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Okay, praise the Lord.
I do want to open in a word
of prayer.
Lord, I thank you for this opportunity to
delve into this enormous subject of the prophets.
And I pray for your inspiration.
I pray for your anointing.
I pray that this will be a blessing
to everyone here and those listening through the
website.
I pray, Lord, that you would give us
a greater sense about your ways, the ways
that you operate, how you deal with your
people.
Make those things more real to us, I
pray.
Bless this message and bless this series I'm
asking of you, Lord.
In Jesus' name and for his glory alone,
amen.
I want to talk about the role of
the prophet before we get into the life
of Isaiah.
I just felt like it would be good
to touch on how prophets operated.
Mostly, I'm going to be dealing with the
subject of Old Testament prophets.
And they definitely played a huge role in
the Old Testament times.
You know, Hebrews 1, 1 said, God, after
he spoke long ago to the fathers in
the prophets in many portions and in many
ways.
So the prophets were, from the very beginning,
God's primary vehicle to communicate his will and
purposes to his people.
The subject is so enormous to try to
tackle it in one message is almost ridiculous,
but I'm going to do my best to
give a broad view of it and kind
of how they operated and so on.
But really, the history of the prophet spans
the history of God's dealing with his people.
You know, they played such a huge role
in Old Testament times.
One thing, if nothing else, is that they
are responsible for writing most of the Old
Testament.
I don't know if you knew that, but
you know, obviously all the books of the
prophets, which is a huge section in itself.
David was a prophet.
So you have the book of Psalms.
First and second Samuel was written by Samuel
the prophet, you know, Moses was a prophet.
So you have the whole Pentateuch, you know,
so it's it's the prophets of God that
communicated to us what we call the Old
Testament today.
And this office of prophet continued on into
the church age.
In fact, Paul said that the church was
built on the foundation of the apostles and
prophets Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone.
That's Ephesians 2 20.
He also said that Jesus Christ gave some
as apostles and some as prophets and some
as evangelists and some as pastors and teachers
for the equipping of the Saints for the
work of service to the building up of
the body of Christ.
That's Ephesians 4 11 and 12.
So we see that the prophets were one
of the fivefold ministerial gifts given to the
church in its earliest days.
And I should say that even though the
role of the prophet continued and continues to
this day and will continue to the end
of our time on Earth.
We know that because prophets are mentioned in
the book of Revelation.
It is true that the role of the
prophet changed in the New Testament period.
Everything changed really because now instead of there
just being a temple a central location where
Yahweh resided and he had priests operating there
in the temple and he had prophets in
you know in different places through the land.
Everything changed in New Testament times because now
everything's scattered all over the place all over
the known world and churches were established in
different cities and for each of these churches
there were in operation these five gifts of
the spirit and you know a proper healthy
Church today should have all five of those
gifts in operation and you rarely see it.
I mean a lot of that is simply
because of the unhealthy condition of the church
in general.
Also, there's a whole segment of the church
who believe that the functions of the apostles
and prophets went away after the first century,
you know, I just can never understand how
people can just take it upon themselves to
erase entire sections of the New Testament arbitrarily
like that.
I mean to me, it's just my opinion.
It's a sign of tremendous arrogance.
Paul says that they are part of the
operation of the church and you know, it's
just not wise to just take it upon
yourself to say, well, no, it's no longer
an operation today.
That's not true.
But anyway, the prophets role changed in the
New Testament times in the sense that it
became for the most part an attachment to
the local bodies of believers.
Whereas in the Old Testament times, it was
more of a man speaking to the entire
nation.
You know, of course with the New Testament
revelation of God, which was a much greater
revelation than they had in the Old Testament
times, the need for the prophet diminished somewhat.
That doesn't mean that the office completely became
extinct.
It only means that the need wasn't as
necessary in the church age.
Okay, so but prophets, the role of the
prophet continues today.
That's really what I'm trying to say.
For the sake of this study, I want
to focus on the prophets of the Old
Testament time.
I mean, because that's really what we're going
to be looking at.
Actually, the books of the prophets is what
I'm going to be looking at.
So I just wanted to mention the New
Testament role that that has continued.
All right, let me just talk for a
couple of minutes about the need for the
prophet.
Why do we need prophets?
Let me put it to you this way.
The history of God's dealings with man or
with his people is tragically predictable.
And what I mean by that is the
things usually don't continue going along a good
course.
