Good morning, everyone.
I couldn't help but think that Brother John
was talking about this beautiful weather we have
this morning.
I think the sun must have something to
do with the movements of these suns of
Earth, because, you see, the weather is just
broken lovely now, because the time of my
departure is at hand.
It reminds me when I, I think it
was our very first visit we made to
Costa Rica, my wife and I, a few
years back, and we, they didn't know us
folks, which was one of the parts of
their good fortune, and we ran, we arrived
there and they put on a little meal
for us, which is kind of typical Latin
thing to do, and visitors come to you,
and we met in a little corrugated hall
that they have there, and they served us
their typical food.
And we enjoyed ourselves, but we're getting to
know people little by little, as it has
been my pleasure to do with you this
week.
I know I won't remember all the names,
but I can remember hairdos and colors of
blouses and things like that, you know.
And so we had a very nice time.
We stayed three months with them on that
occasion, in the absence of one of the
missionary families, and when we came to leave,
they put on another supper for us.
And this was a real big meal, and
of course, I had to say something, and
the only thing I could think of, I
said, well, you must have been very glad
to see us come, because I remember the
meal, or we remember the meal that you
put on to welcome us here, but I
see that it was hardly comparable with what
you're putting on tonight, so you must be
triply glad to see us go.
It was just such a much bigger festival
occasion when we were leaving.
Can't blame them for that.
Well, I was thinking, too, that it reminded
me of something the Lord said, you know,
when I look at you folks here this
morning, ye are they who have continued with
me in my tribulations this week.
And my wife generally instructs me about how
to treat the best of friends.
By the way, a man's best advice generally
comes from his wife, in case you're wondering.
She said, now, don't be cramming on the
last few meetings, the last meeting or two.
And that was what I was planning on
doing this morning.
How is it that these feminine words of
instruction come creeping into your mind when you've
just planned to do something?
Because I thought I should wind up our
considerations of visions of God, particularly in the
Old Testament, and then skip over into the
New and do it in about a half
an hour, because I'm not going to abuse
your kindness, or as Tertullus said, the felix
of thy clemency, by going over time this
morning, because I understand the buses and the
station wagons are moving out shortly afterwards.
But what I wanted to do was to
pick out a few individuals that we could
consider in detail, but won't today, due to
time, and then move over quickly and make
a few comments about the New Testament.
We were considering the life of Jacob when
we closed yesterday morning, as I recall, and
got to the place where God met him
at Bethel on his way to Padanerim when
he was fleeing from the wrath of his
brother, as God reminded him 20 years later.
The Lord remembers the occasion under which he
appeared to Jacob.
He was running as a fugitive, really, fleeing
from the wrath of his brother, and God
met him there, as we were noticing, and
he gave him that beautiful promise, Behold, I
am with thee, and I will keep thee
in all places whithersoever thou goest, and I
will not leave thee until I have done
that which I have spoken to thee of,
and I will bring thee into this land
again.
Now, that must have been reverberating through Jacob's
memory over the succeeding 20 years, because it
wasn't until the 20 years were over, at
the close that we read in chapter 32,
that the Lord appeared to Jacob again down
in Padanerim before he left the house of
Laban, and these 20 years were not characterized
by some sudden spectacular appearance by God to
Jacob.
Did you ever stop to think that only
three times in the life of the Master
did he hear a voice from heaven?
How many times have you and I just
wished that the Lord would say something audibly,
personally to us on a given difficult occasion?
We have done that, haven't we?
I know I have done that, and then
I remember, well, the Master was here, and
he was here as we are here, and
he was walking, as I suggested to you
yesterday, the path of faith, and only three
times did he hear an audible voice from
heaven.
Now, he went into the mountaintop on more
than one occasion, and he stayed all night
and communed with his father, but an audible
voice out of heaven, it seems he only
heard three times.
Three times in those three and a half
years, approximately, of his public service.
Now, the life of Jacob was something similar,
and I think our experience is something similar.
God meets us oftentimes in the beginning of
our Christian walk.
I think a lot of Christians have this
experience at any rate, and some of us
are very young when this happens, and some
of us perhaps later on, but he met
Jacob in the early stages of his pilgrimage,
and he made that wonderful revelation of himself
as he stood at the top.
