Prophets and God

Prophets were not God’s first choice.

God created the earth. Then he reached into the earth and formed man from the dust then he leaned in to breathe the spirit or breath of life into the still unfinished man from thence he took a rib and finished man with his complimentary component, woman.

God spent time daily walking and talking with man. Worship and communication were face-to-face. They were intimate and personal experiences. Both were informal and comfortable. God’s first choice was to deal directly with his people; i.e., face to face.

Sin brought the collateral damage of renewed chaos: disruption, destruction and decay as man was estranged from God.

Reconciliation was itself jagged with the broken, fallen man. Man’s fall has meant his relations ever since have been crippled. Man’s relationship with God became an arms-length-ritualized relational dance. Altar, sacrifice, accompanied by fire, death, and ego-defense mechanisms changes worship from a walk and talk to liturgy with confession and sound-bites of praise and worship and a stumbling, halting, gait replace an easy walk with God.

At one time God dealt directly with his people. He dealt directly with man. Then after the fall woman was subjected to man and God spoke to the primarily to the fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but he also still occasionally spoke to the sons, like Joseph, and to women -- daughters and sisters like Miriam and Deborah.

But the people remained fearful of God as they had been at Sinai when they cried out and sent Moses to mediate between them and God.

Later they rejected God’s leadership saying that they wanted a king like the nations around them.

So God told Samuel, then his judge and prophet to the people, they have not rejected you, but me. He went on to tell Samuel to find and anoint Israel's first king, Saul.

Eventually Israel was plagued both with ungodly Kings and false prophets. However, it is the prophet that I wish to focus on herein.

In the beginning every man and woman were in relationship with God and there was no need for prophets. Each person heard directly from God. The fact that they walked and talked in the cool of the day might even suggest the latter practice of God continuing to speak to his people in their dreams and night closed in.

Cain killed able over issues involving their priestly service: sacrifice, worship, and hearing and heeding God’s voice. In one sense then Cain also represents or foreshadows the office of the false prophet; holding forth as God’s word his own will, and wrongly enforcing it. He distorted, at the very least or ,perhaps, misrepresented, God’s desires and he acted in an evil manner as a result.

Jumping down the track we might consider the sorcerers or magicians who supported Pharaoh, a God, himself, among a panoply of Gods and Balaam, an acknowledged soothsayer. These along with a variety of other socially acceptable spokesmen for God(s) seemed to have made a practice of speaking well and or guiding their patrons and in Balaam’s case acted on-demand to curse the enemies of their patron. God, himself, challenging Balaam to act contrary to his pocketbook.

Additionally, it is of serious interest to me that Balaam on the one hand seems entirely comfortable with his communication with God. The point on contention between Balaam and God which the New Testament will further acknowledge is that Balaam was profit motivated.

In the story of the leprosy of Naaman, a military commander, who came from a powerful, neighboring enemy state to seek healing from the prophet Elisha is informative (II Kgs. 5). Naaman presumes that he should offer considerable wealth to the prophet in order to secure this blessing. But the prophet of God waved that off. However, within his ministry staff was Gehazi who saw the opportunity to profit from the man’s willingness to pay and as a result was cursed by the prophet and as a reward was, himself, leprosy stricken. This certainly instructs us that the true prophet of God is not a hireling and does not speak or act from a profit motive.

Meanwhile Balaam is nonetheless in a clear communication loop with God. Our God who can and has used a star to guide wise men to the crib of the messiah, and who has used an ass to correct a profit driven soothsayer to speak truly as God directs can also use the fallen perverted soothsayer to do his bidding when he so desires.

God did not in the beginning chose intermediaries through which to speak to mankind. In the last days the prophet Joel foresaw the coming of a return to God dealing directly with his people as he had in the garden.

Therefore we who are his children need to learn to listen for his voice. Even an ass can hear it!