1 JESUS THE PROPHET

JESUS
THE PROPHET

My subject this morning is “Jesus THE Prophet.” I have three texts: Deu 18:15; Deu 18:17-19 : “Jehovah 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: . . . (17) and Jehovah said unto me, they have well said that which they have spoken. (18) I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. (19) 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.”

Acts 3:22-23 : “Moses indeed said, a prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me; to him shall ye hearken in all things whatsoever he shall speak unto you. (23) and it shall be, that every soul that shall not hearken to that prophet, shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.”

John 7:46 : “Never man spake like this man.”

Moses predicted about fourteen hundred and fifty years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that sometime in the future God would raise up for Israel from among their own race a perfect and inerrant prophet into whose mouth God would put His own Words, and who should speak all that God commanded Him. About fifteen hundred years later, about thirty years after the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, Peter, after he had been chosen to be an apostle and had been filled with the Holy Ghost, and thus qualified to speak for God, declared that this prophecy made through Moses had been fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. The Lord Jesus Himself claimed that He was such a prophet. In John 7:16 He says “my teaching is not mine, but His that sent Me.” He further says in John 8:28, “When ye have lifted up the Son of man, then shall ye know that I am He, and that I do nothing of (Greek, from) myself, but AS THE FATHER TAUGHT ME, I SPEAK these things.” Again in John 12:49-50 He says: “I speak not from myself; but the Father that sent me, He hath given me a commandment. WHAT I SHOULD SAY, and what I should speak. (50) And I know that His commandment is life eternal; THE THINGS THEREFORE WHICH I SPEAK, EVEN AS THE FATHER HATH SAID UNTO ME, SO I SPEAK.” In John 14:10 He says, “Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? THE WORDS THAT I SAY UNTO YOU I speak not from Myself: but the Father abiding in Me doeth His works.” And in the 24th verse of the same chapter He says “He that loveth Me not keepeth not My words: AND THE WORD WHICH YE HEAR IS NOT MINE, BUT THE FATHER’S who sent me.” In one of the most solemn utterances of His life on the night before His crucifixion, speaking not to men, but to God Himself, Jesus says in John 17:8, “FOR THE WORDS WHICH THOU GAVEST ME I HAVE given unto them; and they received them, and knew of a truth that I came forth from Thee, and they believed that Thou didst send me.” The meaning of these many utterances of Jesus Christ is unmistakable. Jesus Christ claimed that God the Father gave Him a commandment as to just “what He was to say” and that in nothing “He spoke from” Himself, but that he spoke from the Father that sent Him, that He spoke “just as the Father said unto” Him, that the very words He spoke, He “spoke not from Himself,” that EVERY WORD HE SPOKE WAS NOT HIS BUT THE FATHER’S, that the words which He gave to others were “the words which thou (i.e. God) gavest me.” There are those today not avowedly infidels but professors in theological seminaries alleged to be orthodox, and training men for the evangelical ministry at home and to be instructors in the theological seminaries in China and other lands emerging from the darkness of heathenism, who unhesitatingly affirm that these statements and claims of Jesus Christ are not true. They affirm that Jesus did not speak the words that God gave Him, the very words of God, but that He spoke His own words which set forth His own ideas and that THESE IDEAS WERE, IN PART, AT LEAST, DERIVED FROM THE ERRONEOUS NOTIONS OF THE TIME IN WHICH HE LIVED. If these theological teachers are right, Jesus Christ was a liar. But as God has set the stamp of His endorsement upon the claims of Jesus Christ by raising Him from the dead, and as the evidence of His resurrection is so overwhelmingly conclusive as to compel conviction of the fact of His resurrection on the part of any sincere seeker after truth, I am compelled by every consideration of sane logic to believe that these theological professors are the liars and that Jesus Christ’s claim is true. Jesus Christ was a prophet of God in whose mouth God put His own words, and His words therefore are absolutely without error, and according to one of our texts, whoever will not hearken unto God’s words which Jesus Christ spoke shall be visited with overwhelming destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power (Cf. Acts 3:23; 2Th 1:9) even though he may be a university student or Y. M. C. A. secretary or theological student or professor in some theological seminary. Jesus Christ by God’s appointment holds three offices, Divinely Appointed Prophet, Divinely Appointed Priest and Divinely Appointed King. Today we look at Him as our texts set Him forth, as God’s Divinely Appointed Prophet.

