Jesus, Our Prophet

Father, grant that the words we have expressed to you in song may be the genuine indication of what we long for. We pray that as we study the Bible, that you will do for us what we are unable to do. Speak to us, and help us to listen and understand and believe and obey. And to this end we ask for your help. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Perhaps you’ll begin this morning by turning with me to Psalm 45. Psalm 45. I just want you to be in that portion of Scripture as we begin what is essentially a topical study and one that will reward the taking of one or two notes, at least if you want to have Bible references to which you can refer later. It becomes tedious, turning them all up necessarily. I’ll tell you when I think you’ll be helped by doing so. But if you have it open at Psalm 45, that’ll be a good place.

During an earlier part of the summer, I spoke for a week in an auditorium that had opposite me at eye level in the balcony area, or the sound area, a phrase that was taken from the King James Version of the Bible. It simply said, “Sir, we would see Jesus.”[1] I was not unfamiliar with the phrase, because it was that very phrase—or it is that very phrase—which was carved into the pulpit which was my pulpit in Scotland between 1977 and 1983. And it just was a forcible and necessary reminder to me on that particular week of the priority of bringing before the people of God the name and the work and the ministry of the Lord Jesus.

In every generation, I think those who’ve been of most help in pastoral ministry have been those who have deviated very little from a continual reinforcing of the appropriate necessity of reminding one another that we must look to Christ. Murray M’Cheyne, who died at the age of twenty-nine but wrote a little before he did, in one of his writings says, “Learn much of the Lord Jesus. For every look [you take] at yourself, take ten looks at [him]. … Let your soul[s] be filled with … [the] excellenc[e] of Christ.”[2] It’s a good word, isn’t it? For every look that we take at ourselves… Think how many looks we’ve already taken at ourselves this morning, some of us waiting for others to come because they have spent so much time looking at themselves. And our society is preoccupied with the self. And therefore, it is a quite revolutionary idea. Certainly, it would be a Christian distinctive if we who name the name of Christ and believe ourselves to follow him would be responding to this exhortation.

I recognize, too, that these three Sunday mornings are somewhat unique. We have no Sunday evening activities this Sunday and next Sunday, and we’re at that transitional stage: some are going away to college; some are back, having gone to college and wishing they were never going back, because it’s Labor Day Weekend and with all of the things that are going on. And I was confronted, then, with the question “How do you want to spend these three weeks? Do you want to go back into your studies in Luke’s Gospel, or what should you do?” And prompted by what I have been doing and by the occasion of this opportunity, I determined that we would do well simply to look together at the Lord Jesus, but to do so in a way that is particularly pointed, to do so using a particular lens.

And the lens that we’re going to use is a lens that was essentially given to us by one of the Reformers, Calvin, when he determined that there was a paradigm in the Bible, a kind of secondary model, which would allow him to teach his people concerning the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. And this model is the threefold office of Christ—the munus triplex, for those of you who are theologically astute. And Calvin said to his people in the earlier century, “What you need to do is, first of all, think of Jesus under his great title as the Christ, or the Anointed, of God. I want you,” he said, “to think of Jesus primarily in terms of his being the Anointed One of God.”

Now, if you’re open to Psalm 45, let me point this out to you. This is a prophetic psalm, and in verse 6 we read:

Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever;
 a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.
You love righteousness and hate wickedness;
 therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions
 by anointing you with the oil of joy.[3]

Now, Parkside people are familiar with this, because we sing it quite routinely, don’t we? “Your throne, O God, will last forever. Justice will be your royal decree.”[4]

When we read, or had read for us, in Hebrews chapter 1, you will now notice that when the writer of Hebrews, speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ in terms of who he is and what he represents, without saying, “I’m quoting Psalm 45”: “But about the Son”—Hebrews 1:8—“but about the Son he says, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever …, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.’” So here the writer to the Hebrews is saying, “Psalm 45 was a reference to none other than Jesus. The psalmist looked forward to the Christ, to the Anointed of God. We’re now looking back to Jesus and seeing him in that respect.” That was the first step in understanding or the utilization of this lens: first of all, viewing Jesus as the Anointed of God.

