[Sunday School] Christ, the Prophet (WSC 24)

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Let's get started. Help pray. Lord, thank you for this morning and for bringing us all together. Thank you for the life that you've given us, the life we have that you've breathed into our bodies, and the life that you've given our souls for Jesus. Lord, help us this morning as we consider Jesus our prophet. As we look through Scripture, consider what a prophet is and what role prophets have played in the church, and how Jesus, the ultimate prophet, comes to reveal to us by his word and spirit your will for our salvation. Lord, bless each one of us, strengthen us, encourage us, so that we might better perform our own prophetic vocation. Not that we are prophets, Lord, but that we do have a role to play in speaking your words of truth to everyone we encounter. Help us in that, we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen. Alright. So last week we talked about how Jesus was the prophet, priest, and king. To end all prophets, priests, and kings. We talked some about our human vocation and how we are called in certain ways to bear witness to God's truth, to mediate between God and people in a sort of priestly sense, not in a we're substitute Jesus senses. And we have a kingly role in that we are called to exercise dominion. Today we're drilling down on Christ's office of a prophet. What that is, what it means, how it relates to us. So question 24 of the catechism. How does Christ execute the office of a prophet? Christ executes the office of a prophet in revealing to us by his word and spirit the will of God for our salvation. So, just to get us started a little bit, let me ask you: what is the purpose of prophecy? To reveal to us the will of God for our salvation. Alright. Alright. Well played. Well played. Just thinking biblically, you know, in your own words. Unpacking. What's the purpose of prophecy? Why are there prophets in the Bible? What's God doing? Foretelling. Yeah, foretelling, foretelling the future of what he's uh want to do to make us make it. Foretelling the future. Warning us. Warning us. Exhorting us. Exhorting us. Guiding. Guiding. Disclosing. Disclosing. Good. Yeah. We're on fire, dude. You guys are all over it. It's fantastic. And I'm glad you said the other words because often we do come to prophecy with this idea that it's just straight foretelling. And that's the only thing prophecy is. That they're looking into the future and they're telling us what's going to come next. And there are certainly aspects of that. I don't want to discount that. But prophets aren't just foretellers, they're forth tellers. Right? Disclosure, revelation, activation, even. And to you know, to get at something we we often miss, I'm going to ask a question. Um, and we'll see where we go with this. We'll see how on point you guys are today. Or I am. Was Jonah a false prophet? Jonah? Jonah. No. No? No. Why not? Oh, okay. He was a disobedient prophet. Okay, yeah, he was a disobedient prophet. At first. Let me set this up a little bit better, right? So Deuteronomy 18, right? God is talking about the prophets to come. And verse 21, if you if you say in your heart, how may we know the word that the Lord has spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that it is a word the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. So we talk about coming prophets, right? If the prophet says a thing's gonna happen, and it doesn't happen, don't worry about him because it didn't come from God. He's not a true prophet, he's a false prophet. Alright. Now coming back to Nova. Jonah in Nineveh. Goodness, I am not on it. We need another cup of coffee. Yeah, I guess so. We're driving to Connecticut after church today. And we we spent the morning like getting ready for that. So I'm still getting here. Sorry. So Jonah turns up in Nineveh and he says, in three days, Nineveh will be destroyed. And what happens? They repent. They repent. And is Nineveh destroyed? No. Okay, well, Jonah said Nineveh was going to be destroyed. It was a warning. No. It was a warning. But he didn't give him a warning. He just said in three days Nineveh will be destroyed. Ah, three days. There you go. There's your warning. But it was a contingent. That's right. There's a contingency built into that. Exactly. It was about motivation to get to their hearts. Exactly. So when we're reading the story of Jonah, or even the people in Nineveh, there's an understanding. When a prophet turns up and says, this is gonna happen, they're not just foretelling, they're actually forthelling. There is a bait-in contingency. You know, it's it's they say the judgment is coming, but the recipients of the prophecy understand that that can still be averted. And it's not a matter of true or false prophecy, it's a matter of our right response to prophecy. We see this, and we're not just making this up, right? You can read about this in Jeremiah 18, 5-11. Uh here's what it says. The word of the Lord came to me, O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done? declares the Lord. Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and that nation, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it. And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Now therefore say to the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Thus says the Lord, behold, I am shaping disaster against you, and devising a plan against you. Return every one from his evil way, and amend your ways and your deeds. So this is a window into that contingency that's based into every prophecy. And the reason why I start with this as we get into prophecy, it's because a lot of times we do come to the biblical prophets with, let's call it a hermeneutic of prognostication, where we're reading the prophets in order to discern what's going to happen in the future. And, you know, you can take that to a certain extent where all of a sudden the locusts and Joel are really about Apache helicopters in the Middle East and the signs of the end times and all that kind of thing. But