Series

God speaks. He speaks so that people can understand Him. He does this because He loves us and wants a real, meaningful, relationship with us, and you can’t have a real relationship with an inanimate, inarticulate being.

God speaks to us in lots of different ways: Scripture is the primary and most objective communication from God that we have, and every one of us should become careful students of the Word of God so we can understand and respond to what He has told us there. He also speaks to us through other people, and our circumstances, and through the still, small voice of the Holy Spirit speaking to our spirits.

There are different terms used in the Bible for some of these verbal communications from God, such as the message/ word of wisdom, or of knowledge; and prophecy. This morning and for the next two weeks I want to talk about the spiritual gift of prophecy, and how we can learn to hear His voice.

When we talk about prophets or prophecy, the first place we have to look is the Old Testament.

There were certain men in the Old Testament who were recognized as prophets—God’s spokesmen, if you will. The priests represented the people to God; the prophets represented God to the people. Everyone understood that the prophet’s words were God’s words. God said to Moses, the first prophet, Deut. 18:18, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers; I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him.” Jeremiah reported this experience with God: Jeremiah 1:9, “Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, ‘Now, I have put my words in your mouth.’” What the prophet said, God said. They often began their prophecies with the formula, “The Lord says…” and no one questioned that.

Therefore, the prophets spoke with divine authority. To disbelieve or disobey a prophet’s words was to disbelieve or disobey God. God Himself said, Deut. 18:19, “If anyone does not listen to my words that the prophet speaks in my name, I myself will call him to account.” The words of a true prophet are beyond challenge or question. There are no instances in the Old Testament of people evaluating or sifting the words of someone who was acknowledged to be a true prophet of God. They did have the right to question whether the man was a true prophet or not, but once he was judged to be a mouthpiece for God, his words were never evaluated. If he was a false prophet, he was to be stoned to death.

When we come to the New Testament, we might expect to find people there also speaking with this kind of authority, and we do, but curiously, they are not the prophets.

The New Testament counterpart to the Old Testament prophets are the apostles, not prophets. The apostles spoke with God’s authority, they wrote God’s words like the Old Testament prophets did. There are plenty of prophets referred to in the New Testament, but none of them spoke with this kind of divine authority.

This observation begs for an explanation. We’ve got prophets in the Old Testament, and prophets and apostles in the New Testament. Why is the correlation not between prophets and prophets? Why did Jesus not call His men prophets? I’m convinced that the reason is because prophecy has changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament.[1] God does still communicate to His people through men and women who are called prophets, but the nature of their communication is different from that of the Old Testament prophets. Specifically, they do not speak with the same authority as the men in the Old Testament.

Let’s look at some of the passages in the New Testament where it says someone prophesied, to see if we can get a handle on what kind of speech this is.

In Acts 19, we have the story of some people who had been baptized with John’s baptism for the forgiveness of their sins, but who had never really heard of the Holy Spirit. Paul preached Christ to them, and Acts 19:5-7, “On hearing this, they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus. [6] When Paul placed his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they spoke in tongues and prophesied. [7] There were about twelve men in all.” So here are twelve brand new believers, who have just had the gospel explained to them, and Luke says they all prophesied. It’s hard for me to believe that they were all speaking words with the same authority and level of inspiration as, say, a Jeremiah, or an Isaiah, or an Elijah. Luke doesn’t give us enough information here to know exactly what kinds of things they were saying, but it doesn’t sound like Old Testament prophecy.

When I first started thinking about prophecy today, I thought that if a person came up to me and told me that God was saying I should move to Africa as a long-term missionary, I had better do that, or be out of the will of God. And I wasn’t at all comfortable with that idea! But there were some prophecies given to Paul that he essentially ignored. Luke wrote, Acts 21:4-5, “Finding the disciples there [in Tyre], we stayed with them seven days. Through the Spirit they urged Paul not to go on to Jerusalem. [5] But when our time was up, we left and continued on our way [to Jerusalem].” “Through the Spirit” is the same phrase used to describe the predictions of the prophet Agabus, but in spite of that, Paul ignored their warning. He evidently did not believe that the words of these men had divine authority for him.