The second step was to go back into the Old Testament and, viewing the history of the people of Israel, to consider the three offices that were associated with the anointing of God—two explicitly and one by implication. And really, anybody who’s been through a decent Sunday school already can anticipate this. Because we know that the kings of Israel were anointed by God (for example, David in 1 Samuel 16), that the priests were anointed by God all the way through Leviticus (primarily Leviticus 8), that the prophets were the anointed of God (Isaiah 61). “So,” says Calvin, “what I want you to do”—and this is in the sixteenth century—he says, “what I want you to do is think of Jesus in this way, then think of these offices in the Old Testament, and then bring these two thoughts together in your mind. Fuse them, and you will realize then that we see Christ acting for his people as the supreme Prophet, Priest, and King.” All that was anticipated, then, in the Old Testament comes to fulfillment in Jesus in the New.

And using this little lens is helpful on multiple fronts. I won’t go into them all but point out just two.

All that was anticipated in the Old Testament comes to fulfillment in Jesus in the New.

Many of us have difficulty in understanding how the Old Testament and the New Testament fits together. Some of us are afraid of reading the Old Testament. Some of us only read sections of the Bible, and we reread them all over again. And one of the reasons for that is because no one has given us any lines, any maps, any theological motorways down which we may drive that will show the continuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament. If you examine Christ along these lines, it will begin to pull the pieces together for you.

Also, it will allow us to see the way in which the Bible is all about promise and then fulfillment. And you read these promises, and you read these expectations, and you’re saying to yourself, “I wonder how they reach fulfillment.” Some of them have an immediate historical fulfillment, as we will see two weeks from now, if and when we come to Jesus as King. We’ll read a section in the Old Testament, and we’ll say, “But wasn’t that fulfilled in Solomon?” Well, yes, it was fulfilled in Solomon, but it was ultimately fulfilled in Christ, who is the King. And that’s why, incidentally, if you’re going to read your Bible, you have to learn to read it from the back and then read it towards the front.

Now, what we’re going to do, then, is consider him as Prophet, Priest, and King—this morning as Prophet. As a prophet he ousted our ignorance, as a priest he bears our alienation, and as a king he fills up our impotence.

First, then, as a prophet. What does a prophet do? Well, a prophet reveals God to us. A prophet speaks God’s word to us. That is why God gave to his people his prophets: in order that they might hear his voice and in order that they might understand his purposes. And in the same way, God gives to us the Lord Jesus because we need him.

Why do we need him? Because we don’t know by ourselves what God is like. We cannot by ourselves discover God. Christianity begins with God’s self-disclosure. God reveals himself. God makes himself known. And he’s doing that all the way along the road. Way back in Genesis 6, when God comes to send Noah to them, in about Genesis 6:5, it says of the people at that time that the inclinations of their minds and the thoughts of their hearts were continually evil in the sight of God. They had no interest in God. They weren’t concerned about God. They were pleased just to do their own thing. And what does God do? He sends them a preacher. He sends them a prophet. He sends Noah to them in order that he might disclose himself. And that, you see, follows all the way through till it comes to its apex in Christ.

Now, God gives us Jesus as Prophet because we need him. Let me expand on this for just a moment. Psalm 14. You remember the words of the psalmist with which he begins: “The fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God’”[5]—that in his folly, man is blind to the truth of God. We’ve sung about that this morning, haven’t we, in the great hymn by Heber? “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! … Though the eye of sinful man your glory may not see.”[6] Now, I’m not sure that I didn’t just understand this line for the first time as I was singing it this morning. I’ve always understood that line—I’ll have to wait till heaven to ask Heber what he meant, but I don’t know if you’re with me on this—I have always understood that as an expression of judgment. I mean, “You know, you are holy, and though the eye of sinful man your glory may not see”—they’re not allowed to. It may be that, because there’s a sense in which the judgment of God falls rightly on man’s willful ignorance. But perhaps he’s just saying this: “Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty! Though the eye of sinful… Though sinful man may say you’re not, though sinful man may say you not exist, only you are holy. There is none beside you. So let the whole world say whatever it wants to say, because in their darkness and in their blindness, they are skewed in their thinking; they’re biased in the way they operate.”

