Matthew-097

 

The church always needs God’s prophets!

Last Sunday, we looked at Matthew 23:34. There the Lord Jesus said to the Jews,

And we looked at the meaning of these words, “I am sending you prophets” and we saw the importance of the prophetic ministry in the church which has totally died out. It has become passé, obsolete for nearly 2,000 years and this fact puzzled us. And we saw that contrary to present practice, the church in fact was meant to have prophets. This was stated not only in 1 Corinthians 12:28 but also in Ephesians 4:11. In Ephesians 4:11-12, Paul says that God appointed apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers for the purpose of equipping his holy people, the church. The word “equip” means to train, to prepare his saints who are vital for the ministry of up­building God’s church. Without these people, how will the church be built up?

Today, the churches are more like spiritual nurseries in which Christians are forever spiritual infants who simply never grow up. As the writer to the Hebrews [5:12] says, almost to the sense of frustration that, “Whereas it was time to become teachers, you are still not even able to keep yourselves going, let alone teach anyone else. You are still on milk. You are still babes.” And Paul, with the same frustration says to the Corinthians, “I cannot speak to you as mature people, I have to speak to you as forever babes.” The churches are spiritual nurseries, and it’s hard to find one mature person, spiritually speaking, that shows something of the stature and the maturity, the beauty, the power of Christ. It is with this kind of problem in view that we have been expounding the Lord Jesus’ teaching, showing that we have these problems in the church because we have not implemented his teaching.

Where have the prophets gone to, not to say where have the apostles also gone to in this generation? We saw that these belonged only to the First Century. And if you say the First Century needed apostles and prophets, how much more desperately we need them! Yet, in the midst of our desperate spiritual need, we don’t find the very people that we most need. So not only are we concerned about where the prophets have gone to, but we must also ask this question: How do we become prophets? That is the theme of today’s message. How do you and I become prophets? How do prophets come into being at all? Where do they come from? Why don’t we have prophets anymore?

 

Where are the prophets?

There seems to be no shortage of false prophets as far as the cults are concerned, but where have the true prophets gone? Joseph Smith of the Mormons calls himself a prophet, and the 12 people who run the Mormon church call themselves apostles. So they have apostles and prophets, but the church has neither of these! It seems to be rather like the days before the destruction of Israel as a nation, before the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple as you read in the Old Testament, there were masses of false prophets around, but the true prophets were hard to come by.

Many people who are not familiar with the Old Testament thought that the only prophets of the Old Testament were Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Zechariah and this kind of mighty prophets. If you think so, you have not read the Old Testament. These prophets were the smallest minority. The hundreds of prophets around were not of this type at all. We need only read in Jeremiah and in Ezekiel how they constantly denounced the multitudes of the false prophets, as Ezekiel 13:2, 17 say they preached whatever message comes to their minds and not from God, to suit the fancy of the people. They preached interesting little tales and stories and encouragement. They told the people the things that the people liked to hear, and in this way, they could increase their earnings by increased congrega­tions.

Read the Old Testament and see that the true prophets were always unpopular and disliked. They were regarded as negative. They are always denouncing something. And when you look in a concordance, you will see how often is the phrase, “prophesy against” this or that in the Old Testament. Prophets prophesied against sin, corruption, unfaithfulness to God, the breach of covenant, the false prophets, and against the leaders and rulers of the land who did not live as the people of God although they professed to be the people of God. No one likes to hear this denunciation, “Hypocrites, one and all!” There­fore, the true prophets were not only disliked but were also severely persecuted. As the Lord Jesus said in Matthew, “O Jerusalem, which prophet has not died within your walls? Which prophet was not persecuted when they brought the message to this so-called “holy city”?

We are now much in the same situation. Where are the prophets of God? Then we saw in the last message, the disastrous situation which even the theologians conspire to tell us that the church does not need prophets anymore. This is marvelous! Not only do we not have prophets, but we are also told that we don’t need prophets! Then what is 1Corinthians 14:1 doing in the Bible since it tells us, “Earnestly seek the gift of prophecy”? And the scholars tell us, “Don’t bother to seek the gift of prophecy because prophecy is passé, it’s obsolete. You don’t need prophets anymore. All you need is Bible scholars like us, who have studied theology.