Jehovah stood at the top of a ladder,
and we noticed yesterday that that ladder is
the Son of Man, who is going to
be the one who will bring earth and
heaven together.
Not that heaven is that far away, either.
Neither is hell, for that matter.
When you come to Revelation chapter nine, there's
a door open to a shaft that goes
into the pit, and out of that emerged
a cavalry of demonic spirits, and it's just
right there.
And heaven is not some astronomical remote distance
away from us.
The presence of God may be real to
us every day, and the presence of the
Lord is real to us, and individual, and
intimate.
But Jacob goes away for 20 years, and
he goes away with that promise ringing in
his ears, I will be with thee, I
will not forsake thee, I will bless thee,
and I will bring thee into this land
again.
That promise stood good for 20 years, and
it stood good through the labyrinth, through the
maze, through all the twisted experiences and pathways
of this supplanter, Jacob.
You remember when we open the book of
Hosea, we read in Hosea chapter 12 that
Jacob is a merchant man, the balances of
Deceit are in his hands.
He took his brother by the heel in
the womb, and he was rightly named, as
Esau said, a supplanter, someone who took from
another that which belonged to him.
And so, when he's in the house of
his father-in-law, he has difficulties multiplied
through 20 years, he changes his wages 10
times, he endures the cold of the night
and the heat of the day, he endures
the ravages of the wild beasts, and he
was weary, and he tells his wives later
on, you know that I have served your
father with my whole heart and my very
best.
Isn't always the mother-in-law, you know,
that can give the problems?
Here's a father-in-law, and he's a
very subtle, wily, deceitful Tyrian, and it's Jacob
versus Laban for 20 years, and you can't
help but wonder at some of the strategy
which each of them use against the other.
But all through that, all through the mistakes,
and all through the stumblings, and all through
the wonderings, and all through the connivings, and
the schemings, and the plans, God said, I
will be with thee.
And so, I think you and I need
constantly to hang on to the solidity of
some of these promises which God makes to
us, not in general terms in his word,
but individually as he makes covenants with us
as we go on our way through life.
Now, it's not going to be a spectacular
array of mountain peak experiences, but I do
believe that there are special occasions in the
life of each of us when the Lord
appears to us, when we are spoken to,
when he speaks to us, when he uses
means, circumstances, people, or his word to make
a very special occasion out of a very
difficult circumstance.
Now, I'm not speaking in riddles, I'm not
speaking mythically to some of you, or most
of you, if not all of you, who've
been on the pilgrim way these many years.
So, 20 years come and 20 years go,
and at the close of the 20 years,
God appears to Jacob, and he says, go
back to your country, go back to your
father's house, and Jacob gathers together everything that
he has, and he starts on his way,
and when we come to chapter 32 of
Genesis, let me notice what it says to
you here, the opening verse, Jacob went on
his way, and the angels of God met
him.
32 and verse 1.
Without any introduction, without any special occasion, without
any emergency, without confronting any major difficulty, Jacob
is going on his way, and the angels
of God met him.
Later on, this group of angels is called
a host, or a camp, and later on
when Jacob comes to the Fort Javik, he
says about how he had gone over the
River Jordan with his staff, and he's coming
home with two bands.
I've wondered about that.
On this occasion in chapter 32, as he's
going on his way, I like this, as
he went on his way, God has directed
him, he knows where he's headed, he's going
on his way, and in the process of
the activity of journeying, the angels of God
met him.
Now, that's all that's said, but isn't it
significant?
Why a host?
Why a camp?
Why a group of angels?
Now, we know that the terrain through which
Jacob was traveling could be very perilous, it
could be very dangerous.
It was fraught with various dangers.
Bandits, and wild beasts, and so on, through
much of the country he was traveling, and
he certainly needed protection, he needed a shield,
he needed to be accompanied, and he was.
Not one angel smote the camp of the
Assyrians in one night, 85,000 people.
He's got a host of them, he's got
a group of them, and it's in the
plural, and it's called a camp, mahanayim, two
bands.
And I don't know, I can't say with
certainty whether Jacob is referring to his own
vast array of servants, and sons, and flocks,
and herds.
When he later mentions that, he says, I
crossed Jordan with this staff, and now I'm
coming back again, made two bands.
