Advent
4
Deut
18:15-19
12/22/24
Who is the GOAT? Who is the greatest of all time? This
question is a source of ongoing debate and disagreement among sports fans. In each of the sports, commentators and fans
make passionate arguments to support the claim that a particular athlete was
the greatest.
It is very rare when a consensus
exists, that one athlete can in fact be identified as the GOAT – the greatest
of all time. But in the case of NFL
quarterbacks, there is wide agreement that Tom Brady is the greatest. Incredibly, Brady won the Super Bowl seven
times. What is more, he lost in the
Super Bowl three times, and so he took his team to the Super Bowl ten
times. Brady leads all quarterbacks for
most completions, most passing yards, and most touchdowns. He played twenty three seasons, and at 43 was
the oldest player to appear in a Super Bowl – a game that he won.
If I turned from sports to the Bible
and asked you who was the greatest prophet of all time in the Old Testament,
you might be surprised to learn the answer.
Here too there is a clear winner, for Scripture tells us that Moses was
the greatest prophet.
Now we don’t usually think of Moses
as a prophet. Instead, we usually consider
him to be the “law giver.” Yet Scripture
tells us that Moses was a prophet, and that there was no one else like
him. Moses was the instrument through whom
God worked some of his greatest miracles such as the plagues sent upon Egypt,
the Passover, and the parting of the Red Sea.
He delivered God’s word to the people of Israel and performed the
prophet’s role by calling them to repentance.
Unlike any other prophet, he spoke with God directly in his presence,
and as a result of this his skin was shining and he had to put a veil over his
face.
In our Old Testament lesson this
morning, Moses tells Israel that Yahweh will raise up a prophet like him for
the people. Moses says that God will
provide a prophet who is equal to him, and that the people are to listen to
what he says. We learn that in Jesus
Christ, God sent this prophet like Moses into the world in order to save us.
Our text this morning is from
Deuteronomy which contains the instruction that Moses delivered to the people
as they were preparing to enter the promised land after they had wandered in
the wilderness for forty years. Moses
says, “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-- just as you desired of
the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you
said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this
great fire any more, lest I die.’”
Moses
is referring to what happened when the people gathered before Mt. Horeb – also
known as Mt Sinai – when Yahweh descended on the mountain. There was thunder
and lightning and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very
loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Mt Sinai was wrapped in smoke because Yahweh had
descended on it in fire. The whole mountain trembled greatly.
God
spoke the words of the Ten Commandments to the people. When the people saw all
that was taking place they were afraid and trembled, and they stood far
off and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not
let God speak to us, lest we die.” So the people stood far off, while Moses
drew near to the thick darkness where God was.
In
our text we learn, that for once, Israel had been correct. God said to Moses, “They are right in what
they have spoken. 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. And whoever will not listen to my words that
he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.”
God
promised to raise up a prophet like Moses.
This prophet would speak the words of the Lord – he would faithfully
deliver God’s word to the people. He
would be God’s unique representative, and Yahweh warned that anyone who did not
listen to the words this prophet delivered would face God’s judgment.
The
end of Deuteronomy says, “And there has not arisen a prophet since in
Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face, none like him for
all the signs and the wonders that the LORD sent him to do in the land of
Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, and for all the
mighty power and all the great deeds of terror that Moses did in the sight of
all Israel.”
What was true at the end of the
writing of Deuteronomy continued to be true during Israel’s history. God raised up mighty prophets like Samuel,
and Elijah and Elisha. But none of them interacted with God in the manner that
Moses had. None of them performed
miracles that could rank with what Moses had done.
As Israel’s history went on, it
became clear that they were still waiting for the prophet like Moses. This prophet became associated with the end
time action of God. He was a figure that
people were hoping would appear. We
learn in our Gospel lesson that when John the Baptist appeared and drew so much
attention with his ministry, the priests and Levites asked him: “Are you the
Prophet?”
During Advent we are preparing to
celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. We
are reminded that Jesus was born in fulfillment of God’s promises in Scripture.
Jesus is the Christ. He is the Messiah
who descended from King David. He is
also the Servant of the Lord – the suffering Servant – promised through Isaiah.
Indeed, Jesus is the fulfillment of many different Old Testament promises. I once had a seminary professor who described
Jesus as “the great sucking sound of the New Testament.” He meant that Jesus draws into himself the
many promises of the Old Testament and fulfills them all.
The New Testament tells us that
Jesus is the fulfillment of the prophet like Moses. In the Book of Acts Peter proclaimed to the
people at the temple: “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of
Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus,
whom you delivered over and denied in the presence of
Pilate, when he had decided to release him.” And then a little later as he
talked about Jesus he declared: “Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for
you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in
whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to
that prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’”
Jesus performed the miracles of a
prophet. He controlled nature as he
stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee, and on another occasion came to the
disciples walking on water. Last Sunday
we heard Jesus summarize his ministry as he replied to John the Baptist’s
question by saying, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive
their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and
the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And
blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”
Jesus also spoke God’s word as a
prophet. Our Lord said, “He who does not
love me does not keep my words; and the word which you hear is not mine, but
the Father’s who sent me.” He called
people to repentance, just as the prophets always had. Matthew tells us that Jesus began his
ministry as he said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.”
Jesus was a prophet. But at Christmas we will be reminded that he
was also more than a prophet.
Like Elijah and Elisha, Jesus raised people from the dead. Yet when Elijah and Elisha did this, they
prayed to God and asked him to work the miracle. Jesus didn’t offer any such prayer. Instead, he just did it by his own
power. He did so because he is the Son of God.
He is the One who is true God and true man, conceived by the Holy Spirit
and born of the virgin Mary.
The prophets proclaimed God’s word
to the people. And they suffered because of it. They died because of it. Jezebel promised to kill Elijah, and the
prophet fled into the wilderness wishing that God would end his life. Jeremiah was put in stocks and was thrown
into a dry well as a prisoner. John the Baptist was imprisoned by Herod
Antipas, and was then executed by beheading.
Jesus was the end time prophet sent
by God – the prophet like Moses. It was
his calling to meet with rejection and to die. But as the Son of God, his death
was more than a faithful witness. It was
a sacrifice that removed sin. Peter said
that we have been ransomed “with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a
lamb without blemish or spot.”
By his death, Jesus rescued us from
sin. And then on the third day, God
raised Jesus from the dead. In the
resurrection, God rescued us from death.
We may die before Christ returns in glory, but that death cannot
separate us from God. And that death
cannot hold onto our bodies because the risen Lord will raise up our bodies to
be like his own – bodies that can never die again.
In our text, God says about the
prophet like Moses: “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. And whoever will not listen to my
words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.”
These words remain true for us. We listen to the word of Jesus, the crucified
and risen Lord. We repent and turn away
from our sin when his word confronts us as Law – when it reveals the ways we do
not fear, love, and trust in God above all things; when it reveals the ways we
do not love our neighbor as ourself.
We listen to his word of Gospel –
the good news that we have forgiveness and salvation through faith in Jesus –
through faith alone. We receive the
visible word of the Sacraments by which Jesus applies this forgiveness to us as
individuals.
And we listen to his word as he
describes life that is prompted by the Spirit working through the Gospel – as
he describes life that is true to God’s will.
We listen as Jesus says, “Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you.” We listen as Jesus tells
us to forgive others. We listen as Jesus
tell us to trust in God’s provision and care for us. We listen as Jesus tells us to take up the
cross and follow him. We follow our Lord
because by believing in him and keeping his word we have forgiveness and
eternal life.
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