A Prophet like Moses and an Unclean Spirit- Deut 18 and Mark 1
In our reading from Deuteronomy Moses tells the people that God will raise up a prophet like Moses from among the people.
God, through Moses, performed great signs and wonders in Egypt in order to rescue the Hebrew people from slavery. Moses also acted as a mediator between God and the people. The people discovered what God was like, and what expectations God had of them. There was no equal to Moses among the prophets in the Old Testament. … The Bible tells us
“… the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend” (Exodus 33:11).
God established the Covenant on Mt. Sinai through Moses. And Moses let the people know the state of their relationship with God as they wandered through the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. … The role of the prophet is to make the mind of God known. A prophet calls people to turn back to God. A prophet reminds them of the Covenant they have made with God, especially when they have ventured off the path.
Moses has led them, and he knows his time with them is coming to a close. Deuteronomy is Moses’ final words to the people. They will have to go on without him. … But, now there is a promise that there will be another like Moses. In our reading God says,
“I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to [the people] everything that I command” (Deur 18:18).
In Acts 3, after Peter is involved in healing a man who couldn’t walk, he starts to teach the crowd that gathers, and he quotes this passage. Moses said,
“The Lord your God will raise up for you from your own people a prophet like me. You must listen to whatever he tells you. And it will be that everyone who does not listen to that prophet will be utterly rooted out from the people.” (Acts 2:22-23).
When Jesus feeds the five thousand with the 5 loaves and 2 fish we read,
“When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world’” (Jn 6:14).
They saw bread and meat miraculously being given to the crowds in the wilderness, and their minds were drawn to Moses, who likewise was with the Hebrew people, who were fed with manna and quail by God in the wilderness.
And just a chapter later, in John 7, after Jesus had been teaching, we see the crowd divided over who Jesus is. We read,
And just a chapter later, in John 7, after Jesus had been teaching, we see the crowd divided over who Jesus is. We read,
“When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, ‘This is really the prophet.’ … ‘This is the Messiah.’ But some asked, ‘Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?” (Jn 7:40-41).
In Matthew, Jesus goes up a mountain to give the Sermon on the Mount. Which sounds a bit like Moses on Mt. Sinai receiving the Law. … Jesus calls 12 disciples, just as Moses gathers the elders of the 12 tribes of Israel. … Jesus sends out the 70 (or 72) to heal and declare that “the Kingdom of God has come near to you” (Lk 10). Moses also called 70 (or 72) elders (Num 11:16-25). … And on the Mount of Transfiguration Jesus is speaking with Moses and Elijah (Matt 17), but not in in a submissive way, as if Moses was his superior.
God says about this expected Prophet like Moses, “I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet”, but Jesus was the Word of God in the flesh (Jn 1:14). He didn’t Just speak God’s words, he was (and is) “the Word”. Jesus is not just a prophet.
Jesus is “God with us”. … He doesn’t establish the tabernacle for worship, he is the Tabernacle where God is present to the people. … He doesn’t establish a system of sacrifices overseen by priests, he is the sacrifice and the High Priest. … When the people are questioning who this son of a carpenter is that he can be speaking with such authority, Jesus quotes Isaiah 54:13,
“It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me” (John 6:45).
… Jesus is the expected prophet, and he is so much more.
We continue to be in the season of Epiphany, and we continue to see people have epiphanies about who Jesus is. Something about him is revealed. Not everyone sees it, which is why his presence causes division. Some see that he is the Prophet that they were expecting, who Moses spoke about. Others doubt.
In our Gospel reading from Mark, we read about Jesus teaching in the Synagogue on the sabbath. This is the first chapter of Mark, so Jesus just began his public ministry. The people don’t really know who he is yet. … The people notice that his teaching is different. He teaches with authority. The Scribes teach by leaning on the authority of something else. Jesus seems to have this authority within him.
While Jesus is teaching, a man with an unclean spirit cries out. … I feel this this is a spot where were we should just pause and have a bit of an aside. … In the modern secular west, we have largely moved talk about spirits and demons to the realm of fantasy and superstition. Sophisticated people don’t take this stuff seriously. … We think that demons are a primitive way of explaining mental illnesses, or other unusual human behaviours. …
I heard a preacher named Timothy Keller talk about this, and he pointed out that outside of the modern west, the idea that there is a battle between unseen spiritual forces of good and evil is largely taken for granted. Not only is it taken for granted, but they believe they experience this reality. They think the idea of this battle helps to make sense of the world.
In the modern West, we have almost eliminated the idea of evil. We will use the categories of nature and nurture. We will medicalize it and say that the terrible thing we see someone do is a symptom of a mental illness. … Or, we will see it as a symptom of a sociological problem. … So, we might say that the person who did that awful thing was brought up in an abusive home, or they grew up in a rough neighbourhood- there were societal factors that caused this to happen. … Nature or nurture. Psychiatry or sociology. Broken brain, or broken environment. …
I’m not denying that these are very important factors. They are. But it’s a bit flat. … One problem with this is that personal choice seems to be gone. The freedom of the individual to do good or bad doesn’t exist. The individual it just a function of their biology and their community. That’s all. So individual freedom is gone as a source of evil.
