The Message of the Prophets
“It is the LORD your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him.” (Deut 13:4)
We will be exploring ‘the message of the prophets’ for the next five weeks, and our feature book is Habakkuk. ‘How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, "Violence!" but you do not save?’ Habakkuk starts with this desperation – and many of us can identify with this kind of sadness and pain. Pouring it to God is a good thing – and there only is our hope. The detail is in the rest of the book as we will explore.
The reflection for this Sunday is on an important general question: ‘What was the message of the prophets?’ A strange vision in which Jesus, Moses and Elijah were seen together is recorded in Matt 17 – The Transfiguration – when Jesus’ countenance was changed, his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. Moses and Elijah represented the testimonies borne in the Law and the Prophets about Jesus, whose true identity was now announced by God himself there and then. The first abandoned child recorded in the Bible, Moses, went on to become an Egyptian prince, a murderer, then a refugee. He later received a divine call, and carried out a revolutionary mission to deliver Israel out of slavery in Egypt; he saw God; he received the Law.
The message of the prophets has been encapsulated in Moses’ message to Israel: It is the LORD your God you must follow, obey him; serve him. Across different generations and by various messengers, it has been put in different words, given different illustrations both literary and physical; and finally the Apostle John heard the voice of an angel sending the same message in the words, ‘be faithful unto death’ (Rev 3:10). Do you hear this message in Abel, Noah, Abraham, Job, Joseph, Moses, Elijah, Habakkuk, Ezekiel, Daniel, John the Baptist, and in Jesus Christ himself? The list is much longer – all speaking the same language; this is no surprise as they were under the same inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Today, we are faced with many factors that would shake the believer – even flimsy ones – but many are misled nonetheless. False teachers deceive people with signs and miracles, and age-old doctrines are abandoned. Some institutions and governments have doctrines that men have traded for the Kingdom of God! Are we back to the time when ‘all the people did whatever seemed right in their own eyes’ because there was no godly leadership (Judges 17:6). Listen again to the message of the Prophets; in heeding the same is your life. It takes determination to stand out from the crowds that are taking the easy way (that leads to destruction); it takes deliberate effort to hold fasst to God and remain faithful to the gospel. Take the stand and be faithful.
God bless you all.