Typically, what happens is God comes upon a
people group and it's either a movement or
revival or renewal, whatever term you want to
use or whatever the occasion is.
The reality is that the people, God's people,
become more passionate about drawing near to him
and become more passionate about the things of
God and are more concerned about their life
with God.
And so you see when this sort of
thing happens amongst a group of people, you'll
see that their worldliness, for instance, will very
much diminish and they will be more exuberant
about knowing the Lord and pressing into God
and that sort of thing.
Well, over time, just because of the way
that we are, that excitement tends to diminish.
You know, it's just a slow, gradual diminishment.
And then over time, new leaders rise up
and things begin to change and get watered
down.
Paul said to the Corinthians, he said, but
I am afraid that as the serpent deceived
Eve by his craftiness, your minds will be
led astray from the simplicity and purity of
devotion to Christ.
And that is such a picture.
He also warned the church at Ephesus that
savage wolves would rise up from amongst you,
you know, and try to gather disciples to
themselves.
There is just a way that things tend
to happen.
You know what's a good picture of it
is denominations or organizations.
Like, for instance, and now, you know, I
can get myself in trouble here, but I'll
do it anyway.
Let's take the Methodists, for example.
They grew out of the life of John
Wesley and Charles Wesley.
And there was a move of God.
It was called the Great Awakening.
And those brothers were a huge part of
that whole movement of God, along with George
Whitefield and some of the others.
And then there were other people who followed
along behind them as well.
But Methodism began as a movement.
It really came out of the Anglican Church.
And the Anglican Church had grown stale and
dead and religious and formal.
And the Wesley brothers kind of brought fire
back into the people of God, especially in
England.
And then that fire spread into America.
And you had these Methodist circuit riders that
would, you know, go across the land and
were preaching, you know, with a passion.
And people were in a fervor.
It was tremendous.
But over time, you know, it started gradually
diminishing.
And now Methodism is one of the most
liberal denominations there are.
So we see this basic tendency for God's
people to drift away from the Lord.
You know, it's just the way that we
are.
And so what is the need for the
prophet?
God needs to send a man in to
confront the people in their waywardness, in their
tendency to backslide, in their worldliness, and into
their lack of consecration, into their sin, and
so on.
God needs to send a special sort of
man to his people to arouse them up
again, to call them back to himself, and
so on.
I'll get into that a little bit more
later.
But I want to read a part of
this, the foreword that A.W. Tozer wrote
for Leonard Ravenhill's book, Why Revival Tarries.
And it's just so well-written, and it
really captures kind of the role of the
prophet.
Now, he's talking a lot about Leonard Ravenhill.
And, of course, this was written back in
the 60s, I believe.
But let me just read this.
God has always had his specialists whose chief
concern has been the moral breakdown, the decline
in the spiritual health of the nation or
the church.
Such men were Elijah, Jeremiah, Malachi, and others
of their kind who appeared at critical moments
in history to reprove, rebuke, and exhort in
the name of God and righteousness.
A thousand or 10,000 ordinary priests or
pastors or teachers could labor quietly on, almost
unnoticed, while the spiritual life of Israel or
the church was normal.
But let the people of God go astray
from the paths of truth, and immediately the
specialists appeared almost out of nowhere.
His instinct for trouble brought him to the
help of the Lord and of Israel.
Such a man was likely to be drastic,
radical, possibly at times violent.
And the curious crowd that gathered to watch
him work soon branded him as extreme, fanatical,
negative.
And in a sense, they were right.
He was single-minded, severe, fearless, and these
were the qualities the circumstances demanded.
He shocked some, frightened others, and alienated not
a few.
But he knew who had called him and
what he was sent to do.
His ministry was geared to the emergency.
And that fact marked him out as different,
a man apart.
To such men as this, the church owes
a debt too heavy to pay.
The curious thing is that she seldom tries
to pay him while he lives.
But the next generation builds his sepulcher and
writes his biography, as if instinctively and awkwardly
to discharge an obligation the previous generation, to
a large extent, ignored.
Skipping ahead.
Towards such men as Leonard Ravenhill, it is
impossible to be neutral.
His acquaintances are divided pretty neatly into two
classes, those who love and admire him out
of all proportion, and those who hate him
with perfect hatred.
And that is so true, you know.
And that is such a great picture of
what prophets are like.
Now, I want to go over five characteristics
and functions of the prophet.
Let me just go over these and just
kind of share a few thoughts on each
of these.
Number one is that the prophet lives an
exceptionally consecrated life.