that is not the primary function of what the prophets are doing. You can't come to them with a hermeneutic of prognostication. You have to come with them with a hermeneutic of activation. The prophets are telling forth these things, they are predicting these things, they are prophesying about judgment and restoration in order that we would respond in the right way. There are future elements, right? I don't want to discount that totally, right? The prophets, that's part of it. They're pointing our eyes toward the future, but they're not pointing our eyes toward the future so that we can abstract ourselves from the present and try to game out the play-by-play of what the future is going to look like. They're doing it so that we can live appropriately in the present, right? Toward that end. Whether it's moving toward the restoration and the promises he has for us in the future, or moving away from the judgment and destruction that he has promised because we're heading down the wrong path. Alright, so when we look at prophets in the Old Testament, there are three terms: Roach, Navi, and Hose. And Navi probably is the best, most representative word to describe what a prophet is as one who witnesses, one who testifies, again, one who tells forth. These prophets, the biblical prophets, all speak under the inspiration of God, under the guidance of his spirit. Deuteronomy 18, 18, again, this is a section I mentioned a few minutes ago where God is talking to Moses and through Moses to Israel about how he's going to raise up other prophets in his train. 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 I command him. So I will put my words in his mouth. God gives the prophets what they're supposed to say. Their word is not ultimately the word of Isaiah, the word of Jeremiah, whoever, it's the word of the Lord. That's why in the prophets you hear again and again and again, thus says the Lord, or the word of the Lord, or the word of the Lord came to me. These are constant devices that are being used in the prophets to remind us, hey, I'm not saying this, God is saying this. Jeremiah 1 9. The Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth, and the Lord said to me, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth. 2 Peter 1 19 through 21, we have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. 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. So true prophets speak the words of God. We have a variety of prophets in the Bible. You have the writing prophets, and the major ones would be Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the minor ones, not because they were less important, but because we have less writing from them. Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, and Nahum, all of the minor prophets in the book of the Twelve. But you also have other non-writing prophets. The prophets in the book of Judges. The prophet Samuel. Samuel was kind of a judge and a prophet. Gad, Nathan, Elijah, Elisha, and even John the Baptist. John the Baptist was like the last prophet under the old covenant. The new covenant, you have prophet-like individuals or prophetic individuals of prophetic gifts. He talks about there being prophets in the early church. Anna, a prophetess in Luke 2.36. Agatha in Acts 11 and 21. Jude and Silas, Philip's daughters, Acts 21. So, and we'll talk a little bit about continuing prophecy later, whether we should be looking for prophets in the church today. The prophets, as we said, you know, they're forthellers. They're also social critics. They're also the voice of the national or even the royal conscience. Can you think of a time when a prophet stepped in in order to correct a king's conscience because they were failing to live in line with the word of God? Yeah, Nathan. Nathan. It's easy one. Yeah. But there were prophets who the interesting story is of Ahab and Hezekiah, where God sent a lying spirit or something into the pagan prophets. Yeah, the false prophets. The false prophets to lure Ahab to his death. Yeah. I mean, that's a creepy story, I think. Yeah. Not putting any judgment on scripture or anything. But it is a weird story. Yeah. Well, it is, you know, it's it's God's judgment, right? We think of in Romans 1, where it talks about all turning aside and God leaving them up to the sinful desires and lusts of their hearts. We tend to talk about that in terms of the passive wrath of God. But the fact of scripture, you know, not a bird falls apart from the will of the Heavenly Father. That nothing happens in all creation without God's intentionality. So even his passive wrath is active. And that's kind of what's happening there. I mean, you have these false prophets given over to a spirit of lying, and God says, Alright, I'm going to give you more of what you got. And he actually uses that in order to, instead of correcting the conscience of the wicked king, actually confirming him in his wickedness and leading him towards God's unend. So kind of, we see kings in Israel, like David with Nathan, rightly receiving the word from the Lord through the prophet, but we also see kings in Israel wrongly receiving. 1 Kings 19, 1 through 3, Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow. Then he was afraid, and he rose and ran for his life and came to Beersheba, which belongs to Judah, and left his servant there. So, you know, kings and their wives, and Jezebel was, you know, had a lot of influence over his, over her husband's will that she shouldn't have. But so you see prophets kind of serving this function as the royal or the national conscience, at least trying to. Prophets were social critics, like I mentioned a few minutes ago. Great example, Amos. Amos 6, 1 through 7. This is part of where he's inveighing against the real housewives of Samaria. Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches, and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David, invent for themselves instruments of music, who drink wine in bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph. Therefore they shall now be the first of those who go into exile, and the revelry of those who stretch them out shall pass away. So Amos, very much a social critic, because you have all these people in Samaria specifically who are living very high on the hog, uh, these people are supposed to be leaders of God's people, and they've got there by fleecing God's people, by taking advantage of them. It's rank injustice. And Amos is saying, uh, God's coming after you first. You live in opulence, he's gonna drag you out with fish hooks. And it's see, he does not pull his punches at all. Yeah. And so, like I said, prophets are social critics. So prophets have a lot to say to speak into the government, to speak into the state of culture, all of that. But on what do they base their critique? That's not rhetorical, I'm asking you. What you know, where where do they get their ideas? What do they base their criticisms on? The revealing word of God, the revealed will of God in his word. Yeah. Yeah. And they take it very seriously. Yeah. And sometimes responded to and sometimes not, like when Jeremiah got dumped into the pit or sister. Yeah, and Richard said that he probably ended up with harder in Egypt because his last prophesying was in Egypt. Yeah. That's a really sad story. Yeah. So when the prophets criticize, when they bring their critique, they're not operating according to the spirit of the age, right? It's not like the modern-day prophets we have today, or the people who strive style themselves as speaking with a prophetic voice, right? Uh Greta Thunberg, right, when she starts talking about climate change. You have a lot of people or a lot of activists who are like either hail themselves or are hailed as prophets. And what they're basically doing is critiquing the status quo on the basis of their idea of what they would like the status quo to become. Whether it's racial justice, environmental justice, uh, gender equality, or whatever the case might be. The biblical prophets are specifically calling the people of God, and really specifically calling the leadership of the people of God back into conformity, yes, with the revealed word of God, but even more specifically, the terms of the covenant, the sanctions and stipulations of what God made with the people of Israel as his people. You read about those in Deuteronomy, right? Deuteronomy is the covenant document. And even the book itself takes the shape of an ancient Hittite suzerain vassal treaty, where you have a preamble about what God has done for the people, you have uh specific stipulations and sanctions, you have the blessings for doing right and the curses for doing wrong. You have all of this stuff baked into Deuteronomy. And so when the prophets are laying it out for the people of God and critiquing them, they're doing it on the basis of what's revealed in the Torah. They're doing it on the basis of the covenant. And the Old Testament even uses technical language for this, like the Hebrew word reveal uh it means uh contention, but more specifically, more technically, it means a lawsuit. Hosea 4, 1 through 6. Hear the word of the Lord, O children of Israel, for the Lord has a reeve with the inhabitants of the land. He has a contention, he has a controversy, he has a covenant lawsuit. So that's what the prophets do. That's a good way to think about the prophets. They're covenant prosecutors bringing a case against the people of God. And they've got all the evidence on their side, and they already know what the verdict is going to be, because the judge, or at least qualifying that in the ways we talked about earlier, the judge himself is the one who sent them. And so the prophets could prophesy the coming judgment. Joel 2, the day of the Lord. Or all throughout the prophets, they're talking about the day of the Lord. And they're talking about it as a day of the Lord's visitation, a day of the Lord's reckoning. Uh, that reckoning begins with the household of God. So there are some prophets who speak, like it's either Amos or Hosea, asking the question: why do you long for the day of the Lord? For it will not be light to you, it will be darkness. And it's this idea that you have people in Israel who, like, we're good. We're living the good life. The real housewives of Samaria I mentioned a minute ago. We're living the good life, we're having a good old time. God must love us, God must be blessing us. Everything's good here. But we have these enemies all around. We can't wait for God to come back and deal with them so that we can really be comfortable. And God through the prophets is saying, hey, when the day of the Lord comes, when the day of judgment comes, I'm starting with you. It's not going to be light for you, it's going to be darkness for you. I'm starting with you, Israel. I'm starting with you, Judah, because I need to sanctify and purify you to be who I created you to be, Israel, a light to the nations, and then you can be a light. Then I can deal with all the other nations out there, and then I can purify and sanctify them and bring in the ones that I will for my redemption. So the prophets, all of this is mixed up together in the prophets, especially in Isaiah. You read the first five to ten chapters of Isaiah 5. It's going back and forth between judgment and restoration, judgment and restoration, condemnation, salvation, all that kind of thing. Because the prophets, they preach this coming day of the Lord and proclaim it as a condemnation for God's people, and then as a sanctification, a salvation. And that's, again, in accord with the terms of the covenant. I'm going to read something for you from Deuteronomy 4, that uh this will be verses 25 through 31 if you want to look along. When it talks in this chapter, it talks about how Israel will turn aside, what the consequences will be for their turning aside, and what will happen after a time of discipline for them. Deuteronomy 4 25 through 31. When you father children and children's children and have grown old in the land, and you act corruptly by making a Carved image in the form of anything, and by doing what is evil in the sight of the