy life tending sheep and getting sycamore fruit, and then

I have to come here and preach to you. So the prophets could come from anywhere.

That's why we say they have an extraordinary office rather than an ordinary office.

Additionally, with the two ordinary offices, let's think of the priest in the temple, and let's think of the king on his throne, we can tell that those two were not supposed to mix, right?

Can we name, trivia time, can we name two kings that tried to mix the role of priest with king, and how'd that go?

Okay, Saul, yes, Saul definitely. That went very poorly.

Had the kingdom ripped away from him, right? What about another one that is rather famous in the book of Isaiah?

Well, Hezekiah did not attempt to be priest. Uzziah, in the year that Uzziah died, right?

I saw the Lord high and lifted up, right? That's Isaiah 6, verse 1, in the year that Uzziah died.

Now, he died in isolation. In the Bible, the sick were quarantined, not the healthy.

And Uzziah had leprosy, and so, because he had leprosy, they locked everybody up in towers.

No, they locked him up in a tower, and his son Jotham had to be a co -regent with him for a time because Uzziah was limited in his ability to rule.

Why did he have leprosy? Because he tried to go into the temple and offer sacrifices like a priest would, and the high priest, to his credit, stopped him, confronted him, and leprosy broke out on his forehead because he rebelled against the

Lord. So, it's very interesting that kings and priests were not allowed to be combined into the same role.

Things get a little close with David and Solomon who acted priestly, but they did not replace the priests in their actions.

And we think of others like Moses and Samuel who had governing authority according to them as judges, and yet they also were priests.

Moses was a priest, and so was Samuel. And both of them were, of course, prophets.

So, in the person of Moses, we see somebody who had governing authority, but he was never called a king.

At that time, it was understood that God was king over Israel. In fact, during the days of Samuel, though, he was a judge.

When Samuel's sons were wicked and the people did not want to accept them as his successors, as judges over them, they said, we want a king like all the nations around us.

And Samuel took this very personally, and God told Samuel, this isn't about them rejecting you, it's about them rejecting me as their king.

So, during the time of Moses and Samuel, God was understood to be the king over the nation.

So, once again, we don't have a priest -king combined in Moses or in Samuel, though it looks pretty close.

We don't have a priest -king combined in David or Solomon, though it gets awfully close.

And so, as we look at that, the blending of these anointed offices,

I think, prepares the old covenant believer for the anointed one or the

Messiah who forever unites prophet, priest, and king together in his office as the

Messiah, as the anointed one. In the old covenant, prophets get anointed, kings get anointed, priests get anointed.

The new covenant is in the anointed one who is king of kings, the great high priest, and the great prophet all at the same time.

That's why he's the anointed one. So, I think that these pictures we have in the

Old Testament where there's a blending, and we notice that prophet goes fine with a king like David, and prophet goes fine with a priest like Samuel.

The extraordinary office of prophet easily blends with the other two.

And this is all, I think, preparation for the Messiah who was to come in his everlasting mediation as God's chosen servant.

I think we see a lot of that in the second half of Isaiah as the servant is described in kingly, priestly, and prophetic ways.

I think that the mediation of God's truth, holiness, and authority, actually, these things reach back to the very design of the image of God, how

God has made us in his image. So, it's an extraordinary office, and also prophets tended to be an external operative.

Priests and kings in the life of Israel were by definition at the very heart of the nation's religious and civil life.

I mean, they had to be. They were figureheads of the vital systems that God established for both holiness and for justice.

But God, in his mercy, as extraordinary needs demanded, God would send forth and empower a prophet.

When the time came, all of a sudden, there's a prophet. Just spring out of the bush. Oh, wow, there's a prophet.

Out of the blue, the man of God would just suddenly show up and have a word for that moment.

Many prophets that we read about in the scriptures, they don't even have a name. It's just a man of God came and said this.

And we're like, well, what was his name? We don't even know their names. It was an extraordinary office, and they were an external operative.