The other thing that gets eliminated is the influence of the unseen realm- spiritual beings. We, sophisticated, modern people don’t seem to be willing to entertain the notion that there can be such a thing as unseen spiritual beings that can have an influence on people. … But maybe that’s being a bit narrow-minded. Maybe it’s too simplistic. Maybe reality is more complicated than this. Maybe we should leave open a possibility that this talk about unseen spiritual beings points to something we don’t really know much about. Maybe we should try to consider that the modern western secular way of looking at things doesn’t always have everything figured out. … Maybe we should consider that people in other parts of the world, for whom spiritual realities are very real, shouldn’t be so quickly dismissed. Maybe we are being culturally narrow-minded when we dismiss these people as being just superstitious. …
If we can open ourselves to believe in God (an unseen spiritual being) then why would it be such a stretch that there might be other lesser spiritual beings? And why would it be impossible to believe that some of those beings might be hostile? … That’s all I wanted to say about that. We often pass over the unclean spirit bits of the Bible without saying much. … And that’s mostly okay because they aren’t the point. In our Gospel reading today, the unclean spirit isn’t the point.
Jesus is teaching in the Synagogue on the sabbath. The people recognize that his teaching has authority. And suddenly a man with an unclean spirit cries out. What does he say?
We continue to be in the season of Epiphany, and we continue to see people have epiphanies about who Jesus is. Something about him is revealed. Not everyone sees it, which is why his presence causes division. Some see that he is the Prophet that they were expecting, who Moses spoke about. Others doubt.
In our Gospel reading from Mark, we read about Jesus teaching in the Synagogue on the sabbath. This is the first chapter of Mark, so Jesus just began his public ministry. The people don’t really know who he is yet. … The people notice that his teaching is different. He teaches with authority. The Scribes teach by leaning on the authority of something else. Jesus seems to have this authority within him.
While Jesus is teaching, a man with an unclean spirit cries out. … I feel this this is a spot where were we should just pause and have a bit of an aside. … In the modern secular west, we have largely moved talk about spirits and demons to the realm of fantasy and superstition. Sophisticated people don’t take this stuff seriously. … We think that demons are a primitive way of explaining mental illnesses, or other unusual human behaviours. …
I heard a preacher named Timothy Keller talk about this, and he pointed out that outside of the modern west, the idea that there is a battle between unseen spiritual forces of good and evil is largely taken for granted. Not only is it taken for granted, but they believe they experience this reality. They think the idea of this battle helps to make sense of the world.
In the modern West, we have almost eliminated the idea of evil. We will use the categories of nature and nurture. We will medicalize it and say that the terrible thing we see someone do is a symptom of a mental illness. … Or, we will see it as a symptom of a sociological problem. … So, we might say that the person who did that awful thing was brought up in an abusive home, or they grew up in a rough neighbourhood- there were societal factors that caused this to happen. … Nature or nurture. Psychiatry or sociology. Broken brain, or broken environment. …
I’m not denying that these are very important factors. They are. But it’s a bit flat. … One problem with this is that personal choice seems to be gone. The freedom of the individual to do good or bad doesn’t exist. The individual it just a function of their biology and their community. That’s all. So individual freedom is gone as a source of evil.
The other thing that gets eliminated is the influence of the unseen realm- spiritual beings. We, sophisticated, modern people don’t seem to be willing to entertain the notion that there can be such a thing as unseen spiritual beings that can have an influence on people. … But maybe that’s being a bit narrow-minded. Maybe it’s too simplistic. Maybe reality is more complicated than this. Maybe we should leave open a possibility that this talk about unseen spiritual beings points to something we don’t really know much about. Maybe we should try to consider that the modern western secular way of looking at things doesn’t always have everything figured out. … Maybe we should consider that people in other parts of the world, for whom spiritual realities are very real, shouldn’t be so quickly dismissed. Maybe we are being culturally narrow-minded when we dismiss these people as being just superstitious. …
If we can open ourselves to believe in God (an unseen spiritual being) then why would it be such a stretch that there might be other lesser spiritual beings? And why would it be impossible to believe that some of those beings might be hostile? … That’s all I wanted to say about that. We often pass over the unclean spirit bits of the Bible without saying much. … And that’s mostly okay because they aren’t the point. In our Gospel reading today, the unclean spirit isn’t the point.
Jesus is teaching in the Synagogue on the sabbath. The people recognize that his teaching has authority. And suddenly a man with an unclean spirit cries out. What does he say?
"What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." …
We are in the season of Epiphany. It is a time of revealing. … The unclean spirits know who Jesus is. They know that he will be their destruction, and they know that he is the Holy One of God. … Jesus tells the spirit to be quiet and to leave the man, and it obeys. (Jesus probably tells it to be quiet because he doesn’t want too much information to get out before the right time. Similarly, he sometimes heals people and tells them to not tell anyone.) Jesus tells the unclean spirit to leave and there is no fight. Jesus doesn’t even pray, he just commands and it has no choice but to obey. … So, though it comes from an unclean spirit, it reveals to those present that Jesus is the Holy One of God.
Jesus is the prophet that Moses spoke about, but he is so much more than what they were expecting. He doesn’t just have God’s words in his mouth, he is God’s Word in the flesh- he is the Holy One of God. To encounter Jesus is to encounter God. … In Deuteronomy, the people are called to do something in response to this prophet when he is revealed. In our reading God says,
“I will raise up for them a prophet like [Moses] from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable” (Deut 18:18-19).
We are called to heed what he says. We are to listen and take seriously what he says. We are not to be admirers, but followers- disciples- apprentices in kingdom living. … May we be found having taken his words seriously. Lord, have mercy. AMEN
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