Christ Church Leavenworth
WSC 23-24: Christ the Prophet
December 7, 2025
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OT READING: Deuteronomy 18:15-22
NT READING: Acts 3:17-26
Christ the Prophet
READING OF THE TEXT
Our text this morning is Hebrews 1:1-3 these are the words of God:
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, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the Word of our God stands forever.
PRAYER
Our Father and our God, we come before You this morning through Jesus Christ, our Lord, and in the Holy Spirit. All of Your promises are Yes and Amen in Jesus Christ alone. Give us eyes to see Him as Your final Word. In His Name I pray, Amen.
INTRODUCTION
This morning we are continuing our Advent series based on WSC questions 22-26 which focus on the incarnation of the Son of God and His fulfillment of the three Biblical offices of prophet, priest, and king, respectively. Last week we looked at Q22 which focused on the miracle of the incarnation and the reminder that the sin is not in the stuff. The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. Let the stuff rejoice. This week, we move on to Q23-24 which expand on Q22 by focusing on some of the work that Jesus, in the days of His flesh, accomplished. Jesus was not a tourist and He was not here on vacation; He was on a mission. His Father deployed Him with particular orders and some of those involved fulfilling the mediatorial offices of the OT.
Q23 of the WSC clarifies what these are. It asks, “What offices doth Christ execute as our Redeemer? The answer provided is, “Christ, as our Redeemer, executeth the offices of a prophet, of a priest, and of a king, both in His estate of humiliation and exaltation.” So, for the next three weeks at CCL, we will walk through questions 24-26 of the WSC which respectively address each of these offices beginning today with Q24 which asks, “How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet?” The answer to which is: “Christ executeth the office of a prophet, in revealing to us, by His Word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.”
With that in mind, let’s review our sermon text today from Hebrews 1:1-3
SUMMARY OF THE TEXT
:1 “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets,” A long time ago in a Galilee far, far away, a prophet grew in wisdom, stature, and favor in the house His mother, Mary, and her husband, Joseph. Before that time, many prophets over the course of many years had been sent into the world. Each of them came saying, “Thus saith the Lord,” and each of them was believed by some and rejected by others. All of them eventually passed away, but many of them were martyred. When God called the man, He bid him to come and die. Each of these, in his own way, pointed ahead to the prophet who would one day come from Nazareth. But because men are often impatient or insolent or both, they had a bad habit of rejecting the message by murdering its messengers. In His kindness, however, God always raised up another. That was the pattern.
:2 “but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.” The people of God had come to expect a prophet here and there, but one day God broke the pattern. Instead of sending another prophet to point ahead, He sent the point of it all – not just A prophet, but THE prophet. This Prophet was not just a man of God, He was the Son of God. He did not just have the words of God in His mouth, He was the very Word of God. He did not just enlighten His audiences, He was the light of the entire world. He was not just a man trying to preserve the world and values of His fathers, He was the Son of God setting His eyes upon the world that He, in the beginning, had created and that He, in the end, was to inherit. This was not business as usual. This was not just another prophet like all the ones who came before Him. He was not just another character being written into the story, He was the Author of the story entering into the plot.
:3 “He is the radiance of the glory of God” Jesus was not a prophet like Moses whose face shone with a fading glory after He stood in the presence of God. No, He was “the light of the world” who possessed an unfading glory because He was Himself, God. He was not solar-powered like the other prophets, He was the sun. When He was transfigured before Peter, James, and John, “His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became white as light,” according to Matthew 17:2. The other prophets were like the moon, reflecting the source of light, but Jesus is like the light of the sun. He is the source and He sheds light on everything else.
As C.S. Lewis once noted, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” The sun is too bright to see and the glory of God too glorious to behold, but we can see the light that comes from the sun and we can see the Son of God who came from His Father. As John 1:18 puts it, “No one has ever seen God; but God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known.” The One who is currently seated at the right hand of God the Father is the same One who walked among us, was crucified, died, and was buried before being resurrected on the third day and ascending into Heaven forty days later. He has made the Father known. He has revealed the Father to us. As Jesus told Philip in John 14:9, “Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father.’” In short, to see the Son is to see the Father.
But what about us? Philip may have seen Jesus in person, but we haven’t. Thomas may have felt the texture of His scars, but we haven’t. So, what about us? Well, let’s begin with what Jesus said to him. Remember Thomas said he would not believe that Jesus had risen from the dead unless he got to see the marks of the nails in His hands. Eight days later he did and he believed. And what did Jesus say to him? John 20:29 “Have you believed because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Peter was there as well and what does he say to those who weren’t? 1 Peter 1:8-9 “Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
So, no one has ever seen God the Father, but a few saw the Son of God so that they could testify to what they had seen and heard. John was one of those witnesses. Listen to what he said in 1 John 1:1-3 “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” So, even though we were not there, we are one with those who were. We are invited into fellowship with them so that we all might have fellowship with the Father through His Son, Jesus Christ. The apostles did not sit on their privilege or hoard it up for themselves. No, they sought to share it with others and to invite as many into it as would believe their message. And so, we believe the testimony of the eye witnesses God handpicked to take the stand on His behalf. They are our fathers in the faith and they our brothers in Christ.