I am not attacking them. I have studied theology too. But I have to look into the Word of God, and I don’t like what I see in the churches today, because they have displaced the Word of God. They tell us that we don’t need prophets in the church anymore so we can delete Ephesians 4:11-12, and all these passages in the Bible which speak about prophets. We can delete Revelation 11:3 too, where it speaks about the great prophets of God who are going to come in the end time. And we can also delete the passage we have studied, Matthew 23:34, where the Lord Jesus said, “Behold, I send you prophets.” Who is he going to send? We don’t need prophets anymore. All we need now are wise men and scribes, the last two categories.

It’s so difficult to preach the gospel these days. I want to share with you I feel almost a sense of frustration because I don’t wish to be forever saying, “This is not right. That is not right.” Just as Jeremiah said, “I don’t want to preach this gospel anymore, but you are God, forcing me to preach. I don’t want to preach this to this rebellious people who don’t want to listen to me anyway.” And Yahweh God, (the LORD) said to Jeremiah, you are going to preach to them. Even if they don’t listen to you, you are going to preach to them!”

What a ministry! I’m forever sorry for Jeremiah. Do you think Jeremiah enjoyed preaching this? Do you think I enjoy it? It’s so frustrating to be forever saying, “Look, the church is not behaving as the New Testament tells us to behave.” Yet, what can we do after preaching last week concerning the vital necessity of the prophets in the church today?

 

A prophet is not a preacher or a pastor

I went to a bookstore and I looked at some books written by Pentecostals, of all people. I would have thought that Pentecostals are charismatic, thinking more on spiritual things, but what do I see in there? To my surprise, I find that even the Pentecostals have come so much under the influence of these theologians of the New Testament that even A. A. Strong, a Baptist theologian was being quoted there. Even the Pentecostals say, “We don’t have prophets anymore except in the sense that prophets are preachers.” So a pro­phet is reduced to any preacher! So because I am a preacher, I am automatically a prophet. Alas! Alas! Even our friends the Pentecostals, not really knowing how to stand, have found themselves swept away with this current notion.

Well, I want to reply to this notion that we can now use the word “prophet” in a watered-down sense from the Scriptures. According to these people, prophets today are not prophets in the Old Testament sense of the word “prophet,” but they are prophets in the sense of simply being preachers. In this case, our churches are full of prophets because every pastor is some sort of a preacher. Therefore, there is no lack of prophets around. Now I want to answer to this.

 

1. Who gives us the authority to change the meaning of “prophet”?

First of all, who gives us the authority to change the meaning of the word “prophet”? Certainly, preaching is one aspect of prophecy but hardly the main and only aspect of prophecy. To say that today, prophets are no longer prophets in the Old Testament sense, but merely preachers of the Word, and one even goes so far as to say, expositors and exegetes. Well, I would like to have you see, where are the expositors today? If this is what they want to say, you are going to have a hard time finding prophets too.

Our brother in South Carolina was saying to me that he has gone to many churches in South Carolina, but he couldn’t find a single preacher who could be properly described as an expositor or an exegete. That is someone who expounds the Bible, who does not go up the pulpit telling stories or talking about some theme that he happens to be interested in, but faithfully to expound what the Word of God says, whether it goes with or against his convictions. Where are such expositors? Frankly, if they are going to define prophets as expositors, it is hard to come by expositors today. But if they are going to reduce this still further down to say any preacher is a prophet, then we have really messed around with the Word of God, and I would like them to answer before God for this.

If the Lord Jesus wanted to say, “I am going to continue to send you preachers,” he would use the word “preacher” and not “prophet,” because there is a word for “preacher” in Hebrew. Also, Paul simply meant that God has appointed apostles and prophets, because if he really meant preachers, why didn’t he use the word “preacher”? Why didn’t he use the word “the one who proclaims the Word of God”? There are words for that in Greek and Hebrew. Why use the word “prophet”? We are so dishonest in our understanding and preaching of the Word of God, that those who claim that preachers, pastors, even exegetes are prophets, they themselves are truly false prophets.