Lord your God so as to provoke him to anger. I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that you will soon utterly perish from the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess. You will not live long in it, but will be utterly destroyed. And the Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord will drive you. And there you will serve gods of wood and stone, the work of human hands that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there you will seek the Lord your God, and you will find him, if you search after him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in tribulation, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice, for the Lord your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you, or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them. So what God is acknowledging for Israel by way of Moses, and Deuteronomy is the second generation of Israel preparing to go into the promised land, and Moses has gathered everyone together and he says, I'm gonna lay the covenant out for you again. Moses doesn't get to go, but he's making everything known for the next generation what they need to know before they go into the land. So he's saying it's like, hey, you're gonna go there. God, through Moses, is saying, You're gonna go there, you're gonna live for a while, you're gonna forget about me, you're gonna break my law, you're gonna deal with the consequences for that. Which is exile, which is scattering. But in the latter days, or in the last days, you're gonna turn, and I'm gonna bring you back. So when you read the prophets, you get all of that. You get the prophesied judgment, the prophesied scattering, the prophesied latter days in the latter days, uh, the return, the restoration, you get all of that. And that latter days one is actually really important because it becomes a technical term. It becomes the last days. When you understand the day of the Lord is not a singular day, but as actually like an epic or a stage or a period in time, it's the same thing. The latter days. God's going to do something in the latter days in order to bring about this return from exile, this restoration of his people. One of the things too about the prophets is just the mercy of God being shown from them. Yeah. Warning. Yeah. I mean, my goodness for mercy. Yeah. Where we can take off our breath right now. Yeah. Yeah. But by the blood of Christ. It's crazy. Don't touch that, you'll get burned. How many times have we said that to our kids? Right. And we touch it. And they touch it and they get burned. I told you so. Yeah. Yeah. Why don't they hear? I know. Well, why don't we hear? That's what I'm talking about. Every time I say something like, how many times do I have to tell you to one of my kids? It's like I hear an echo from heaven. How many times do I have to tell you? How many times do I tell you? And when Peter says, you will do well to listen. Holy scores, you will do well to listen. Pay attention. British understatement. Yeah. British understatement. Alright, so keeping with this idea of the last day, the latter days, God's going to do something. I'll read something from Joel too. In the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even on my male servants and female servants, in those days I will pour out my spirit, and they shall prophesy. And I will show wonders in the heavens above and signs in the earth below, blood and fire and vapor and smoke. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day. And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Woo! It's Pentecost, Kenny. It's Pentecost. And Peter quoted that. Yes, I just read it from Peter's quote of it. Yes, that's when we see that fulfillment. We don't see the fulfillment in its fullness, right? We see the down payment in a lot of ways. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood. Have we seen that yet? Yeah, kind of. When Jesus was crucified, what happened in the middle of the day? It went dark. It went dark. That's a very deliberate hook into something that the prophet said in multiple places. And when Jesus comes again in glory, what's going to happen? Sun, moon, and stars are going to fall from the sky. So again, it's this forthelling where you get a lot of times prophets will they will foretell something, but because of that that twin purpose of forthelling, you know, they're foretelling something as though it's a singular event on the horizon. But when you get to it, you see that it's actually multiple events on the horizon. It's called telescoping. It's like when you look at a mountain range, and it's far off, you kind of see it all as one thing. Like you see a peak here and a peak here, and they look like they're right next to each other from where you are. But if you actually get close, you realize that, whoa, they're like 10, 20 miles apart. That's how prophecy works. Looking forward to a day when all of these things will happen. And then you get to one of the immediate days where it's partially fulfilled, and you realize, oh, it's uh it's not all on this day. There's still a great deal of time to come before the fullness of it comes to pass. But in this prophecy, in the last days, Peter, which Joel is talking about, Peter gets up on Pentecost after this amazing experience of the Spirit descending in fire and all this sort of like end-of-the-world apocalyptic kind of phenomena happening and people speaking in different languages and hearing different languages, all of that. Peter gets up and says, Hey, y'all remember Joel too? Yeah, that's what just happened. And then he goes on to talk about Jesus, this wonderful man who God attested through signs and wonders. Hey, you guys are seeing signs and wonders? Yeah, you see them today, but we've been seeing them for years. This is what's happening. This is what's happened, and because this has happened, this is what's going to happen. Whom you crucified. There is a there is an element of judgment. Right. But it's it's merciful judgment, right? Right. Right, so this, you know, thinking in the in terms of like