I—WHAT IS A PROPHET? The first question that confronts us is, What is a Prophet? The Hebrew word translated “prophet” in our text from the Old Testament (נָבִיא) is derived from a verb (נָבָא) the primary meaning of which is “to boil up,” to “pour forth (words)” and therefore, “to speak under Divine inspiration” because the one Divinely inspired pours forth words “as he is borne along by the Holy Ghost” (Cf. 2Pe 1:21 R.V. and Greek.) The Prophet is one who speaks not his own words but the words he receives from God as he speaks. The Greek word translated “prophet” in our New Testament text to mean primarily, “one who speaks forth,” hence a “spokesman for God,” “one through whom God speaks.” This same Greek word is used in the LXX rendering (or Greek translation) of the Hebrew in our Old Testament text. A prophet then is one who speaks the words which God puts into his mouth, one through whom God speaks. Every word he speaks as a prophet is God’s own word just as much as if God spoke it directly from heaven, as He did speak when He said to Jesus “Thou art my beloved Son; in Thee I am well pleased.” (Luk 3:22). The Biblical idea of a prophet is then not merely one who FORETELLS but one who “FORTH TELLS” what God tells him. Nevertheless, prediction constituted a large part of what the Old Testament prophets uttered for God and prediction also constitutes a large part of what our Lord Jesus said as the mouthpiece of God the Father. But the Lord Jesus was uttering God’s words and only God’s words, not only when He was predicting but in every word He uttered. His every word recorded in the New Testament was God’s own word; not one syllable did He utter that was not God’s word. As one of our texts puts it, Jehovah said, “I WILL PUT MY WORDS IN HIS MOUTH, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command Him.” And as He Himself put it, “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.” (John 14:24), and “My teaching is not mine, but His that sent Me.” (John 7:16); and again “FOR THE WORDS WHICH THOU GAVEST ME I have given unto them.” (John 17:8).

II—FULFILLED PREDICTIONS MADE BY
JESUS CHRIST.

Let us now look at some of the predictions of Jesus Christ that have already been fulfilled.

1. In the first place, He predicted His own death and resurrection and the exact manner of his death and resurrection. The first prediction He made of His death and resurrection we find in John 2:19, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John tells us that when He uttered these words, “He spake of the temple of His body.” (John 2:21) These words were spoken at the very outset of His ministry, He already knowing and declaring His coming death and resurrection. He made a more explicit prediction of His death and resurrection in Mat 16:21, “From that time began Jesus to show unto his disciples, that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and the third day be raised up.” A little later His prediction of His own death and resurrection becomes still more explicit and detailed. We read in Mat 20:18-19, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be delivered unto the chief priests and scribes; and they shall condemn him to death, (19) and shall deliver him unto the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify: and the third day he shall be raised up.” Here we have a prediction of the details of what He was to suffer and just how He was to die as definite and explicit as the historical accounts of what actually took place. These predictions regarding both the manner of His death and the fact of His resurrection seemed preposterous and impossible of fulfillment when He made them. Crucifixion was not a Jewish method of execution and resurrection was entirely unknown. For centuries men had come and gone. They had lived and died and that was the end of them as far as men could see. And so He declares that His own experience was to be entirely different from that of the uniform course of nature; that He was to die as other men died, but that on the third day the body that was laid in the grave was to be raised from the grave. But as preposterous and seemingly impossible of fulfillment as these predictions were, in point of fact they were fulfilled in the most literal way, fulfilled to the very letter. So we must conclude that His predictions which are as yet unfulfilled, because the time for their fulfillment has not yet arrived, will be literally fulfilled when the time does come, fulfilled to the very letter. There is no room left for the spiritualizing interpretations of Shailer Matthews and Prof. Case and all that thoroughly unscientific and entirely unhistorical school of Biblical interpretation.