 

2. No Scriptural evidence to show that prophecy is obsolete

My second point is, not a scrap of evidence is being offered to say that prophecy is obsolete. I would like these scholars to show me one plain verse in the Bible that says there is no more prophecy. Give me a verse like that and I am satisfied. I would close this discussion. I would say I preached the wrong message last Sunday. There are no prophets in the New Testament. The prophet era has closed and now we are left with preachers. Show me one such verse. Why beat around the bush? There is no such verse in the Bible of course! There isn’t even one remotely equivalent to such a statement in the Scriptures. And yet we are told by these preachers and so-called “scholars” of the New Testament that this is what the Bible tells us: prophecy is equivalent to preaching and that prophecy has finished. Maybe preaching has finished too. Or are they going to mess around with the word “prophecy” in two senses? One is, it means preaching. Preaching continues, but prophecy is no more. Or preaching is no more, and prophecy is no more. Which way would they like to have it?

 

3. Why did the Lord specify “prophet” and “scribe” if both preach the Word?

A third point I would like to make is this. If a prophet is equivalent to a preacher or a teacher of the Word of God, how does he differ from a scribe in Matthew 24:34? “Behold, I send you prophets, wise men and scribes.” Scribes were preachers of the Word of God as we know, then why is the Lord Jesus repeating himself? If prophet and scribe are fundamentally both preachers, then is he saying, “I’m sending you wise men and I will send you preachers”? Is he saying anything significant at all? By the account of these “Bible experts” who they profess to be, the Lord Jesus has said nothing significant whatsoever.

 

4. A scribe cannot replace a prophet

Fourthly, a scribe is a Bible scholar. He is a teacher and an expert in the Word of the God. He is therefore a preacher of the Word of God based on his learning. The key idea of a scribe is learning. But a scribe by definition is entirely different from a prophet.

A prophet does not have to be very learned. He may or may not be a very learned man. In some cases, he is a learned man, in some cases he is not. Learning—unlike the task of a scribe—is not central to the ministry of a prophet. If you know anything about prophets, a prophet in the Old Testament is a seer, someone who gets a vision and a spoken word directly from God, and he conveys that word to the people. That is what the whole Old Testament is telling us. We have a very clear understanding of what a prophet does, what prophecy is. Prophecy is something that is said on a specific instruction from God either by vision or by word.

A scribe does not have a vision from God. He does not hear anything from God. He expounds the Bible, in this case the Old Testament. He has great learning in the Bible, in the Old Testament. We have New Testament scribes too, as I have expounded in Matthew 13:51-52. I do not in any way despise scholarship—by this I don’t mean scholarship in the widest sense, but scholarship in the Word of God—I don’t despise this. But I will not have it when a scholar thinks that he can displace the prophet, when the scribe thinks that he can take over the church and take out the prophet. We will not have this because this is not what the Word of God says.

 

5. You cannot be a prophet without holiness in your life

And fifthly and very importantly, I would like to stress to you why I put so much weight upon the place of the prophet in the church, as the Word of God does. You can be an excellent scribe, a great New Testament scholar; you can even be an eloquent, learned preacher, but have no holiness in your life.

Preaching is a skill. Eloquence can be a natural gift. It has nothing necessarily to do with God at all. There are non-Christians who are most eloquent, most entertaining in fact, and even very learned. I have studied in a theological faculty in London in which all my professors were liberals, that is to say, people who did not stand in a very close relationship with God. They rejected much that is in the Word of God. They even rejected the possibility of establishing a close relationship with God. But they were exceedingly learned. They were great scholars and I admired them for their scholarship, for their integrity in their scholarship because at least they were honest in confessing that they did not have a real, living relationship with God, which I respect as being honest. They did not pretend to have what they did not have.

And I say sometimes, evangelicals are not very honest. They profess to be a lot more spiritual than they really are, and sometimes a lot holier than they really are. I would like to stress that this is the vital difference between the preacher and the true prophet. You can be an excellent preacher based on your learning and eloquence. You can even be a most effective preacher because you know what is called public speaking. You know mass psychology, how to speak in such a way that pleases the people, but that is what the false prophets did.

The false prophets were experts in communicating to the likes and dislikes of the people. They could have a feel as to what the person liked to hear and they could put it across to you in a way you so enjoy. The false prophets are skillful. That is why Israel could not tell the difference between true and false prophets because they did not understand that the key difference laid in only one fundamental point: Holiness.