You know, to be a person that brings
a drastic and radical message, the prophet has
to live with a drastic and radical lifestyle,
if I could put it that way.
And if you look in the lives of
the different prophets from what we can see
from their lives, like John the Baptist, for
instance, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, you know, when
you start really looking at the way that
they lived their lives, you see that, you
know, they were very strong with themselves before
they ever were.
In a position to be strong with others.
You know, I could say this, and I've
said this before, that the difference between having
a discerning spirit and having a critical spirit
is brokenness.
And that is one of the characteristics of
all true prophets, is they understand what it
means to be dealt with by God.
They allow themselves to be dealt with by
the Lord.
They are far more confronting with themselves than
they, you know, are towards other people.
And so typically, by the way that God
works in people's lives, they have been broken
of much of the self-life, the pride,
and so on, so that by the time
the Lord begins to use them, they can
bring a pure word, or at least a
word that has been largely purified, of self
-motivations, or self-righteousness, or any other form
of pride.
So the prophet typically is very much what
we would call unworldly.
You know, like Elijah living out in the
deserts, and John the Baptist.
They're both good examples of that kind of
austere lifestyle.
It's not that God expects that of everyone.
He doesn't.
The prophet has a specific kind of role,
and to be prepared for that role, he
often had to be put in a position
of living that kind of very tight discipline,
if I could put it that way, or
just a very disciplined life.
I like what Leonard Ravenhill said.
The Lord spoke this to him at some
point in his life, probably early on.
He said, others can, you cannot.
And what the Lord meant by that was,
you know, don't compare yourself to pastors, and
teachers, and evangelists out there, and around you,
and so on.
Maybe I'm allowing them to live a little
bit looser, or not so disciplined life as
I'm requiring of you, but that's because I
have a specific type of call on your
life.
And Leonard Ravenhill really was a classic example
of a New Testament prophet.
You know, because he began as a revivalist,
and somewhere along the line, that changed over
to where he became a voice to God's
people.
And he called people back, especially in the
late 60s through the 70s and 80s.
He called God's people back to holy living.
And that's what a prophet does.
But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself.
This man must live a consecrated life.
Number two, the prophet is keenly aware of
the spiritual climate of his day.
You know, another word that they were called
in the Old Testament times was a seer.
S-E-E-R, a seer.
In other words, someone who could see.
And see things that normal people couldn't see,
if I could put it that way.
They had remarkable powers of perception into the
spiritual realm, and into the inner workings of
people's hearts.
Because of the way that they had allowed
God to deal with them first, made them
keenly aware of the atmosphere around them.
Let me put it to you this way,
and I've used this analogy regarding television before.
When God called us to quit watching television
in 1985, you know, at first I was
like, I could not understand.
It seemed so weird that the Lord would
lay that on us.
Everyone watched television that I knew, all the
Christians, I mean.
All Christians watched television.
Why was God requiring us to give up
television?
It didn't make sense to me.
But we quit, we knew the Lord was
speaking to us.
But after a few months of not watching
television, when I would get around television, then
I could see what was going on, on
the television set.
And I'm not talking about, you know, scantily
clad girls, or vulgar language, and sexual innuendo.
I'm talking about on a deeper level than
that.
Just seeing the spirit behind television.
I could begin to see it now.
Why?
Because I had gotten away from it.
And the analogy I've used with this is
the cigarette smoker.
When he's a smoker, he could walk into
a smoke-filled room and not even notice
it.
But after he quits smoking, goes into that
same room, now all of a sudden he
smells it for what it is.
It's a contaminant to his lungs.
And it's that way spiritually for the prophet,
that he, when God has been able to
extract out of him different forms of worldliness,
he is able to see it for what
it is.
He can see it from God's perspective.
And it completely changes his viewpoint.
Psalm 12 is one of those psalms that's
really a prophetical type psalm, not in the
sense of foretelling the future events, but in
the sense of seeing what society was like.
It was actually Psalm 11 and 12 kind
of go together.
And I'm pretty sure it was David that
wrote them.
But seeing what the culture, what the people
were like, what was going on around them.
But Alexander McLaren said this.
Let me just read this.
One penalty of living near God is keen
pain from low lives.
The ears that hear God's word cannot but
be stunned and hurt by the babble of
empty speech.
The psalmist is not sad for himself, but
sick of the clatter of godless tongues, in
which he discerns the outcome of godless lives.
