Tuesday
Tuesday
A Prophet like Moses
The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.
Deuteronomy 18:15
One of humankind’s most ardent desires is to discover the will of God. But how? Broadly speaking, Israel was faced with two options. On the one hand, the Canaanites practiced witchcraft, sorcery, and divination of different kinds, but God forbade his people to copy them. On the other hand, they could pay attention to the voice of God as it came to them through the prophets. It was a question of listening. They must not “listen to those who practice sorcery…. But as for you … the LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me…. You must listen to him” (vv. 14–15).
This divine promise seems to have referred originally to the succession of prophets God gave Israel. But when the voice of prophecy fell silent in the intertestamental period, “the Prophet” became a recognizable messianic title. So when Jesus came, the crowds said, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world” (John 6:14). And in one of Peter’s early sermons he plainly applied the promise to Jesus (Acts 3:22). Although Jesus was not one more prophet in the long succession of the centuries, but rather the fulfillment of all prophecy, in whom all God’s promises find their “yes” (2 Cor. 1:20), we still hail him as “the Prophet” who like Moses knows God “face to face” (Deut. 34:10) and in whom God’s revelation has reached its culmination.
It is moving that on the Mount of Transfiguration the voice of God the Father quoted his own command in Deuteronomy 18:15 and applied it to Jesus. His command to all of us is the same: “Listen to him!” (Mark 9:7).
For further reading: Deuteronomy 18:14–22