Agabus is a very interesting case study. We meet him in two different situations. The first is in Acts 11:27-30, “During this time some prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. [28] One of them, named Agabus, stood up and through the Spirit predicted that a severe famine would spread over the entire Roman world. (This happened during the reign of Claudius.) [29] The disciples, each according to his ability, decided to provide help for the brothers living in Judea. [30] This they did, sending their gift to the elders by Barnabas and Saul.” So here’s an instance where a person who was recognized as a prophet among the believers predicted that there would be a famine all over the Roman Empire, and the believers were so certain that he was delivering a message from God that they took up an offering and sent the money to fellow Christians in Judea. (They evidently thought those folks would be worse off than they would be.) As it turned out, that famine did occur during the reign of the emperor Claudius.

Then in Acts 21, we meet Agabus again. Acts 21:10-11, “After we had been there [in Caesarea] a number of days, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. [11] Coming over to us, he took Paul's belt, tied his own hands and feet with it and said, ‘The Holy Spirit says, “In this way the Jews of Jerusalem will bind the owner of this belt and will hand him over to the Gentiles.”’”

It sounds like Agabus is reporting the very words of God when he prefaces his comments with , “The Holy Spirit says.”[2] But a little later in the book of Acts, we learn what actually happened, and that raises some questions for us. In vss. 27-33, Paul has come to Jerusalem in spite of Agabus’ warning, just like he ignored the similar warning he got in Tyre . “…some Jews from the province of Asia saw Paul at the temple. They stirred up the whole crowd and seized him, [28] shouting, ‘Men of Israel, help us! This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against our people and our law and this place.’ …[30] The whole city was aroused, and the people came running from all directions. Seizing Paul, they dragged him from the temple, and immediately the gates were shut. [31] While they were trying to kill him, news reached the commander of the Roman troops that the whole city of Jerusalem was in an uproar. [32] He at once took some officers and soldiers and ran down to the crowd. When the rioters saw the commander and his soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. [33] The commander came up and arrested him and ordered him to be bound with two chains. Then he asked who he was and what he had done.”

I don’t know if you noticed, but there are two things Agabus predicted that did not come true just the way he said. Certainly, Paul was bound in Jerusalem, as he said. But it was not the Jews who did that—they were trying to kill him, not arrest him. Instead, it was the Romans who tied Paul up with chains. And secondly, the Jews did not hand Paul over to the Gentiles as Agabus had predicted—the Gentiles had to rescue him from their hands.

I find it extremely interesting that even though Luke knew, when he was writing the book of Acts, that these two details in Agabus’ prophecy had not come true exactly the way he predicted, Luke still calls him a prophet in two different passages. Apparently, the discrepancies did not disqualify him as a prophet in Luke’s mind, and the church certainly did not stone him as a false prophet. This is strong evidence in my mind that New Testament prophecy is not the same kind of speech as Old Testament prophecy. It’s not that Agabus spoke in a totally false or misleading way; it’s just that he got some of the details wrong.[3] But in the Old Testament, even a minor detail wrong would label a person as a false prophet and subject them to the death penalty.

Another reason to think that New Testament prophecy is different in its authority from that in the Old Testament is that in the New Testament we are instructed to evaluate the words of the prophet.

In his instructions for public worship, Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, 1 Cor. 14:29, “Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said.” “The others” who are supposed to weigh what is said are the rest of those present, whether that is the entire congregation or a small group. Most of the pastors I talked to who expect prophecies in their worship services require that the person with the word from God speak first to a pastor or other church leader, who will initially evaluate it as to whether it should be shared with the whole group. Even when it is shared, it is still incumbent on everyone who hears it to weigh it carefully.

This phrase, “weigh carefully” (Greek, diakrino) can mean to separate or make careful distinctions between things or ideas. This implies that some parts of the prophecy might be judged to be true, and other parts might be rejected. That looks like what Luke did with Agabus.

