Voices of Faith: Proclaiming the Gospel in a Disoriented World

In this sermon, Richard Belcher focuses on the importance of proclaiming the gospel in a disoriented and hostile world. He highlights the enduring relevance of faithful gospel proclamation and encourages support for spreading biblical wisdom globally.

The following unedited transcript is provided by Beluga AI.

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This audio lecture is brought to you by RTS on iTunesU at the virtual campus of Reformed Theological Seminary. To listen to other lectures and to access additional resources, please visit us at itunes.rts.edu. For additional information on how to take distance education courses for credit towards a fully accredited Master of Arts in religion degree, please visit our website at virtual.rts.edu. Lecture number two: we have several introductory lectures, and lecture number two deals with the role of the Old Testament prophets. We go back and start in Deuteronomy 18 again, which is so foundational. Deuteronomy 18:16.

We talk about the origin of the prophetic role within the nation of Israel. Now, there were prophets before Mount Sinai, as we will see. But this is very important and foundational. Deuteronomy 18:16, if you begin in verse 15,

¹⁵ “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— ¹⁶ just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ ¹⁷ And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet… (Deuteronomy 18:15-17, ESV)

In other words, this goes back to Mount Sinai, when Israel was at the base of Mount Sinai and they were told to stay away from the mountain, and they saw God’s presence demonstrated in Mount Sinai, the thunder, the lightning, the shaking of that mountain. And they said, Moses, you go talk to God. We don’t want to go talk to God. Moses, you go talk to God. They were afraid. They stayed at a distance.

And Moses becomes the prophetic mediator, the covenant mediator that took the word of God and then proclaimed that word to God’s people. So that’s a very important development of the prophetic role. Now, if we talk about the development of the prophetic office and we just look briefly at the history of Israel, we see before the monarchy. When we talk about monarchy, we’re talking about the establishment of a king in Israel, which, 1051 BC is the date, probably, of the coronation of Saul that year. Before the monarchy, there were a few prophets.

They had a variety of informal services, and they were temporary, temporary for particular situations. The role of intercession, the role of prayer is important in relationship to a prophet. Abraham is already called a prophet in Genesis 20. And what’s his role in Genesis 20? It is to pray. To pray for the king who had taken Sarah into his household because Abraham had told a lie. But ironically, Abraham has to pray that God would open up the wombs of the household of Abimelech. The king and Sarah’s womb has been barren for so long.

But then the next chapter, God opens up Sarah’s womb. But the point here is intercession is part of the prophetic role, identified specifically with Abraham as a prophet. Moses prays. Pharaoh asked Moses to pray for him. Moses prays for the people. In Exodus 32, before Moses goes down to confront the people, he is interceding for God that God would not destroy the people and start all over with him. Prayer, intercession. He intercedes for Miriam in Numbers 12. Samuel prays. He says in 1 Samuel 12:23,

²³ Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you, and I will instruct you in the good and the right way. (1 Samuel 12:23, ESV)

Talking to Saul, King Saul, Samuel would pray for King Saul. We will see when we get to Jeremiah. Jeremiah is told not to pray. The assumption is the prophet would be praying for God’s people. We will see when we get to Jeremiah why God tells Jeremiah not to pray. But prayer intercession. So when we talk about a prophet, there are two things: the word and prayer. What does that remind you of? Acts 6.

Actually, the one I’m thinking of may be in Acts 2 as well. What’s the job of a pastor? your job description in the Bible is the word of God and prayer. And if you don’t put time into the word of God and prayer, you’re not fulfilling the calling that God has called you to. There’s a lot of things you got to do as a pastor. I’ve been there, a lot of stuff you gotta, but you’ve got to carve out time for the word of God and prayer because that is what God calls a pastor to.