You need to understand that when you read your newspapers. You need to understand that when you listen to CNN. You need to understand that when you enter into debate with friends and neighbors in your community. The great argument, of course, that we’re confronted with all the time is that we are the people who are completely intolerant. They are the people whose minds are completely open to everything. And if they could somehow or another convince us of the prideful nature of our approach, then we could join them in being completely clueless along with them. But they are not naturally open to every idea of truth. They’re open to every idea of truth that allows them to remain in control.

Ephesians 4, a kind of parallel passage to Romans 1: “I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord,” says Paul—verse 17—“you must no longer live as the Gentiles do.” How do the Gentiles live, the pagans, those who are disregarding of God? Don’t live as the Gentiles do—listen to this phrase—“in the futility of their thinking.” “In the futility of their thinking.” “They are darkened in their understanding”—point one. Point two: they are “separated from the life of God.” Point three: this is “because of the ignorance that is in them due to,” point four, “the hardening of their hearts.”

Now, this is a real dilemma, isn’t it? Especially for those who’ve come this morning, and they’ve just recently said, “Well, I think I’ll go off to church and see if I can find something there after all. Someone up the street said I should,” or “I haven’t been in a while, and I think I ought to go.” Well, I’ve got bad news for you: the darkness that you experience is not a darkness that is outside of you; it’s a darkness that is inside of you. It gets worse: you’re separated by nature from the life of God. You do not know God. Thirdly, you’re ignorant. And fourthly, the reason you’re ignorant is because you have a hard and willful, disobedient heart. Good morning, and welcome to Parkside!

So, what is the job of the person who stands in this position? Does anybody think for a flat second that I or any of my colleagues could say anything that would overcome the darkness, penetrate the hardness, grant life to the dead? You’re right: we couldn’t. This task is an impossible task. This is not just difficult; this is impossible! There is only one who can “[break] the power of canceled sin and [set] the prisoner free,”[7] and he is our great Prophet.

Now, if you doubt this, then I don’t think that you are really paying attention to what’s going on around you. The Thursday edition of the New York Times—got back on Wednesday, went for my New York Times on Thursday; moved from the London Times to the New York Times but still the Times. I know many of you think… You’re praying for me that I take this newspaper, but that’s all right. If I didn’t take this newspaper, I wouldn’t be able to give you all these dreadful illustrations. What I’m saying is that the darkness of man, the reason man needs a Prophet, is because he’s dark on the inside. That’s what Paul says; that’s not what I’m saying. The darkness is on the inside. This is a review of a book called Sex, Time and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, written by a surgeon, Leonard Shlain, and reviewed by Meredith Small. The opening paragraph reads as follows:

Humans and apes separated about six million years ago, and ever since then humans have been careening down an evolutionary path all their own. Lucky for us, bits of bones dropped along the way became fossilized, and these remains tell much about the physical evolution of the creatures that eventually became modern humans.

