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In Deuteronomy 18:15 Moses says to the Hebrews, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren.” At this point we don’t know from which of the Twelve Tribes listening to Moses’ words that the prophet will come from. In Verses 18-19 God says to Moses that He will put His Words into the prophet’s mouth and the prophet will speak to the Hebrews, and it will be expected that they will listen to this prophet.
How will the Hebrews know that the person is the prophet God speaks of? In Verse 22, God says, “...when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.” So. The genuine prophet will tell of things that are to come to pass, that we might presume is beyond anyone’s own ability to predict the future based on what they know.
The fact that such a prophet will come from among the Twelve Tribes narrows it down somewhat but as these Tribes multiply it would become ever harder to narrow down the tribe he would come from, let alone the family at this point. And the burden falls on the people to determine if what the self-proclaimed prophet predicts could easily have been predicted by anyone, depending on their ability to analyze from their limited knowledge of the world. The New Testament warns us to test everything to see that it conforms with the doctrine the Bible professes.
Isaiah 7:10-14 narrows it down as to where this prophet will come from. It will come from the House of David. This House is from the tribe of Judah if we trace the genealogy via 1 Chronicles 2:1-15.
Fast forward to John 6: 8-14, and here there seems to be a mystery. In this Passage, Jesus is addressing a tremendous crowd of people, and he decides the people should be fed. So he miraculously creates bread and fish out of thin air, enough to feed all the masses and then some. Upon seeing this, the people in Verse 14 declare, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” The apparent reference is to Deuteronomy 18:15-22, but nowhere in that Passage does God say that the prophet he raises up will perform His Miracles. (We must presume that only God can perform miracles, and any miracles performed by people would have been because of God.) How is it that the people determined that Jesus is the prophet because of God’s Miracle he performed there? Where in the Bible does it say that this prophet would be performing Miracles?
The Jews in the crowd who proclaimed Jesus as the prophet, seemed to have made their own determination based probably on the fact that only God can create miracles, and in their understanding of the miracles God performed in Exodus, including those in which Moses assisted in performing, they concluded that Jesus had a divine conntection to Him. They must have stretched their understanding further by wondering who else but someone with the connection to God that Jesus had, would be the prophet referred to in Deuteronomy 18:15-22?
We can only guess at the train of though of those Jews there. Many of those Jews knew the Bible. Maybe they considered what Isaiah 7:14 and perhaps what Isaiah 9:6 says, and that, plus Jesus’ miracle with the bread and the fish compelled them to conclude that ‘Jesus is the one.’
Perhaps a lesson can be drawn from here, the lesson being that to the extent the Lord allows us to reason with Him, we can draw inferences from the Bible when things aren’t exactly spelled out. Witness the quandary as to the question of whether Paul in writing to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16 was referring to just what we know to be the Old Testament, or whether he also referred to what is found in what to us is the New Testament. And in terms of our faith in God, the Jews decision in John 6:14 that Jesus is the prophet referred to in Deuteronomy 18:15 is correct.
How will the Hebrews know that the person is the prophet God speaks of? In Verse 22, God says, “...when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him.” So. The genuine prophet will tell of things that are to come to pass, that we might presume is beyond anyone’s own ability to predict the future based on what they know.
The fact that such a prophet will come from among the Twelve Tribes narrows it down somewhat but as these Tribes multiply it would become ever harder to narrow down the tribe he would come from, let alone the family at this point. And the burden falls on the people to determine if what the self-proclaimed prophet predicts could easily have been predicted by anyone, depending on their ability to analyze from their limited knowledge of the world. The New Testament warns us to test everything to see that it conforms with the doctrine the Bible professes.
Isaiah 7:10-14 narrows it down as to where this prophet will come from. It will come from the House of David. This House is from the tribe of Judah if we trace the genealogy via 1 Chronicles 2:1-15.
Fast forward to John 6: 8-14, and here there seems to be a mystery. In this Passage, Jesus is addressing a tremendous crowd of people, and he decides the people should be fed. So he miraculously creates bread and fish out of thin air, enough to feed all the masses and then some. Upon seeing this, the people in Verse 14 declare, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” The apparent reference is to Deuteronomy 18:15-22, but nowhere in that Passage does God say that the prophet he raises up will perform His Miracles. (We must presume that only God can perform miracles, and any miracles performed by people would have been because of God.) How is it that the people determined that Jesus is the prophet because of God’s Miracle he performed there? Where in the Bible does it say that this prophet would be performing Miracles?
The Jews in the crowd who proclaimed Jesus as the prophet, seemed to have made their own determination based probably on the fact that only God can create miracles, and in their understanding of the miracles God performed in Exodus, including those in which Moses assisted in performing, they concluded that Jesus had a divine conntection to Him. They must have stretched their understanding further by wondering who else but someone with the connection to God that Jesus had, would be the prophet referred to in Deuteronomy 18:15-22?
We can only guess at the train of though of those Jews there. Many of those Jews knew the Bible. Maybe they considered what Isaiah 7:14 and perhaps what Isaiah 9:6 says, and that, plus Jesus’ miracle with the bread and the fish compelled them to conclude that ‘Jesus is the one.’
Perhaps a lesson can be drawn from here, the lesson being that to the extent the Lord allows us to reason with Him, we can draw inferences from the Bible when things aren’t exactly spelled out. Witness the quandary as to the question of whether Paul in writing to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:16 was referring to just what we know to be the Old Testament, or whether he also referred to what is found in what to us is the New Testament. And in terms of our faith in God, the Jews decision in John 6:14 that Jesus is the prophet referred to in Deuteronomy 18:15 is correct.