That’s why the apostles did not serve tables in Acts 6, so they could devote themselves to the word of God in prayer. You see this already in the Old Testament in relationship to the prophets. We also see in the development of history the foundational role of Moses as a prophet. Deuteronomy 18:15:

¹⁵ “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— (Deuteronomy 18:15, ESV)

There is continuity between Moses and the prophets. The prophet will be an Israelite. He’ll communicate the word of God. Prophets many times we will see act as covenant mediators. We’ll come and look at that a little bit more closely. Continuity between Moses and the prophets. However, there is also discontinuity between Moses and the prophets because Moses is foundational. Moses is unique. This comes across several places. Deuteronomy 34:10-11 talks about the uniqueness of Moses. He knew God face to face, but then especially Numbers 12, where it differentiates the way God interacts with Moses and speaks to Moses. That’s differentiated and contrasted with the way God speaks to prophets. God speaks to Moses face to face.

¹⁰ And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, ¹¹ none like him for all the signs and the wonders that the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, (Deuteronomy 34:10-11, ESV)

God speaks to Moses plainly, not in riddles or dark sayings. God speaks to the prophets in visions and dreams. So there’s a difference, because Moses is foundational to the whole rest of the Old Testament, to the whole rest of the development of prophecy. We will see that the prophets build on Moses. The prophets preach Moses, the prophets apply Moses to the people of God. We’ll see exactly how they do that even before, maybe before we’re done today in this lecture. So Moses is foundational.

And then you have the rest of the prophets who are important, who speak the word of God, but they are building on Moses, as we will see now. We can look forward to see the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 18 ultimately in Jesus Christ, who is the prophet to come. And there are places in the New Testament that develop this or make allusions to this. And you can look at John 5:43-47. Acts 3:23 is another place where Christ is the whole fulfillment of the prophetic movement.

In fact, when you talk about this, it is sort of a good way to get it into your thinking. You can do this with prophet, priest, and king. But when you think about the prophets of the Old Testament, you think about them building on Moses. You think about prophets being fulfilled in Christ. Then you think about the role that elders and pastors have. They have a prophetic function as they preach God’s word, minister God’s word. But not just elders and pastors.

All of God’s people have a prophetic function and role to play as you minister the word of God in a variety of situations of your life, sharing the word of God with a neighbor, praying for a neighbor; that can be prophetic, that can be priestly. So when you think about modern meaning, it’s good to think about how it worked itself out in the Old Testament. It’s fulfilled in Christ, and then how these things relate to the leaders of God’s people. But then all of us have this prophetic function and role to play.

Now, in the history of Israel, Samuel is a transitional figure. So you’ve got some vestiges of prophetic stuff with AbRaham in terms of intercession. You sort of got Moses being foundational for the development of the prophetic office, and we’ll see how the prophets build on Moses. Samuel is a transitional figure. He was raised up in some days of trouble and affliction. Samuel served in several capacities. He served as judge. He came sort of at the end of that period of judges. He served as priest and he was prophet. So a transitional figure.

He sort of transitions us between the area of judges and the kings. Or you can think about it, he bridges the gap between Moses, Joshua, and the monarchy with David, Solomon. After Saul is crowned king, the role of Samuel shifts much more to a prophetic role. He moves from leader of the theocracy, which he was before Saul was crowned as king, to prophet, proclaiming the word of God to the king, placing the king clearly under the authority of the word of God.

So that shift is important because, as you see in the rest of the history of Israel, the relationship between the king and the prophet sometimes is good, sometimes it’s not so good. When we look at the period of the kingship, the monarchy, you have the United Kingdom from 1051 to 931. 931 is the division of the kingdom. Saul, David and Solomon. During this period, there were many prophets. They had a more formal role related to kings. They were sort of like royal advisors, Nathan to David, advising David.

They may not have had much of a role beyond ministering to the king. So they may have focused primarily on the king. Some have called them court prophets. However, you have to understand also what happens in 931. This is key for understanding all the rest of the history of Israel. In 931, the kingdom divided. And you need to understand the implications of that. Now we could talk about why the kingdom divided, and I’ve given to you, I think, several reasons in your notes.

You know, even geographically, Judah was sort of separated from the other tribes. I’ve sort of given you that information in your notes. I’m not going to mention it here publicly in class. you’ve got it there. Geographically, Judah was isolated. There were tribal tensions. You read the book of Judges, and things weren’t always good between the tribes. That history has an impact on the division of the kingdom. You remember, David was not king over the whole kingdom at first. Was he only over Judah? And it took a while before David became king of.