They were not normally famous and celebrated. The prophet, by definition, was no insider of the system, but an external operative.

Think of John the Baptist. Where did he do his ministry? On the external.

And he was not in the town square of Jerusalem. He was in the wilderness at the

Jordan River, and everyone was coming out of the city, out into the wilderness to come hear this prophet.

So at times, we do have a prophet like Moses or Samuel or David or Isaiah who did exhibit central leading roles at certain times, but let's think about it.

I mean, obviously, it's clear Elijah was an outsider. I mean, that's easy. John the

Baptist, he's an outsider. That's easy. But David was called a prophet. Samuel was called a prophet.

Isaiah is a prophet. What about them? What about Moses? Were they really some sort of external operative when there are so many things happening around them?

Let's think about it. How isolated was Moses throughout his life? First 40 years.

First 40 years getting his Ph .D. in ancient Egypt archaeology and mythology.

Second 40 years getting his Ph .D. in agriculture and nomadic sheep herding.

Last 40 years of his life, how'd that go? Not really well accepted by the people he was called to lead out of Egypt, was he?

How often did he find himself on the outside of them? They didn't like him coming in and making things harder on them when he was trying to say to Pharaoh, God says, let my people go.

He was hated by the people on more than one occasion. They often tried to stone him to death.

He was missing on Mount Sinai. They were ready to sign him off and go back to worshipping idols. Very often we find

Moses isolated off in the tabernacle of meeting. And even when he got out of there, he had to wear a veil over his face because nobody wanted to look at the glory flowing off of him.

So, central figure, but rather isolated from the people.

Also, Samuel, think about Samuel's relationship to Eli when he said, basically,

God's going to judge you and do away with you and your family. And how did things go with Samuel's relationship with the tribes at the end?

Were they very pro -Samuel? They weren't very pro -Samuel. They were done with him, done with his family.

They didn't want to hear any more of this. And then he had to preach judgment upon them at the very end until they cried out in terror and said, no more, no more.

We also have David. How often do we find

David being the well -accepted insider celebrated in the king's palace?

A good portion of David's life in the scripture, we find him on the run. First, he's out in the field.

He's not even in his father's house to get anointed. You've got to go call him in from the fields to get anointed. Then he shows up at the battle with Goliath and his brothers mock him and scorn him and tell him to go home.

And even though the king promises his daughter to David, he refrains to give her to him and tries to trick

David into dying and then tries to spear him a couple of times and then finally chases him and persecutes him for a long time.

Even when David becomes king over Judah, the rest of the tribes say, we don't want to have anything to do with you. It's a big civil war for a long period until finally

David becomes king of the whole nation of Israel. And then very soon his sons rise up against him.

And he's on the run again from Absalom as an outsider from the city. So we see this theme with David as well.

And then, of course, in Isaiah's calling, as we read in Isaiah chapter 6, consider the nature of the calling at the very beginning, how

God spoke to Isaiah and laid out for him the program. I've called you to be my prophet.

We have this classic passage where God says in verse 8 of Isaiah 6,

Also I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send and who will go for us?

Then I said, Here am I, send me. That's what Isaiah says. And this verse has been preached a thousand and one times at missions conferences galore.

And undoubtedly these words are incredibly inspiring until you read the following passage.

So Isaiah volunteers, and of course if you've been in the military, you know you're never ever supposed to do that.

Never volunteer. Isaiah volunteers and now he gets his marching orders.

Oh, this is what I'm going to be doing. Verse 9, he said, Go and tell this people,

Keep on hearing but do not understand. Keep on seeing but do not perceive.

Make the heart of this people dull and their ears heavy and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes and hear with their ears and understand with their heart and return and be healed.

That's a rough task. Preaching in such a way, preaching to those who are going to be judged because they are going to resist this message with everything that they are.

And then I said, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities are laid waste without inhabitant.

The houses are without a man. The land is utterly desolate. The Lord has removed men far away and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.