Is he talking about his own group of
possessions, or is he talking about his own
family, and his own servants, plus a host
of the angels of God?
But there was some specific reason, evidently, why
these angels met him at the beginning of
chapter two, and all we may conclude is
that God is being good to his promise,
and he's making very evident to Jacob, regardless
of all the difficulties, regardless of all the
problems, all the disappointments, and the discouragements, and
the physical difficulties that he passed through, God
is with him.
And not only is God with him, God
is with his children, his wives, and his
children, and his servants, and his flocks, and
his herds.
Comforting, isn't it?
We're farther down on our journey, most of
us, than we ever thought we would get
there, aren't you?
I never thought I would see, certainly, I
never thought I would be over 40, ever
be over 40, but here I am, and
now I'm actually over 50, but anyway, I
never thought I would see the decade of
the 80s, and I never dreamt we'd ever
see the 90s, and at any rate, the
Lord, there were 88 reasons why the Lord
was coming in 1988.
You remember that one?
I read those two books, too.
And then, do you remember that, after the
88 reasons why the Lord had to come
in 1988, he didn't do it, he was
coming, you know, between sunset and sunrise, September
the 13th through 15th, and he didn't come
on those feast days, so then, oh, that's
right, we made a slight mathematical error, it's
91 he's coming, yes, in 91.
So, in the fall of 91, you understand
the Lord will be here.
Well, 91 came, and 91's gone, and I
was in North Carolina a while back, for
a little conference on a weekend, and I
was handed some new literature altogether, printed in
blue, I suppose that was to be a
heavenly message, and it said that computations had
been rectified now, and the Lord was definitely
coming in the fall of 92.
What are you folks doing here?
This is 93.
Well, they've been making all kinds of prognostications
of that kind, and we are still here,
and we never thought we would be this
far, likely, on the journey, but regardless of
20, 50, 60, 70 years that may lie
behind us, God is with us still, and
all that we have is his, and so
Jacob moves forward, and then something rather strange
happens, he gets word that Esau's coming.
Now, 20 years have not erased from the
memory of Jacob his own trickery, neither have
they wiped out the stain that conscience has
left upon his heart, and he's afraid of
Esau.
Isn't it remarkable how human nature, still, even
after God has done all this for us,
doubts and questions, and is afraid, and you
come into a new situation, you say, how
am I ever going to handle that?
They've actually invited me to go to Park
of the Palms for a week, what am
I going to do with this?
Well, look at all those stern, intelligent, aged
faces, and what will I say?
So, I was quite apprehensive about it, to
be very honest and frank with you.
So, in spite of all that the Lord
has been to us, and has done for
us, we meet new circumstances, and here's Jacob,
and he hears that Esau's coming, and he's
afraid.
So, he gets together a minka, a gift
offering, and that goes way back, as I
suggested to you earlier in the week, to
Cain So, he gets these presents ready.
Now, I don't know, I have no way
of computing this, I'm only suspecting, perchance, that
it may have been this way, but when
God met Jacob at Bethel in chapter 28,
Jacob promised God, with the oil poured on
top of the pillow that became the pillar,
he promised God that he would give him
a tenth of everything that the Lord would
bless him with.
Now, I don't read of that ever happening,
and whether it could or couldn't have happened
in the land of Cain and Aaron, I'll
leave you to decide.
But, at any rate, he's on his way
home, the vow is 20 years old, he
has accumulated a tremendous amount of wealth, and
I don't have any indication that any of
it went back to God in any way
whatsoever.
So, he's coming to meet Esau, and what
is he going to do?
He's going to do for Esau what evidently
hasn't done up until now for the Lord.
I think I see a reflection there, somebody's
face, and it's not likely yours.
So, he gets all these presents ready, these
gift offerings, these minkas, he gets these all
ready, and he sends them over in droves,
so many hundreds of this, and so many
hundreds of that, and so many score of
something else, and he's moving them up ahead
with his servants, and these are to meet
Esau and his 400 men on the way.
Esau's coming, it would seem, with an armed
force.
But, at any rate, Jacob is afraid.
Now, is Jacob finally having to give to
Esau what he should have been giving to
the Lord?
Did you ever see it work that way?
