The Prophet
October 2, 2022
The prophet has never been a popular figure, at least during their life. It’s not hard to imagine why—they proclaim “the word of the LORD,” which is—
Shout out, do not hold back!
Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
Announce to my people their rebellion,
to the house of Jacob their sins.
Who wants to hear a message like that? Especially when there’s no real proof of who is a true prophet and who is false. All prophets look more or less the same. Some call the people to repentance. Others call the people to steadfast faithfulness. Some to humility toward God. Others to holy piety.
Isaiah 58 is a good example of why being a prophet was so hard. In his day, the people’s rebellion was religious piety without justice. They were good at humbling themselves before God, fasting and keeping the holy days. They were not good at treating their neighbor with justice and compassion. So the prophet had to tell them that their religious piety was for naught, because it was lacking concrete expressions of the character of God.
It’s easy to tire of the rebuke of the prophet, especially when the message is counterintuitive. His message is essentially that love for your neighbor is more demonstrative than outward signs of love for God, which seems to fly in the face of “the most important commandment is to love the LORD your God.”
Prov. 27.6 says “faithful are the wounds of a friend,” but wounds are still wounds. Rebuke still hurts. So I guess we have to ask ourselves what we want from God. Do we want to be accepted just as we are? Done. We have it. But beyond that, do we want to be transformed into people who can bring healing into the world? In other words, do we just want to be accepted by God, or do we also want to be used by God?
One of the interesting points in Isa. 57.16 is that God essentially ignores our sin out of necessity. If God wanted to, he could nitpick us to death for our sin. But he doesn’t want to! So he won’t. He knows we are weak and sinful; he isn’t surprised or even turned off by that. He accepts us as we are, because he loves us as we are (1Jn. 4.9-10).
If all we want is to be accepted, that’s a low bar. Maybe that’s all we can clear right now, in which case, please understand—God loves us as we are! But at some point, our awareness of that acceptance needs to shift into a desire to be used by God. That’s a higher bar, one that calls us for transformation. If that’s what we’re aiming for, we need the faithful wounds of the prophet. The prophets show us what sort of people we need to be to bring healing into the world.
—John Coffey
