Deuteronomy 18:14-15 The nations you will dispossess listen to those who practice sorcery or divination. But as for you, the Lord your God has not permitted you to do so. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.

The Jews of Jesus’ day were very aware of this prophecy. They wanted to know if John the Baptist was “the Prophet,” and some of them indeed rightly identified that Jesus was this Prophet. However, most of them didn’t connect this prophecy with those in Isaiah and elsewhere about the Messiah. They couldn’t see how one individual could combine the prophetic, priestly, and kingly roles, much less grasp that there might be two comings of the same individual, with the kingly role delayed until the second of those. From our perspective, this long after the cross and resurrection, that doesn’t seem so strange, but many today have forgotten the kingly reign of Jesus entirely. We need to grasp that Jesus is indeed all these things, and commit ourselves to Him in total obedience. Many today look to various things as predictive, and look to science much like sorcery. We aren’t to ignore logical forecasts, much less science as a whole, but our reliance must be on God and not on anything else. The Japanese here twice uses a compact expression that means, listen and obey. That expression appears a great deal throughout the Bible, and I wish English had a similar phrase. We tend to divorce those two things, listening and obeying, but that is self-deceptive. (James 1:22) Yesterday I saw a very cleverly pointed video of a father who had told his teenage daughter to clean her room. She had memorized his words, read a book about their implications, and done various other things, but she had never actually cleaned her room. As that video was pointing out, that’s NOT how to love Jesus, but it is all-too-apt an allegory for the lives of far too many Christians.

As a pastor it is very easy for me to see this in others, but I must not tolerate it in myself. I come up with justifications so easily! I need to walk in daily, humble obedience, listening carefully and always with the attitude of applying what I hear. I see too many people who nod sagely during the sermon and maybe even express appreciation to me after the service, but then never apply it in their daily lives. I am not to look down on them, because I’ve done the same thing more times than I could possibly count, but I must pray for obedient, listening hearts and never stop speaking the truth in love. I also must never confuse what the Lord says through me and what comes from my own emotions and imagination. The more anointed the messenger, the more dangerous that becomes. I must walk in full humility at all times, applying in my own life everything He speaks to and through me, for His glory.

Father, thank You for Your faithfulness even when I myself am so unreliable. Help me be an accurate representation of Your grace to all I encounter, so that they too may be drawn into fellowship with You, by Your Spirit, for their salvation and Your glory. Thank You. Hallelujah!