The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The text this morning is the Old Testament reading, Deuteronomy 18:15–20. The word “Deuteronomy,” it might surprise you, is actually a Greek word applied to the Old Testament book. Deuteronomy means “Second Law.” It’s a compound word: deutero meaning “second,” and nomos meaning “law.” It’s the book of the Law — the second telling of the laws of the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim. It’s Moses putting down in writing a second version of the laws and the events that go into the wilderness wandering. In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses retells the story of what God had spoken to him and through him previously, over the 40 years of wilderness wandering, from the day they left Egypt until now, as they’re about to enter the Promised Land. After 40 years, the Exodus was about to culminate, and the ultimate promise for those people — namely, the Promised Land — they were about to cross over. But the journey for Moses was about to end. So he wrote a book, a second book, to remind the children of Israel what it meant to be the children of Israel — that is, the children of the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim — and to remind them again of all that the Lord had done over that 40 years, from the time they left Egypt, were rescued from the army of the Egyptians, and wandered the wilderness until this moment.
This morning’s text, Deuteronomy 18:15–20, is a singular, focused text. It’s about the Prophet who will come. It’s about the Office of Prophet, and in particular the two men that have occupied, or will occupy, the office: Moses and the promised Messiah. Moses, of course, was the first prophet called by the Lord God. In Exodus chapter 3, there the Lord God commanded Moses from the burning bush, saying, “Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is His name?’ what shall I say to them?” And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And He said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.'” There, in that little paragraph, is the commissioning of both the divine Office of the deliverer and the prophet, established by the Lord God Himself through spoken words. And over the subsequent 40 years of wilderness wandering, Moses would be God’s special prophet — unique and singular in office. God spoke to Moses, and Moses spoke to the people. That was the system. It might come as a surprise to you, but that system became a reality because that’s exactly how the children of Israel wanted it to be. They didn’t want God talking to them directly. That was simply too terrifying. When they were camping at the base of Mount Sinai, and Moses had gone up to receive the Ten Commandments, they saw and heard what it was like to be in the presence of the Holy One of Israel. They saw what it was like to have God speak directly to a sinful man. Exodus 20:18–21: “Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people 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.
That’s what sin, you see, does to our relationship to the Lord God. It turns our loving heavenly Father into a stern judge. A frightening God who speaks to man directly is a terrifying thing. I often think of that, by the way, when people tell me how God talks to them. I’ve heard several preachers that are in some legal trouble in the news this past week who keep telling people what God said and told them to do, and why they’re in the trouble that they’re in. But if God is speaking to a sinful human being without the intermediary God has appointed — trust me, it’s probably not God talking. The Israelites were in a wilderness, and they were in a wilderness marred by sin — their relationship marred by sin with God. They weren’t in the Garden of Eden, where Adam and Eve walked freely and talked freely with God in the open light of day. They were in a wilderness marred by sin — a reminder of what sin had done to their relationship to both God and to one another. At the bottom of Mount Sinai, they witnessed firsthand what it would be like to be in the presence of God and to have God speak to them directly, and they were terrified. Just think: each time an angel shows up, either in the Old Testament or in the New Testament, and what’s the first thing out of an angel’s mouth, or the Lord God’s mouth? “Do not be afraid.” Because the natural inclination for sinners, when they’re in the presence of the Holy One, is to be afraid.
In the second telling of the Torah, the book of Deuteronomy, Moses tells the Israelites: “This is according to all that you asked of the Lord your God in Horeb on the day of the assembly, saying, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken.'” That’s about the only time you hear praise from God about something His children have figured out on their own. It’s not very often that you hear the Lord commending His people for actually getting it right. But here they got it right. God’s people need someone to stand between the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, and the sinner and sinners in this world — someone through whom God speaks and acts. It’s here that the Office of Prophet is solidified, or cemented, into salvation history. That is: God will send one prophet after another to speak His words to His children, to call them to repentance and a true Christian faith. The Office of Prophet is not established by a man, any more than the Office of Pastor or Apostle or anything else. These are offices instituted by God, that grow out of or are directly connected to the office of prophet, priest, and king. “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit,” St. Peter writes in his Second Epistle, chapter 1.
Moses knows that the people are about to enter the Promised Land, but he also knows that he will not be allowed to enter, for he belonged to the generation of rebellion. He will die outside the Promised Land. He’ll be called home, however, to his heavenly Promised Land. So the Lord God spoke once again through His prophet Moses, promising: “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.” Luther calls this the most important Bible passage in the book of Deuteronomy: the promise of a Messiah who would speak God’s words directly, on God’s behalf, in His stead — for He is God. A prophet from you, like your brothers — that is, Moses is a man, and the next Prophet, the greatest Prophet to come, will also be a man in the flesh: the very Word of God in the flesh. But to get from Moses to the perfect Prophet, God would raise up a succession of prophets, with names like Joshua and Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Joel, Amos, Malachi, Hosea, and others. He would put His words into their hearts and their minds and their mouths, in a miracle that we call holy inspiration. And they will speak and do what the Lord God gives them to speak and to do. And it was for the children of Israel to listen and to obey. These prophets often began by saying, “Thus says the Lord” — that announced that what was now to follow came directly from the Lord God Himself. And they would end by saying, “declares the Lord.” They announced God’s favor by saying, “Blessed are you,” and they announced God’s curse by saying, “Woe to you.” And they called God’s children to repent and to return to the Lord God, time and time again.