These days, they even want to throw holiness out of the churches as being non-essential to salvation. We are told that we are saved by faith not by works, and according to this definition, holiness is works! So if holiness is works, you can certainly throw holiness out otherwise we are going to be saved by our works, as these clever theologians tell us. So holiness is out. And faith is some kind of profession in God. What have we come to in this generation? And the reason why I will not fail to stress holiness in the churches is because you cannot be a true prophet of God without holiness.

In our training ministry, we train people in God’s work. I have much experience at least in this area. I often look at the exegetical work of some people as they become preachers in the Word of God, and some of the exegetical work is excellent. And I know that these people, given the kind of training they have in the full-time training, will become excellent preachers in due time. They will become excellent expositors because their exegetical work is excellent. They know how to expound the Bible. Some of them are not only excellent in terms of their exegetical work, they are also very eloquent. So I know they will become very fine preachers in due time. Many of those in the training teams will become outstanding preachers in due time. Given another few years, you will hear their names in various places. People will soon recognize their skill and ability as preachers. That is precisely what begins to scare me, because you can become an excellent preacher, an excellent pastor, an excellent expositor without any holiness in your life. I would rather have a true prophet of God than a preacher, because you cannot, and I emphasize, you cannot be a true prophet without holiness.

There you can see how dangerous is the teaching of these so-called “scholars” of the New Testament, because in throwing out the true prophets of God, you have thrown out holy ministers of God in the New Testament. You will replace the prophets, the men of God with scholars, which is what is happening. Today, churches invite pastors on the basis of their academic training, what degree they have, what kind of academic hood they can put over their shoulders. In fact, in England, it is common practice for pastors to enter their pulpit wearing their academic gowns. I was invited to preach somewhere and they asked me what are my degrees. I refused to tell them. I said, “If you invite me, you either invite me as a man of God, or if you invite me on the basis of my academic training, I’m not even coming to preach. Go find someone else with more degrees than I have. Maybe he can preach to you more academic stuff. Your question to me about what are my degrees is irrelevant if you are asking me to preach. If I am taking up a secular job, they have a right to know what academic training I have. But in the ministry of God’s Word, my academic training is irrelevant.

But today, it is the scholars. Today, if you look at the preaching list in Christianity Today to see who is going to speak at this conference, the name is listed as “Dr. so and so.” Of course, most of these are honorary doctorates worth nothing, but you still have to make the name sound a lot better if you can say “Dr. so and so.” What has happened to the church? The prophets have been replaced by the scholars, and these walk around trying to tell us that we don’t need prophets.

I have stressed this point at considerable length. Unfortunately, I don’t like to have to do this. I have to defend why prophets are essen­tial to the church, while those who take the opposite stand don’t have to defend their position. That is the situation today.

 

Three distinctive marks about the prophet

1. Communion with God (Jo. 15:1-11)

When it comes to speaking about prophecy, the material of the Lord Jesus’ teaching can be found everywhere. In fact, he intended to turn every one of his disciples into prophets. That was the point of his disciple training when he trained his apostles. They were to be prophets and in fact, they were. If you look at the life of Peter and at his ministry, you will see that Peter functioned nothing less than a prophet by the vision that he had. Paul had visions many times recorded in Acts and in his letters. A prophet speaks either because of a vision or a communication from God that he hears. Either vision or voice, those are the marks of a prophet. How did Samuel know he was to be a prophet? He did not see God but he heard the voice of Yahweh God calling him, “Samuel.”

How many people today have this kind of contact with God? No wonder people don’t understand contact with God since so few have it, and they cannot find people who have closeness with God.

Let us hand over the ministry to those who can spend their time sitting at their study desks. Sometimes, when I look at the list of degrees that some of our pastors have, I hope I may be excused to leave myself out of the picture. I wonder, how many years did they sit in one school or another picking up their degrees. They must have spent no less than 8 to 10 years. And I wonder how they managed to finance these long and expensive studies? It is very interesting if you could find out their backgrounds. I have spent so many years in study that once I asked myself, “Does it really take so many years of study to produce one man of God?” And if men of God can be produced by studying, then where are the men of God today? When I looked at three different theological, Bible schools I have been to, I wonder where the men of God are, because I don’t know that I can mark many or any of these as men of God in this generation. If that kind of training can produce men of God, then where are they?