Okay? So, this is the opening paragraph. This is the sort of “Let’s just clear the ground immediately. Let’s just establish what we all know to be true.” Because Meredith is going to move on to debunk Dr. Shlain’s theories because they don’t fulfill the feminist agenda to which she is particularly partial. And so, I won’t bore you with the whole detail of it, but she eventually works to the point where she says,

Dr. Shlain also seems to believe that there is a purposeful trajectory of human evolution that landed us here as masters of the universe. Evolution is a much more zigzagging, messy process, and our history, like that of all animals, is fraught with mistakes and dead ends. Thinking that human evolution was guided along by women toward some clean and neat end is just wrong.[8]

Oh, I loved it when I read that! I said, “This is good: ‘It’s just wrong.’” You see, because nothing’s allowed to be wrong, is it? Oh, yes it is—when it suits our purposes. “It’s just wrong.” Well, are you prepared to consider the possibility that your opening paragraph is equally wrong, Meredith? “Oh, no, it couldn’t be wrong.” Why not?

Why do we need a Prophet? Because of the darkness of our hearts. Because of our sinfulness, and because of our fallenness, our views of the world, they’re skewed; they’re biased. There is no intellectual road from us to God. There’s no intellectual road from us to God. That’s why Paul says to the Corinthians, he says, “For God in his wisdom saw to it that the foolishness of the world could never find God.”[9] But instead, God brought what was regarded as foolish to a “wise” world: the story of this Jesus, a Prophet and a Priest and a King. And what the Bible says is that we need Jesus, we need this Prophet, because humanity—ourselves—we are incurably turned in upon ourselves. Every day, in a thousand ways, I make myself the center of my world. So I need a prophet to come to me in order that I might know God. And that, of course, is the great declaration of the Bible: that “God has spoken in various ways of old in the past”—Hebrews 1, as was read for us—“but in these last days he has spoken to us in his Son.”[10] As Prophet, Christ brings to ignorant and sin-darkened humanity the very truth of God.

Now, I want to backpedal for just a moment, for those of you who are still with me, and give you just an inkling of the biblical material which underpins this paradigm, this lens. It starts in Deuteronomy chapter 18, where Moses, as the great major prophet of God, gives, himself, a word of prophecy. And in Deuteronomy 18 he says, speaking from God, “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 tell them everything I command him.” This is Deuteronomy 18:17–19; you can look it up at your leisure. Moses, of course, is followed by the other people whose names we recognize: Isaiah and Amos and Jeremiah and Hosea and so on. But from the very time that Moses made this dramatic statement, the people of God were living with an expectation. Because Moses was the great prophet, and he said, “There is a prophet who’s going to come, and you really need to listen to him.”

As Prophet, Christ brings to ignorant and sin-darkened humanity the very truth of God.

Now, when you read your Old Testament Scriptures, you need to then realize that this is a line which is running all the way through the books. Oh, it doesn’t come up in every chapter. It doesn’t come up on every occasion. It’s like a signpost that goes away and returns again when you’re making your journey down the road, and suddenly you pick it up again, and then you find it in another place. So when the Old Testament comes to an end and you go into the silence of the intertestamental period, between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, the people of God are still living with this expectation that a prophet will come. And you pick this up when you begin to read the Gospels.

For example, in John chapter 6, after the feeding of the multitude, Jesus says to his disciples, “Gather up all the stuff,” they gather up all the baskets, and somebody on the periphery of the crowd says, “Surely a great Prophet has come into the world.”[11] It’s interesting, of all the things they could say. Jesus feeds all these people five loaves and two fish, and they said, “Surely a great Prophet has come into the world.”

Luke chapter 7—we saw it when we were in the earlier chapters of Luke—Jesus stops a funeral procession coming out of Nain. The widow lady has her only son, and he’s in the equivalent of a coffin. Jesus goes up, addresses the boy, raises him to life, and someone in the crowd says, “A great prophet has [arrived] among us …. God has come to help his people.”[12]

Earlier, again, in Luke and in chapter 4, Jesus acknowledges the designation “prophet,” when in reference to himself—Luke 4:24—he says, “No prophet is accepted in his hometown.” Later, in chapter 13, somewhat enigmatically—I remember when we studied it—Jesus says, “Surely no prophet [could] die outside [of] Jerusalem!”[13]

