Emmanuel Reformed Church of the United Church of Christ

I love this passage from Deuteronomy.  It lays out very clearly how we can tell what comes from God and what doesn’t.  Knowing God’s Word to us in our everyday context is not an easy task in today’s word (if it ever was).  In Chapter 18, Moses lays down 2 criteria for knowing the truth of the Word of God: 

1. If the person is speaking a word of prophecy, it must be consistent with what the Lord has already revealed in his Word. 
2. And does the prophet’s word bear fruit down the road.  Does it come true?

Here’s Deuteronomy 18:15-22:

The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. ¹⁶This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: “If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.” ¹⁷Then the Lord replied to me: “They are right in what they have said. ¹⁸I will raise up for them a prophet like you 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. ¹⁹Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. ²⁰But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak—that prophet shall die.” ²¹You may say to yourself, “How can we recognize a word that the Lord has not spoken?” ²²If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken it presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.

Here’s the sermon: Jam and Jelly