Let us turn to John Chapter 15 to speak of, how do we become men of God? It’s not by spending years and years and years picking up degrees that will inflate our ego, and make us more arrogant all the time. But here is the answer. If we can implement this chapter into our lives, it will make us all prophets of God. Three distinctive things about the prophet are immediately seen.

As you can see, this chapter is divided into 3 sections, and the first is from verses 1-11 which deals entirely with communion. As we said, the first and most vital mark of the prophet is communion with God. You do not become a prophet without communion with God, but you can become a preacher without communion with God.

I don’t know if I would like to say this but I was glancing through a book, Preaching and Preachers, by the servant of God, Martyn Lloyd Jones, under whose ministry I sat in London, and who is hailed as the greatest expositor of this generation in the world, if not just in the United Kingdom. There is one section in which he says that it is essential for a preacher to pray. And then he made a remark which I find somewhat puzzling. He says, “On this subject of prayer, I don’t want to say very much”; and the effect was that he wanted to say he was not really qualified to talk about prayer. This remark puzzled me. I pondered about this remark for quite a while. He felt he was not qualified to speak on prayer. Why? Could it be that he felt he had some problem with his prayer life? Shouldn’t a preacher expound on prayer as most essential? Why did this greatest of modern day preachers hesitate to speak on the subject of prayer? Now I am deep­ly touched by his modesty, but I am made a little bit anxious by that statement because it reminds me of this fact again, that you can become a great and even an effective preacher even if your life is not terribly holy. This is because when you are preaching the Word of God, the Word of God can accomplish many things quite indepen­dently of your own life, even if your life is not terribly holy, even if your life is not very much saturated in prayer, because the Word of God will accomplish that whereunto it was sent, as you know from Isaiah 55:11.

Let me say again, I would like to deeply stress to your minds, and I say this particularly to the training teams, communion is the essence of prophecy. And may God help you to become a prophet. We often read John 15, and I don’t know what you get out of this if you don’t understand communion. “If you abide in me and I abide in you,” what is all this if this does not mean anything but deepest communion? Because of that deep communion, the Lord Jesus goes on to say, “Therefore you will bear much fruit if you abide in me.” Can any of you say that you experience this kind of communion? Have you learned the sweetness of fellowship with God, which is made possible by the blood and life of the Lord Jesus? Is this something that you have entered into in your personal experience?

Communion is not only essential to being fruitful, it is essential to survival, because the Lord Jesus also says in verse 6:

This is referring to the Judgment. Fire and burning speak of the last days. And now I understand what Paul is saying: “Lest when I preach to others, I myself become a castaway.” (1 Cor. 9:27) I wonder how many pastors will have the Lord Jesus say to them on the Day of Judgment, “Depart from me into eternal condemnation!” Then they would say, “Lord, Lord, did we not preach in your name? Did we not cast out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty works in your name?” And the Lord will say to them, “I don’t know who you are. I haven’t seen you before.” Just read that in Matthew 7:21-23, I did not invent those words. The Lord Jesus says, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter into eternal life.”

And Paul is frightened by this very thought: “Lest I having preached effectively to others should myself become disqualified.” Who preached more effectively than Paul? It’s a very real possibility that even an apostle could be cast away. Compare that to the shallow self-confidence called “assurance” that we have in the churches today. Communion with God is of the essence of prophecy.

Why do we want every person to be a prophet in the church? It’s because it means that every person is living in close communion with God. Only in the closeness of that communion will God be able to say something to you, to give you a vision from himself.

 

2. Revelation from God (Jo. 15:12-17)

The second thing in John 15:12-17 is that this communion is based on friendship with God. Now this speaks much to my heart. Let us read in particular verses 15 and 16:

Now notice carefully: “All that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” Everything the Father has revealed to me, I have revealed to you. That is what prophecy is about. I would like you to bear this in mind: prophecy is communion, prophecy is reve­lation. And the Lord Jesus tells us that anything he has heard from the Father he has revealed to us. Now more than that we cannot ask.­

 

3. Persecution (Jo. 15:18-27)

The third thing is persecution in verses 18-27. Verse 18:

Does the world hate you? Is this a reality or are we landed with another hypothetical statement? The world doesn’t hate us; it treats us well. As we saw the other day, my friend is a pastor of a state church who lives in a 20-room house in Germany! The world doesn’t hate him. The world gives him a house with 20 rooms in it. And the world pays him a salary that is well in excess of most people in Germany. When we think of the pastors today, especially in the state churches in Europe and the pastors in North America, all of us are treated with such honor and respect, we wonder if we still understand the Bible. The world does not hate us.

