A prophet like one of the prophets of old (Mark 6:15)

            This is one of the answers to the question, “Who do you say I am?”  But it is not an answer from Jesus’ disciples, and He is not the one asking the question.  King Herod had become afraid because he had beheaded Jesus’ cousin and thought that Jesus was John the Baptizer.  The people were saying that Jesus was Elijah, which is an understatement or at least “a prophet like one of the prophets of old”.  They may have thought that they were exaggerating slightly, but it is impossible to exaggerate God.

            It would do us well to recognize the futility in trying to exaggerate concerning God.  Sure, we can teach wrong things about Him, but we cannot out do Him.  He isn’t just loving, He is love.  He isn’t merely powerful, by His hand all things are held together.  He isn’t understandable, but knowledge of Him is understanding.  He is a blazing paradox that makes the most profound novel seem like the adventures of Curious George.  His world is far more exciting than the monotonic, monochromatic boredom we call “life”.  There are colors around Him that human eyes can only see by faith.  There are sounds coming from His throne that only those who have ears to hear are able to discern.  And you haven’t truly tasted until you have tried the fruit of His goodness.

            The Father is not lacking creative genius.  He is constantly dreaming up ways of blowing our mental circuits so that He can get some seeds of faith into the faithful so that they can grow up into oaks of righteousness under the unapproachable Light of His Presence, watered by the Word.  He does abundantly beyond all we could ever ask or think.  His ways are higher, His thoughts higher, His goals bigger and His intentions purer than anything we have ever considered.  And it is His good pleasure to give us the Kingdom.  He wants revival more than we do.  He wants to hand out blessings more than we want to receive them, but in His divine and great wisdom He withholds things for a time so as to give us the true treasures of the Kingdom – His character, His Presence, His mind.  The keys to these treasures come at the price of our weakness given to Him.

            When the prophets see Him in the Scriptures, they are always saying “One like a son of man”.  He is so beyond us, so completely other than us that human language would have a hard time explaining Him without eternity.  This is one reason why it is so silly to be boastful.  Jeremiah said that the only ones that ought to boast are those who know and understand God.  That rules out a good majority of the human race from boasting.  If anything, Jesus is not like the prophets, but the prophets are like Him.  It was the touch of eternity that gave the prophets authority, eyes to see what they saw, ears to hear His word and the endurance to do the strange things they were instructed to do.

            Even what the prophets prophesied He would do was only like what He did and will do.  The beloved John said in the end of his gospel account that if all He had done in those three and a half years were written down, a library the size of the globe would be insufficient to contain the record.  Limits mean nothing to the One who created the ones who set those limits.  But Jesus is like the prophets in one way, He is crazy.  He is so committed to His people that He considered His own life for naught without them.  He went through the worst torture methods available to the Roman empire of His time on earth willingly, not to prove a point but to prove His love.  We see His resolve creeping out in Hosea’s pursuit of Gomer.  We hear and feel the anguish of His soul in the lamentation of Jeremiah.  When eternity touches the temporal, even echoes break chains.

*Lord, here are the keys, go deeper and take us further than we’ve yet been. Amen*