2. In the second place, Jesus the Prophet predicted that there would be a great outward growth of His kingdom and at the same time a thoroughgoing corruption of its inward life and doctrine. This we see in the twin parables of the mustard seed and the leaven in Mat 13:31-33, “Another parable set He before them, saying, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: (32) which indeed is less than all seeds; but when it is grown, it is greater than the herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the heaven come and lodge in the branches thereof. (33) Another parable spake He unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till it was all leavened.” The meaning of these parables is evident. The first parable sets forth great growth from insignificant beginnings. Interpreted in the light of Eze 17:22-24; Eze 31:3-9, the birds of the air represent the nations coming and taking shelter under the protecting shadow of the visible Church, a most unlikely, yes, apparently preposterous, prediction when Jesus made it, but history tells us that it was literally fulfilled. The parable of the leaven represents the inward, secret, but all pervading corruption of the visible church. This many interpreters would deny but God Himself has given us an inspired interpretation of the leaven in 1Co 5:6-8, “Your glorying is not good. Know ye not that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump? (7) Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened. For our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ (8) Wherefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” This inspired reference to Christ’s own parable leaves no room for doubt that the growth of the leaven refers to the growth of error and corruption, which the woman, an apostate church, mixes in the “three measures of meal,” i.e. the children’s bread. So we see that Jesus predicted that while the visible church would grow marvelously outwardly, it would also be completely corrupted inwardly, in life and doctrine, by the leaven of false doctrine which the apostate church would mix in the children’s bread, the Word of God. What a strange prediction for the Founder of the Church to make concerning His own Church (in its outward manifestation), but it was fulfilled, as history tells us, to the very letter in the outward growth and inward corruption of the Church under Rome’s domination in the middle ages. This even taken alone would prove the truth of Jesus’ claim to be the Prophet of God.

3. In the third place, Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and the character and details of that destruction forty years before its destruction. This we find in Mat 24:1-2, “And Jesus went out from the temple, and was going on his way; and his disciples came to show him the buildings of the temple. (2) But he answered and said unto them, see ye not all these things? verily I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” And again in Luk 19:41-44, “And when he drew nigh, he saw the city and wept over it, (42) saying, if thou hadst known in this day, even thou, the things which belong unto peace: but now they are hid from thine eyes. (43) For the days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast up a bank about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, (44) and shall dash thee to the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” When Jesus made these predictions, in A.D. 30, there seemed no probability or even possibility, of their fulfillment and yet as we all know they were fulfilled to the very letter when Jerusalem was visited with such an overthrow of desolation and siege of agony and destruction, under Titus and Vespasian in 70 A. D., as was never visited upon any other city.

4. In the fourth place, Jesus predicted the centuries long subjection of Jerusalem and the Jew to Gentile domination, to be ended when the times of the Gentiles were fulfilled. This we see in Luk 21:20-24, “But when ye see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that her desolation is at hand. (21) Then let them that are in Judea flee unto the mountains; and let them that are in the midst of her depart out; and let not them that are in the country enter therein. (22) For these are days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. (23) Woe unto them that are with child and to them that give suck in those days! For there shall be great distress upon the land, and wrath unto this people. (24) And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led captive into all the nations: And Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled.” Nineteen centuries of history have confirmed the truth and literal accuracy of the first part of this prediction, that the subjection of Jerusalem and the Jew to Gentile domination would last throughout the centuries until God’s purposes concerning the Gentile nations were fulfilled: and we seem to be on the eve of the fulfillment of the second part of it, that “when the times of the Gentiles” were “fulfilled,” Jerusalem’s subjection to Gentile domination would end. I say we seem on the eve of the fulfillment of the second part of this prediction, since Jerusalem was taken by General Allenby and since the League of Nations decided for Jewish control of Jerusalem. Attempts have been made in the past by mighty enemies of Jesus Christ to bring about conditions that would prove the first part of this prediction untrue, but they have failed utterly. The apostate emperor of Rome, Julian, in 361-363 A.D. brought all the political, military and financial resources of the Roman Empire to bear in order to rebuild the temple at Jerusalem, but he was utterly discomfited by forces that seemed supernatural, even as recorded by an infidel historian (Gibbon), and perished ignominiously on the field of battle despairingly shrieking, “Oh, Galilean, Thou hast conquered.” So also some day these apostate professors in “Christian” colleges and theological seminaries who seek to discredit the claims of Jesus of Nazareth to be a Prophet who spoke without error the very words of God and infallible predictions of God, will be forced to cry in despair, if they do not do it soon in repentance and shame. “O, Galilean Thou has conquered”!