But that was the mark of every true prophet in the Old Testament. Look in the Old Testament and see that the prophets of God were persecuted. We also saw in Matthew 23:34, the Lord Jesus said to the Jews that every prophet would find that they were either executed or scourged and had to flee from time to time, so that was the mark of every true prophet. If the world treats you too well, you know that you are in trouble spiritually.

I still remember how I shared with the First Training Team when the training began. I said there is something wrong. I am so respected in the Chinese churches. I am invited to preach in conference after conference. I am so highly regarded I think there is something wrong with me. And God put it right very fast for me, and how grateful I am since that day that he put it right for me. The mark of a true prophet is that you are rejected and persecuted. We don’t go out of our way to look for persecution; all you have to do is speak as a prophet, live as a prophet, walk close to God and see what will happen to you. Mark my words, it won’t be long in coming. You don’t have to have a “persecution complex” and we shouldn’t have one. For we rejoice in the midst of persecution because we know as the Lord Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 5:12, “so they persecuted the prophets before you.”

 

How to become a prophet?

1. Become a friend of Christ and God by being a totally obedient servant

Before we close, let us look at how do we become a prophet? First, I would like you to notice these precious words in John 15:15.

Let me make a few remarks about this. Although the Lord Jesus does not call us servants, it doesn’t mean that we are not servants. We must expound the Scriptures carefully. Let us remember that we always remain servants of Jesus, our Lord and Messiah-king. In fact, in verse 20, he goes on right away to say, “Remember the words I have said to you, a servant is not greater than his master.” He reminds us immediately that we are still servants. He does not call us servants means that he does not treat us as servants but as friends, and yet, we are servants.

Who does he treat as friends? He tells us in verse 14: “You are my friends if you do what I command you.” That is, “If you are totally obedient to me, you are my friends.” But who are the people who are totally obedient to him? Those are servants. So to be totally obedient to him is to be his servant. To put in another way, the Lord Jesus is saying, “You are my friends if you are truly my servants, if you totally obey whatever I command you to do.” Only servants are friends. That is the point we are getting at.

The beauty of our Lord Jesus is that he only commands us to do what he himself does. We can see this in verse 10:

 

Obey Christ’s command: Love one another as he loved us

What are the Lord Jesus’ commands? His command in verse 12 is this: “This is my command, that you love one another as I have loved you.” Notice, if he said love one another, we can swallow that, but he goes on to say “as I have loved you.” He is saying, “You are my friends if you love to my standard of loving.”

Now we begin to see that friendship with Christ, as with God is not that easy. You had better stick to scholarship because you can manage scholarship. It’s just a matter of sitting at the desk and learning day after day, month after month, year after year. But loving becomes rather costly, especially loving to this kind of standard!

To love means we don’t sit at our desks, but to go out and live for others, exactly what scholars don’t like to do, at least most scholars that I know of. They like to lock themselves away in their study, hammer at their books hour after hour, just as I love to do. I just love to study. That is my weakness. And in the midst of this concentrated study, I neglect people. When someone phones with a need, I cannot say, “I have this study to do. Phone me later. I have to finish this. I have no time for you right now. I’ll talk to you another time.” People become less important and I justify my study because I say, “This is the Word of God therefore studying is top priority.” When do I have to love my neighbor? I have no more time for him, let alone love him to the standard that Christ loves him. Scholarship takes a lot of time and loving people also takes a lot of time.

In this conflict between the two, you have to choose one or the other. Many times, I have to lay down my Bible, lay down the studies that I love to do and go out to spend time with people. Time is precious for me because when I study, I am gaining something. When I am loving, I am giving all the time; I am gaining nothing. Do you see how being a prophet and being a preacher comes into conflict again?