redemptive history, this is a thing that happened before anybody wrote down the gospels. So God's pouring out his Holy Spirit on the church. He's giving it in special measure to his apostles. He talked about this in John 14 through 16 in the upper room, giving the disciples the spirit so that they would be able to bring to memory the things that Jesus had taught them. That's not a general statement about everyone being able to read the Bible for ourselves. It's actually a specific statement for the apostles saying, Hey, I'm going to give you the Holy Spirit so that you can write the Bible. I'm going to inspire you so that you can write the authoritative, inerrant scriptures. So as they're writing, as they're reflecting, they're looking back on Jesus' ministry and they're drawing all of these connections, bringing out all of these words to intentionally show that, hey, Jesus was the prophet to end all prophets. Jesus had the Holy Spirit upon him, just like in Isaiah, it said the Holy Spirit would come upon him. Remember Luke 4? We covered it a couple months ago in the sermon, where Jesus goes into the synagogue, he opens up the Isaiah scroll, and he's talking about the Spirit of the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor and all these things. Then he rolls up the scroll and says, Yeah, that's fulfilled in me. It's just an astounding thing for anyone to say. No prophet ever said anything like that because they couldn't say it. Only Jesus could say it. It's in John, I didn't write down exactly where. John specifically makes the connection to Deuteronomy 18, 18. I read this earlier. 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 you. It's real interesting there, where Moses is talking about God raising up prophets in Israel, and yet he's speaking in the singular. Not them, him. So, yes, it applies to all the prophets to come after Moses, but it ultimately applies definitively, conclusively, to Jesus himself as the ultimate prophet. People recognize this in him. They recognize that Jesus had a prophetic character to his ministry. That's why so many people thought he was Elijah or some other prophet. Herod the Luke 9, 7 through 9. Herod the Tekar heard about all that was happening. He was perplexed because it was said by some that John had been raised from the dead. By some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old had risen. When Jesus asks Peter, when he asks them, you know, who do the people say I am? One of the answers they give is Elijah. You're one of the prophets. Okay, Peter, who do you say I am? So people saw that in Jesus, and they thought that, you know, there was there would be another coming of Elijah, another coming of a prophet, and Jesus was that prophet. But of course, he was more than that prophet. So something I've been saying is that Jesus is the prophet to end all prophets. And I want to turn some from kind of history and theology to application. Because we have to make a qualification. There were prophets that were active in the New Testament church. We know that, we talked about that earlier. We mentioned different ones of different prophets. We even see prophets listed in the list of spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians 12, 28 through 31. God is appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles and gifts of healing, helping and ministrating in various kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the higher gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way. So we see that in the New Testament church, that there were prophets, and they even played alongside the apostles a kind of foundational role. Ephesians 2.20. The church is built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets. So we want to admit that, we want to see that, we don't want to hand wave that away. But there is no provision for an ongoing office of prophet in the church. Just like there's no provision for an ongoing office of apostle. These were extraordinary gifts given for extraordinary times. And in the pastoral epistles, what you see is the establishment of what the church will look like in ordinary times and the giving of ordinary office. And the ongoing equipping of the church, the ongoing administration of revelation in the church, isn't trusted to prophets. It's not even trusted to priests, it's entrusted to elders. 2 Timothy 2, 15, do yourself to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. That's Paul talking to Timothy, who is essentially an elder in the church in his delegate, right? The one he's sending to go and see that things are put right in the other churches. And he's the word worker. That's the working in the word is what is entrusted to the teaching office of the church in and through the elders. You have no provision for an ongoing office of prophet. There are times in our tradition, in our history, where there's the word prophesying has been used, like in the Puritans. The Puritans, you know, living in the time of the establishment Church of England, where you weren't allowed to preach unless you used the Book of Common Prayer and you had a license from the royalty. The Puritans, who were very much opposed to a lot of what was happening in the Church of England, they would hold conferences out in the woods, right? Or out in the fields, and they would prophesy for hours at a time. But their prophesying wasn't like downloading information from God and then communicating it over people in a sort of like, James, this afternoon, you're gonna that sort of way. For the Puritans, prophesying was preaching, but it was preaching in a way that was particularly geared toward the application of texts to people's lives. It was very much like what I try to do on Sunday morning, where you know, when I prepare a sermon, I'm not just thinking about, you know, what it means in the abstract, I'm thinking about how it applies to people's lives. And so when I'm unpacking it, I'm doing it in ways where self-consciously I'm trying to help people think in a way where they can apply it to their lives. And I'm naming