We know that all that we have is
his, we know that we should be giving
back to the Lord of the abundance of
the things he has given to us, we
know that if the Jew was required to
give much more than a cent, if you
add up all the votive offerings, the gift
offerings, etc., the free will offerings, and yet
it's difficult sometimes to discover the saints of
our day who go as far as the
law.
So, our shame be it said.
But, he's giving it now, or offering it
now, to somebody else.
Should he offer to Esau what he should
have already offered to the Lord?
Be that as it may, he sends the
presents on, and then we come to that
marvelous passage in chapter 32, when he sent
his wives over in verse 22, and he
was left alone in verse 24, and there
wrestled a man with him until the breaking
of the day.
Very intriguing passage, a passage that stirs your
mind to consider it.
Visions of God.
Who is this man of high degree, as
he is called?
Who is this one that Jacob prevails against?
That's a marvelous thing to say, isn't it,
in Hosea chapter 12?
He took his brother by the heel, but
he wrestled as a prince with God, and
he prevailed against the angel of the Lord.
He prevailed by his strength.
He prevailed, it says, against the angel of
the Lord.
How does a man prevail with God?
How does a man wrestle hand to hand,
cheek to cheek, body to body with an
angel of the Lord?
Who is this one that retains the authority
to change his name now from Jacob to
Israel, a prince with God?
Who is this strange person who meets him
alone?
The angels of God met him as a
company to a company, but this one meets
Jacob as man to man.
Let us never forfeit our personal experiences with
the Lord because we have them in the
aggregate.
Let us never think that because as a
congregation we meet and enjoy the presence of
the Lord, that's all that we require.
Let us remember there are still personal, individual
encounters with God, and I know it isn't
always true, or safe, perhaps I should say,
it isn't always wise to take this expression,
the angel of the Lord, and to apply
it as a theophany, though I do believe
it is one of the manifestations of God,
the second person of the Godhead in man
-like form, individually called the angel of the
Lord.
You say, I don't think you have confirmation
of that.
Yes, I think I have plenty of confirmation
of that on different occasions in the Scriptures,
that when God appears as an angel, it
is the Lord himself.
He did that, as we already saw, in
Genesis 18 with Abraham.
He'll do that again, as we may see,
with Moses at the burning bush.
The angel of the Lord spoke unto Moses,
and Moses said, Who art thou?
And he said, I am.
And this man of high degree who meets
Jacob at the Fort Jabbok, I believe is
the Lord, he said.
And he finally reduces Jacob.
Jacob must have been a very strong individual
physically.
How could he wrestle all night with an
angel of God?
And how was it only that by touching
him in his thigh and crippling him in
that way that he brought him into a
place of submission?
Nature dies hard, doesn't it?
And liberty and weakness and frailty and submission
come hard.
Because by nature we are independent, we are
lawless, but it's only when nature is crippled
only when nature is quiet, as we notice
with Abraham in his tent door, that God
reveals himself to us.
And so Jacob is crippled.
And he says, What is your name?
And Jacob clung to him, and he said,
I won't let you go until you bless
me.
The perseverance, the unjust judge in the wit
of women, you remember that story.
I won't let you go until you bless
me.
And this insistence, this perseverance is something that
God evidently prizes.
How many of us come to the Lord
with petition and go on our way, and
we say, well, that faith enabled me to
do it.
It might be, and it might not be.
It might be carelessness that makes us to
do it.
It might be presumption that makes us to
do it.
Here's a man, he hangs on to the
angel of God all night.
He says, I won't let you go until
you bless me.
And then he says, What's your name?
And he changes his name to Israel, a
prince of God.
Jacob says, He called Luz Beth-el, the
house of God, because that's where he met
him first.
He calls the poor Jabbok Peniel, the face
of God.
For he says, I have seen God face
to face, and my life is preserved.
Visions of God in the night.
He moves on, he goes on, and then
the Lord appears to him again in chapter
35, and he says, Go up to Bethel
and dwell there, and make there an altar
unto God that appeared unto thee, that's 35
and 1, when thou fleddest from the face
of Esau thy brother.
And then God appears to Jacob again in
verse 9 of chapter 35, and so on.
Now I leave Jacob with you, and let's
move quickly on.
I just want to make mention now of
a few of the others that I had
planned or thought about in connection with visions
of God in the Old Testament.