And when you follow the line through the Gospels into the Acts… Remember, we said in the Old Testament Jesus is predicted, in the Gospels Jesus is revealed, and in the Acts Jesus is explained. Now, when the apostles, then, are explaining the nature of what has been happening down the road map of the Old Testament, in Acts chapter 3—Peter preaching, giving explanation of what has happened in the healing of the man who’d been a beggar at the gate—and in Acts chapter 3, he says, “I know, [brothers]”—verse 17—“that you acted in ignorance,” and so on. “But this is how God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, saying that his Christ,” that his Anointed One, “would suffer.” So he says, “[I suggest to you] repent … and [that you] turn to God” and so on, “[so] that he may send … Christ, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus. [Right now],” he says, “he[’s] … remain[ing] in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago,” again, “through his holy prophets.”

Then listen to this—3:22: “For Moses said, ‘The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; [and] you must listen to everything he tells you.” So here Peter says, “If any of you have still been wondering about what your grandfather was always on about when he put you on his knee and he said, “The prophet Moses said that there would be a prophet who would come and we must listen to him,’” Peter says, “I’ve got news for you: he came, and he’s Jesus. And it is imperative that you listen to him.”

Okay? But eventually, says Bruce Milne, the designation collapses under the weight of its fulfillment.[14] Eventually, the wineskin can’t hold the wine. Because Jesus is Prophet, but as I said to you at the beginning, you can’t deal with him just as Prophet; you have to deal with him in the triunity, as it were, in the trinity of his office, because Prophet won’t cope with the totality of him. We have to see him then as Priest and see him as King. You have to hold the three together. You say, “Well, why are you not doing that?” Well, you can see now that I’m chasing my tail just to finish Prophet. You think you want me to try do the whole three together? Fine, we can stay all afternoon; it’s okay with me. I have the material. You don’t like that idea? That’s okay. Let’s stay with Prophet.

But it falls down under the weight of its own fulfillment. Why? Because Jesus is the one about whom all the Old Testament prophecies finally were written. Luke chapter 24, on the Emmaus Road: “We thought that he was the one to redeem our people, Israel. We thought that the prophetic line was going to finish up in Jesus of Nazareth. But he died! They put him in a cave. And some women have said some things, but frankly, you know, who’s going to listen to them?” And then Jesus says to them, “You know, how slow of heart you are to believe all that the prophets have written!”[15] And then he took the Bible, the Old Testament, and he explained to them all the things that were written in the Scriptures concerning himself.[16]

“Great prophet of [our] God, my tongue [shall] bless your name.”[17] He wasn’t simply the messenger of revelation from God; he was the source of all revelation. Didn’t we see that in Luke chapter 4, which we said was absolutely pivotal? Jesus of Nazareth comes back to Nazareth, goes to the synagogue in the place where he was brought up as a boy, working at his father’s place with Joseph in the carpenter’s workshop, in all of those years that are silent to us in the Bible—walks into the synagogue, “as was his custom”[18] on the day. They hand to him the scroll of the prophet—presumably the reading for the day. He reads from the scroll of the prophet: “The Spirit of the Lord is now upon me. He has appointed me to preach good news to the poor, delivery of sight to the blind, and the release of the captives,”[19] and so on—finishes the Scripture reading, gives the scroll back to the attendant, and then he sits down.

And I think it’s true—I’m not going to look it up now—but I think Luke says, “[And] the eyes of [all] … were fastened on him.”[20] “Fastened on him.” ’Cause now he’s going to give the exposition. “Well, I wonder what he’s going to say. Isaiah 61: we’re familiar with that. ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.’ It’s a word about the prophet of God.” There is not a person in there, I don’t think, who could ever have prepared themselves for what they were about to hear. Jesus looks at the group, and he says, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”[21] What? The Galilean carpenter is the one from Deuteronomy 18? Get out of here! Joseph’s son is the Prophet of God? Yeah! And eventually, you will remember that he had to make a run for it, didn’t he?[22]

You find the same thing, in a dramatic way, unfolds in a wonderful encounter between Jesus and the lady who was looking for love in all the wrong places—going to the well in the middle of the day, meets a man at the well, the man speaks to her. Strange! Even stranger is the fact that he’s Jewish, and she’s a Samaritan. And the Jews and Samaritans, they didn’t really do much in terms of tête-à-tête.

