As we look at the life of Jesus, we see that he performed three roles for his people: prophet, priest, and king. For the next three questions, we will look more closely at each of these special jobs and discover how Jesus was better at them than anyone before him! We’ll start by talking about how Jesus did the work of a prophet.

In the first half of the Bible, the Old Testament, God chose certain people to be prophets. A prophet was God’s messenger. The Lord would give them a message to deliver to his people, then send the prophet to go speak it to them. Sometimes, it was a message about the future. Most often, it was a serious warning about terrible times that would come if the people didn’t stop their evil ways! Whether the message contained happy or not-so-happy news, it was a prophet’s job to speak it to the people. There are dozens of different prophets listed in the Bible. A few of the more famous ones were Moses, Elijah, and Jeremiah.

To make his people listen to the message of his prophets, God often gave them the ability to do amazing miracles. When a prophet did something incredible that only God had the power to do, the people paid attention. Seeing these miraculous signs and wonders, they could be certain that the words the prophet spoke came straight from God himself!

During this life, Jesus did the work of a prophet. He spoke God's Words to the people. But since he was the Son of God, literally every word that came out of his mouth was the Word of God! And the things Jesus said were exactly what God his Father wanted him to say. In John 12:50, Jesus tells us, “So whatever I say is just what the Father has told me to say.”

Jesus also did many mighty miracles. He healed the sick, fixed the eyes of the blind, drove out demons, and even raised a dead guy back to life after he had started to stink! These signs and wonders made the people who saw them pay attention to Jesus’ words. A man named Nicodemus once told him, “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him” (John 3:2).

Jesus was the greatest prophet there ever was. Every word he said was true, straight from the mouth of God. As he spoke, he shared his message to the people about the kingdom of God: how they could enter it and how God expected his children to live as members of his kingdom. As Jesus spoke like a prophet to the people, he revealed mysteries about God. But he didn’t even need to speak to show us what God is like. After all, Jesus was God in human flesh; his listeners could learn new things about their God just by watching the way he lived his life!

Ex. 7:1-2, Deut. 18:15-18; John 1:18; 4:25; 14:23-24; 1 John 5:20