When we come out of the book of
Genesis, you thought I was never going to
get out of there, didn't you?
Well, when we get out of the book
of Genesis, we come into Exodus, the first
thing, or very early, you meet in the
book of Genesis, Exodus is another vision of
God, which I've already briefly referred to in
connection with Moses.
When Moses comes to the burning bush in
chapter 3, he meets God face to face.
The Lord is pleased to take up circumstances
and conditions, and even things as well as
people, to reveal himself in accordance with the
individual, the circumstance, and the purpose of the
visit.
We would like to box God in, wouldn't
we?
Don't we find, or have you found, guidance,
the matter of guidance, about which so many
Christians often have difficulty.
Haven't you found guidance, just this very thing?
For example, you have a major decision to
make, and you go to the Lord about
it, and you don't know what to do
or where to go, you're not hearing any
audible voices from heaven, and you open the
book one day, and sure enough, right there
in front of you, you have the answer
to your problem.
Has that ever happened to you?
Of course it's happened to you.
Happens to Christians everywhere.
And so you go on your way, and
very sure you are, and it proves to
be so, God has given you definite direction.
Then what happens?
So many months or even years down the
road, you come into another, similar circumstances, another
major decision to be made, and you say,
I know how this works.
So you open the Bible like that, boom,
and there's nothing there.
It doesn't work.
So you don't know what to do.
You're at a loss now to get an
answer to your problem.
You're talking with another Christian one day, and
you're making certain things, and something, a comment
is dropped, and you've got it right there.
The Lord says, this is it.
It's not alive, not Judas, no.
This is it, and that's your answer.
You know that's your answer, and you go
your way, and certainly enough, it was the
Lord's leading.
So you come up to a third difficulty,
a third decision to be made, and you
say, well, I remember how it was the
first time.
So you open the book at random, doesn't
work.
You go around and talk to a number
of people, silent, and you're in a quandary
now.
You say, Lord, how are you going to
guide me?
How are you going to tell me what
to do?
And he's waiting to tell you, but not
the way you think he's going to tell
you.
So he chooses another method altogether to show
you the way.
Now, why does this happen in our lives
as Christians?
May I suggest one basic reason?
We are naturally inclined to trust methods, and
God says, with me you don't trust methods,
you trust me.
And I won't do it the same way
every time, not only because the circumstances are
different, but because I will do it with
you, and be to you thy God.
He will be to us an individual God,
as we are to him individual sons and
daughters, and he will retain at all costs
the individuality of his manner of our guidance.
I have proven that over and over again.
Before we ever went to Cuba, I'd better
not go into all this.
A way back in 1940, during the course
of the Second World War, everything was blowing
up around us in Canada, wasn't so much
here in the States at that time, not
until after Pearl Harbor, but we were in
the midst of it there, in the thick
of it, and so I was very much
interested, and I thought I had the Lord's
leading about going to Cuba as a missionary.
I'm not going to tell you all this
story, but at any rate, I got very
definite guidance from the Lord that we should
go to Cuba.
And my wife and I were married back
there in 1943.
Now you know I'm over 50, and you
got that one figured out already, I'm sure.
So what happened was, we were given military
exemption on the grounds of being minister of
the gospel, and so we were served in
Canada for a number of years.
And when the war was over, and the
door was open to go to Cuba, I
went to the Lord, and I said, Lord,
I want some plain indication that we are
now to go to Cuba, when we couldn't
back that many years ago.
And I waited, and I prayed, and I
read, and I watched, and I waited, and
I prayed, and I read, and I watched,
and I got no guidance.
And I said, I don't understand this.
The Lord told me so many years ago
that that's what He wanted me to be,
and now He wants us to be, and
now the war is over, and we can
leave the country, and we can get passports
to travel, etc., and now He won't tell
me that He really wants me to go.
You know what happened?
Well, in a nutshell, He just closed doors
all around, all around.
And when all the doors were shut, as
far as my service was concerned, it dawned
on this dark, benighted mind that the Lord
hadn't changed His mind at all.
He told me once that He has to
tell me again, so He just shut all
the doors.
I said, all right, I see.
What is He doing?
He is staying true to His first commitment
and guidance, and the gifts and calling of
God are without alteration.
He doesn't fluctuate.
He doesn't change His mind.