The conversation unfolds. Jesus says to her, “If you knew who it was who was asking you for a drink of water, you’d ask him for a drink of water, and you’d never thirst again.” She says, “Are you greater than our father Jacob? ’Cause he’s the guy that put this well in here.” Jesus says, “Why don’t you go call your husband and come back?” She said, “I don’t have a husband.” He said, “You’re dead right you don’t have a husband! You’ve had five husbands, and presently you have a live-in lover.” What does she say? “I can see that you are a prophet.” Jesus advances the story a little further, and she says, “I know the Messiah is coming. The Christ, the Anointed One is coming. I know the Anointed One is coming. And when he does, he’ll explain everything.”[23] It’s kind of like the big close, you know: “Been nice talking to you, but you know, the Anointed of God, he’ll be coming along, and when he comes, then we’ll know. You know, there’s a lot of discussion here, a lot of things we could pursue,” you know. Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”[24]

If you’ve become a Christian out of agnosticism, you know something of this reality. Because you were going through your days religious or irreligious, intrigued, concerned about metaphysics, the questions of philosophy, the dimensions of human existence in time and potentially in eternity. But the one thing you’d decided was that of all the things you may give consideration to, there’s no real reason to go back down that Christian path. “Let’s go to the things that are far more intriguing. Let’s go to Zen Buddhism. Let’s go to the issues of Scientology. Let’s see if we can’t put together a little smorgasbord of New Age religious dogma that would allow me to live as I choose and believe what I want.”

And somewhere along the line, perhaps walking out of a hospital, leaving behind a very sick child; perhaps sitting down on a train next to somebody; perhaps picking up a book and reading it; perhaps even being dragged into a funeral service or attending a service of worship against your will—and all of a sudden, you realized, “Jesus Christ is the very Prophet of God”; that this Prophet comes not simply to inform but to transform; that the Teacher is the Redeemer; that in Jesus the prophetic Word of God finds its ultimate expression not only as a truth to be believed but as a person to be trusted. For “the Word”—remember what the Prophet did? He spoke the word. For “the Word became flesh and [dwelt] among us …. [And] we have [beheld] his glory.”[25]

In Jesus the prophetic Word of God finds its ultimate expression not only as a truth to be believed but as a person to be trusted.

Now, let me just wrap this up with a couple of words of application. Because some of you are, frankly, sitting there saying, “So what? So what? I mean, I can tell you say that you’re fairly concerned about this—and relatively agitated about it, I may even say. But for the life of me, I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it.”

Well, I hope you would first of all realize that the very fact that he sends a Prophet confronts us with our need of one. You need to hear from God. I need to hear from God. And for those of us who have come to trust in Christ, then, in considering the fact that Jesus exercises a prophetic ministry, we need to recognize at the same time that he hasn’t finished. He hasn’t finished!

When Luke starts his second book, which is the Acts of the Apostles, he makes reference to his first book; he says, “You know, Theophilus, I wrote some stuff to you before. And before I was writing to you about all that Jesus began to do and teach. This is what he began to do, in the Gospels.”[26] But what he began to do he is continuing to do. Well, you’re not going to meet him in Shaker Square. You’re not going to meet Jesus personally at the Terminal Tower. You’re not going to get on a plane one day and meet Jesus of Nazareth. So how in the world is Jesus, then, the Prophet of God, going to continue to speak into the world that he has made?

