A Prophet is Given

Welcome to Advent! For the four weeks of Advent on Sundays, we will be anticipating the arrival of Jesus by looking at the four traditional topics of Advent: Hope, Peace, Joy, & Love. (If you were able to connect with us this past Sunday, you probably figured that out!) We’ll then conclude our Advent series on Christmas Eve by celebrating the arrival of the Christ Child, the Light of the World, through a family-friendly candlelight service, so mark your calendars for our 4:30 pm Christmas Eve service!

But here on the blog, I want to anticipate the arrival of Jesus by taking a different approach. In Isaiah 9:6, the prophet declared:

“For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.” (Isaiah 9:6, ESV)

While Isaiah goes on to say some mind-blowing things about this child in the rest of verse 6 and through verse 7, in this space we are going to look at the three-fold role this child was born to fulfill. As the ancient Jews looked for the first-coming of the Messiah, God had been telling His people that this Anointed One would be a prophet like Moses, a king like David, and a priest like Melchizedek. And so today, as we kick off this For Unto Us series, we are going to consider how Jesus was the “prophet given” to declare God’s Kingdom and God’s Ways to God’s people.

A Prophet like Me

When you study the life of Moses, it would be easy to conclude that he wasn’t very impressive: he most likely stuttered, he was impulsive, and he struggled with self-doubt. Additionally, the Israelite people often gave him a negative approval rating.

Yet, God did some remarkable things through this “unremarkable” man. First, God used Moses to perform miracles which not only obtained the freedom of the Israelite slaves from their Egyptian masters, but protected and provided for the people during their wanderings in the wilderness. More importantly, God met “face to face” with Moses, giving him the words to declare to the people that would guide them for multiple generations.

So despite his weaknesses and their occasional complaints against him, the people ultimately held Moses in high regard. Because of their fear of God, they were grateful the Most High spoke to them through a great leader and prophet like Moses.

So you can imagine their relief when they heard Moses tell them…

“The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers – it is to him you shall listen… And the Lord said to me… “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.” (Deuteronomy 18:15, 17a, 18)

Like many prophecies of the Old Testament, Moses’ words had a dual fulfillment. The people of that day would have seen the prophecy partially fulfilled when Joshua became the leader, after the passing of Moses, to lead them into the Promised Land. But for centuries, Jewish scholars believed these words would find their ultimate fulfillment in the Messiah, whom Christians know is Jesus.

The Role of the Given Prophet

What does a prophet do? Too often, we think prophets primarily foretell the future. But that is only a small sliver of how God uses them. More common is how God has His prophets “forth tell” how the people of the day are in sin and need to return to God and His ways.

While Jesus definitely foretold some things (His death and resurrection, end-times events, etc.), His arrival on that first Christmas Night was God’s ultimate “forth telling" that humanity was trapped in sin, but God had fulfilled His promise to provide the way to return to Him and His ways through the death and resurrection of His Son.

May you worship Jesus this week with thankfulness that He is the Prophet given to us to declare God’s righteousness and His unstoppable love for us.