Circumstances come and circumstances go, but God is
the same, and His Word is the same,
and He is reliable, and His Word is
reliable.
When He makes a covenant with us personally
about anything, He will stand to that covenant.
So He said, all right, all right, I'll
show you.
You have to be shown.
I'll show you.
And I had all the disappointments, and it
was disappointing.
I had all the doors shut in my
face.
You use some old preachers to do it,
too.
They're real handy instruments for that sometimes.
And He shut all the doors around, and
He blocked me out of everywhere and everything,
and He said, now, where do you go?
I said, Lord, I'm going to Cuba.
The only door is left open.
But God retains that right to deal with
us individually.
Now, we come to the next case, Moses
at the burning bush.
He meets Him, the I Am, commissions Him.
You know that marvelous story.
And Moses sees God face to face in
the burning bush.
Moses later on goes up Mount Sinai, and
as the Lord said, and I quoted to
you the other day at the beginning of
our studies, the Lord said, He will see
the similitude of Jehovah, and I will talk
with Him face to face.
Moses comes down, the tabernacle is built, and
when Moses wants to talk with God, he
goes in to the sanctuary, and he talks
to the Lord in front or before the
propitiatory, the mercy seat, and God answers Moses.
And this man is characterized by individual communication
with God all the way through.
He's a man that has seen God.
After Moses, who comes to the stage?
Joshua.
Did Joshua see the Lord?
The river Jordan?
The Ogalls?
He stands there, ready to go in and
possess the land, and he sees a man
with a drawn sword in his hand.
And Joshua says, Are you for us or
for our enemies?
Do you come in peace, or how do
you come?
He says, No, I came as a captain
of the host of the Lord.
Take your shoes off your feet.
And here's another of the theophanies, when a
man looks upon God as he's pleased to
present himself to this man in keeping with
his calling, in keeping with his service, in
keeping with his charge, and in keeping with
the work that lies before.
I insist on leaving with you this thought.
God is your God.
He's my God.
Your life is not mine.
Your experiences are not mine.
My needs are not your needs.
My difficulties are not your difficulties.
And God meets us individually on the ground
which he is pleased to do so.
So Joshua meets the Lord.
And then you come out of the book
of Joshua and the book of Judges, and
let me just throw two little brief instances
at you.
Judges chapter 6, we have Gideon, poor man.
I was interested to note the various tribes
that these men come from.
God is, he makes no exception of persons.
He doesn't discriminate, as we say today so
frequently, and so he takes a poor man
of a poor house in the tribe of
a poor tribe, the tribe of Manasseh, and
he's grinding wheat, where wheat wasn't supposed to
be ground, but was in the winepress out
of sight of the Midianites, because of the
Midianites who were robbing and spoiling and pillaging
the land of Israel.
And the Lord meets him in the angel,
the Lord meets Gideon there, and he says,
God is with thee, thou mighty man of
valor.
Mighty man of valor, did you say?
Why says Gideon?
He protests, he said, I'm of a poor
family, the poorest family in the tribe of
Manasseh, and I'm the very least of my
father's house, and if the Lord is with
us, why has all this befallen us?
Two major requirements to the use of God.
One is personal humility, and the second is
confidence in the victory of the presence of
God.
See what he says?
I'm the least in my father's house, my
father's house is the least in all the
tribe of Manasseh.
Why do you say to me, thou mighty
man of valor, and then anyway, if the
Lord is with us, why have all these
things befallen us?
And the angel of the Lord looks at
him and he says, go in this thy
might.
Where is the strength?
Where is the might?
Lack of self-confidence and an understanding that
the presence of God means victory.
Another one of the interesting visions of God
we have in the Old Testament.
We move over to chapter 13, and there's
a woman in chapter 13.
I know we don't have her name, we
don't need her name.
She was looking after her personal duties, her
house duties, and the angel of God appears
to her, and he says, you're going to
have a son.
Well, she had all lost all hope of
having sons.
Aren't these childless couples a wonderful study in
the scriptures?
Marvellous.
And the children that come out of these
childless couples.
So she wasn't going to have any children,
and the angel of the Lord promised her
children a son, rather, and what she is
to do with this son.
Now she belongs to the tribe of Dan,
and you know that the tribe of Dan
turned out to be a tribe of inferior
quality and even of treachery in Israel.
