Jesus - Prophet, Priest, And King

Jesus

In Scripture we find that Jesus held three primary offices. These three offices define, or rather are defined by, who Jesus is, and what he did.

These three offices, or roles, are Prophet, Priest, and King. We are going to look at these three defining offices this morning.

The first office of Jesus is Prophet.

What is a prophet? When people think about prophets today, they often think about people who tell the future, they tell us what is going to happen in some time to come. But the primary purpose of a prophet wasn’t to tell the future, but to call people into right relationship with God. They were the mouthpiece of God to the people, showing and revealing to them God’s will, and how to live in right relationship with Him.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of prophets mentioned in the Bible. We don’t know all of their names, and we don’t know all of the messages that they gave. But we do know some. Noah is the first person in the Bible to be identified as a prophet. Isaac, and Jacob are both called Prophets. The last books of the Old Testament are all about prophets, carrying the names of the prophet they are about. But the most important Prophet to the people of Israel was a man named Moses.

Moses didn’t do a whole lot of foretelling the future, but it was through Moses that God revealed his Law to Israel. It was Moses who told the people how God wanted them to live. It was through Moses that God freed the people from their slavery in Egypt and let them on a journey to a new future. It was Moses who God used to essentially redeem His people from death to life.

Now, I said that a prophet’s primary purpose wasn’t to tell the future, but to call people into right relationship with God. But that doesn’t mean that they never spoke of things that would happen in the future. And when they did, the purpose was always to draw people’s attention to God and call them to live the way God wants us to live.

Moses is no exception. In Deuteronomy 18:15, we read that Moses tells Israel that God would raise up a prophet like himself, and the told Israel to listen to him. And later, in verse 18, God days, “I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all I command him.”

Jesus is the definitive fulfillment of this prophecy. In the New Testament Phillip, if not the first to recognize, is the first person to vocalize this fulfillment. John writes, in chapter 1 verse 45 that Phillip told Nathaniel, “we found the one who Moses wrote about.” That isn’t our only indication that Jesus is this Prophet, Jesus himself gave witness. In John 12:49 he says, “I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has given me a commandment – what to say and what to speak.”

But Jesus isn’t just a prophet “like” Moses, he is the prophet greater than Moses. Not only does he speak the word of God, he is the Word of God. He doesn’t just represent God to humanity, he is God, the exact expression of God.

In John 14, Phillip asks Jesus to show them the Father. Jesus responds by saying, “The one who has seen me has seen the Father… Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who lives in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. Otherwise, believe because of the works themselves.”

The Heidelberg Catechism states well what Jesus does, it says, “[He] perfectly reveal[s] to us the secret counsel and will of God for our deliverance.” But he doesn’t just reveal it to us, he doesn’t just call us into right relationship, he enables and empowers us to do so.

On our own we would turn away from God. In fact, we all have. Isaiah 53:6 says, “all we [all of us] like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—everyone—to his own way.” And again, in Romans 3:23, “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

And if that is where it ended that would be horribly depressing. But Paul goes on to say in the next verse, “[we] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” In his redeeming work Christ not only calls us into right relationship, but he also brings us in to right relationship. He enables us to follow the two greatest commandments; to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself.