The Angel Of The Lord

The Unseen Hand of God in Providence 0:14

You know, at some point in the future, probably in glory, but at some time in the future, I'll bet that we have the opportunity to look back at our lives and to see things that we're probably not seeing right now. In other words, at some point, I'll bet you God grants us the opportunity to look back at our lives and to see through retrospect something that we're missing right now.

And the main thing, the main thing I think we're missing is what you might call God's unseen hand in our lives, doing all manner of things that we have no recognition of in the moment He's doing it. So many times we face adversaries or hardships or illnesses or what have you, and we know God is there.

We know He can affect things, but we think He's a satellite in orbit of us, and only now and again does He track into the line of sight in order to assist us. Sometimes we default to that sort of thinking. Sometimes we know God is there, but then something scary comes up on our radar, and honestly we just disassociate the fact that God is there and God is powerful from our circumstances.

Elisha at Dothan: Eyes to See the Chariots of Fire 1:16

Do you remember the story of Elisha and his servant? They're in a place called Dothan. The Syrians are coming against them. They wake up one morning.

The Syrians are basically at the door of the city looking for Elisha in order to kill him. But Elisha, he's not worried at all. Elisha does the equivalent of getting up and gets his morning coffee and paper and goes out on the balcony, and he's not sweating it. But his servant, his servant was freaking out.

He says, oh my stars, alas, my master, what shall we do? But Elisha was a cool customer. He says, God, show my young friend, show my young ward here your unseen hand. Show him something that I can see through the eyes of faith that he needs to see with his physical eyes.

Show him that You got this. Show him that You're here. Show him that Your hand is invested in our circumstances in ways that he clearly doesn't understand. In that moment, what happens?

The servant is enabled to see around the valley and to see the mountains. And what does he see there? He sees chariots of fire all around them. One moment he was looking at Syrians and freaking out about them.

But then he is enabled to see the unseen hand of God and God's power and God's provision and God's protection all around him. And that protection and that provision overwhelmed, outnumbered, outshone that of the poor Syrians down below. He saw the chariots of fire. He saw that God was with him.

I think at some point you and I will have the benefit through retrospect, through spiritual eyes that we don't have right now, to see that so many times in our Christian walk, maybe even today, God is with us and we don't see how. We don't see His unseen hand. We don't see the chariots of fire.

Footprints and the God Who Carries His People 3:00

We don't see these things. You know, back in the 70s and 80s, there's a poem that got inscribed in a lot of Christian churches, and the poem is called Footprints. You ever remember this? Some of you probably own plaques from the 70s or 80s that had this on.

Footprints. The two footprints walking through the sand. Now, the poem is written through the eyes of the poet herself, and it's an attempt to look backward at one's life and to see that God was with me through the course of my steps, through the course of my days. There was two sets of footprints through the sandy beach of my life.

But the poet makes an observation, and that observation is this, that at certain points, looking back at the footprints, at certain points, there was only one set. At certain points, there was only one set. And what was odd about that was that that coincided with the times and the moments when things were the worst, when things were terrible in the person's life, and they couldn't figure it out.

So the poet asked this question, God, the times it was the worst for me, there was only one set of footprints. Why? Why did you leave me alone in those times? And of course, the poem ends with this declaration on behalf of God to the poet.

The declaration is this, my precious child, I love you. I would never leave you during your times of trial and suffering. And when you saw only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried you. It was then that I carried you.

Now that's not a biblical quote, but I will tell you this, that concept, that idea, that poem does reflect a biblical precept. God is not distant or aloof with what you're going through. God is not remote in your times or hours of need or when you're facing dangerous obstacles or situations. He's right with us, even carrying us, although you might not know it at the time.

God is carrying you even right now. The biggest theological problem I have with the poem Footprints is this. There's no time in my own life where there was two sets of footprints. God carried me the whole lot of it.

There was one set, and I was in His arms the entire time. My point is this, as we look at today's text, if you could only see the unseen hand of God in your life, if you could only see the things he's protected you from so far, if you only knew the sort of maladies that would have taken you down, the amount of scar tissue that would have been laid upon your back, the way you would have been devoured by a spiritual enemy, if you had any idea what would have already happened to you if God had not protected you thus far.