That’s right: through you, Christian! That the love of Christ, says Paul in 2 Corinthians 5, “compels us.” We are the very ambassadors of God, he says; it’s “as though God were making his appeal through us.”[27] And here’s the amazing truth: that God was anointed for himself but also for his people in order that the power of his Spirit may be obvious in the proclaiming of the good news—that there may be about us and the things we convey “a waft of the supernatural,”[28] says James Stewart, the old Scottish Presbyterian, and not just in the preaching, but please, God, in the preaching! That beyond the issues of personality and gift or the absence of gift, people would be compelled to say, “God was speaking into my life. It was as though the person knew me, and I know he has no knowledge of me.” What is that about? It’s about the prophetic ministry of Christ through his Word.

And it’s true for you, my dear friend, when you explain the gospel to somebody, when you give somebody a copy of that New Testament, when you reveal to them your passionate conviction about who Jesus is. Jesus says, “Go into all the world and make disciples, and lo, I am with you always.”[29] “Lo, I am with you always” doesn’t work. I mean, it sounds like, “And lo, I am with you always.” It sounds like an archbishop saying it. No, Jesus says, “You go and tell people, and I’m right with you. I’m right with you! You’re not on your own in Starbucks. You’re not on your own on the plane. You’re not on your own in the pulpit. You are not on your own, because I am the great Prophet of God.”

This, you see, makes it possible now. The impossible becomes possible! “Who am I to speak to somebody? I’m not as bright as them. I don’t know what I’m going to tell them.” You just tell them what it says. Jesus’ll take care of it!

“Compelled.” Says [McCullough], when the gospel is made known, “Christ walks among his people. It’s the miracle of Christmas all over again: Christ clothes himself in humanity, spurning the language of angels to speak with the tongues of mortals.”[30] Oh, this is good, you see! “Spurning the language of angels to speak with the tongues of mortals.” Your tongue. Yeah, your tongue. “You mean my tongue that cussed when I jammed my fingers in the door?” Yes, remarkably so. “You mean my tongue that said critical things behind that person’s back?” Yes, isn’t that amazing? Not perfect tongues; redeemed tongues, redeemed lives, messed-up people declared righteous in God’s sight and propelled into humanity.

If we’re going to take that seriously, we need to ask God for his help. I’m going to tell you three words that I’m asking God for all the time. Two of them my father prayed for me every Sunday. I know; I found out after he died that he prayed the same prayer every Sunday for me when I preached.

First thing we need to ask God for is conviction. Conviction. Two Corinthians 5 again: he says, “We are convinced that one died,” and therefore, we’ve got something to say.[31] “Timothy,” he says, “continue in the things you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned them.”[32] And we need convinced pastors, don’t we? In fact, if you do not have a convinced pastoral team, you cannot have a convinced congregation. And this is a God-given conviction. Oh, yes, we arise on a morning, and we’re confronted by our own ineptitude, by our failures, by our disappointments, by our doubts, by our inability to explain great doctrines of the Bible in a way that people can understand. But at the very core of things, we’re convinced. Convinced: convinced about the resurrection, convinced about the atonement—convinced. We need to be convinced.

Secondly, we need to be courageous. Courageous! If you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to take your courage in both hands and hold your fire. Pluralism is around, abounding. Acts 4:12 flies in the face of our contemporary worldviews: that there is in Jesus the only salvation for the sinner. Yes, we do need courage.

And thirdly, we need compassion. Compassion. Here we are at the end of the summer period, with the fall before us. God comes to us by his Word, and he says, “Jesus, my Son, is my great Prophet, and I’ve told you in the Gospels all that he began to do, and I have poured out my Spirit upon you in order that you might have a part in his prophetic ministry in your generation. If you’re going to do this, you’re going to have to be convinced, you’re going to have to be courageous, and you’re going to have to be compassionate.”

How am I going to be convinced, courageous, and compassionate—and, incidentally, clear? That was the other one my dad prayed: clarity. He prayed that I would have clarity, conviction, and compassion. So I’m just adding a fourth. I don’t know what the fourth is; it doesn’t matter.