It is better to be too sensitive to
evils than to be contented with them.
Heroes and reformers have all begun with, quote
-unquote, exaggerated estimates of corruption.
And that also is just very well put,
describing a prophet.
All right, number three.
The prophet hears from God.
And how does that come about that he
can hear more clearly?
Well, it's partly from what we've already been
describing because this process that's gone on inside
his own life.
But it also reflects someone who knows what
it means to get alone with God.
You know, there is something about just getting
off by yourself with God that I don't
know how to describe it.
I remember times that I would go, like,
to the cabin by myself or be in
situations where I was away from Kathy and
everyone and there was just a loneliness that
I didn't like.
And yet it also made me somehow more,
I don't know, open to the Lord in
a way.
But you really see it in Palestine.
You know, let me put it this way.
The wilderness areas of Palestine, I believe, played
a significant part in the history of God's
dealings with his people.
Because it was out in the desert that
God spoke to Moses and David and Elijah
and John the Baptist and others, you know.
It was out in the lonely regions away
from people that they learned how to hear
the voice of God, how to listen to
God.
And this ability to hear from God and
to receive direction, communication from God, that is
one of the characteristics of all prophets.
Amos said, Surely the Lord God does nothing
unless he reveals his secret counsel to his
servants, the prophets.
And that's very true, you know, because every
time God is going to deal with his
people in some way, he first sends that
word to his prophets.
And his prophets then usually come in in
different fashions, which I'll talk about here in
a minute, to bring that communication from the
Lord.
Well, how exactly did they hear from the
Lord?
Now, I'm focusing mainly now on the Old
Testament prophets.
There is a term that is used 255
times, a phrase.
It's called the Word of the Lord.
And almost all of those usages of that
phrase are in the Old Testament.
The Word of the Lord came to Amos.
The Word of the Lord came to Zechariah.
The Word of the Lord came to Ezekiel.
You know, over and over you see that
being described.
Well, what does that mean, the Word of
the Lord?
And they never really describe it.
You just get little hints here and there.
They don't really describe it very well, but
God communicated to his prophets in different ways.
So let me just give you four.
One would be an audible voice.
Now, like, for instance, the time that God
spoke to Samuel when he was a little
boy, that was definitely an audible voice.
And I believe there's other occasions.
I just, you know, I think that when
we're hearing about the Word of the Lord,
the Word of the Lord came to Ezekiel
or whatever.
I think it was an audible voice.
But if it wasn't an audible voice, and
this would be number two, then it's definitely
an impression that comes upon the person's mind
so strongly that he knows it's from the
Holy Spirit and that it's from outside of
himself.
So it's one or the other or both.
With the New Testament prophets, and I think
this is true and continues to be true
today, that you get the sense of God
speaking.
For instance, I can tell you that I
have gotten senses or sights into future events,
if I could put it that way.
I'm trying to say it in a way
that, because I don't want it to be
exaggerated or taken wrongly.
I say a sense or I say how
the Lord has given me a sight in
future events.
What it is, it's almost like a snapshot
that's just real vague in your mind.
And if I was a prophet of a
little more stature, maybe I would see and
hear more clearly.
But anyway, whatever the case is, I know
that there's a difference between the clear-cut
word from the Lord that the Old Testament
prophets received and wrote down word for word.
You know, you don't get more clear than
that.
Whereas today it tends to be more of
a vague sense, like you've heard Pastor Jeff
give a word of prophecy here before.
Well, I don't necessarily think it's a word
-for-word clear-cut thing.
It's more of a strong anointing...
No, not anointing.
A strong impression that just comes on you
and just you get in a flow and
the words are flowing out of you.
You know, it's strong, it's the Lord, but
it wouldn't have carried as much weight as
what they received in Old Testament times.
I hope I didn't just totally confuse everything,
but that's the way I see it.
The third thing is that, in fact, God
Himself spoke to Miriam and Aaron and said,
when the Lord speaks to prophets, He speaks
through visions and dreams.
And that's true, you know, that that's often
the way that the Lord would speak to
His prophets.
For instance, and I think it's the first
sentence in Isaiah or maybe the second sentence,
it said, the vision the Lord gave to
Isaiah.
Well, why were they called seers?
Because they were seeing things.
They were seeing, receiving visions.
And again, it's an impression that comes upon
their minds.
And as we start going through the book
of Isaiah, we'll see different sections where He
is obviously clearly seeing things unfold, you know,
getting scenes would unfold in His mind.