different sorts, I'm not naming people by name, but I'm naming different sorts of things that we come up with in life in order that we can apply the word to it. That's what the Puritans thought of prophesy. So the catechism question. Christ executes the office of a prophet in revealing to us by his word and spirit the will of God for our salvation. So Jesus, right now, the prophet and all prophets, seated at the right hand of the Father, continues his prophetic ministry in revealing to us by his word and spirit God's will for our salvation. So the question is, you know, how does he do that? And the answer to the catechism question gives us is by his word, by his spirit. He continues to speak via the word of the apostles, through the inspiration and illumination of Scripture. Uh, the Bible is the prophetic word about Jesus. Uh, I read it earlier, 2 Peter 1, 19 through 21. We have the prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you will do well to pay attention, as to a lamp shining in a dark place. We have the prophetic word completed, fulfilled, confirmed. Not just as an innate object that we hold in our hands, but as the very word of God that the Spirit uses in order to communicate to us the truth of God, right? We see that when Jesus is on road to the nice. Yep. He proclaims to these strangers, you know, that all from the Old Testament, all the prophets. And then they finally say, Whoa, that's that's what I'm looking at, yeah, right here. Yeah. So it's it's there for us today. Yeah, his word is from us, or from from him, for him, through him, to him, for him, all of it. Right. And Richman, when he was being punished, you know, and he said, Send somebody back from the pit, you go tell my brother. Yeah. It's funny you said just this morning. I was sitting in my home office and I was looking at my Bible, and I just put my hand around and I thought, the answer to everything, right? I mean, it is beginning to end the answers, and no one, I'm being dramatic, no one reads it. You know, when you're if you're stressed and you're anxious, read songs, watch what happens, right? It's the greatest psychological self-help book, right? And and it's it's incredible. But yeah, if you're if you're having an anxious moment, read songs, watch what happens. It's beautiful, and it just it just sits on shelves for all of us. Yeah, this is the Bible is where Jesus has promised to communicate with his people. Can he communicate with us in other ways? Sure, he can communicate with us in other ways. God. But he's left, it's like, you know, at the beginning of the silver chair, Asan sends this girl on a mission. And he tells her, he gives her these signs. He says, remember the signs. He tells her what to look out for. And of course, what she did, she starts forgetting like right away. Right? Uh the signs. God gives us the signs. He doesn't tell us to go out looking out there for signs. He gives us the words right here that tell us what we need to know. We forget again and again. That's what I have to tell you. Yeah, right, right. Alright, and so this word he gives us, it's not just optional, it really is necessary. And it's necessary in a number of different ways. Uh and the confession helps us to get our arms around its necessity. In chapter one, paragraph one. Although the light of nature and the works of creation and providence do so far manifest the goodness, wisdom, and power of God as to leave men inexcusable. So, God has revealed himself everywhere. And all we have to do is read the book of nature to know that there is a God, and because we refuse to do that, we are rendered legally liable. That's Romans 1, right? Yet are they not sufficient to give that knowledge of God and of his will which is necessary unto salvation? You can read the sky and know that there's a God, but you can't read the sky and discern the gospel. The gospel is not written in the clouds. Therefore, it pleased the Lord at sundry times and in diverse manners to reveal himself and to declare that his will unto his church. So, because you can't read the gospel in the clouds, God had to show up and tell people things, enter into verbal relationship with people. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, all of these people, right? He declares himself to his people. But that's that's the unwritten word of God. And so, uh, afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same holy unto writing. So God spoke to his people, but oral tradition would not be enough to stand the test of time. So he also commanded his people to commit his words to writing, which makes holy scripture to be most necessary. Those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased. Amen. God doesn't show up and audibly speak to his people as a matter of ordinary course. Again, I'm and I'm not trying to bind God's hand. God can do whatever he wants to do. But there was a time in which God communicated with his people verbally, orally. Then there is a time where he committed his word to be written so that we can have a touchstone, so that we have the Bible in our hand, so that it's not, his word isn't subject to the sands of time and the insufficiencies of our own memory, so that we have a word in our hand that we can always go back. And we don't have to say, well, did Jesus say this or say that? I think he said this, you think he said that. Well, let's just go read the book, and we can we can know what he said. So scripture is necessary in the economy or in the plan of God's revealing himself to his people, not because we're an inherently bookish people who really like to read, but because this is how God has done it over the course of history. Through Scripture, God makes covenants with people, then he commands the things to be written down. Moses on Sinai, write this down. And when it has to be written, rewritten, let me write it for you. And all this other stuff, write that down and make sure you have two copies of it in the Ark of the Testimony. And when you have a king, make sure he writes. What is really amazing about that Peter passage is that Peter talks about seeing Jesus transfigured on the mount, okay, which would be an experience that would blow your mind and blew their minds. He just is like this transfigured. But he said the word is more sure than that. Which is to me like it, okay, you're gonna put make experience be up there. Let's see what Peter says about that. He had this amazing experience, but the word of God is even more sure than that amazing experience. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. And rather than read the word of God, people will join churches like the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church. I'm not gonna read the Word of God, just show me the check marks, right? I'm not gonna worry about this, right? That's what it is. I'm not going to read the Word, I'm going to surrender my own intellect that God has given me and just show me the check marks. Okay, did that. I go to mass. I did that. I did that. Alright, cool, I'm good, right? It's almost like anything you have to do to not take a moment to read. And I speak from experience. I was a Catholic. You know? So it's an easy way just to like subordinate my own intellect. But then when COVID hit and I started giving them the word, and Colossians. James. Well, part of the. I came before I started attending this church, I was a member of a more Catholic-like church, which which was the Lutheran, which I love dearly. I do not, but I would sit there and nobody had a Bible. Nobody opened a Bible. And on my very first Sunday when I came here, I said, everybody has a Bible and they're looking in it and they know where to find it. And Kenny says, Open your Bibles. It was just such a contrast. I couldn't agree more. And I'm sorry, we're I know everyone here, I think, right? So I was going to Hermit Schills Baptist Church, right? And we go to these life groups, and it was really a huge church. And we go to these life groups, which is something school. There are beautiful people there, don't get me wrong. But it was it was it was very shallow. It was, right? And but then the Lord revealed you know biblical reformed tradition, not even tradition, but reformed theology and covenant theology. And I'm like, oh my goodness, I don't want to go here anymore. You know, God bless them, but I don't want to give my money here anymore. And Sarah said, I said, let's I'm gonna check out this church in Great Rogue. And Sarah said, could you go ahead and go first and let me know. I went to Sunday school, Kenny's up there, right? Break it down, and when I came home, I told Sarah, I said, they know their Bible. I felt like, oh my goodness, this is really beautiful to see people in the Word. It was like night and day, and here I am. So anyway. Well, part of the Roman Catholic Church, part of the argument is that, well, the Bible's a hard book to understand. A lot of people disagree about what's in the Bible. And what you need is the magisterium, the official teaching office of the church, to tell you what it means. The reformers' argument against that is that we have the witness of the Holy Spirit. We have the witness of the Holy Spirit that not just tells us that Scripture is the Word of God, but also helps us to read it. And so that we believe that, yeah, there are things in the Bible that are hard to understand, sure. But the main things are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things. The Bible is clear or perspicacious, right? The perspicuity of Scripture is an attribute that you'll hear. And we get it in Confession chapter 1, paragraph 7. All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all. Yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and open in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them. And so the Bible is clear. It is externally clear in the sense that the words make sense. It's not a secret code. You don't need a PhD to understand what it's saying to you. It's presented as ordinary speech for ordinary people. So it's externally clear in that sense. But Martin Luther talked about how internally it could be unclear, even though it's externally clear. And that lack of clarity has not to do with the words, but with the state of our hearts. If you're going to understand Scripture in a way it's supposed to be understood, in a way that's sufficient for salvation, you need the witness of the Holy Spirit to help you. Yet they're unbelievers. They don't believe a lick of it. I mean, maybe like some of the historical bits, like, sure, Peter said that, but they don't believe it. It's not a word that bears witness to the word for them because they lack the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. Absolutely. It's like the Bible becomes the hushten to them. Like the serpent in the wilderness was raised by the command of the Lord, and people had to look at it, but over the process of time, I don't even know where it was, people began to make it an idol. And I think it was Josiah, one of the good kings, that actually had to destroy it because the people were, you know, worshiping this sake. And Jesus said to the scriptures, were you thinking then you have eternal life? And they testified me. So they aren't leading you to Jesus, and it is a it is a something that you know pride yourself on your knowledge, but Acts 4.13. Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were uneducated, common men, they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with Jesus. So you sit, you be with Jesus with the Holy Spirit, suddenly you're not uneducated or common. Yeah. Tail. I think in all of those sides, because I've seen the opposite error where you you think you have a behind it have the Holy Spirit hiding you, depend a non-ranger interpreter who totally misreads and misinterprets. Right. And there's anger on both ends, and that's why I think that being an eldership of believers is so so critical. Yeah, absolutely. Because yeah, the wrong reaction to the Roman Catholic sort of locking up the meaning of the text in the teaching office is to think that, well, we have no use for teachers. We're all our own teacher. The spirit who inspires Scripture is the spirit who illumines our reading of it. It's also the spirit who gives gifts to different members of the body. So it's the spirit who gives us teachers. So, and it's the spirit who gives different people different levels of knowledge, different stages in the process of understanding scripture. So that's exactly right. I mean, you may feel like your reading of the Bible has been illumined by the Holy Spirit and is therefore correct. But then you come into a fellowship and you open up the Bible together, and some other saint says, Well, have you considered how it says this, or how what you're saying contradicts this? Or maybe we look into the tradition of all these other people who've been illumined by the Spirit and they've considered your reading but kind of ruled it out because of XYZ reasons, you engage in that kind of process and you realize, oh, I was being illumined by the spirit in some sense, but I'm also being illumined right now. I thought I was right. I was actually wrong. I'm getting closer to being right now. That's all a part of the process. And if you think you are the Lone Ranger who's gonna sit in their room, uh just read the Bible for yourself, find all of the internet articles that support your reading and the YouTube videos and all that, because you'll find them. You'll find them, right? Whatever flavor you got, you'll find it out there. That's the state of the digital world today. But it's when you come into the fellowship where the Holy Spirit really works and you get closer to the truth. Last thing I'll mention before we run out of time, we've talked about the necessity of scripture, we've talked about the clarity or perspicuity of scripture, uh, the authority of scripture, right? That's kind of implied in everything we've been talking about. It is the word of the Lord, the Spirit has inspired us. So in Confession 1, it talks about the Supreme Court, right? The highest standard for all matters of doctrine of devotion, is not just the Holy Scripture, it's the Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture, right? Acknowledging that apart from the Spirit, this is a dead letter. We need the Spirit to understand the word rightly. Last bit, the Scripture is sufficient. It's enough. It's uh materially sufficient in that we don't need someone to tell us what the Bible is. The Holy Spirit bears witness that these books are the canon of scripture. And it's also materially sufficient. Uh sorry. Did I say material a second ago? You did. My bad. It's formally sufficient. I'm losing it again. Hopefully I turn it around before I get up there. Uh it's formally sufficient in that the Spirit tells us what the canon of Scripture is. It's materially sufficient in that Scripture gives us everything we need to know. What more can he say than to you he has said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? We don't need another word, we don't need a better word, we don't need words of prophecy spoken over us in order to give us some privileged communication from God. Westminster Confession 1.6. The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down in Scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture, unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men. Nevertheless, we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word, and that there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God and government of the church common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the word, which are always to be observed. So the Bible is enough, right? Sure, we need to work things out logically in order to understand how the Bible applies to our day. Like, um, the Bible doesn't say anything about cheating on your tax return or falsifying your 1040 or your Schedule C or anything like that. The Bible doesn't say anything explicit about that. And yet, by good and necessary consequence, by just reading the eighth commandment about not stealing, or Romans 13 about being subject to the governing authorities and even paying taxes to them. Weights and measures. Equal weights and measures, all these kinds of things. You just read this stuff and say, okay, the Bible doesn't say thou shalt not falsify your tax form. But I cannot falsify my tax form without breaking what the Bible has told me to do and to not to do. That's what good and necessary consequence is. And so the Bible remains the authority, but that we still have to think it out. We still have to apply it. And we still have to use the light of nature and Christian prudence in order to apply it. The Bible says to not forsake the assembly of the saints, right? We are commanded to gather here on the Lord's Day for worship. We're not commanded to do it at 10:15. We could do it at 11:15 or 5.15, right? That's up to the light of nature and Christian prudence for the leadership here to decide what's going to serve our people best. But that doesn't, that none of that leads us to the conclusion that the Bible is not enough, the Bible's insufficient, we need new revelations of the Spirit or anything like that. You just recognize the Bible as it is, gives us everything we need in order to know God savingly. I like that it's alive. It's alive. It's alive. It's not a dead letter. It's not a dead letter. It's a lie. Alright, good. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for this time together. Thank you for your word. And thank you for your spirit. And thank you that Jesus continues to reveal himself to us today by that word and spirit so that we might continue to know him and get to know him even better. Lord, we pray this morning as we gather to worship you. There's a lot of word and spirit happening in this room. And we pray, Lord, that you would continue to make yourself known to us and that we would grow in faith and in hope and in love. That, Lord, you would be making disciples here today, that you would be building us up and apprenticing us to our teacher so that we can look more like him. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.