1 Thes. 5:19-21, “Do not put out the Spirit's fire; [20] do not treat prophecies with contempt. [21] Test everything. Hold on to the good.” The close connections of these phrases seems to indicate that treating prophecies with contempt would put out the Spirit’s fire. But testing them is not the same as treating them with contempt. We are always to test everything—every idea that is put forth, whether it is in the name of God or not. (You need to be doing that with what I say on Sunday morning—be like the Bereans who searched the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.) The standard against which prophecies and all other truth claims are to be judged is always Scripture. The Scripture has final authority, and it is much more objective than a reported impression or word from God.[4]

Note how different this is from the situation in the Old Testament. There God said, Deut. 18:22, “If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously. Do not be afraid of him”—and verse 20 says, Stone him to death! That is a really different process from what is described in these New Testament passages, and we have to ask ourselves why it is so different. I think the reason is that New Testament prophecy is different from Old Testament prophecy in that it does not carry with it the absolute authority of God’s infallible word, and should therefore be tested or weighed against the standard of Scripture.

The thing that makes us most nervous when people talk about modern day prophecy is this issue of authority. What authority do those “prophecies” have?

Some people say they have received a revelation from God, and that word puts up all kinds of red flags. We associate the word revelation with the inspired, infallible, and authoritative words that were recorded in Scripture. We speak of the Bible as special revelation, and the last book of the Bible is called The Revelation that Jesus gave to the apostle John. This is the sort of thing that makes us uncomfortable when people tell us they heard a word from God.

1 Cor. 14:30 uses the word “revelation” to describe the thoughts that come to a New Testament prophet. Paul is giving instructions for how worship services should be ordered. He expects there to be prophecies given, and says, “if a revelation comes to someone who is sitting down, the first speaker should stop.” It turns out that while the word for revelation, (apocalupto/ apocalupsis) often carries divine authority, it is sometimes used in ways that do not necessarily imply that kind of authority. At least, the report of the revelation is not authoritative, as it was in the Old Testament. When the prophets got a revelation from God, their report of it was authoritative. It doesn’t seem to be that way in the New Testament. When someone today says they heard from God, we are listening to their report of what they think they heard, which may or may not be 100% accurate, and therefore is less authoritative.

A good example of this less-authoritative use of the word revelation is in 1 Cor. 14:26, where Paul is describing a typical worship service. He says, “When you come together, everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.” He does not literally mean that everyone who comes to worship has all of these things, but that everyone has something to contribute, and anyone might have a revelation from God. But surely the apostle, of all people, does not think that just anyone could be speaking with the authority of Scripture.[5]

Another reason to believe New Testament prophecy is different is the question of who can prophesy.

In the Old Testament, there were a very limited number of prophets.[6] They mostly seemed to operate individually as spokesmen for God standing against the tide of their culture. We have seen the tremendous reverence given to the prophets and to their words, whether written or spoken.

In the New Testament, it seems to be different. We read of prophets in lots of churches: in Corinth (1 Cor 12, 14), Tyre (Acts 21:4-5), Antioch (Acts 11:27-30; 15:32), Thessalonica (1 Thess 5:20), and Caesarea (Acts 21:8-9); and the new believers in Ephesus prophesied when they first received the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:5-7). Moreover, Paul encouraged all his readers to prophesy. 1 Cor. 14:1, “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy.” 1 Cor. 14:5, “I would like every one of you to speak in tongues, but I would rather have you prophesy.” 1 Cor. 14:39, “Therefore, my brothers, be eager to prophesy….” If there were an “office” of prophet, or if someone had to be formally recognized as a prophet, Paul would not have encouraged everyone to seek that gift. He certainly would not encourage everyone to speak purported Scripture.