The man they knew and loved was God in the flesh and no one comes to the Father except through Him. He was, as :3 goes on to say, “the exact imprint of God’s nature.” Jesus is not a knock-off. We all know what happens to copies – they get worse and worse and less like the original the more you copy them. Christ is not a copy. He is not a screen shot of God, He is the exact imprint of the nature of His Father. The word translated “nature” is the Greek word, “hupostasis” which means “substance.” The Son of God, then, is the exact same substance as His Father. “Hupostasis” is also the word from which we get the term “hypostatic union.” This is used to describe the union of the nature of man and the nature of God in Christ which we will later confess together in the Definition of Chalcedon.
And so, Jesus was a prophet, but He was also much more than any of the prophets who had come before Him. The prophets of old were often given signs. These ranged anywhere from striking the ground with arrows to being in the belly of a big fish. Prophets were a lot like a box of chocolates, you never knew what you were going to get. The prophet’s job was to interpret the sign for the people. He would tell them what it meant. In that sense, the prophets of old were like translators. They helped one party understand what the other party was saying. As we are often reminded, however, some things are often lost in translation. That is where Christ the Prophet was different. In Him, the Word of God was translated into our language without losing anything in translation. The Word became flesh. He was the medium, the message, and the messenger without confusion, compromise, or miscommunication. He was the very Word of God, not a facsimile; and He was a real man, not a hologram.
Unlike the prophets before Him, :3 goes on to say that, “He upholds the universe by the word of His power.” The prophets of old held the words of God in their hearts and opened their mouths to declare them to others. Christ the Prophet holds the world in its place by the power of His Word. Everything that exists is sustained by His say-so. The only thing necessary for the world to fall apart is for Him to stop speaking. The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein. His Word holds it all together. And just as He once made everything out of nothing, He now makes disciples out of no ones.
Consider 2 Corinthians 4:6, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Understand what Paul is saying here. The same way that God said, “Let there be light” in the very beginning, He now says, “Let there be light” in us. Out of nothing He made everything and out of nobodies He makes saints. The same way that light shone into the darkness in Genesis 1, the light of the knowledge of God now shines into the darkness of our hearts. The Word of God created the world in the first place and the way for it to be redeemed in the end.
As :3 ends by noting, “After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. How did Jesus make purification for sins? By taking our sins onto Himself as He hung on a tree. For our sake, He who knew no sin, became sin, so that in Him, we might become the righteousness of God. The Word of God was punched in the mouth and then shut up in a grave. But three days later, the Word of God got the last word. The Father raised His voice and the Word of God rose again before He rose into Heaven where He now sits at the right hand of God. Unlike the prophets that came before Him, He could not be silenced. They tried to bury the lead, but God made it the headline. The grave could not contain the Word of God and no gag order could keep Him from speaking.
Christ the prophet did not merely proclaim salvation, He was salvation. He did not simply publish peace, He was peace. He did not merely point to a future deliverance, He was the Deliverer. Jesus did not just proclaim Good News, He is the Good News and the fulfillment of all the prophecies of old. He was and is the “Yes” and “Amen” of every promise of God. (2 Cor 1:20) He did not just give us another sign, He was the fulfillment of all the foreshadowing.
NOT JUST ANOTHER PROPHET
Remember that according to A:24 of WSC a prophet is a man who reveals the will of God by speaking the words of God through the Spirit of God for the sake of saving those who hear and believe his message. And so the prophet begins and ends his speeches by saying, “thus saith the Lord.” But he is limited to what God tells him to say. He cannot generate the Word of the Lord whenever he feels like it. He is not a prophecy factory. He is not deputized by God to say whatever he wants with the authority of Heaven behind it. So, when people have follow up questions, as they often do, the prophet can only address those, like the rest of us, by appealing to what God has already said in the past and the words of the prophets who came before him. The prophet is not a walking Word of God. He is not infallible in his speech. He could write out a to-do list or a grocery list without it becoming part of our Biblical canon. He wasn’t always writing Scripture whenever he wrote or speaking on God’s behalf whenever he spoke.
Jesus, on the other hand, was always a prophet. He was never off duty. He never said anything that was not the Word of God. He never did anything that was against the Word of God. He never failed to do everything the Word of God commands. He had no sins of commission or omission. Everything He said or did was authorized by God because there never was a single moment where He was not acting perfectly in line with the will of His Father.
In addition to being limited in knowledge, the prophets of old were also limited in their terms of service. Prophets, like all men, must die. So, they cannot go on speaking on God’s behalf forever. Jesus, on the other hand, lives forever to intercede on our behalf. He is always acting as a perfect mediator between us and the Father. If a stranger walks through my front door uninvited, he will be met with strong words, inhospitality, and the familiar click click of my shotgun. If that same stranger, however, walks through my door with my son and is introduced to me as his friend, that man is met with a handshake, a warm welcome, and a “come on in”. It is the same with Jesus. If you try to break into Heaven on your own, you will be met with violence, but if you walk into Heaven with Jesus, you will be met with a warm welcome and treated like family.
