2025 Advent 4
When I was a child, I experienced an interesting sibling dynamic. My older brother, bigger and stronger than I, and my younger sister, protected by her status as the youngest and the only girl, would often ignore what I had to say. Don’t get me wrong, we got along just fine, but when it came to issuing orders and commands, my word carried very little weight, unless of course if I invoked those powerful words, “Dad says.”
Siblings usually stand on a roughly equal footing, but the one wielding the authority of the parent, speaking in his stead and at his command, that sibling’s words are to be heeded. Yet his position is precarious. If he lies and gives a command that is contradicted by the parent, woe be to him; he will never be trusted again. Even if he acts as a faithful go-between, his siblings may resent him for it, but in the end, they must recognize that those words and authority are not his own, but his parent’s.
I would never have called myself “a prophet of mom and dad,” but this is basically how prophets worked in the Old Testament. Far from being simple fortune tellers, prophets were intermediaries, spokesmen for God, speaking His words to His people.
Moses is called a prophet in today’s reading from Deuteronomy, though he is not often listed among the men who are given that moniker. Unlike most prophets, Moses did not often proclaim the future to the people of Israel, but he certainly did speak to the people on God’s behalf. He was entitled to the invocation, “Dad says,” though he never would have said it like that, but rather “thus says the Lord your God.”
Moses was the great mediator between God and man in the Old Testament, and an example or type of the prophets to come. He interceded on behalf of God’s people when they sinned against God and he reminded them of the words God spoke, the Ten Commandments that were to guide them in a good and God-pleasing life.
The book of Deuteronomy includes a recitation of the Law that God first declared from Mount Sinai. Deuteronomy, means “second law,” not a new set of commands, but a reminder to a new generation, a redeclaration of God’s expectations for His people before they entered the promised land, and a restatement of the covenant stipulations.
God promised to be faithful to His people. He had promised long before Moses was born that He would bless them. He had promised from the moment after the fall to provide a Seed of the woman, a Savior, to crush Satan’s head. His people, in return, were expected to trust in God’s promises and to watch for the salvation that He would accomplish.
Before they embarked into the promised land, which they would do without Moses, God’s people were reminded of His faithfulness and His promise to raise up for them another prophet like Moses, who would speak all that God commanded. His people were expected to carefully follow those spokesmen that God would raise up, the prophets following after Moses. Ignoring their words would be perilous, for it would be akin to refusing to hear God’s Word.
Those prophets had a big task in front of them. The children of Israel, making their way into the promised land, would be tempted to follow other gods, to turn their hearts away from their Creator, and instead look to created things for security and hope (Rom. 1:25). The true prophets would also have to content with false prophets, who would tempt God’s children to abandon His Word and seek after the desires of their own hearts (c.f. 2 Tim. 4:3).
The world is full of wicked men and lying spirits who do not serve God, but themselves, or more precisely, the devil, who wishes nothing more than for men to worship themselves so that he can claim them as his own.
As we see from Scripture, God occasionally allows those false prophets and lying spirits to survive. They test His people; revealing where their hearts and minds are focused. Are they faithful and true, trusting in God’s Word and promises, or do they allow the Word of God and all His promises to be perverted and abandoned.
You face that same test. There are plenty of people in this world who are ready and eager to mislead you. Their tricks and deceptions are nothing new, but the same ones the devil has employed from the very beginning. “Did God really say…” (Gen. 3:1) that intimacy should be reserved for marriage, not just in actions but in thought and intention? “You will not surely die…” (Gen. 3:4) if you seek personal satisfaction and glory, building up and trusting in treasures on earth rather than in the Lord your God. “You can have whatever you wish…” if you worship the created things and all that Satan, the world, and your sinful nature have twisted and perverted (Luke 4:7).
False prophets abound in these, the last times. The surest way to fame and success in this culture is to say whatever people want to hear, to feed their itching ears with rotten and corrupted words that do not bring life, but death. Social media algorithms are constructed to play on your emotions, to lead you into fear, anger, lust, and other emotions that allow you to be influenced, manipulated, and controlled. The devil and the world wish to lead you back into slavery to sin. You must be careful whom you listen to. You must be careful whom you follow. You must be careful where you put your trust.
Your surest defense, like that of the people of old, is to hold fast to the Word of God. To read and learn, memorize and meditate on the very words of eternal life (John 6:68). False prophets can be identified if you know how to look for them. They are distinguished by their fruits, seeking not God’s glory nor the good of His people, but self-satisfaction, self-confirmation, basically anything having to do with inflating the self.
