Sermon: The Divine Liturgy Pt. 6 - Prophets & Prophecy (1 Corinthians 14)

The Divine Liturgy Pt. 6 – Prophets & Prophecy
Sunday, May 18^th, 2025
Christ Covenant Church – Centralia, WA
1 Corinthians 14:1-40

Prayer

Father, we ask now that by the preaching of Your Word, we may grow up together in maturity, thoroughly equipped for every good work. We ask for Your Holy Spirit to enlighten the eyes of our understanding, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.

Introduction

Last week we considered the gift of Charismatic Grace, and we observed that all Christians who are united to Christ Jesus, receive from Him some spiritual gift (or gifts), which are intended to build up (edify) Christ’s body, the church.

• Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:7, “But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.”
• And in Ephesians 4:7, “But to each one of us grace was given according to the measure of Christ’s gift.”
• And again in 1 Peter 4:10 it says, “As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”
• And so we learned that all of us have some spiritual gift to steward for the good of others, and we can try to identify our gift (or gifts) by asking: Where does our Desire, our Ability, and the Needs of others all line up?
  • Where does my 1) Desire to bless others, 2) my Ability to bless others, and 3) the Need for someone to blessed all find harmony? Because that is where spiritual gifts most frequently reside.
  • God has so designed the body to function as a diversity within unity, as distinct members with different functions who are all united together for the common good. This is what Christian community should look like.
  • And so Paul goes on in 1 Corinthians 13 to describe that bond of unity, which is supernatural love, also known as charity.
    • Unlike natural and ordinary love which even unbelievers have for themselves and their children, charity has God as for its object and loves other people for the sake of God. Charity is supernatural love in that we receive it from above as a gift of grace, and by it we can are able to love people who are not naturally loveable.
    • And this is why Paul says that charity is the best of all spiritual gifts, and without it all the other charismatic graces profit us nothing.
    • He says in 1 Corinthians 13:2-3, “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not charity, it profits me nothing.” And then he concludes his exaltation of love in verse 13 by saying, “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.”
    • So where there is supernatural love animating our spiritual gifts, there you will find peace, order, and unity. But where there is envy, pride, and selfish desire, there you will find confusion, disputing, and every evil work (James 3:16).
  • So Paul is writing to correct and instruct the Corinthian presbytery, the churches in Corinth, in how to use their spiritual gifts. And having established the primacy and superiority of love as the best gift, he then dedicates all of chapter 14 to explaining how the gifts of prophecy and tongues are to be used in the church.
  • And so this morning will consider the gift of prophecy, and then next week we’ll consider the gift of tongues. And we will not actually spend very much time in 1 Corinthians 14 this morning because we need to do quite a lot background work in other parts of Scripture before we can rightly interpret it. So this sermon will be setting the stage for addressing tongues and other spiritual gifts next week.

Outline

So there are three questions I want to answer in this sermon:

• Q1. What is a prophet?
• Q2. How is a true prophet distinguished from a false prophet?
• Q3. In what sense if any may someone be called a prophet today?

Q#1 – What is a prophet?

• We read in 1 Samuel 9:9, “(Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he spoke thus: ‘Come, let us go to the seer’; for he who is now called a prophet was formerly called a seer.)”
• So the Bible itself gives us an origin story for why prophets are called prophets. And it was because they had a supernatural ability to see, with sight being a metaphor for knowing.
  • So a seer receives divine inspiration that lifts up the eyes of the mind, and then they receive divine revelation to understand what they saw.
  • And so a seer was a person with knowledge (intellectual sight) of things divine. And thus, before they were called prophets they were called by this action of seeing, they were seers.
• Now what exactly did these seers see? When we study the writings of the prophets (whether Moses, or David, or Isaiah), we discover that there are two unique senses in which they have supernatural sight.
  • 1. They can see events far off in the future that only God could know and reveal (e.g. the destruction of Jerusalem, the virgin birth, the kingdom of God, etc.).
  • 2. And/or they can see truths that surpass the powers of human reason to know (things like how the unity of the divine essence is Triune, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or how the Son of God would become incarnate, the hypostatic union, or the plan of salvation, etc.).
  • So knowledge of future events and/or knowledge of things that surpass human reason are the basis for which seers/prophets get their name.
  • DEFINITION: A prophet in the widest and most basic sense is someone who receives from God supernatural knowledge. And then usually that knowledge is preached or taught and communicated to others for their edification, and in some special cases, that knowledge is written down such that it became what we now call Scripture.
    • Paul says in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”
    • And it says in 2 Peter 1:19-21, “We have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.”
  • Summarize: What is a prophet? A prophet is someone who sees/knows things by supernatural revelation. They do not speak from their own personal/private opinion but are mouth pieces for God. This is why they usually begin their prophecies with some form of, “Thus saith the Lord.” Or, “the word of the Lord came to me.” Or, “Hear now what the Lord says.”
  • So a prophet speaks as an ambassador and messenger of heaven. And insofar as he prophesies, He is inspired and infallible, but insofar as he speaks not in the spirit, he is just another man and can err.
    • For example, David was an inspired prophet who wrote many Psalms, but that did not make his decrees as a king infallible, and in fact he often sinned and sinned grievously despite being a prophet. The same could be said for Solomon who also wrote Scripture but fell into idolatry. So it possible for a man to be a true prophet, and also fall into grievous sin, and yet that sin does not nullify the truth of what he spoke by divine inspiration.
    • This brings us to question 2.