5. In the fifth place, Jesus predicted that the Jews, though crushed and scattered throughout the earth, subjected to a tyranny such as no other people ever suffered, would preserve their race identity until He Himself should come again to deliver them. Centuries have rolled on since our Lord made these predictions. Nations have risen and fallen, been obliterated and forgotten. In all these centuries the Jew has not had a foothold anywhere, yet to this day the Jew retains his race identity as perfectly as he possessed it in the first century. The Jew is always a Jew. He cannot be absorbed. Even in the melting pot of America the Jew won’t melt. He is the miracle of history and the words of Christ stand.

6. In the sixth place, Jesus predicted that His words would prove imperishable amid the wreck not only of philosophies and religions, kingdoms and empires, but even in the passing away of the heavens and earth. His amazing words were “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.” (Mat 24:35). This was a most astounding prediction and claim to make under the circumstances under which He made it. He was an obscure member of a circumscribed, subject and despised people, an uneducated artisan of that decadent, contemned and hated race. In less than a week He was to be the butt of the scorn and ridicule of jeering mobs as He ended His life as a condemned felon on the gibbet, only a short walk from here He was now speaking. He had no following of any account as to numbers or character. And yet he had the audacity to say that for centuries to come, when the great philosophies were proved false and inadequate, when the mighty cities were over-overthrown and buried, when the all-conquering kingdoms and empires had crumbled, His words would stand. How absurd, how ludicrous, how ridiculous, how preposterous, how impossible! But His words have already stood for nineteen hundred years, while everything else of that day has passed away, and stand they will when “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the works that are therein shall be burned up.” (2Pe 3:12). When the puny critics who are “vainly puffed up by their fleshly mind” because they have attained to a few meaningless university degrees, and who are intoxicated by the fumes of their own supposed superior wisdom, because they have learned how to ring the changes on the spell-binding word “evolution,” with callow young men and maidens in our high schools and colleges and universities, and with the dominant type of twentieth century so-called “scientists” who build their “science falsely so-called,” upon the tenuous filaments of their own dreams, that result from an unscientific use of the imagination, rather than upon the carefully observed and substantial and rugged facts of nature and, therefore, assume to demand that we give up our belief in the infallibility and inerrancy of Jesus Christ and put our faith in their infallibility and inerrancy instead; when these nauseating products of a philosophy that is as unreliable and transitory as the self-confident philosophies of the past, that have had their day of boasting and then burst like the saponaceous bubbles that they were, when these self-styled “scholarly critics” are utterly forgotten, the words of Jesus, the infallible Prophet of God will stand.

III—UNFULFILLED PREDICTIONS MADE BY JESUS CHRIST. As every prediction of Jesus, the Prophet of God, who poured forth the very words of God that had to do with the past and present, has been fulfilled to the very letter through nineteen centuries, the inexorable logic of facts demands that we believe that His predictions which refer to the times still future, will also be fulfilled to the very letter. What are these predictions? They are many and we have time for but a few.

1. In the first place, and most important and including much besides, that He Himself is coming again. On the night of His crucifixion when the hearts of the disciples were rent and torn and crushed and despairing because of the announcement He had just made of His fast approaching death He said to them, “Let not your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me. (2) In my Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you: for I go to prepare a place for you. (3) And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto Myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.” (John 14:1-3). These words of His clearly indicate a personal, visible, bodily coming back from a place, Heaven, to which He was now going, to a place that He was just about to leave, this earth. Furthermore, God has not left the Divinely inspired words of Jesus without a Divinely inspired interpretation. This interpretation we find in 1Th 4:16-18, “For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven, with a shout, with the voice of the Archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: (17) then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. (18) Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” Why do I say this is a Divinely inspired interpretation of Jesus’ own words? Because there are just the same four points in each utterance. (1) Jesus said, “I come again.” Paul’s inspired comment as He spoke the words which God put into his mouth is “The Lord Himself shall descend from heaven.” (2) Jesus said. “And I will receive you into Myself.” Paul’s inspired comment is, “We shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” (3) Jesus said, “That where I am, there ye may be also.” Paul’s inspired comment is, “So shall we ever be with the Lord.” (4) Jesus said, “Let not your heart be troubled.” Paul’s inspired comment is, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.”