True prophets did not seek glory for themselves, but for God. Their authority was not their own. They did not speak from their own will, but as they were carried by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). Just look at how they were called to the prophetic ministry. God told Jeremiah to “go to all to whom I send you, And whatever I command you, you shall speak” (Jer. 1:7). God put forth His hand and touched Jeremiah’s mouth, saying “Behold, I have put My words in your mouth” (Jer. 1:9).
Ezekiel ate the scroll containing God’s Word, filling himself with the Word of God so that he might proclaim it to the people. Isaiah recognized his unworthiness to act as God’s intermediary, crying “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). Yet his lips were purified with a burning coal from the altar of the Lord (Isaiah 6:6). These great prophets did not speak their own word, but God’s. They fulfilled the prophecy that God would raise up prophets like Moses… but they were not the ultimate fulfillment.
As with most prophecies in the Old Testament, there is both an immediate and local fulfillment to God’s promise, but also a future and complete fulfillment. Moses and all the prophets who followed after him mediated between God and man, but there is only One who can do that truly and perfectly (1 Tim. 2:5). There is only One who can speak with God’s full authority.
Walking with His disciples on the Emmaus road after His resurrection, Jesus opened their minds to the Scriptures, revealing that Moses and all the prophets bore testimony about Him (Luke 24:27). All the Old Testament signs point toward Jesus.
Just as Moses, God’s mediator, led His people through the Red Sea, out of bondage and into new life, so Jesus leads you through the waters of Baptism, out of bondage to sin, through death itself, and into new life in Him.
Just as Moses interceded with God on behalf of His people when they grumbled and so God provided them bread from heaven in the wilderness, so Jesus gives you the true bread from heaven in the Lord’s Supper.
In the Transfiguration account, Moses and Elijah, God’s great prophets, spoke with Jesus about the exodus that He was about to accomplish (Luke 9:31). Some translations use “decease” or “departure,” but the original word is “exodus.” All of the great signs and wonders of the Old Testament were pale imitations of the true glory of God revealed in Jesus Christ.
He is the true Prophet Whom God raised up from among us. Lowered to be born as a little baby in a humble house. Fully human and yet fully Divine; the most beautiful mystery that creation has ever seen.
He was raised up by God in fulfillment of His promise to lead and provide for His people. He spoke forth God’s word, teaching the way of life, but He is far more than a simple prophet. He IS the Word of God. He IS the way to eternal life for all who put their trust in Him.
And knowing that His people could never sufficiently cleave to His Word, could never completely forsake and refuse the siren call of sin, the temptations laid before them by the false prophets, knowing that they could not keep the Law, Jesus Christ, your Lord and your God, was raised up on the cross to pay the consequences of your sin.
He was raised up to bear the fires of God’s wrath in your place. He descended into the grave to take your place there, so that He may be raised up and ascend into heaven, leading the way for you, so that you may stand blameless before the throne of God (Rom. 4:25) and enter into the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom that will have no end.
This, the last Sunday in Advent, is called “Rorate Coeli,” which are the Latin for the opening words of Isaiah’s prophecy, “Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness” (Isaiah 45:8). In Jesus Christ the heavens descend, and God pours down righteousness upon His creation. He descended so that He might raise you up.
We who put our trust in Jesus look forward to His coming again, at His descending once more to usher in the new creation, remembering and trusting in His promises spoken by His prophets in days of old, but now revealed in the only Son of God (Heb. 1:1-2) and proclaimed through the apostolic ministry. The apostles were not new prophets; they were something more. They did not need to prophesy about the future fulfillment of God’s promises but simply point back to their ultimate fulfillment in Jesus.
That apostolic ministry continues today, through faithful men who speak not from their own authority, but from God’s, not attempting to inflate and elevate the self, but subjugating it to God, who alone is worthy of praise and glory. The one who speaks God’s Word does not presume to know anything but Christ (1 Cor. 2:2), who’s glory is not in prosperity and wealth, but in the cross, in obedience to God's will to the point of torture and death so that He might bring you salvation.
Through the apostolic ministry, Jesus continues to provide His Word, in the proclamation of the Gospel and in the administration of the visible Word, the Sacraments. In Baptism, He washes you clean, destroying the old sinful man and raising you to new life in Him. In the Lord’s Supper, He descends from heaven and pours down righteousness and the forgiveness of sins through His Body and Blood in, with, and under the bread and wine.
Faithful pastors are raised up from your midst to continue God’s ministry, not speaking their own words, nor from their own authority, but God’s. They come to you with those powerful words, “Dad says.” Pastors proclaim and deliver the Word of God, that He loves you, that He is with you, that you are forgiven for all of your sins.
Hold fast to those promises of God. Trust in His Word. And receive, through faith, the salvation accomplished for you by your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
And “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). Amen.