GOD'S PROPHET
GOD’S PROPHET
God’s Prophet is introduced in this chapter in contrast with all the abominations which have come in through men listening to communications from beneath. The eight things mentioned in verses 10 and 11 refer to communications from the unseen world. There are many avenues through which Satan influences men. All these things are coming in again under new names, and people hearken to them, but they are all opposed to God. “Thou shalt be perfect with Jehovah thy God” (verse 13), means that we are not to listen for a moment to any communication which is not from Him.
[p. 198] God ever had before Him to communicate with men. He spoke to Adam and Eve in innocence (Genesis 1: 28 - 30), and afterwards they “heard the voice of Jehovah Elohim, walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3: 8). It was His pleasure to be near to man and to communicate with Him, and it grieved God to find that distrust and distance had come in on man’s part. Another communication had been listened to, a communication from beneath. Every abomination has come in that way, but deliverance is found in listening to God’s Prophet. “In the beginning was the Word”
(John 1: 1), is a statement which tells us plainly that from the beginning God had in mind to speak to men, but the serpent has been speaking also, so that there are two kinds of speaking, as we see — the first in Deuteronomy 18: 10 - 14, the second in verses 15 - 19. Men have opened their ears to communications from the power of darkness, but it is blessed to know that God has not left men without communications from Himself. Man is God’s intelligent creature, and God speaks to him intelligibly. All the darkening influences in the world have come from beneath, but all illuminating influences are from above, they come down from “the Father of lights”.
Divination, auguries, enchantments, sorcery, charms, a spirit of Python, soothsaying, consulting the dead, are all found today in christendom, but they neither convict men of sin, nor give the knowledge of salvation by the remission of sins. They darken men as to the true knowledge of God. The communications which come from God are not dark and mysterious; they are light, and they make known that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, and that He is now in light as having fully revealed Himself in a Man, His own beloved Son.
Moses said, “Jehovah thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee ... like unto me”. That this refers directly to Christ is proved by Peter’s quotation of it in Acts 3. It declares unmistakably the true humanity of Him whom God has sent, and who has spoken the words of God.
The full communication of God’s words, of all that He would have made known to men, has come in One who is truly Man. The One “who is over all, God blessed for ever” came of Israel as according to flesh (Romans 9: 5).
God has come near to men, and put Himself into communication with them, by Christ. To receive His communications is the greatest privilege and favour. It means that God is known, and if He is known, He is loved, and if He is loved, He is worshipped.
Christ was like unto Moses as being the true Deliverer and Mediator. He inaugurated in grace and truth all that was typically set forth in Moses. The covenant, the service of God, and all that is suitable to the inheritance, were made known by Moses, and Christ is like unto him in relation to all these blessed things, giving the fulness of them according to all that is in the mind of God. What a Prophet we have! “Unto him shall ye hearken”.
This was in the minds of the disciples, and it was in the light of it that they hearkened to Jesus. As the Prophet, God’s words were in the mouth of Christ, and He spoke what God commanded Him to speak. Hence He could say, “My doctrine is not mine, but that of him that has sent me” (John 7: 16). And again, “the words (the divine communications) which thou hast given me, I have given them, and they have received them, and have known truly that I came out from thee, and have believed that thou sentest me” (John 17: 8). The One who was raised up “of thy brethren” so near to men as being truly Man, was “the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father”; it was He who “came down out of heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven” (John 1: 18; John 3: 13). He was therefore able to declare God in a way of unmeasured fulness, and to speak of heavenly things as knowing them and having seen them. All has been told out now; there is no reserve in the divine communications; “All things which I have heard of my Father I have made known to you” (John 15: 15).
Not everything that the Lord said and did has been [p. 200] recorded in the Scriptures. The gospels are a divine selection by the Holy Spirit, and they are fully adequate to set forth all that was spoken by the Son of God when here. His works spoke volumes as well as His words. Every utterance of the Lord has a fulness which is immeasurable. There are some verses of which Christians have been speaking and writing for nearly two thousand years, and fresh beauties and glories are being disclosed in them every day. The Holy Scriptures are the greatest marvel in the world, and the gospels are the greatest marvel of the Scriptures. The four gospels are a little book, which could be read in a day, but there is concentrated there what will fill eternity with its blessedness. John supposes that if all the things which Jesus did were written one by one, “not even the world itself would contain the books written”. If men had written these narratives in their own ability they would never have known when to stop. But the Holy Spirit has given all that was necessary for us in words marked by simplicity and dignity. As we read we are in the presence of the ineffable majesty, and yet infinite grace, of the Word. There is fulness of divine communication, constraining the soul to worship as it is realised that God has made known in His beloved Son all that was in His heart and mind manward.
The assembly of God is to be characterised by speaking which is of God as to its origin and its power. See 1 Corinthians 14. The speaking there is to take character from Christ’s speaking; indeed, He is now speaking from heaven in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit speaks in the house of God, bringing out in detail what God has communicated by Christ, and giving it application to the needs of souls and of the assembly. Such prophetic speaking has peculiar value in a day of departure, as reviving in spiritual power that which was from the beginning, and exposing the departure by bringing out the mind of God as it was originally made known. The assembly is God’s house; it is the pillar and base of the truth, and the way to speak in it is “as oracles of God”
([p. 201] 1 Peter 4: 11). Such speaking would be the speaking of Christ continued in intelligent communications from God. Not new revelations, but every word in accord with what God has spoken by Christ. In presence of difficulties the prophetic word would exercise consciences so that the moral state might be put right. Whatever matter occasions difficulty the real question is the moral state of saints, and if this is judged in the light of communications from God, difficulties melt away.
I “will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him”. Nothing is held in reserve now, save judgment. The Spirit has come in witness to the fact that all the mind of God is out; there is nothing further to be looked for. “As for you let that which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you: if what ye have heard from the beginning abides in you, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father”. There can be no advance upon this; any going forward from it must be apostasy (2 John 9).
It is a serious thing not to hearken to Christ. “And it shall come to pass that the man who hearkeneth not unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him” (Deuteronomy 18: 19).
The word from the excellent glory is “Hear him”.