The prophets of old were not replaceable. When the priest died, you could put his vestments on his son’s shoulders, anoint him, and have a new priest. When the king died, you could put his crown on his son’s head, have a coronation, and have a new king. But when the prophet died, you were left in the lurch. A prophet is not a guarantee. There is no way to pass along or produce a new one. Seminaries cannot do it, especially when they are run by Pharisees or Sadducees. You cannot get a degree in prophecy. But Jesus does not need to be replaced. Since He lives forever, He can serve as our prophet both now and forever, world without end, and amen.
Sometimes you desired a prophet and could not find the one you had. They had a habit, after all, of being whisked away at a moment’s notice. So even when you had one around in your time, you didn’t always know where he was. Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and He will remain there until the end when He stands up to return to judge the quick and the dead.
Sometimes you had to wait a long time for someone to declare the word of God. In fact, between the final prophecies of the OT and the first prophecies of the NT, roughly four hundred years went by. During that time, no doubt many were tempted to wonder if the age of the prophets was over and if words from the Lord were now a thing of the past. But then, God broke the silence by calling John the Baptist to serve as the great forerunner of the final Prophet. He led the final parade that finished with the float that the people of God had been waiting for.
Recall what John 1:19-23 says about John the Baptist. “And this is the testimony of John, when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, ‘Who are you?’ He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’ And they asked him, ‘What then? Are you Elijah?’ He said, ‘I am not.’ ‘Are you the Prophet?’ And he answered, ‘No.’ So they said to him, ‘Who are you? We need to give an answer to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?’ He said, ‘I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, “Make straight the way of the Lord,” as the prophet Isaiah said.’” When people saw John making noise in the street, they wondered if he might be the end of the parade, but he said, “No, I’m the grand marshall.” He confirmed that he was an answer to A prophecy, but not THE answer to THE prophecy. But notice what his questioners assumed? They were waiting both for the Christ promised by Isaiah and for the Prophet promised by Moses. So, they wondered if John might be one or the other. So, they asked him. “Are you the Christ? Are you the Prophet?” We are familiar, thanks to Christmas, with the prophecies concerning the Christ, but less so, thanks to Biblical illiteracy, with those concerning the prophet. This is where our OT and NT readings help us out.
THE PROPHET
In our OT reading, Moses foretold of a prophet, even greater than himself, whom God would send to His people. Hear the Word of the Lord recorded by Moses from Deuteronomy 18:18 “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. And whoever will not listen to My words that He shall speak in My name, I Myself will require it of him.’” The Lord, through Moses, often regarded as the greatest of all the prophets, promised an even greater prophet. So, those who honor Moses can only do so by acknowledging that someone greater than Moses was coming… someone to whom even Moses would defer.
Our NT reading confirms that this someone is the Lord Jesus Christ. Hear the word of the Lord from Acts 3:18-26 “What God foretold by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ would suffer, He thus fulfilled. Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that He may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets long ago. Moses said, ‘The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to Him in whatever He tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that Prophet shall be destroyed from the people.’ And all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and those who came after him, also proclaimed these days. You are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your Offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ God, having raised up His servant, sent Him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness.”
Through all of this, I trust that you are now, if you weren’t already before, fully convinced that Jesus Christ is THE prophet of God. Like a prophet, He came proclaiming the Word of the Lord. Like a prophet, He was believed by some and rejected by others. Like a prophet, His words were attended by signs and wonders that confirmed His message. And like a prophet, He was killed by those He came to save. But acknowledging Him as a prophet is not enough. Many in our day recognize Jesus as a good teacher or a great prophet, but they do not worship Him as their God or submit themselves to Him as their King. The same was true back in His day as well. In Luke 9:18-20 Jesus asked His disciples this question: “‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’ And they answered, ‘John the Baptist. But others say, Elijah, and others, that one of the prophets of old has risen.’ Then He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ And Peter answered, ‘The Christ of God.’”
Jesus is not just another prophet. He is the Prophet of all prophets. He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. As we have seen, He is like the prophets of old in many ways, but it is not enough to honor Him as just another one of them. As He Himself once pointed out, “No one is good but God alone.” (Mk 10:18) So either call Him God and start worshiping Him or stop calling Him good. We honor the prophets by preserving their tombs, but do not honor Jesus that way. His tomb is empty. We honor Him by celebrating His resurrection and by proclaiming salvation in His Name. So, while many have different takes on Jesus, the question remains: who do you say that He is? Is He just another prophet? Or is He your God? “Repent and turn to Him, that your sins may be blotted out, and that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”
In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit… Amen.
PRAYER
Heavenly Father, You sent Your one and only Son to be the Prophet of all prophets so that whoever would believe in Him might not perish, but have eternal life. Give us ears to hear Him as the final Word from above and the first Word concerning the world down here below. We ask these things in Jesus’ name and honor Him by offering up the words of the prayer He taught us to pray singing…