But yet a tenth will be in it and will return and before consuming as a terebinth tree or as an oak whose stump remains when it is cut down, so the holy seed will be its stump.

So, that was not a passage about going and preaching the gospel to the nomads in the

Gobi Desert in Mongolia. This is a passage of where God is appointing his prophet to go preach his truth to those who are coming under his judgment because of their injustice, immorality and idolatry.

So, Isaiah is the prophet of God for that work. So, he's going to be an outsider. He's going to be rejected.

His message is not going to be well received. So, he too is an external operative in many ways.

During certain kings, Isaiah was far less welcome than with other kings.

So, kings, priests and even other prophets who were rebelling or who were idolatrous had to be rebuked by an outsider and that very often did not go very well.

Think about this. Out of priests and kings and prophets, who are the most likely to be on the run under threat of death?

Prophets. It was the prophet, usually. It was the prophet who was on the run and trying to survive.

David's own exile early on was in some way brought on by his continual present reminder to Saul that Saul was under the judgment due to his rebellious heart.

Let's turn over to Matthew 23 and we'll look at verses 34 through 36.

When Jesus talks about prophets, when he lists the prophets, he has a very extensive list.

He's talking to the Pharisees. He says, He says,

Surely, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.

And in Luke 11, this same passage is given and Jesus explicitly says there in verses 49 -51 that Abel was a prophet and Zechariah was a prophet as well.

So, he's listing the prophets. So, from the beginning to the end, the murdered prophets lost their lives, notice, in connection to some failure of worship.

Why did Cain kill Abel? Because Abel was worshiping God correctly and Cain was not.

That's why Abel died. Cain killed Abel because it was a matter of worship. And this man,

Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, was killed, notice, between the temple and the altar.

Once again, worship is central to the story of how this prophet died. What are we learning?

It is the exclusivity of worship which was the message of the prophets, correct?

What did the prophets say again and again and again? The writings that we have. How did they challenge the kings and the priests?

It was about the exclusivity of worship. They were preaching against idolatry. Sure, they talked about immorality and injustice, but those two were downstream from the polluted fountain of idolatry.

That's why it was always the message against idols that the prophets preached and that is why they were so persecuted.

That's why Abel died. That's why Zechariah died. In fact, if you think about it, why did they murder

Jesus? Because his message was one of exclusive and he exposed their idolatry that they worshipped the building, the temple.

They worshipped that golden building. He exposed that. He exposed their idolatry and they killed him for it.

So a prophet was all about preaching the exclusivity of worship and so that required him to be an external operative.

He had to be. He had to be an external operative. But what happens when a prophet became a man of the people rather than a man of God?

What happened then? What kind of messages would that kind of prophet preach?

What kind of reception would he have? And where would you find that prophet after some bit of time?

Yes. Jeremiah 5 .31 The prophets prophesy falsely and my people love to have it so, but what will you do in the end?

They preach peace, peace, when there is no peace. In a rather humorous passage in Micah, in Micah 2 .11

If a man should walk in a false spirit and speak a lie, saying,

I will prophesy to you of wine and drink, even he would be the prattler of this people.

We are going to have a six week sermon series on the joys of drinking. Wow. Watch the crowds grow.

That's church growth 101. Find out, survey what people like to hear and give it to them.

And so prophets who were, who be, who compromise became messengers who told the people what they wanted to hear.

They became men of the people rather than men of God. By contrast, prophets like Noah and Abraham and Nathan and Gad and Micaiah and Elijah and Elisha were all true because they were all external operatives.

Pointing, pointing out to those on the inside what the word of God had to say.

And of course, no one illustrates that better than than Jesus Christ himself.

And of course, his forerunner made that point very well. John the Baptist. So prophets in their nature.

First of all, they have an extraordinary office. Secondly, they are an external operative. Any questions or thoughts as we close our study?

OK, next time we'll get to the weird stuff. And your homework will be to find the weirdest thing a prophet did.

And we'll talk about that Sunday night, Lord, Lord willing. OK, let's go ahead and close with a word of prayer.