Deuteronomy 18:18 reads, “I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth: and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.” In a general way, we can say that these words apply to every prophet that God raised up. Moses himself was the first prophet and when God called him to the prophetic office He declared, in Exodus 4:12, “I will be thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say.” God told Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:9, “Behold, I have put my words in thy mouth.” And so it was with every prophet, ending with Malachi who began his prophecy in Malachi 1:1 with these words, “The burden of the word of the LORD to Israel by Malachi.” Without exception each prophet claimed to be the mouthpiece of the Lord, speaking whatever He commanded them to speak.

These “true prophets” are in stark contrast to the “false prophets” that pretended to speak for God. In verse 20 God warned His people of these, “But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak…that prophet shall die.” Verses 21-22 go on to say, “And if thou say in thine heart, how shall we know the word which the LORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of the LORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD hath not spoken.”

We have seen how verse 18 can apply to every prophet that God raised up, but it is obvious that God had ONE PROPHET in mind, for He said, “I will raise them up a prophet.” We have no doubt whatsoever that THIS PROPHET is the Lord Jesus Christ. The Jews in Jesus’ day were still looking for “the prophet” that would fulfill this verse. In John 1:21 they asked John the Baptist, “Are thou that prophet?” John told them he wasn’t and then they asked him, in verse 25, “Why baptizest thou then, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?” John went on to tell them that there was one among them that was the One they were looking for and from that point on men of faith began to follow Jesus and to listen to Him. They realized that this One was indeed “the Prophet” that God raised up “from among their brethren,” and that God had put His “words in his mouth.” Jesus Himself said time and time again that the words that He spoke were given to Him from His Father. In John 8:28 Jesus said, “…as my Father hath taught Me, I speak these things” and in verse 38 He declared, “I speak that which I have seen with my Father.” In His prayer to the Father shortly before His death He affirmed the same truth, for we read in John 17:8, “For I have given them the words which Thou gavest Me.” After His death, resurrection and ascension to glory, the apostle Peter preached to the nation of Israel, accusing them of rejecting and murdering their own Messiah. Peter basically told them that their search for the Messiah and the Prophet should have stopped with the Lord Jesus, for he ended his message with these words in Acts 4:22, “For Moses truly said unto the father, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me; him shall ye hear in all things whatsoever he shall say unto you.” (172.3) (DO)