By Taylor Fair – Pastor of Students and Families – Brookside Campus
The more quality time you spend with someone, the more deeply invested you become in that relationship, and the more you begin to care about the things that matter to them.
I have been an avid fan of the Green Bay Packers since I was three years old. I even wore a “cheesehead” hat for my college student I.D. photo! My wife, on the other hand, had no reason to even think about professional football until she started dating me.
But now, ten years into our marriage, she cares nearly as much as I do! Because of her life lived with me, she has invested in things that matter to me. And I could name countless things (far more important than football) that are now important to me, because they stir her heart.
The Circumstances of the Prophets: Idolatry and Injustice
This is the precise dynamic we find at play when we read the books of the prophets in the Bible. As the northern and southern kingdoms became increasingly established in the land, they progressively resumed the ancient human enterprise of seeking to live life without God for their own good instead of life with God for their neighbor’s good.
From the most lowly to the most powerful, God’s people were enmeshed in two chief sins: idolatry and injustice. In order to justify themselves, they cultivated a circle of “prophets” who claimed to speak the very words of God, but really just told the people what they wanted to hear.
They spent little time getting to know God’s heart in God’s presence. They were unattuned to God’s voice, unmoved by his character, unbothered by Israel’s sin, and altogether unaware of what was really at stake for God’s people.
The Heart of the Prophets: Feeling What God Feels
During this same time, there remained genuine prophets who had been called and commissioned by Yahweh himself. They spent time in his presence, and as a result, they developed hearts that broke for the very things that broke Yahweh’s heart. They couldn’t help but speak the true words of Yahweh, whether they pronounced the looming darkness of exile or the distant hope that God would gather his people again.
The prophets reveal that a life lived with God begins to feel what God feels. They possess a deep identification with the pathos, or emotions of God, and a deep identification with the predicament of humanity. Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel brilliantly describes the experience of the prophet as:
“Facing man, being faced by God…In the presence of God he takes the part of the people, in the presence of the people he takes the part of God.”
Heschel continues:
“Prophecy proclaims what happened to God as well as what will happen to the people…Sin is not only a violation of a law, it is as if sin were as much a loss to God as to man. God’s role is not spectatorship but involvement….The pages of the prophetic writings are filled with echoes of divine love and disappointment, mercy and indignation. The God of Israel is never impersonal…God is involved in the life of man.” – Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets
Each prophet gives us a glimpse into the very heart of God: his anguish at abandonment, his ire at injustice, his compassionate commitment, his loyal love, his readiness to receive repentance, and his desire to deal with sin and dwell with his people—ruling them forever in a remade world.
The Vision of the Prophets: Seeing as God Sees
The prophets also reveal that a life lived with God begins to see as God sees. Their prophetic imagination is so saturated with the reality of God that they perceive the world differently. They help us view all of life from the perspective of the God who is deeply involved in human affairs. And through that lens we are able to ascertain that no part of human life is untouched by sin and no part of human life lies beyond the scope of redemption.
One Old Testament scholar describes it this way:
“[The prophetic imagination] reorients the various dimensions of human social life and provides a lens to apprehend sociopolitical and economic reality as it is in God’s sight…[It] has an expansive appreciation of sin, which can help us recognize how pervasive and cruel it is and that it is individual, social, cultural, structural, national, and international.”
– M. Daniel Carroll R., The Lord Roars
But while the darkness of sin is far-reaching, ever more expansive is the hope of redemption. Hope for what Dr. Carroll calls “God’s plenty, justice, and peace.” Hope that these realities will be “taken to heart and lived out in society and in history.” And ultimately, hope that they will have the final say in God’s world. Seen with the eyes of God, every pocket of darkness is something that will soon be permeated with God’s light.
The Invitation of the Prophets: Return to Life With God
As you read and study the prophets for yourself, let them awaken you to the ways you have turned from God and compel you to return to life with him. Let them provoke you to passionately care about the things that matter to him and mobilize you to meaningfully work for his plenty, justice, and peace today. Simply put, let them draw you ever deeper into the very heart of God.
Israel’s prophets are some of the most brilliant and forceful poetic voices in human history. The prophetic literature is just as powerful as it is peculiar, just as puzzling as it is profound. The prophets stare unflinchingly in the face of the darkness of humanity, pronouncing both impending doom and unassailable hope. They urge us to repent—to return to life with God and stick with him. Darkness will come, but hope is on the horizon.