And He's just frantically writing this stuff down.
We'll get into that more as we start
going through the book.
But what's the difference between a vision and
a dream?
Consciousness.
That's the difference.
In a dream, you're unconscious, and God speaks
or brings a vision.
That's all it is, is a vision while
you're asleep.
And it comes on very strongly.
Obviously, a vision when you're awake, you're still
fully in control of your faculties, but you
get this sight in your mind's eye of
things.
And so that's the difference between visions and
dreams.
But that's another way that God would communicate
to His prophets.
And number four would be epiphanies or angelic
visitations.
You know, an epiphany is the Lord Himself
appearing, and that happened in a number of
different occasions I won't go into, but, you
know, or angelic visitations like Daniel received, for
instance, and Ezekiel and so on.
So those are some of the ways that
prophets would hear from God in the Old
Testament times.
All right, number four, let's talk a little
bit about the role of the prophet or
get a little more specific about exactly what
they were called to do.
The primary role of the prophet is to
communicate the mind and the heart and the
will and the purposes of God to His
people.
And notice that I say to His people
because the prophet isn't typically going out and
speaking to the heathen world.
You know, it's not that they never did
it.
For instance, Jonah did.
He went to Nineveh.
He was actually a prophet to the northern
tribes of Israel, but he went, God called
him and, you know, sent him to Nineveh
to preach repentance.
So in that sense, he became a revivalist,
an Old Testament revivalist.
But generally speaking, almost always, the role of
the prophet is geared to God's people.
The evangelist is called to the heathen.
He takes God's Word out to the unsaved
and tries to win them to the Lord.
But the prophet, his main function is to
speak to God's people.
And again, as I've already shared, it's in
response to a need because God's people have
drifted away from him.
Now let me just mention, you know, three
ways that the prophet would operate.
Number one primarily, and this is what I've
already touched on, his role was to confront
the waywardness of God's people and call them
back to the Lord.
And there are some prophets who only functioned
in this way.
In other words, they never functioned in the
role of foretelling future events.
In fact, yeah, of all these that I'm
going to mention to you, none of them
even wrote down prophecies and so on.
Samuel and Elijah, Elisha, Micaiah, and even John
the Baptist.
You know, all of those guys and there's
others too.
There's actually quite a few if you start
reading through the books of 1 and 2
Kings.
You see them interspersed.
There may be one little sentence.
They may not even tell the guy's name,
but he was a prophet.
He was operating in the role of a
prophet.
Who knows how he lived his life, how
the Lord used him outside of that.
I mean, the guy lives until he's 70
years old or whatever for years.
You know, he's operating as a prophet in
some capacity, I'm sure.
But all of a sudden the Lord calls
him, go to King Zedekiah or whoever, you
know, and all of a sudden this nobody
shows up and speaks a word to the
king.
And because he's dealing with the king of
Israel or Judah, the event is recorded in
Scripture.
But he has a whole long lifetime of
dealing with God's people in this way.
Maybe he has a circuit or an area
where he's known, like Samuel had a circuit
where he would go around to different towns
and judge the people and so on.
But anyway, their main function was primarily to
bring a message of repentance.
Well, why repentance?
Because what is repentance all about?
It's to turn away from your waywardness and
to turn back to God.
You know, that is what repentance is.
And so for someone to bring a message
of repentance, he's got to confront the sin.
He's got to point out the sin of
the people and call them to leave that
sin and turn back to God.
And I want to say to you counselors
here at Pure Life that you are to
some degree operating in the role of a
prophet because your job is to deal with
these men who you are discipling week in,
week out, and they obviously have a problem.
If we just took the whole big picture
of the prophet, God's people, and bring it
down to one person who you are dealing
with, it's the same dynamic.
They have gone astray.
They have things in their life that aren't
right.
You're the man that God uses to speak
into their life.
You have to point out in a spirit
of love and compassion where they have gone
astray, and your job is to lead them
back to the Lord.
So you are functioning as a prophet, really,
in that sense.
So that's the main thing.
Secondly, the Lord would use prophets to warn
of impending judgment.
And much of the books of the prophets
are taken up with this subject.
Like, for instance, the book of Isaiah, much
of the book of Isaiah, at least most
of the first 35 chapters, is this same
thing of warning the people about impending judgment
and so on.
Anytime God is going to send judgment, He
always, always, always, always warns about it first.
He never just, you know, throws it on
His people.