Notice this: What is the standard of his love? Verse 13: “Greater love has no man than this that a man lays down his life for his friends.” Oh! If I lay down my life for my friend, I cannot study anymore. What happens to my studies let alone the pursuit of my degrees? We can almost borrow what the Lord Jesus said: No man can love two masters. You either love your books or you love your brother. And I think that those of us who are intellectuals, have often been forced into this choice, whether we like it or not: to spend more time with my books or to spend more time with my brothers. What is your choice? I confess to you immediately, that I have often made the wrong choice. I love my books more. But if I do this, how will I be God’s and Christ’s friend? I must make the right choice to be their friends. I must put my brothers first. Only in that choice will I be able to say, “whatever I have heard from the Father I will reveal to you.”

That is why I said to be an effective preacher, you need to be a scholar to some extent. At least if you are not one of the evangelists who always repeats the same message. In this case, you don’t have to study much in the Bible because there are preachers who have five or six basic messages, and they are forever preaching the same message in one form or another. If you are going to be an effective preacher, you have to study deep into the Word of God, you have to be a scholar, a scribe.

 

Enjoy communion with God even in the presence of others

If you are going to be a prophet, you must spend much time with God. But there is one thing beautiful about communing with God: you can commune with God in the presence of other people. I find a wonderful passage in Scripture where the Lord Jesus is doing exactly that. The Lord Jesus is in the midst of communion with God even with the apostles round about him. What I mean is that you can commune with God in any situation, whether on the bus or train, it doesn’t matter. Even when someone is talking to you, your heart can still be communing with God. This is the wonderful thing! That is why prophets don’t have to be scholars; they may be but they don’t have to be.

I also find something very sweet about this: friend of Jesus Christ and friend of Yahweh God. How much would you give to be a friend of Jesus Christ and of Yahweh God? You don’t become their friend by spending a lot of time in scholarship alone. And I stress again, I don’t despise scholarship. After all, I have spent enough years of my life in that too. But I am learning that if I want to be a friend of Jesus and God, I won’t be able to spend all that much time in books at the expense of my communion with God and my communion with my brothers and sisters.

 

Only Abraham and Moses are called the friends of God

I am rather struck by the fact that there are only two people who are called the friends of God in the Old Testament. One is Abraham and the other is Moses. Abraham is called a friend of God in 2 Chronicles 20:7, Isaiah 41:8 and James 2:23, and Moses is called a friend of God in Exodus 33:11.

Only two people in the entire Old Testament are called friends of God, and Jesus is offering us his friendship, and through him, we can have God’s friendship if only we would commune with God. So how can we be friends if we don’t talk with God? It’s hypocritical to say, “X is my friend, but I have no time to talk with him.” You delight to be with a friend, whether it’s a girlfriend or a boyfriend, or a good friend. The very fact that they are friends means that they mean something precious to you and you would like to spend as much time as possible with them.

I had a dear friend even in the days when I was a non-Christian. He and I could never spend enough time together. As soon as he called me, I dropped everything I was doing to be with him because he meant more to me than whatever it was that I was doing. Friendship is so precious, so sweet. But one day, he left and I lost a very dear friend because of a political change, and he had to run for his life. He disappeared into northwest China and I never heard from him again. But I never forget this friend. Friendship is something so strong, so sweet.

And Jesus offers us this kind of friendship, and through him, friendship with God. Judge from the time you spend in communion with God every day, and you will know how much of a friend you are to God and how much of a friend he is to you. How much time did you spend in communion with God last week? Or even today? Or last night? Be honest with yourself.

Don’t you see why we don’t have prophets? We don’t have pro­phets because we don’t have people who delight to commune with God, who delight in the friendship of God. Only two people were granted that privilege in the Old Testament. But all of us are granted this privilege in the New Testament and we don’t grab the chance with both hands, not to say with both feet as well! You are going to throw away this privilege.

One day, when you and I stand before the Judge, the Lord Jesus, I don’t doubt that the thing we will regret most is that we could have been in the league of Abraham and Moses because Jesus offered us his friendship, and God’s friendship, but we spent our time with the TV, even with Christian books. By all means read Christian books, by all means spend much time in the Bible, but not at the expense of communing with God. Have you ever tried to commune with God and study the Bible so that the one does not compete with the other? Have you tried that? That is why we don’t have prophets. How do we become prophets?