This seems to correlate well with the very beginning of the age of the Spirit at Pentecost. You recall how the Holy Spirit fell on the believers who were gathered in the upper room, and they went out into the streets of Jerusalem proclaiming the praises of God in different languages. The people who heard them thought maybe they were drunk, because they were all speaking different languages, and it may have sounded confusing. But Peter stood up and said no, we’re not drunk. This is the fulfillment of the prophecy by Joel that said, Acts 2:17-18, " 'In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. [18] Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”

Peter recognized that the outpouring of the Spirit that they experienced that day was the fulfillment of this Old Testament prophecy, which says that God’s people will prophesy. Joel’s prediction seems to go out of the way to emphasize that when this came true, prophecy would be different from the Old Testament practice, because he refers to “all people; your sons and daughters; young men; old men; both men and women.” There is no distinction here; no formal office of prophet; no official recognition of “prophets”. Every believer could potentially prophesy in this New Testament sense.[7] That’s very different from the Old Testament, where only certain people could prophesy, and their words were considered to be God’s words.

Now this doesn’t mean that every believer actually had the ability to prophesy. Prophecy is a gift of the Spirit, and Paul is clear that no one gift is shared by all, including this one (1 Cor 12:8-10, 29-30). He even makes a point of saying, 1 Cor. 12:29, “Are all prophets?” indicating that they clearly are not. So prophecy is not restricted in the New Testament era to just a few officially recognized prophets, but neither does everyone actually prophesy in this sense.

Many people who are uncomfortable with the notion of New Testament prophets or prophecy nonetheless believe that God still speaks today; they just use different terminology. We would never preface a comment with, “God says to you…,” or, “God told me…” But we do say that we have impressions, or promptings from the Holy Spirit, or leadings from God. We may say, “I feel led to…[say or do this…].” Have you never felt God leading you to say something to someone that turned out to be just what they needed to hear? We speak of the “still, small voice” or the “quiet whisper” of the Holy Spirit. We talk about God putting something on our heart for a friend. Pastors and worship leaders have sometimes changed the order of worship, explaining that it seemed to them that God had something different for them that day.[8] All of these are different ways of saying what the Bible says: that God still speaks to His people, and when we share with others what we think we have heard from God, we are doing what the New Testament calls prophecy. As Wayne Grudem defines it, prophecy is “speaking merely human words to report something God brings to mind.”[9] If we understand it this way, I think it is much less problematic.

I’m going to speak about prophecy the next two weeks, but let me leave you with this caution this morning.

One of the places where people get a little squirrely about the gift of prophecy is when someone starts telling us that God told them we were supposed to do such and such. One of my charismatic pastor friends says, “You wouldn’t believe the goofy things people in a charismatic church say to their pastor!” He has had church members tell Him God wants him to do all sorts of strange things.

Happily, not all who believe in the gift of prophecy are like that. In fact, many charismatic writers are very cautious about the use of prophecy to give specific guidance. Here are two quotes that I found in Wayne Grudem’s book The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today. [10]

“Prophecies which tell other people what they are to do—are to be regarded with great suspicion.”

“Any attempt to give highly specific instructions to the group, or to individuals in it, under the guise of prophecy should be strenuously discouraged by the leaders.”

Well, I’m the leader, and I am strenuously discouraging you from doing that! We need only mention the names of Jim Jones in Guyana, and David Koresh in Waco, to be reminded of the dangers when someone starts speaking what they claim is the word of God to give very specific directions for others’ lives. Prophecy should never be given in a controlling or authoritative way. My friend in Ft. Collins, Dave Niquette, says, “Offer and release; do not impose and control.” As Jack Deere points out, the government of the local church is under the authority of the elders, not the prophets.[11]

So what should you do if someone offers a “word from God” for you? Receive it; thank them; and put it in your “pending” file. Then pray about it, and ask God to confirm or reject that for you. If it really is from God, you can expect to see Him confirm that guidance in several ways over the next few days or weeks. Never do something just because you were told to by some presumed prophecy, even if it comes from a friend. Ask God to give you peace about that action in your heart, and ask Him to confirm it in others ways before you do anything. And always test everything by Scripture. If it violates any Scriptural principle, it is not from God. Period. But that doesn’t mean that some parts of it may not be true, as we have seen with Agabus. Weigh everything carefully; distinguish between truth and error; separate out the wheat from the chaff. Hold on to the good.

