Jesus, the Ultimate Prophet

Prophets are God’s messengers, lawyers, the conscience of the king, and those who pray on behalf of God’s sinful people. In the Old Testament, Moses was considered the greatest prophet (Deut. 34:10–12). During his life, God told him that in the future, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth” (Deut. 18:18). While in one important sense, God refers to the line of prophets, including Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, who will follow Moses; in the most important sense, God refers to the ultimate prophet, namely Jesus as Peter make clear by applying this verse to him in Acts 3:22–23.

Jesus, the Ultimate Fulfillment of the Prophetic Message

Peter also tells us that Jesus fulfills the prophetic word in the most ultimate sense, “all the prophets who have spoken have foretold of these days” (Acts 3:24). As Paul announced, “for no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ” (2 Cor. 1:20).

How the words of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel anticipate Christ is much too rich and varied to be even summarized here, but we can get a glimpse of it in how often the New Testament authors cite these books.

To mention a few highlights, we see Isaiah’s message fulfilled in John the Baptist’s cry in the wilderness announcing the coming glory of God (4:3; Matt. 3:3), in the virgin birth (7:14; Matt. 1:23), the association between the rejection Jesus and the suffering of the servant (53:1; John 12:38), in Jesus’ mission to the Gentiles (9:1–2; Matt. 4:13–16).

Turning to Jeremiah, the New Testament writers cite his book over forty times, but perhaps the most notable connection has to do with the prophet’s announcement of a new covenant in Jeremiah 31:31–34. Jesus established this new covenant at the time of the last supper with his disciples. As he passed the cup, he announced, “this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22:20). The author of Hebrews twice quotes this passage as the new covenant arrangement between God and his people (Heb. 8:7–13; 10:15–18).

Quotations and allusions to the book of Ezekiel are even more numerous than to the book of Jeremiah. For example, the book of Revelation uses the imagery surrounding the appearance of God to Ezekiel at the time of his commissioning to describe the glorified Christ as he appeared to John (Rev. 1:13–15; 4:3, 6–8).