Of the whole nation, seeds were there for the division if problems arose. And problems arose with Solomon. Solomon showed favoritism to Judah. The rest of the tribes did not appreciate the concept of forced labor. When you think about the division of the kingdom in relationship to Solomon, you could think about political reasons why the kingdom divided. And there are political reasons why the kingdom divided. Rehoboam made some stupid decisions regarding the issue of forced labor, but theologically, the Bible says the kingdom divided because of Solomon’s apostasy. He had many foreign women, foreign wives.

Took his heart away from the Lord. He fell away from the Lord. That, in essence, is a primary reason why the kingdom divided. Jeroboam, when the kingdom divided, you have the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. Rehoboam, king of the southern kingdom. Jeroboam, king of the northern kingdom. Do you realize God promised Jeroboam a lasting dynasty if he would be faithful? A lasting dynasty. Well, when Jeroboam became king of the northern kingdom, he did something that set the course of history for the northern kingdom. He established his own worship centers at Dan and Bethel.

Now, if you sort of look at a map of the history of Israel, you got Jerusalem here. Bethel is on the road going south to Jerusalem. Why would Jeroboam establish his own worship centers? Yeah, he did not want his people to go down to Jerusalem to worship because their loyalties might change from himself to the southern kingdom. And so to keep his people from going down to worship in Jerusalem, he set up a worship center at Bethel, right on the road to Jerusalem.

And he set up a worship center in Dan, which was in the northern part of the northern kingdom. Now, this is problematic, right? Deuteronomy 12:1 states, “One place that I will establish for my name to be worshipped.” Plus, what did he set up at those worship centers? Golden calves, idolatry. In fact, many point out the parallels between Jeroboam and what Aaron did back in Exodus. He set up his own worship system. Many of the legitimate Levites, Levites were connected to the priests. They helped the priests serve at the Tabernacle Temple.

When Jeroboam set up his own worship centers, many of the legitimate Levites went south to Jerusalem, and Jeroboam established his own priesthood. That’s also in disobedience to God. The results of what Jeroboam did in the northern kingdom were long lasting. You look at the northern kingdom, and instead of being one dynasty, God promised Jeroboam, “I will give you a dynasty if you are faithful to me.” One dynasty that doesn’t happen. You look in the northern kingdom, and there’s turnover. Dynasty after dynasty after dynasty.

In other words, you have one family that rules for a while, and then you have a different family, and the kings come from that family. What’s going on in Judah? One dynasty. The line of David is continuing in Judah, but in the northern kingdom, you have this turnover of dynasties. How many of the northern kingdom kings were pronounced good in 1 Kings? Zero. There were no good northern kingdom kings. Partly related to this. Yes, but they, the kings themselves, took things even further. When did the northern kingdom fall?

You eventually will have to know this for this course. you’ll have to know the division of the kingdom in 931. you’ll have to know that the northern kingdom fell in 722. When did the southern kingdom fall? Yeah, 586. 587. A little bit longer. So the actions of Jeroboam really do set the stage for the history of the northern kingdom. Now, the southern kingdom is not always much better, but you’ve got God’s faithfulness, promises to David, which are a factor in the southern kingdom, and you have some good kings spread out in the southern kingdom.

We’ll see. Hezekiah, good king. Josiah. Good king. Now, the exile during the exilic period, just kind of to fill this history out. You know what we mean? We talk about the exile. 587. The Babylonians come into Jerusalem, destroy the city of Jerusalem, destroy the temple, carry away God’s people into exile. We will talk about that history when we get there. And some of the prophets that are important during the exile, the prophets decrease in number, perhaps because the kingship is now gone. In essence, there is no king.

Well, there’s Jehoiachin, who’s really considered by Ezekiel as a legitimate king, but he’s in Babylon, so the kingship is in trouble. In the post exilic situation, 538, 537, Cyrus defeats Babylon in 539. And then a few years later, Cyrus issues the decree that God’s people can return to the land. And you have this movement back to the land of Canaan. Not a tremendous, great movement, but a movement begins back to the land of Canaan. In that post exilic situation, you have the potential for the reinstitution of kingship in Zerubbabel.