2. In the second place, Jesus predicted that the time of His coming will be a time when human society is totally absorbed in worldly pursuits, profiteering and pleasure seeking and reeking with sin. Listen to His words as they are recorded in Luk 17:26-30, “And as it came to pass in the days of Noah, even so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. (27) They ate, they drank, they married, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. (28) Likewise even as it came to pass in the days of Lot; they ate, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded: (29) But in the day that Lot went out from Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all: (30) AFTER THE SAME MANNER shall it be in the day that the Son of man is revealed.” He has predicted, that when He comes His professing church will have so far apostatized that faith will be hard to find. His words are “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith on the earth?” (Luk 18:8) He has declared that His coming will take even His faithful disciples by surprise, “Therefore be ye also ready; for in an hour that ye think not the Son of man cometh.” (Mat 24:44). He has declared that His coming will overtake “All them that dwell on the face of the whole earth ‘as a snare’ ” (Luk 21:35).

3. In the third place, Jesus, the proven Prophet of God, has predicted that the time immediately preceding His coming will be a time when human society is totally unsettled in its politics, its business and its international affairs in utter confusion.

These are His words, “And there shall be signs in sun and moon and stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, in perplexity for the roaring of the sea and the billows; (26) Men fainting for fear and for expectation of the things which are coming on the world: for the powers of the heavens shall be shaken. (27) And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” (Luk 21:25-27.) But when these “perilous,” “grievous” (2Ti 3:1) and disturbing times come, those who believe on Jesus Christ are not to be overwhelmed or even disturbed, but radiant, jubilant and full of loftiest hope. Read the next verse (Luk 21:28), “But when these things begin to come to pass, look up, and lift up your heads; because your redemption draweth nigh.”

4. In the fourth place, Jesus, the One Supreme Prophet of God, has predicted that as a result of His coming, He is to take the reins of government. All the evils of society are to be corrected and there is to be a reign of universal righteousness throughout the world. Hear what He says in Mat 25:31-32; Mat 25:34; Mat 25:46 : “But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne of His glory (32) and before Him shall be gathered all the nations: and He shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats; . . . . (34) then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of ‘the world: . . . (46) and the righteous shall go away into eternal life.” In Mat 19:28-30, He has predicted that as the direct result of His coming there is to be a new birth of society and of the physical universe, “And Jesus said unto them, verily I say unto you, that ye who have followed me, IN THE REGENERATION when the Son of man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. (29) And everyone that hath left houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or children, or lands, for My name’s sake, shall receive a hundredfold, and shall inherit eternal life. (30) But many that are last shall be first, and first that are last.”

Oh, all the brightest and loftiest dreams of the world’s best poets and social philosophers will be more than realized then. They will not be realized by any big drives for Four Hundred Million Dollars by men who have become dizzy and lost their heads by watching the wild whirligig of big business and war extravagance. They will be realized when His words find their fulfillment in His own personal return to this earth and not till then.

IV. OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD JESUS THE
PROPHET.

One question remains and it is the all-important, practical question,—What should be our attitude toward God’s One Supreme and Final Prophet? Listen to my text again, Deu 18:15, “Jehovah 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.” Notice who the speaker is, not Moses, but Jehovah God. Listen to Deu 18:18-19, “I will raise them up a prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee; and I will put my words in His mouth, and He shall speak unto them all that I shall command Him. (19) And it shall come to pass, that WHOSOEVER WILL NOT HEARKEN TO MY WORDS WHICH HE SHALL SPEAK IN MY NAME, I WILL REQUIRE IT OF HIM.”

Listen to my other text, Acts 3:22-23, “Moses indeed said, a prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me; TO HIM SHALL YE HEARKEN IN ALL THINGS WHATSOEVER HE SHALL SPEAK UNTO YOU. (23) and it shall be, THAT EVERY SOUL THAT SHALL NOT HEARKEN TO THAT PROPHET, SHALL BE UTTERLY DESTROYED FROM AMONG THE PEOPLE.” Hearken unto Him intently, believe Him absolutely and obey Him unhesitatingly. Do this and you will get eternal life. Refuse to do it, neglect to do it, fail to do it for any reason whatsoever and you will perish utterly and forever. “He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” (John 3:36) “Every soul that shall not hearken to that prophet, shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.” (Acts 3:23).