Let me share with you an experience Barbie and I had a few years ago at a presbytery meeting in February 2003. Following one of the evening worship services, we were invited to visit a room where we could receive “prophetic ministry”. We really didn’t have any idea what that was, but were curious, so we signed up and went at our appointed time. We were greeted by 3 people, two women and a man; we briefly introduced ourselves, told them just a very little about who we were and what our church was like, and what Barbie did. And then we all bowed our heads and were quiet for a period of time. Eventually, they began to speak, one at a time, sharing impressions or images that had come to them as we waited before the Lord. It was a sweet, very comfortable time, and we certainly did come away encouraged, strengthened, and comforted, as the Bible says prophecy is intended to do (1 Cor 14:3).

One thing that seemed to stand out for us was a word to Barbie that God was going to use her in wider and wider circles. As we recall, it was phrased in the terms of the prayer of Jabez in the Old Testament, where Jabez cried out to God, 1 Chron. 4:10, "Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory!”

We had no idea what that might mean; we certainly didn’t take any action on it at the time. We put it in our pending file. Some time later, though, we found it interesting that Barbie got asked by Group Publishing to travel for them to other states to train children’s ministry workers in how to use their curriculum. Now this year, we think we see a further outworking of that prophetic word. Barbie has been asked to join a mission agency called KidZ@Heart, which trains people in this country to go overseas and train children’s ministry workers there how to be more effective in their ministries. She used this organization’s materials in Cameroon last year and found them very helpful. This ministry opportunity combines her love for children, her expertise with children, her love for missions, and her administrative skills in a beautiful way. And it will not only have her traveling in this country to help train the trainers, but she will also visit other countries. Talk about enlarging her territory!

So as time has gone on, we have seen that prophecy that was given to her some years ago prove to be true. I offer that to you as just one example of ways God might use someone else to convey a message to strengthen, encourage, and comfort you.

[1] The reason for this may be found in Joel 2:28-29, which predicted a change in God’s economy with regard to prophecy and the coming of the Spirit: "And afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. [29] Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.”

[2] Wayne Grudem has three possible explanations for this in The Gift of Prophecy in the New Testament and Today (Westchester, IL: Crossway, 1988), p.100ff.

[3] We can well imagine that Agabus had some sort of communication or impression from God that Paul was going to be in danger if he went to Jerusalem. In fact, that probably didn’t take divine revelation; Paul stirred up conflict with the Jews everywhere he went, and for him to walk into the religious center of Judaism was like walking into the lion’s den. So Agabus shares this impression with Paul, perhaps adding his own interpretation that the Jews would bind Paul and hand him over to the Romans. That was a very likely scenario, but it didn’t happen just that way. He got a couple of the minor details wrong, and yet was still considered a prophet.

[4] If there is a predictive element to the prophecy, then presumably we could evaluate it against what really happened. But notice that in the case of Agabus, Luke reports that things did not turn out exactly the way Agabus predicted, but this did not disqualify him from being recognized as a prophet. This is further confirmation that New Testament prophecy does not carry with it the authority of Old Testament prophecy.

[5] Another example is in Ephes. 1:17, “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” We don’t imagine that this means that whenever a believer shares with another some insights God has given them about their walk with Christ, that those words carry divine authority. The insights, the revelation might be directly from God, but the person’s report would come in merely human words, which do not carry Scriptural authority. As we have seen in the instance of Agabus, those words may even be mistaken in some of the details.

[6] During some periods of history, there was a “school of the prophets”. These associations probably started when an experienced prophet like Samuel gathered to himself younger men as his disciples (1 Samuel 19:18-20).

[7] “There was no special prophetic office such that only those who held that office could prophesy in church, nor is there any indication that only older, more mature, or more respected members of the congregation could prophesy. Rather, every believer who had received a revelation and waited in turn to speak had permission to prophesy.” Grudem, p.199.

[8] This idea is in Doug Banister, The Word and Power Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), p.96f.

[9] Subtitle for Grudem, chapters 3 & 4.

[10] See Grudem, p.246ff.

[11] Jack Deere, Surprised by the Voice of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), p.185.