The Prophetic Voice In Scripture and Today
By Pastor Phil Rushton
As we tell the story of scripture this year, we are entering the sections that feature the prophets. Contrary to popular belief, the prophets in the Bible are not so much future-tellers as they are truth-tellers. The prophets in the Old Testament are gifted with discernment. They are able to see through the propaganda and the lies of the kings and rulers and point people back to God. Below, I share a few thoughts about what I’ve been learning from the prophets and how it informs how we engage our culture today.
The Role of the Prophet
In my sermon on the life and reign of Solomon, I pointed out that his promising rise was followed by a tragic fall. Solomon initially seems to be fulfilling the covenant promise given to the patriarchs. Under Solomon’s leadership, Israel reached the height of prosperity and influence. Rulers from surrounding nations are drawn to Solomon’s wisdom and are impressed with his success. However, behind the veneer of wisdom and affluence are signs that Solomon has lost his way. The narrative in 1 Kings implies that Solomon is becoming like Pharaoh in Egypt. He enslaves people and builds his mansions with slave labor (1 Kings 5:12-13), he creates “store cities” to hold his plunder (1Kings 9:19) just like Pharoah does (Exodus 1:11). Solomon ends up becoming the antithesis of what Israel was to look for in a King (Deuteronomy 17:15-20).
In his book The Prophetic Imagination, Walter Brueggeman argues that God’s people developed a “royal consciousness” that lost sight of the ethical vision of Moses. He writes, “It is difficult to keep a revolution of freedom and justice underway when there is satiation.” The people are satiated with excessive wealth, food, silver, and gold, and this blinds them from their deeper calling. The people who were once oppressed under Moses became the oppressors under Solomon.
The role of the prophets is to point people back to God. They boldly criticize the royal consciousness and lament the injustice and evil that are present behind the veneer of affluence and wealth. Read Amos 5 and 6 for a great example of this dynamic. The prophets also help the people imagine an alternative way of living that was aligned with God’s dream for the world.
As a result, the prophets were often not very popular. They disrupted the status quo and sometimes paid a heavy social price for their honesty. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the anti-Nazi activist, pastor, and martyr, had this to say about the prophet Jeremiah:
He was upbraided as a disturber of the peace, an enemy of the people, just like all those, throughout the ages until the present day, who have been possessed and seized by God, for whom God had become too strong. How gladly would he have shouted peace and Heil with the rest . . .
Bonhoeffer, a modern-day prophet who spoke out against the German Evangelical Church’s emerging alliance with the Nazi Party, saw in Jeremiah a model for how to speak truthfully to a church that was losing its way. He found consolation in knowing that the prophets in the Bible were often labeled the heretics or disturbers of the peace.
The Heart of the Prophet
One of my professors at Regent College, Dr. Ross Hastings, once said to me, “There is an important difference between a prophet and a critic. The prophet loves the people, and the critics like to cut people down to feel better about themselves.” The prophet’s ultimate motivation is love. Yes, they say hard things, but their desire is that people would turn back to God and rediscover God’s dreams for the world.
The prophet Ezekiel relays this message to the people of Israel:
Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, people of Israel?’ (Ezekiel 33:11)
The prophet’s message, at the end of the day, is not a message of condemnation but a message of life. The heart of the prophet is to declare God’s message of love and life. Hard things are said with the purpose of helping people turn and live.
Our social media algorithms reward and amplify critics more than prophets. If people are enraged, they stay engaged, and this is good for the advertising business. As we discern when to say hard things, we ought to test our message against the deeper command to love. Is this message in service of helping people turn and live, or is this message about my need for a cathartic rant that will make me feel better than other people?
The Target Audience of the Prophet
It is important to remember that the primary target audience of the prophets was the religious people of the day. There are times when the prophets will speak out woes against other nations, but the primary audience was God’s chosen people.
I think that the contemporary church in America sometimes gets this backwards. I often hear the evangelical church lament and condemn secular society. We aim our critique away from ourselves and towards those outside the church. Sometimes people want their pastor to cheerlead this effort. Sermons that lament the state of secular society reinforce our sense of righteousness. Those are easier sermons for a prophet to preach.
There are times when we need to lament and critique the evil and immorality present in the world. The role of the prophet, however, is primarily focused on the ways evil is infiltrating the faith community. Paul makes this distinction in 1 Corinthians 5:12, where he writes, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?”
One of the discernment tools I have sought to use when deciding whether to speak into some of the socio-political issues of our day is to ask whether I have the right target audience. I do not think it is right for pastors to become political commentators and let the headlines dictate the sermon schedule. I do think it is important to speak up when the name of Jesus, scripture, the church, or Christian theology is invoked to support unbiblical actions.
Jesus warns us that we have a tendency to see the speck in the eye of another while ignoring the log in our own eye. We do this personally and on behalf of the groups to which we belong. We can easily ignore the log in the eye of our church, our political party, the leaders we follow, and our nation. This is especially true if the group we are a part of has given us glimpses of Eden. This is why God sends prophets! May we have the courage to both speak the truth and receive the truth.