Zerubbabel, governor of the community line of David. Nothing happens. You have a few prophets, but not many. We’ll talk about that whole post exilic community, how we should look at that post exilic community as they try to bring restoration after Malachi. It’s recognized in this period between Malachi and John the Baptist; it’s recognized that prophecy has ceased. There’s apocalyptic literature, but prophecy has ceased. And that’s why when John the Baptist appears, and even Jesus, one of the questions is, are you the prophet? Are you the one God’s going to send?

They’re looking for the prophet, and we know Jesus was that prophet. Now, how do the prophets build on Moses? And what is the relationship of the prophets to the kingship? Well, we talk about prophets as covenant prosecutors, and we’ll explain that in just a minute. Covenant prosecutors. Many times, especially after the division of the kingdom, there was an antagonistic relationship between the prophets and the kings, both northern kingdom and southern kingdom, the prophets were forced out of the royal court. In some situations, the king didn’t want to hear from the prophet.

They were ignored, especially the true prophets. Many served anonymously. Many prophets early on, we don’t even know their names. And you can look in your textbook, Van Gemmeron’s book, Interpreting the Prophetic Word on page 49 for a chart of prophets that are listed in the historical books; this gives you some idea of the number. Eventually, the prophets write down their messages, and we begin to pick up with Amos and Hosea where we will start looking at those prophecies. Prophets. And we will go through the prophets based on the historical appearance of prophets.

We will not go through prophets based on the canonical order, but we will sort of set the history and try to put the prophets in the context of the history of God’s people. So we’ll start with Amos. We could start with Hosea, but we will start with Amos. Elijah is an example of a prophet who’s antagonistic toward the king Ahab. And you can read about that in the historical books. Now, what the prophets did and how they preached the Mosaic covenant is they brought what we call a prophetic lawsuit.

We talk about prophets as covenant prosecutors. They are bringing a prophetic lawsuit. The technical term for a prophetic lawsuit is the Hebrew Reeve, which could be transliterated rib I with a little ripple written, and the bee would have a line underneath it. Reeve, prophetic lawsuit.

You have to understand, in the context of that day, there were treaties made between nations, and with these treaties, there was a suzerain who was the conquering king, and there was a vassal, the king or nation, who was conquered.

And so a treaty would be made to sort of set the terms of agreement. And I have listed in your notes the variety of parts of a treaty. Many of you have heard this speech. In other classes, the stipulations of the treaty would reinforce the obligations of the treaty, but then you would have sanctions, a section of the treaty that would lay out the blessings if the suzerain obeys the sanctions and cursings. I’m sorry, the vassal, blessings if the vassal obeys, and cursing.

If the vassal disobeys, and so you have a relationship between two nations, they had this treaty agreement. In that treaty would be laid out blessings for obedience, cursings for disobedience. And every once in a while, the suzerain would send an emissary to the vassal to remind the vassal, these are the terms of the treaty. Don’t forget the terms of the treaty. The prophets are God’s emissaries. They are God’s covenant representatives who bring a prophetic lawsuit, a reeve, a complaint, an accusation against God’s people because the king and God’s people have been disobedient.

And so, if you look closely at the prophets, there will be a couple of places where we will point this out. If you look closely at the prophets, their oracles of judgment are rooted in the curses of the Mosaic covenant. And I’ve given you the passages there: covenant judgment in Deuteronomy 4, especially Deuteronomy 27:28, Leviticus 26. Those are the two key passages where the blessings and the cursings of the covenant are laid out.

And when you read a prophetic oracle of judgment proclaimed against God’s people, you can see how that is rooted in those covenant curses. If you don’t repent, if you don’t turn to the Lord, these things are going to happen. And it’s the very things that Moses said would happen if they would disobey God. Covenant judgment. Covenant, curse. Stewart’s commentary, and I’ll mention him several times over the next several weeks. Many times over the next several weeks. I don’t always agree with him, but it’s a good commentary, and he hits this angle pretty hard.

