¹⁵YHWH your God will raise up to you a prophet from the midst of you, of your brothers, like me; to him you shall listen; ¹⁶according to all that you desired of YHWH your God in Horeb in the day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear again the voice of YHWH my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I not die. ¹⁷YHWH said to me, They have well said that which they have spoken. ¹⁸I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you; and I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him. ¹⁹It shall happen, that whoever will not listen to my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. (Deuteronomy 18:15–19)

Here is yet another very clear prophesy that describes and explains details about the promised Jewish Messiah.

Notice that this prophecy was given in answer to a corporate prayer to YHWH from His people. In response to their prayer that they not hear again the direct voice of God, God decreed that they had spoken well, and from then on they would hear from Him indirectly through a man like them. But look closely at what God explicitly said. The prophet that God would raise up would be, first, like Moses, and second, would be from among them and like them, the Israelites. Was Moses a hybrid God-man? Were any of the Israelite children with Moses hybrid God-men? Were any of the prophets that rose up after Moses God-man hybrids? Of course they were not. God described the Messiah to them in very precise terms: he would be as human as they were. But most importantly, we should ask, did the NT apostles apply this prophecy directly to Jesus? Why yes, they most emphatically did.

The following quote is the second recorded preaching of the gospel after the day of Pentecost. In this instance, Peter adds to our understanding of Christ. Instead of pointing to Jesus as David’s offspring, he established Jesus as the prophet of whom Moses had spoken. Peter began his preaching by contrasting and distinguishing the God of the Jews from the man whom God calls His servant. Nowhere in Peter’s preaching of the gospel did he tell the Jews “this Jesus is a hybrid God-man…” There was simply no such “incarnation of God” language in Peter’s preaching of Christ, either here or anywhere else in the Book of Acts.

¹³The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you delivered up, and denied… ¹⁴But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, ¹⁵and killed the Prince of life, whom God raised from the dead, to which we are witnesses. ¹⁶By faith in his name has his name made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the faith which is through him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all.
¹⁷Now, brothers, I know that you did this in ignorance, as did also your rulers. ¹⁸But the things which God announced by the mouth of all His prophets, that Christ should suffer, He thus fulfilled. ¹⁹Repent therefore… ²²For Moses indeed said to the fathers, “The Lord God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me. You shall listen to him in all things whatever he says to you. ²³It will be, that every soul that will not listen to that prophet will be utterly destroyed from among the people.”… ²⁶ God, having raised up His servant, Jesus, sent him to you first, to bless you, in turning away everyone of you from your wickedness. (Acts 3:13–26)

Jesus was God’s servant, a man like Moses. This is what the apostles preached him to be. Similarly, the martyr Stephen, just as Peter had, also preached that Christ was a man like Moses:

³⁷This is that Moses, who said to the children of Israel, ‘The Lord our God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me… (Acts 7:37)

But we will cover Stephen’s preaching when we get to him in our examination of Acts. The verse is just being mentioned here as confirmation that Peter wasn’t alone in applying Moses’ prophecy to Jesus. These verses testify that God raised Jesus up from among the people , and he was like Moses. Peter also reiterated the prophecy that anyone who doesn’t listen to Jesus will be destroyed from among the people. Jesus is never stated in the Bible to be God incarnate. But here, in Peter’s words, we have a simple and clear explanation of Jesus’ authority over all. It is simply because God raised him up from among the people and glorified him.

Also noteworthy is that Peter didn’t even call Jesus “God’s Son.” In the first sentence, Peter called Jesus “God’s servant.” This word is pais in the Greek. It is Strong’s number 3816, meaning: “a boy (as often beaten with impunity), or… a child; specifically, a slave or servant (especially a minister to a king; and by eminence to God).”

In this way, Peter preached the one (Jesus) whom God glorified as being distinct from God (the God of their fathers) who glorified him. For Peter, the one being glorified was clearly not inherently the God of their fathers. Peter was not preaching a Trinitarian or Onenessian version of Jesus, but rather was preaching the only Jesus that saves. People who preach a different Jesus than this are really saying they don’t believe Peter’s message, which is the true message that Jesus himself gave Peter to deliver to us!