He never just all of a sudden, without
any sense of warning or whatever, all of
a sudden the whole country is being invaded
or something or other.
They were always warned that judgment was coming.
And it was the prophet who the Lord
used to fulfill that function.
Many of the prophets were used by the
Lord to foretell future events, whether that's judgment
or whatever.
I mean, for instance, much of the second
part of the book of Isaiah, and I'll
get into this next week, chapters 40 through
66, much of that section is really bringing
a word of comfort to God's people.
It's a word of promise.
It's full of hope and encouragement.
So it wasn't always foretelling doom.
Much of it was talking about the coming
Messiah, and we'll get into that.
But anyway, the Lord would use prophets.
That's who He used to operate in the
gift of prophecy.
Wouldn't that make sense?
Okay, lastly, number five, just a characteristic of
prophets is that they inevitably suffer.
When God would raise up a prophet to
confront the sins of His day, there was
always a reaction.
There just has to be a reaction.
And it's kind of like what happens here
at Pure Life.
Men come into this place, and God's presence
is strong in this place, and God starts
dealing with them either through their counselors or
through sermons or books or whatever, but everywhere
they turn, they're being dealt with by the
Lord.
And you guys see this happen, you counselors
especially.
They'll try to keep themselves cool for a
time, but eventually it comes boiling out in
one fashion or another.
And people tend to react either positively or
negatively.
Generally speaking, out there in the church world,
it's going to be a negative response.
In this place, these guys have come to
us for help, so we have better odds
here.
Actually, the majority respond in the right way
here.
But when people corporately have backslidden, and we
are in a state of apostasy right now,
but when the church corporately backslides, the spirit
that everyone is in is, leave me alone,
look, everyone's this way, this is the way
it's supposed to be, because they're all looking
at each other, comparing themselves to each other.
They're all backslidden, and they're all in the
same mindset that, well, everyone else is doing
it, so it must be right, and that
mindset.
So you have one guy standing out in
stark contrast, saying to all of these people,
you're wrong.
Well, there's going to be a reaction.
Look at Luther.
He did that.
I mean, he was called a reformer, but
you could just as easily call him a
prophet, because he was the person that God
used to launch the Reformation, to point out
with his 95 theses the 95 corruptions that
had come into the church.
And it's that same kind of thing.
And there was a violent reaction.
They would have taken him and just tortured
him mercilessly if they could have got their
hands on him.
But it tends to be that way.
It's almost like a chemical reaction.
You know, you have two chemicals.
When they're by themselves, it's fine, but you
throw them together, and there's an explosive reaction.
Well, that's what happens when people have gotten
away from God, and God's prophet is sent
to rebuke them.
There's typically a violent reaction.
Joseph Parker said this, The man whose little
sermon is, quote, unquote, repent, sets himself against
the age, and will for the time being
be battered mercilessly by the age whose moral
tone he challenges.
There is but one end for such a
man, off with his head.
You had better not try to preach repentance
until you have pledged your head to heaven.
That's true.
Another person said, Anyone who preaches the cross
is going to end up on the cross.
And that's true.
You know, it's the same basic truth of
what we're describing.
Let me just read, I'm wrapping it up
now, but let me just read a few
verses just to give you a sense about
what happened with the prophets.
This is 2 Chronicles 36, 15 and 16.
This is kind of an overview of the
Lord trying to deal with his people before
they were carried off to Babylon.
So this is what Ezra wrote, The Lord,
the God of their fathers, sent word to
them again and again by his messengers, because
he had compassion on his people and on
his dwelling place.
But they continually mocked the messengers of God
despised his words and scoffed at his prophets
until the wrath of the Lord arose against
his people until there was no remedy.
So that really is a concise overview of
the whole Old Testament period.
Stephen said this to the Sanhedrin, Which one
of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?
They killed those who had previously announced the
coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and
murderers you have now become.
Well, that's pretty courageous talk for a man
standing in front of 70 leaders of the
country.
And Jesus, of course, said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who
kills the prophets and stones those who are
sent to her.
So we see this long-standing tendency of
the Jewish people that the Lord continually tried
to reach out to them when they resisted
or when they started corporately sliding away.
He would faithfully send prophets to try to
correct their backslidings, to try to get them
back on track, get them back on the
narrow path.
And they almost always responded violently to that.
All right, so I hope that you have
a better sense of what a prophet's function
is and was.
And we will take this up more as
we start going through the different books, especially
through the book of Isaiah.
Okay, God bless you.