Tuesday 14 January 2014

The Roles of the Prophets


  We shall continue our series on how God communicates Himself or reveals Himself to humanity and today our attention would be on the Prophets, come with me as we see this together.
   After the fall, when God no longer spoke to humanity directly, He communicated with them through men and women whom the bible calls seers or prophets (1sam 9:9).The word prophet(in hebrew  nabi) means “one called by God”. The prophet is a person who proclaims Divine messages. These may relate to the past, the present or the future, and many consist of  exhortation, instruction, consolation, or prediction. The English word prophet come from the Greek prophetes, a combination of the preposition pro ,”for”,or “on behalf of” with the verb phemi “to speak”. Thus the idea being “to speak for”.
How does this text (exodus4:10-17) help us better understand the role of the prophets?
     Here Moses objects to God’s call for him to go to Egypt and confront  Pharaoh,claiming that he is “slow of speech and of a slow tongue”.(vs10).Even after God reminded Moses that he had made the mouth and would enable him to speak before Pharaoh,Moses still objected,how many of us today in our own little corner and way have consistently objected to doing the will of God giving excuses of our career or jobs, our children, our comfort,our discomfort,our education,allowing all of these things to make us deviate from the track, God is ever willing to make use of us as long as we empty our cups of  all the excuses and let him know where we are stuck just as he did in the case of Moses.Then God told Moses that he would send Aaron to go with him,  “he shall be your spokesman to the people,and you shall be to him as god.”(vs16).as  Moses was to be spokesperson for god ,so Aaron would spokesperson for Moses,thus a prophet speaks for someone.
     The prophet may speak to humankind on behalf of God , or vice versa. The primary task of a prophet is to declare the Divine will.Throughout the history or Isreal,the prophets main task was to guide gods people.Particularly during the time of monarchy,when the kings often “did that which was evil in the sight of the lord”(2kings 13:2),the prophetic institution was the guardian of the theocracy.The prophets upheld the law of God and taught it to the people.
     Today what we see all over the screens of our Tv’s and all that we hear on the radio are so called “prophets” who parade themselves as preachers of God’s word but who do not uphold the tenets of Gods law. Let those who are called to the work or being prophets do the job let no mediocre be involved in this institution that God has ordained for the purpose of His work, let the people beware also of this men who parade themselves as prophets when they are actually not, they are deceptive, and they have lured a lot of people into evil.
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