There is another very important point in the above passages. God told Moses, “I will put my words in his mouth” (Deuteronomy 18:18). This is similar to Moses and Peter saying, “You shall listen to him in all things whatever he says to you.” Let’s look at Jesus’ own pertinent words:

The word which you hear isn’t mine, but the Father’s who sent me. (John 14:24)

He who sent me is true; and the things which I heard from him, these I say to the world. (John 8:26)

For I spoke not from myself, but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. I know that his commandment is eternal life. The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father has said to me, so I speak. (John 12:49–50)

Now they have known that all things whatever you have given me are from you, for the words which you have given me I have given to them, and they received them, and knew for sure that I came forth from you, and they have believed that you sent me. (John 17:7–8)

It doesn’t seem as though Jesus could be clearer or more consistent: the words he spoke weren’t his words. This was such an important theme that even John the Baptist, Jesus’ forerunner, said the very same thing: “For he whom God has sent speaks the words of God; for [because] God gives the Spirit without measure. The Father loves the Son, and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:34–35).

Clearly, Jesus, Peter, and even John the Baptist all identify Jesus in terms personally distinct from God. Jesus wasn’t God, rather, he was given and spoke the words God had given him. In words and testimonies such as these, we can see that Jesus truly was a fulfillment of the OT prophecies. Of course, this is just a small sample. The important theme, which all of these Scriptures reiterate, is that God gave Jesus the words to speak. These passages do not say that Jesus spoke from his human nature at one point and from his deific nature at other times. Those who say Jesus spoke as God in one instance and as man in another make these Scriptures void through their traditions that they deliver.

Peter made another very important point about Jesus in Acts 3 (above). In verse 18 he said that God fulfilled everything spoken beforehand by the Hebrew prophets. The most important prophecy for our salvation has to do with the suffering of this Jesus.

There is no denying that the Jewish Scriptures prophesied the suffering servant of YHWH. This theme goes all the way back to the time when God said that the serpent would crush his (Messiah’s) heel but he (Messiah) would crush the serpent’s head.

Isaiah prophesied that the Messiah would be cut off from the land of the living, which is to say, he would experience death for the transgressions (sins) of God’s people. Isaiah’s prophecy improved our understanding of what Christ would do and be, but it did not in any manner contradict or change the prophecy given in Genesis about Eve’s offspring.

³A Man of sorrows… he was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities…
⁵And by his stripes we are healed…
⁶And [Yahweh] has laid on him the iniquity of us all…
¹⁰Yet it pleased [Yahweh] to bruise him; He has put him to grief. When You make his soul an offering for sin…
¹¹My righteous Servant shall justify many, For he shall bear their iniquities.
¹²Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, And he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul unto death, And he was numbered with the transgressors, And he bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors. (Isaiah 53:4–12; NKJV)

This Scripture says that Christ would be a man of sorrows. Peter preached that Jesus fulfilled this prophecy and all that the prophets said about suffering. This is a man suffering. God may suffer vicariously through us because He feels our pain and what we are going through, including His only begotten son. But this passage is very clear in stating that it is God’s servant who will actually bear the burden of the suffering he would be subjected to for our salvation and healing.

This Messiah was fully human. This Messiah stood in very clear personal distinction from the God who “put him to grief” and “made his soul an offering for sin.” No prophecy foretold, explained, or described that Messiah would receive his personality from the “God-side” of his being. No prophecy foretold that only Christ’s human nature would suffer, but his deific nature was God, making him a personal incarnation of God Himself. There simply is no such talk in the entire Bible, let alone in any of the prophecies concerning Jesus. Therefore, if Jesus was the theorized, hybrid, dual-natured God-man, as many try to make him today, then he simply is not the Messiah prophesied in the Jewish Scriptures.

Jumping to Conclusions versus “It is written”: The Bible passage at the beginning of this chapter couldn’t be clearer: ¹⁵ “YHWH your God will raise up to you a prophet from the midst of you, of your brothers, like me; to him you shall listen… ¹⁷YHWH said to me… ¹⁸I will raise them up a prophet from among their brothers, like you; and I will put my words in his mouth ” (Deuteronomy 18:15–19). This is not jumping to conclusions; it is what the Bible clearly and plainly teaches us. On the other hand, to claim that Jesus is more than this man like the rest of us, is to jump to conclusions.

The OT Schoolmaster: ³“A Man of sorrows… ¹¹My righteous Servant shall justify many, For he shall bear their iniquities. ¹²Therefore I will divide him a portion with the great, And he shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because he poured out his soul unto death, And he was numbered with the transgressors, And he bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors” (Isaiah 53:4–12; NKJV). The OT teaches us to believe that Christ was God’s servant whom God sent.

Teach No Other Doctrine: You will never read in the Bible that Jesus is clearly and unmistakably taught or preached to be inherently God, or that he is God incarnate, or that he is “100% God and 100% man.” Rather, in Peter’s words in Acts 3:13–26, we have a simple and clear explanation of Jesus’ authority over all. It is simply because God raised him up from among the people and glorified him.

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