Q#2 – How then is a true prophet distinguished from a false prophet?

• Answer: God himself gives various tests to determine a prophet’s authenticity.
  • In the New Testament we have Jesus saying in Matthew 7:15-16, “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.”
  • And the Apostle John says in 1 John 2:22, “Who is a liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father either; he who acknowledges the Son has the Father also.”
  • So here are two initial criteria to judge the true from the false: 1) they have fruit of the spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.), and 2) they acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ and eternal Son from the Father.
    • By those two criteria, are excluded a bunch of false religions (like modern Judaism, Islam, atheism, secularism, etc.), and many sub-Christian cults like Mormons, Jehovah’s witnesses, oneness Pentecostals, and other heretical sects that claim to be Christian but are not.
• Moreover, we have also in Deuteronomy two others tests for whether a prophet is true or false.
  • We heard earlier in the service from Deuteronomy 18:21-22 which says, “And if you say in your heart, ‘How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken?’—when a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him.”
  • And then earlier in Deuteronomy 13:1-5 it says, “If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst.”
  • So those are the tests for a prophet’s authenticity:
    • 1. Does what he prophesies come to pass like he said it would? If not, false prophet. And by that criterion alone hundreds and thousands of so-called prophets, TV preachers, and charlatans are excluded. Do not listen to them.
      • Now if what they foretell does come to pass like they said it would, still there is a second test.
    • 2. Does he speak of and lead you to the one true God (Jesus the Christ) or does he entice you immorality, or to worship other gods?
    • Only the person who can both tell the future accurately and leads you to the one true God are true prophets. The rest are liars or deceivers or presumptuous and according to the Law of God, worthy of execution, “purge out the evil from your midst.”
• Notice how seriously God punishes false prophets. Under the law of Moses, it was a criminal act, a civil crime worthy of the death penalty to speak lies in the name of the Lord.
  • Listen to what God says to Ezekiel in Ezekiel 13, “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who prophesy, and say to those who prophesy out of their own heart, ‘Hear the word of the Lord!’ ” Thus says the Lord God: “Woe to the foolish prophets, who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!” They have envisioned futility and false divination, saying, ‘Thus says the Lord!’ But the Lord has not sent them; yet they hope that the word may be confirmed. Have you not seen a futile vision, and have you not spoken false divination? You say, ‘The Lord says,’ but I have not spoken.” Therefore thus says the Lord God: “Because you have spoken nonsense and envisioned lies, therefore I am indeed against you,” says the Lord God. “My hand will be against the prophets who envision futility and who divine lies; they shall not be in the assembly of My people, nor be written in the record of the house of Israel, nor shall they enter into the land of Israel. Then you shall know that I am the Lord God.”
• So the irony is that these false prophets are receiving from Ezekiel true prophecy, and the true prophecy is that they are false and going to be punished for their lies.
• So there are true prophets like Ezekiel with morally upright lives, there are true prophets like David and Solomon who sometimes fall into grievous sin, there are false prophets who are evil and speaks lies, and then there is this other category of people who are also called prophets, but they don’t write Scripture, some of them aren’t even believers, and yet they are called prophets in some analogous and derivative sense. And this brings us to our third question which is…

Q#3 – In what sense if any may someone be called a prophet today?

