The New Testament form of prophecy started by Jesus was startling in light of what had come before it. In acts 10, Peter was given a new paradigm of how God worked. When he saw that sheet come down from heaven, filled with every manner of unclean animal, he was sickened. He refused to go anywhere with gentiles like Cornelius because they were unclean. Three times, God had to shake Peters upbringing off him: what God has cleansed you must not call common- Acts 10: 15.
God wanted Peter to see the gentiles differently. All his life, the fisherman had been taught to not go into a gentile home, not mixed with any of them, and certainly not eat with one of them. And suddenly, after decades of living like this, God told Peter that he wanted him to do all of those things. You can almost hear Peters protests: I don’t do that sort of thing, lord. It’s not kosher.
What God has cleansed you must not call common.
This was a major shift for not just Peter, but the entire Jewish culture. Acts 11 shows the hot water such a revolutionary act landed him in. The other disciples, Peters dear friends and colleagues, couldn’t believe their ears. Peter’s comment to them is astounding! Who was I, that I could stand in God’s way? ( Acts 11: 17). What Peter experienced in his connection with the household of Cornelius was revolutionary and mindset changing!
Every single one of us is going to go through a similar kind of mental shift. God will change our paradigm about something. It will be as difficult for us to accept as it was for Peter. As prophetic people, we share the Lord’s burden for releasing people from whatever imprisions them.
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. All people who prophecy and those called to the prophetic ministry and the higher office of a prophet are jealous for people to have life and freedom in Christ. They want to see a people of promise and power emerge who know their God and who are living in his fullness.
Prophetic input leads us into an experience of faith, hope and love of the Lord. Prophecy should turn our heart towards the love of God. Even if the word convicts of sin there must be a clear call to repentance in God that brings renewal (revelation chapters 2 and 3).
In Luke 4, Jesus came out of the desert full of the power of the Holy Spirit. He walked into a synagogue, picked up a scroll, and opened it to Isaiah 61. Just the fact that Jesus took the scripture out of sequence must have shocked all who were present. After all, the Jews would pick up God’s word from where they ended the previous reading. Jesus wasn’t terribly interested in sticking to such a tradition. He just turned to his life message in read.
Luke 4: 18-the Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he has sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. Then he closed the book and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.
As prophetic people, we all need a life message about who God is and what he is like. Jesus’ understanding of God the father was that he loved the poor, broken hearted, enslaved, oppressed, and sick. This call on his life focused his prophetic gift. He was constantly kind and generous to those whom he was called to help.
Jesus was full of grace and truth as a prophet. It’s important that we are too; But truth by itself will only change people. Truth causes transformation when it is powered by grace. When those two spirits work together, they have an incredible effect upon humanity. It doesn’t matter if the individual is Christian or pre Christian, truth and grace affects them.
There is a difference between change and transformation. Change can seem a temporary alteration of behavior during a particular season. It could be that people drive their carnal behavior underground when confronted and then return to it when the heat is off.
Transformation occurs by the action of God’s grace on truth when we allow the father to touch our innermost being and we surrender life at that point. It is possible to have great truth but ruin it with poor grace. People then feel browbeaten by truth rather than seeing the beauty of what the father is offering in Christ. Pharisees are chronic Bullies.
I am fascinated by the idea that Christ proclaimed his life message-the Spirit of the Lord is upon me… to set at liberty those who are oppressed-to the Church of his day. He did not read from the scroll, or paraphrase it, during his sermon on the mount, or when he fed the 5000. He didn’t tell the masses that he would save them, but he told the religious community. I’m going to release you from prison, he prophesied to them.
The Church of Jesus’s day was locked in its religious, pharisaical prison. Its system had produced thousands of broken-hearted, oppressed captives. These people had to be freed, and Jesus knew it.