The Nature of Prophecy
This Advent season at Emmaus Road Church we are doing a series called “The Prophets Foretold.” Prophecy is a word that carries all kinds of baggage so let me lay a foundation of what prophecy is and is not before getting into Isaiah’s messianic prophecy.
Prophecy is not just predicting the future. If this were the case, the prophet is just someone who has information other people don’t have who is responsible to let others in on the inside track (like a real live crystal ball, if you will). I submit to you that the purpose of prophecy is not for you to know tomorrow’s headlines today!
If prophecy is not future-telling, then what is it? Prophecy is a timely word from God for the people of God. This timely word often, but not always, is regarding the future, but for the purpose of shaping our life today! This makes the role of the prophet a voice of hope, life, or conviction as he (or she) speaks the words of God.
Whenever we come to prophetic writings in scripture, we must always work to discover what these words would have meant and inspired in the original audience. Prophecy always has a context. If we relegate their words to some future event with no consequence for our lives today we have robbed the prophecy of context. We must ask questions like, Are these words of hope, warning, or a call to repentance? Are these words convicting, correcting, or encouraging? Whatever the prophet was communicating to the first audience, is what those words mean to us now thousands of years later. If the prophet’s words inspired hope and repentance in the first audience, their words cannot and should not inspire fear and trepidation in us!
Prophets are a lot like artists. The role of an artist, regardless of their medium, is to tell you what they see when they look at the world. For many popular artists (like pop musicians), this leads to songs about the pursuit of money, power, and escapade. However, there are many other artists whose art brings hope, healing, life, conviction, and sometimes redirection. I’ll never forget watching the movie “Crash” for the first time. The storyline of that film revealed prejudice in my own heart that God quickly corrected. It literally changed my life.
Ancient prophets were most often poets (that was the “pop music” of ancient culture) and so they spoke with metaphors, symbols, and analogy. They use those to us show how the world really was and what God had to say about that! When we read their words, we step into their world and then discern the ways in which our world is the same. While much has changed over the course of history, the human condition has not so when we read the ancient prophets we find that their world and our own have more in common than we might think.
In our world, prophetic voices can come from musicians, painters, writers or even in the ancient medium of the sermon. Prophecy is a timely word from God for the people of God. Anytime you’ve heard a line from a song, truth in a sermon, challenge from a book, looked at a painting, or watched a movie and it “landed” on your heart or you left feeling “that was for me” – that was prophetic in your life. And that word is often regarding the future! Prophecy is often future-oriented. Like when the counselor paints a picture of what your great marriage will look like if you keep pushing ahead. Or when the pastor talks about a life free of addiction. Or when you get a picture of what your life will be like if you keep going down the road you’re going (think: Christmas Carol). These are prophetic voices and visions in your life.
Prophecy cannot be reduced to simple future-telling. It is a timely word from God for the people of God.
Isaiah’s Prophecy
Isaiah prophesied in a world where each person bore the weight of their guilt before God. They had the law to remind them they couldn’t live up God’s standards. Thankfully, they had ritual to make it right, but you had to make it right over and over and over again. There was no choice but to live in a cycle of sin and ritual forgiveness.
While everyone held their own guilt before God, there was some precedent for bearing the sin of other people.
Numbers 30:15, “If, however, he nullifies them some time after he hears about them, then he must bear the consequences of her wrongdoing.” There was precedent that a husband would bear responsibility for his wife’s guilt.
Leviticus 16:22 (NIV), “The goat (lamb) will carry on itself all their sins to a remote place; and the man shall release it in the wilderness.” A goat (lamb), on the Day of Atonement, would bear the sin’s of the people and take them away.
Leviticus 10:17 (NIV), “Why didn’t you eat the sin offering in the sanctuary area? It is most holy; it was given to you to take away the guilt of the community by making atonement for them before the Lord.” There was even precedent that a priest would take on the sins of the people and bring them to God.
Isaiah’s prophecy speaks of one who would be for us the husband, the lamb, and the priest!
Isaiah anticipated a day when a Suffering Servant would come.
This Servant would take on our sin.
This Servant would take up our pain and bear our suffering.
This Servant would bleed and be crushed because of the sin of many.
Somehow, through this Servant we would be healed and have peace.
Isaiah spoke of a day when One would become the sacrifice for them (and we now understand – for all). One who would take on the sin of all people so that they would no longer be declared guilty and their sin would be wiped away once and for all. He foresaw a day when the cycle of sin and ritual forgiveness would be broken and they could stand forgiven before God.
What we’ve learned on this side of the cross is that is was much bigger than individual sin. When Jesus Christ died, the world was be re-founded! We now live in anticipation that what was accomplished on that day would be fully realized in our world. We live with hope and anticipation of the day when all things will be made new, the world will be at peace, violence will cease, and heaven and earth will become one! Having experienced on a personal level the forgiveness of Christ, we look forward to the day when the effect of his death and resurrection will work it’s way to every corner of the earth!
Isaiah 53:4–6 (NIV), “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. 5 But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. 6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
What a beautiful prophecy of the Messiah!
To learn more about the nature of prophecy and to engage with the prophets this Advent season, join us at Emmaus Road Church, a church in Fort Collins every Sunday at 10:00am or click on the resources below.