Scripture Daily

Context No. 1769 of 4322 · Deuteronomy

Context · Reflection

Deuteronomy 18:17-22: in context

17The LORD said to me, “They have well said that which they have spoken. 18I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you. I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him. 19It shall happen, that whoever will not listen to my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. 20But the prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.” 21You may say in your heart, “How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?” 22When a prophet speaks in the LORD’s name, if the thing doesn’t follow, nor happen, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You shall not be afraid of him.

God promises Moses a prophet for the future: 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 will speak all that I command him. Whoever will not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I will hold him to account. God also warns against false prophets who speak presumptuously in his name, and gives a test: if what a prophet foretells does not come to pass, the LORD has not spoken it.

The promise of a prophet like Moses runs deeper than any single prophet who followed. Moses had been the one through whom God spoke to Israel, putting his words in Moses' mouth; and God promises to raise up another like him, a prophet in whose mouth he would put his words, who would speak God's own message to the people. The prophets who came after were, in their measure, fulfillments of this; but the tradition, and the New Testament, saw its ultimate fulfillment in Christ, the Prophet in whose mouth God placed his very Word, indeed who is the Word of God, speaking the Father to us fully and finally. God did not leave his people without a voice; he promised, and gave, a prophet who would tell them all he commanded. There is a call embedded in the promise: whoever will not listen to my words that the prophet speaks, I will hold to account. To be given a prophet who speaks God's word is also to be given the responsibility of listening to him. And if the prophets pointed to Christ, then the call to listen finds its sharpest form in him: this is my beloved Son, God said at the mountain, listen to him. God has spoken, in past ages through the prophets, and in these last days through his Son, the Prophet like Moses in whose mouth the Father's word was placed. The question is whether we will listen. God has not left us to guess at his mind; he has given us his word through the Prophet he promised. Our part is to hear him, and to heed.

God promised and gave a Prophet in whose mouth he would put his words, fulfilled in Christ his Son; do I listen to that word, or hold it lightly, and can I take seriously that to be given a Prophet who speaks God's word is also to be given the responsibility of hearing and heeding him?

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