For thousands of years, the prophets were to speak all that the Lord called them to speak, and the people were to hear and to listen and to observe all that God had said to them. That, by the way, reached all the way to the ultimate and the very last Prophet. That last Prophet made it clear too that the commands, the doctrines, the teachings of the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, were to be learned and observed: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” And all that I have commanded, in the Old and New Testament, is an awful lot to remember. After all, you take the Old and the New Testament together — the prophets weren’t shy about addressing any need that was necessary. It includes a wide variety of issues, of religion and theology, to domestic issues and the economy, dietary issues, foreign affairs, international relationships, and more. Some prophets would emphasize one issue, while another would take a different. But all the prophets, in whatever topic they were addressing, had this one element in common: they all spoke and taught and pointed to the promised Messiah — to the Redeemer, the Savior, the new Deliverer, the Prophet, the Priest, and the King. They foretold of a Messiah who would deliver people from their sin, from hell, and from the power of Satan. They told of a Prophet that would reconcile mankind to God, so that we might once again hear God speak directly to us — without fear, in pure joy and perfect peace, in our heavenly home. He would be a prophet like Moses: not only a man, but someone we could even call our brother. But also a prophet like Moses who would deliver the people from captivity of sin, death, and the power of the devil.
Through Moses, God not only tells His children, He tells the whole world that He’ll raise up a prophet like Moses — that is, fully human, and yet at the same time fully divine. He would deliver His people from their captivities and bring them ultimately to the Promised Land of eternal rest. God speaks through prophets, and His children are expected to listen. And a warning came with that: “And whoever will not listen to My words that he shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him” — meaning, I’ll require his life of that one. To disobey or ignore the prophet was to disobey or ignore God Himself. And to disobey God Himself always involved consequences. Time and time again, the Israelites would refuse to listen to the prophets. And the Prophet who came last lamented that fundamental fact. He told the Israelites they killed the prophets and stoned those whom He sent to them — Matthew 23:37. Jesus told the disciples the parable of the vineyard and the tenants, to remind them how the Israelites had treated the prophets before Him: they beat one, killed another, stoned another. But God, in His great mercy, said to Himself, “I know what I’ll do. I’ll send My Son. Surely they will listen to Him.” So in Jesus’ Baptism, He was anointed into that threefold office — the Office of Prophet, Priest, and King. And once anointed into the Office of Prophet, the voice was heard: “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Listen to Him.”
When you hear or read words of the Bible, and you believe and do what God said, you are hearing and obeying the Lord God Himself. When you ignore and refuse to listen and to adhere to those words of the biblical text, you’re ignoring God and refusing what He has spoken to you — at your own peril. Jesus said, “The one who hears you hears Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.” Jesus is the Prophet to whom all other prophets pointed. He’s the last of the line of prophets. No more prophets beyond Christ — just pastors and priests, just preachers and teachers of God’s Word, just men who stand in front of congregations with the Divine Liturgy, that is God’s very own words embedded in the liturgy, speaking the words of God to the people. The Son of God alone, in this time, speaks face to face with God — but not in fear, but in perfect joy and peace, in your stead, interceding on your behalf. When He speaks, He never says, “Thus says the Lord,” or “declares the Lord.” When Jesus speaks, He says, “Truly, truly, I say to you.” And He says things like, “I and the Father are one,” and “whoever honors the Son honors the Father, and whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.” The writer to the Hebrews makes it clear that we are to understand Jesus as the last speaking Prophet — the one who speaks in God’s stead, on His behalf, fully and directly, from God’s mouth to Christ’s ears: “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, Jesus Christ.”
Today’s pastors who are orthodox and confessional, who solidly stand and boldly proclaim God’s Word, speak His words — are the physical, human voices through which the people of God hear God’s words, and the words of the ultimate Prophet, Jesus the Son of God. When a faithful pastor stands leading the Divine Service, speaking the liturgy that is largely composed of the very words of the Bible, the Word of God, and preaches sermons based upon that same written Word, our God is using a physical, human voice to communicate the mercy and the grace of Jesus Christ. “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” When Jesus speaks, even demons are forced to obey. One demon-possessed man of the Gospel lesson this morning learned that. He was sitting there, minding his own business in church, when the Word of God walked in, preaching and teaching. And immediately upon hearing the words of God, the man cried out, “What have You to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are — the Holy One of God.” But the man in whom the Holy Spirit dwelt — the man who is the greater Prophet than Moses — He says to the man with the unclean spirit, “Be silent and come out of him!” And the spirit came out, convulsing the man and crying out with a loud voice, and came out of him. When Christ the Prophet speaks through His pastoral mouths, He speaks His final words and applies them to you: “It is finished.” Your sins are forgiven, and your redemption is complete.
God raised up that great Prophet, Jesus, from among us — true God and also true man, our true brother. So when you hear and speak the words of the liturgy, when you confess your sins, when you hear the Words of Institution and come to the Lord’s Supper, when you hear the blessing at the end of the service — know that God and the ultimate Prophet, Jesus Christ, is speaking His words to you. And what He speaks always comes to fruition. So when you hear “for the remission of your sins,” your sins are really remitted. When you hear “in the stead and by the command,” you’re forgiven — you are, in fact, forgiven. And thus it is: the Lord speaks. Your sins are forgiven you. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.