Part of the problem right now—as someone who just wrote a book on the Ten Commandments and is passionately committed to the place of the Ten Commandments—part of the problem right now is the absolute stupidity of the people down in Alabama, wearing T-shirts that says, you know, “Jesus is God, and Satan is a nerd,” playing into the hands of every television reporter that wants to show up. We may admire them for their passionate conviction. We may want to pull them back and say, “Hey, guys, you need to understand that by and large, the gospel has not gone forward as a result of protest and blasting people. The greatest gains have come around as a result of a courageous compassion that says, ‘You know, I would have blown those things out so fast myself, were it not the fact that I heard from the Prophet. Jesus spoke to me.’”

And that kind of compassion for those who are searching, for those who are skeptical, for those who are, frankly, sordid, whose lives and lifestyles are horrible—that kind of compassion will be full of respect for people as individuals, caring enough to listen to them, caring enough to provide for them, caring enough to offer them the news that has been transforming in our own lives.

Well, that’s the first part of a three-part, and we’ll pray together:

Father God, thank you for the Bible, again. Thank you for Christ, who comes into our ignorance and into our blindness and shines the light of his truth, comes not only to inform but to transform us. As we think about the wonder of being made part of your ministry team, we pray that we might know the compulsion of your love, about which Paul spoke—that we may be convinced, that we may be courageous, and that we might be filled with compassion.

And now unto him who is able to keep us from falling and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only wise God our Savior, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, now and forevermore. Amen.

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[1] John 12:21 (KJV).

[2] Robert Murray McCheyne to George Shaw, Dundee, September 16, 1840, in Andrew A. Bonar, Memoir and Remains of the Rev. Robert McCheyne (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1844), 253.

[3] Psalm 45:6–7 (NIV 1984).

[4] Graham Kendrick, “All the Glory (My Heart Is Full of Admiration)” (1991).

[5] Psalm 14:1 (NIV 1984).

[6] Reginald Heber, “Holy, Holy, Holy!” (1826).

[7] Charles Wesley, “O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing” (1739). Lyrics lightly altered.

[8] Meredith F. Small, “Evolution on the Meat-Sex Exchange,” review of Sex, Time and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution, by Leonard Shlain, New York Times, August 28, 2003, https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/28/books/books-of-the-times-evolution-on-the-meat-sex-exchange.html.

[9] 1 Corinthians 1:20–21 (paraphrased).

[10] Hebrews 1:1–2 (paraphrased).

[11] John 6:14 (paraphrased).

[12] Luke 7:16 (NIV 1984).

[13] Luke 13:33 (NIV 1984).

[14] Bruce Milne, Know the Truth: A Handbook of Christian Belief (Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity, 1982), 152.

[15] Luke 24:21–23, 25 (paraphrased).

[16] See Luke 24:27.

[17] Isaac Watts, “Join All the Glorious Names.” Lyrics lightly altered.

[18] Luke 4:16 (NIV 1984).

[19] Luke 4:18 (paraphrased).

[20] Luke 4:20 (NIV 1984).

[21] Luke 4:21 (NIV 1984).

[22] See Luke 4:28–30.

[23] John 4:10, 12, 16–19, 25 (paraphrased).

[24] John 4:26 (NIV 1984).

[25] John 1:14 (NIV 1984).

[26] Acts 1:1 (paraphrased).

[27] 2 Corinthians 5:14, 20 (NIV 1984).

[28] James S. Stewart,A Faith to Proclaim(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1953), 45.

[29] Matthew 28:19–20 (paraphrased).

[30] Donald W. McCullough, The Trivialization of God: The Dangerous Illusion of a Manageable Deity (Colorado Springs; NavPress, 1995), 127.

[31] 2 Corinthians 5:14 (NIV 1984).

[32] 2 Timothy 3:14 (paraphrased).