And Jacob spoke about them in his dying
prophecy in chapter 49 of Genesis.
And of the tribe of Dan now, here's
this woman, and she's told by a visit
from the angel of the Lord that she
is going to have a son.
And this is how you'll do this, and
this, and this.
And she runs out into the field where
Manoah, her wife, her husband is working, and
she runs out to tell him, she says,
there's a man up here to me.
Oh, a man?
What did he say?
He said, we're going to have a son.
And he told me what I'm to do,
and I'm to be careful about this, and
honder is this son.
Oh, I see.
Manoah didn't know anything about it.
No, no.
But his wife knew about it.
She not only was a very able vessel
for what was going to happen, but she
was a very logical, clear-thinking individual.
Manoah goes to the Lord, and he asks
the Lord, he says, Lord, if you've really
sent someone to my wife, have him come
back again to convince me that this has
really happened.
He goes on with his work, and his
wife's out in the field one day, and
the man appears to her again.
He's an angel of the Lord.
She's doing what she's supposed to be doing.
And he appears to her in the outworking
of the daily duties, and tells her again.
And he waits there, and she runs to
tell her husband, and her husband comes back,
and you know the story.
What shall we do?
How shall we order the child?
How shall we raise this child?
How shall we conduct ourselves with this child?
Samson of the tribe of Dan.
And so he tells Manoah again what he
had told his wife previously.
And Manoah says, oh no, if you're really
a messenger from God, let us go and
get your present.
And he goes and gets a meal ready,
as Abraham did, and he brings it, and
I'll give it to you for to eat.
Well, he said, you'll have to offer it
to the Lord, for I won't touch your
food.
And he lays it on a rock, and
then it says the angel did a wonderful
thing, because fire came, and as the fire
went up from the altar, which would be
a burnt offering, it went up from the
altar, the angel disappeared in the flame.
And Manoah falls on his face, and he
says, we're dead, because we've seen God face
to face.
And his wife said, you are not thinking
straight.
If God wanted to kill us, would he
have appeared to us?
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right.
And then you know the rest of that
story.
Well, we come on through, and we keep
on coming through visions of God through the
Old Testament.
Samuel, Solomon, Daniel, when Gabriel comes, but here's
the best of it all.
We come into the New Testament, and I
was thinking of this word, and it was
running through my mind, we beheld his glory.
John 1 and 14, the word became flesh
and dwelt amongst us.
We beheld his glory.
What was the glory that John's talking about?
Here's the verse, the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God was seen in
the face of Jesus Christ.
Now, I admit this whole study breaks down,
because the best is yet to be enjoyed.
However, those who looked upon the face of
Emmanuel, from the day Mary saw him and
laid him in a manger, from the day
he was wrapped by another and a mother's
hand and laid in a manger, to the
day he was wrapped by another's hand and
laid in a sepulcher, he was Emmanuel, the
mighty God is with us.
And the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God was perfectly seen in the
face of Jesus Christ.
John says we beheld his glory.
And when you first read that, you say,
I know what he's thinking about the transfiguration.
He doesn't even talk about the transfiguration.
You can't find it in the Gospel by
John.
What glory is he talking about?
He says, look at the construction carefully.
He says, we beheld his glory, the glory
as of an only begotten son from beside
the Father.
The definite article is not there.
It's not the only begotten son.
He was the only begotten son.
No doubt about that, but that's not the
idea.
We beheld his glory as one who had
come from being beside the Father.
Oh, what was the glory?
It was the glory of the Father seen
in the Son.
And that glory you may trace, of course,
through the Gospel by John.
But I haven't given you time, have I?
Well, may you have a good day.
You are a day of continued with me
in my tribulations, shall we pray?
Our Father, we pause a moment, for we
remember that there's a glory that is bright
above the brightness of the sun.
It is the glory seen in the face
of the Son.
We thank you for who he is.
We thank you for who he was.
We thank you for the mission of his
coming to declare thy name, to reveal thyself,
so that he could say, he that has
seen me has seen the Father.
Bless our meditation of thy word as it
may please thee, Lord, this morning, as we
commend it to thee for the remainder of
the activities of this day, through the Lord
Jesus Christ our Savior.
Amen.