He lists 27 types of covenant judgment. Now, Pratt, in his video he gave his prophets, categorizes these judgments in a little bit easier way to get your hands on. So I’ve given in your notes basically the way Richard Pratt, professor at Orlando, has laid these out. Judgment in nature: drought, pestilence, famine, disease, wild animals, population loss. In other words, if you disobey God, these are things that might happen to you as a nation, the nation of Israel. Judgment in warfare: defeat, siege, occupation by the enemy, death, destruction, exile.

And it’s very clear, and we will show you this: the prophets are preaching the Mosaic Covenant to God’s people. And then there are covenant blessings so that the oracles of salvation, the oracles of salvation, are rooted in the blessings of the Mosaic Covenant. Again, Deuteronomy 27:28, Leviticus 26. Two key places where these blessings are laid out.

Again, Stewart. And he spells his name Stuart. And it’s the WBC commentary, Hosea through Jonah. It’s probably one of the better commentaries in that series and an excellent commentary on that section of scripture.

He lays out ten covenant blessings. I’ve again used Pratt’s categories here: blessing in nature. In other words, if you obey God, you go into the land, you’d exterminate, you get rid of the Canaanites, you live in the land in obedience to God, you’ll be a light to the nations, and God will pour out his covenant blessing upon you. Blessing in nature. Agricultural plenty. Livestock, fertility, health, and prosperity. Population increase. Blessing in warfare, defeat of enemies. End to warfare. Relief from destruction. Return of captives. The prophets preach the Mosaic covenant to God’s people.

Oracles of judgment rooted in covenant curse. Oracles of salvation and blessing. If you will turn to the Lord, if you will turn to the Lord, if you will repent, he will pour out these promised blessings upon you.

So you can see how the prophets, you can see how Moses is foundational to the prophets because the prophets are basically taking Moses and preaching Moses to God’s people. Now, the history of Israel, as you know, is a history of disobedience. And they do experience covenant curse, covenant judgment, exile.

But we are going to see God preserves a remnant, and so there is hope held out beginning, especially in Isaiah, where the remnant becomes, begins to become prominent. Comments or questions? Yes, sir. Did they preach any other covenants like the Davidic Covenant? Well, they will allude to, I mean, these covenants, Abrahamic Covenant, Mosaic Covenant, Davidic Covenant, they’re all, as Robertson says in his book, Christ of the Covenant, organically related. So they’re all integrally related with each other. So they will.

In fact, the Mosaic Covenant, in terms of blessings and cursings, assumes the land which is a promise to Abraham. It assumes, “I’ll make your name great because Israel’s name will be great if they will be obedient to God.” It assumes those promises made to Abraham can be fulfilled in Israel as a nation with the Mosaic Covenant. And then, the Davidic Covenant assumes they’re in the land, arrests from enemies all around when God made that covenant with David. And the great name is sort of alluded to there with David as well.

So all these things are working together. Certainly, the prophets in preaching the stipulations of the Mosaic covenant are also picking up on the promises to Abraham because they’ve been incorporated in the Mosaic covenant. And then the promises to David are also prominent at times. So, since these things sort of are interrelated with each other, it’s not an either-or type of thing; all bound up together. The challenge comes, and we’ll talk about this. And this is a tough part about this whole section of scripture. You know, how do you preach to the prophets?

There’s so much judgment, and we will at some point talk about this. The salvation part is not as difficult. Of course, you always got to take the Old Testament and put it in the context of God’s people today and the fulfillment of Christ. But the prophets are tough because there’s a heavy emphasis on judgment.

Any other comments or questions? Yes, sir. Especially Isaiah, perhaps the others spend a lot of time judging other nations as well. Does this come into a covenant context between… Well, that’s a good question.

The prophets are, in essence, emissaries of the Noah covenant. The Noah covenant includes everybody. And we get to the book of Amos. Amos 1, which will start next week. That’s in essence a justification. God is not just the God of Israel, but God is the God of the nations. And God is concerned with what nations do. And so, if you want to think about the prophets as emissaries to the nations, which many times they are, because they have prophecies.

Now, whether those nations read those prophecies, sometimes the prophecies to the nations are really for the benefit of Israel, so that Israel will see the judgment that may come on the nations. But yeah, under the MoE of Covenant would be one way to sort of see the connection with the prophets to the nations. Anything else? Well, this is a good place to stop.

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