I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.

Deuteronomy 18:18-19 ESV

After using Moses to deliver the Israelites from Egypt, God led His people through the wilderness toward the land of Canaan that He promised to Abraham. Yet because of the rebellious and discontent nature of the people, God sent them wandering for forty years before they could enter Canaan.

At the end of those forty years, Moses stood before the Israelites to give them his final sermons before he died and they entered the land.

Deuteronomy is primarily those final sermons of Moses.

Within his dying proclamations to the Israelites, Moses prophesies about another prophet that would one day come. Moses’ role as a prophet was a speaker to the people on God’s behalf.

When God had spoken to the people directly in Deuteronomy 5, they begged for Moses to be their intermediary lest God’s voice kill them with its power.

Thus, in one sense, Moses is promising that God will always communicate to His people via prophets, yet both Peter and Stephen apply this promise to Jesus (Acts 3:22, 7:37). As the Prophet (John 1:25), Jesus ultimately and perfectly fulfills the role of all the prophets, which is to declare to the people the Word of God.

To ignore God’s prophets was to ignore God’s very words, but Moses seems to give even more special weight to the coming Prophet’s words. We know today that Jesus not only spoke the Word of God, He is the Word of God.

Though Moses, Elijah, and the others were great prophets, each one of them pointed to the Prophet, the promised Savior, Jesus Christ. Consider how often you spend reading the Word of God and how you allow God’s Word to direct your life daily.