If you were to lookup every single instance of the word prophet and prophecy in the Bible, and then organized and categorized all those instances, you would discover that there are four main senses in which someone may be called a prophet. And we distinguish them according to 4 qualities. A prophet in the truest and fullest sense has all 4 of these qualities, but some are called prophets who only possess one or two of these qualities. So what exactly are those qualities? As we have seen already:

• 1. A prophet receives Supernatural Revelation.
• 2. A prophet is given Understanding of that revelation.
• 3. A prophet Communicates/Speaks that knowledge to others.
• 4. A prophet Works Signs or Miracles to confirm that God has spoken through them.
• To give some you some examples of this range of people called prophets in the Bible, let’s start with someone who has all four of these qualities, namely Moses.
  • God himself distinguishes Moses from other lesser prophets by saying to Aaron and Miriam (who were challenging Moses authority), “Hear now my words: If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold: wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against my servant Moses?” (Numbers 12:6-8).
  • And then the book of Deuteronomy concludes with this later postscript about Moses saying, “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, In all the signs and the wonders, which the Lord sent him to do in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh, and to all his servants, and to all his land, And in all that mighty hand, and in all the great terror which Moses shewed in the sight of all Israel.” (Deut. 34:10-12).
  • So Moses is what we would call a capital P Prophet. He is the greatest of the prophets before Christ, and He possesses all four of these qualities in great measure.
    • 1. Moses received Supernatural Revelation directly from God, which we now call Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Moses received, wrote, and edited the first books of Scripture.
    • 2. He was given understanding of that revelation such that the Lord Jesus could say in John 5:46, “For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me.” In other words, Moses understood he was writing about Christ.
    • 3. Moses had courage to communicate God’s Word to Pharoah, to Israel, to many people who did not actually want to hear what God had to say.
    • 4. Moses worked many signs and wonders and miracles as Egypt was destroyed, the red sea was parted, food came from heaven, water came from the rock.
  • Now if Moses as greatest of the prophets has all four qualities, consider some men who are also called prophets, but lacked some of those qualities.
    • Take some of the minor prophets for example, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Habakkuk, or even John the Baptist. These were men who received divine revelation, understood what they saw and preached it to others, but performed no miracles.
    • Or take Joseph, who also worked no miracles, but he was given a special ability to interpret/understand other peoples’ dreams and then foretell the future. It says in Genesis 41:16, “So Joseph answered Pharaoh, saying, ‘It is not in me; God will give Pharaoh an answer of peace.’”
    • Daniel likewise was a prophet who did not work miracles, but was given visions and dreams, some which he could interpret, and some which he could not.
      • He says in Daniel 8:27, “I was astonished at the vision, but none understood it” and in Daniel 12:8, “I heard, but I understood not.”
    • Or to take a more strange example consider the prophet Nebuchadnezzar. He is the proud and unbelieving king of Babylon. He has dreams and visions he cannot interpret. But God turns him into a beast for a time, converts him, and then he authors a chapter of Scripture describing his conversion and giving glory to God. Daniel chapter 4.
  • Summary: There are prophets who just see things but don’t understand. There are prophets who do understand but don’t see things in a vision of dream. There are prophets who write Scripture and there are many prophets who don’t. All Scripture is inspired prophecy, but not all prophecy becomes Scripture.
    • And if that was not complicated enough, you then have at the bottom of the barrel people who are called prophets but only derivatively or by distant analogy. These prophets have only 1 quality and it is that they speak divine truth (often without understanding what they are saying).
    • These are people like King Saul, Balaam, (we might also add Balaam’s donkey), Caiaphas the High Priest.
      • It says in John 11:49-51, “And one of them, named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, Ye know nothing at all, Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. And this spake he not of himself: but being high priest that year, he prophesied that Jesus should die for that nation.”
        • So notice, the Bible calls one of the men who wanted Jesus dead, a prophet.
      • Balaam likewise was a man who had no love for the Lord, he was a prophet for hire and was hired by Balak King of Moab to curse Israel. However, God made Balaam to prophesy truth, blessing, and the coming of Christ which Moses then wrote down and included in Scripture (see Numbers 22-24).
      • And then you have King Saul, who even in the midst of hunting down David to kill him becomes a prophet. It says in 1 Samuel 19:22-24, “Saul asked, Where are Samuel and David? And one said, Behold, they be at Naioth in Ramah. And he went thither to Naioth in Ramah: and the Spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on, and prophesied, until he came to Naioth in Ramah. And he stripped off his clothes also, and prophesied before Samuel in like manner, and lay down naked all that day and all that night. Wherefore they say, Is Saul also among the prophets?”