It’s also interesting that Abraham and Moses are granted all three names: they are called friend of God, servant of God, and prophet of God.

 

Be determined to desire communion with God

How do we become prophets? As we have explored, the essence lies in cultivating a deep communion with God. But there is a problem: Do we really desire this communion with God? We know it’s a privilege available to us. We can enter into the Holy of holies granted only to the high priest once a year, but we don’t bother with whatever is open to us.

I have now lived in Montreal for six years, and I think any tourist knows Montreal better than I do. They have gone to Man and His World, the Botanical Gardens, and many other tourist attractions, but I haven’t. Why? It’s because I think that I can go there any time, and because I can go there any time, I never go.

I wonder if this is the problem with us Christians. “Oh yes, I have access to God’s presence any time therefore I never go.” The tourist knows that he only has one or two days, so he runs here, there and everywhere, and he will see more in one day than I have seen in 6 years! That is why when our time is up and we are about to die, suddenly we have some sense, and we rush into his presence to pray. We pray for the whole of our last 25 minutes. However, when we have all our lives to enter into God’s presence to be friends with him, we say, “I’ll pray tomorrow. I’ll be friends with him tomorrow.” And every tomorrow brings us nearer to the day when there will be no more tomorrow.

This is the point Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:1, 39, “Earnestly desire that you may prophesy.” The word for “earnestly desire” is zenoō, that is where the English word “zeal” comes from. The word doesn’t just mean to desire, it means to strive, to exert oneself in order to obtain. To have a desire is often all that we have. When you are listening to this message you think, “I really desire to be friends with God.” Then when you go down for refreshments and have a nice Black Forest cake, you entirely forgot about communion with God and becoming his prophet! Everything is gone! We don’t have this earnest desire, this striving, this vision: I’m going to become a prophet of God, by the grace of God.

I would like you to say today, “By the grace of God, I will not cease to exert myself until I become a prophet, that I may serve him and build up his church.” That is spiritual ambition.

 

2. Consistently desire the gift of prophecy

The second thing is this: not only must we have this desire but we must also have the constancy. That is another thing I don’t find among God’s people. We have a desire for a little while and the desire grows weaker and weaker and we have forgotten what was our desire the following day. Press forward consistently. Notice here for those of you who know some Greek, we have all present tenses in 1 Corinthians 14:1, 39. All present tenses. “Earnestly strive” that means continuing to strive, as a present tense in Greek is a continu­ous tense. Keep on striving until you get the gift of prophecy. Not just one burst of energy but a continual, steady consistence of banging on the door until you obtain, just as in the Lord Jesus’ parables. Never give up until you get it. That is what we need.

 

3. Ask God to become his prophet

There is a third thing that is so simple that we never do. Ask for it. If you don’t ask for it, you won’t get it. I find also the other thing is: to become a prophet of God, you must meditate deeply in the Word of God. This we find in John 15:7.

“Ask whatever you will” are challenging words! So ask for the gift of prophecy and it will be done for you, isn’t it? “If you abide in me, just as I abide in my Father’s love” (cf. Jo. 15:10) means communion with God as a new person, a born-again person. “My words abide in you” means meditating on the Lord Jesus’ teaching. Every prophet of God is marked by a deep, spiritual (not necessarily academic) under­standing and perception of God’s Word. Meditate day and night in his Word because this is part of communing with God.

 

4. Cultivate friendship with one another

Fourthly, cultivate friendship with one another. You may be surprised that this has anything to do with prophecy, but it does, on that principle of 1 John 4:20 –

If you cannot cultivate friendship with your brother whom you see, how can you cultivate friendship with God whom you do not see? The spiritual is always related to the practical living. Being spiritual does not mean being unpractical. Anyone who is unpractical does not know what being spiritual is about. The prophets lived in communities and that is for a very good reason. In the community of the prophets, they learned commitment to one another. And in this church you are given every chance to learn this commitment to one another. This is why you are training in teams. It’s so essential to be able to learn this commitment, this friendship with one another.

May God grant that each one of us will become a prophet of God in this generation!

Let us be quiet before God in prayer.