• Summary: Not all prophets are created equal. There are capital P Prophets and there are lower case p prophets. Some are called and ordained to the office of Prophet, like Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. And then some like Caiaphas, or Balaam, prophesy truth, but as Jesus says in Matthew 7:22-23, “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”
  • So this difference of degree and gradation of prophets and prophecy helps explain what we find in 1 Corinthians and the rest of the New Testament.
• And so to answer our question directly, “In what sense if any may someone be called a prophet today?”
  • To this we may answer there are two senses in which someone may be called a prophet today, and both are by way of analogy and participation, and not by identity. If you forgot what an analogy is, it is naming one thing by way of likeness to another.
    • The Bible does this all the time, even with a name like God/Elohim. Elohim in Hebrew is grammatically plural, but in English we translate it in the singular as God when God is the one speaking or acting. But there are many places where Elohim refers to created beings like angels, or kings, or judges in Israel. The Bible calls all of them Elohim, with God being the true and proper Elohim, and then angels and men only by analogy or participation.
  • So what are the two senses in which someone may be called a prophet by analogy/participation today?
    • 1. All Christians may be called prophets by analogy inasmuch as they speak the Word of God to others. Just as Scripture calls many people prophets who only speak the Word of God just so we may call those prophets who have received the Scriptures, speak the Scriptures, sing the Scriptures, and pray the Scriptures.
      • To this we could also add that every Sunday all the saints prophesy when we recite together the Nicene Creed. For in it we foretell future events, “He shall come again, with glory, to judge both the living and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end,” and “I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.” When we confess that we foretell the future truly!
      • It is in this broad sense of prophetic inspiration that Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12:3, “no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.” And Moses speaks of the new covenant age when he says in Numbers 11:29, “TOh, that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”
      • When you speak of Jesus as the Scriptures speaks of Jesus (as Lord and Christ, and future judge of the world), you are speaking in the Holy Spirit the very Word of God, and in that sense all Christian who recite God’s Word are in that moment infallible prophets.
    • 2. The second sense in which someone may be called a prophet by analogy is as someone who possesses the spiritual gift of interpreting, explaining, and preaching the Word of God to others.
      • And this is the sense in which Paul is describing prophets and the gift of prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14.
      • We know this because earlier in 1 Corinthians 11:5, he says, “But every woman who prays or prophesies with her head uncovered dishonors her head.” But then in 1 Corinthians 14:34, he says, “Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says.”
    • So how is it that a woman can pray and prophesy in church and has to wear a headcovering when she does, but she is also not permitted to speak? Is Paul contradicting himself? No. He is just using prophecy in the same two senses I just listed.
    • A woman prays and prophesies with everyone else as she participates in the singing of psalms, the responsive reading of Scripture, the praying of Scripture, and so forth. Woman is a coheir together with man in Christ (1 Peter 3:7). But what she is forbidden to do is exercise the office of a public prophet who preaches in the church.
      • For as Paul says also in 1 Timothy 2:11-12, “Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. And I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence.”
    • And Paul knows that some people will think he is being too patriarchal or chauvinistic, so right after he prohibits women prophesying as public teachers, he says in 1 Corinthians 14:37, “If anyone thinks himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things which I write to you are the commandments of the Lord.”
    • So if a woman today wants to claim to be a pastor or preacher or prophet, Paul says, then let her acknowledge what the Lord has commanded, because if she was a true prophet, she would know better.
    • These are hard words for our egalitarian age to hear, and yet these are the words of the Lord, His inspired and infallible commands.

Conclusion

The Apostle John who was the last and final capital P Prophet to author Scripture records in Revelation 19:10 that, “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” And so while we might be tempted to take offense that women are not allowed to exercise the gift of prophecy in the church, remember what the whole point of this gift is for. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:3, it is for edification, exhortation, and consolation.

• By hearing about the person of Jesus we are edified. He is our cornerstone.
• By hearing his instructions in morals and how to order our life we receive exhortation.
• And by hearing his promises that he will never leave us or forsake us and is preparing a place for us in His Father’s house, we receive heavenly consolation.
• And so I close with the words of Romans 15:4-6, “For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope. Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And Amen.