Dear heavens, if you could see that unseen hand, how much more confidence would you have for the future or for what you're going through today?

God's Covenant Faithfulness from Egypt to the Promised Land 5:33

God was consistently reminding the Israelites. He says, you people, you think I'm going to leave you alone? I haven't left you alone. I was with you in Egypt.

You prayed, I answered. I was with you at the Red Sea. The Egyptians came, I drowned them. I was with you in the wilderness.

You were hungry, I fed you. And when you go across the Jordan River, when you go into the promised land, I will be with you still, even though there are monsters there, even though there are tall folks, there are tall walls, there are Jerichos. Down the road, there'll be Goliaths and the like.

I will be with you, and I'll be with you in the person of the angel of the Lord, who is the focus of today's study.

Exodus 23:20-22: Behold, I Send an Angel Before You 6:16

“Behold, I send an Angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place which I have prepared. Beware of Him and obey His voice; do not provoke Him, for He will not pardon your transgressions; for My name is in Him. But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries.”

— Exodus 23:20-22 (NKJV)

Let's look at verses 20 through 22 and then just work our way through the balance. Verse 20. Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you into the place that I have prepared. Beware of him, obey his voice, do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.

But if you indeed obey his voice, do all that I speak, then I, I will be an enemy to your enemies. I will be an adversary to your adversaries. All right. In verse 20, God is reminding the people of the covenant that he made with — who? — a long time ago.

It starts with an A. Abraham. He says, you remember that guy? I made him a promise. And that promise had multiple aspects, one of which was that he would have more descendants than the stars in the sky and the sand of the beach.

Another key component was this, that in my time, I would bring his progeny, bring those ancestors into their own land, into their own place. I would watch over them and protect them. So here, he's referring back to this covenant, and he's saying, I've gone to prepare a place for you, and I will send, I will send my angel to protect you.

He will go ahead of you, and the enemies that you see in Canaan or elsewhere, they will not stand before Him. Now, when you think about it, God could have done differently. He could have said, hey, guys, good to see you. Here's my laws.

There's the promised land. Here's a map and a canteen. Go for it. He, in effect, could have just sent them on their way like weary travelers.

Thanks for stopping by. I'm glad we have this time together. There you go. You have good, safe travels and the like.

He could have been just divine GPS telling them where to go. But that's not the way God does things. Instead of just sending them off the map in a farewell, God says, hey, hey, hey, as you go into this place and face the things you're going to face there, I'm going to be with you in the person of this angel.

No Ordinary Angel: The Burning Bush Christophany 8:16

“And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush.”

— Exodus 3:2 (NKJV)

Now, as you might guess, this is no ordinary angel. No ordinary angel. If you don't get anything else out today, get that. This is no ordinary angel.

Now, how do we know that? A couple weeks ago, we studied Exodus chapter 3, and in Exodus chapter 3, we read about Moses' encounter with the burning bush. Moses encounters the burning bush. Now, who did he meet in the burning bush?

Who did he meet? You keep thinking I'm going to ask you trick questions or something. Who did he meet? He met God.

He met God in the burning bush. Absolutely. And we know he met God. Why?

Because God says, hey, Moses, take off those shoes. Why? Because the ground you're standing on is holy ground. Furthermore, when he met with God in the burning bush, God said something that only God can say.

He says, I am who I am. Tell the Israelites, I am has sent me to you. This was not just a bush. With that said, there's something we might have missed back when we studied Exodus chapter 3.

Let me reread just a small portion. Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the desert. He came to Horeb, the mountain of God, and the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of the bush.

Exodus 3 refers to that which was within the bush as the angel of the Lord.

The Pre-Incarnate Christ: Testimony of the Reformed Divines 9:34

Now, how is that possible? Is this an angel or is this God? Well, it's one of those times the right answer is both. You see, an angel, the term in scripture refers to messenger.

We think of an angel with regards to a noun. We think of it as an angel — the seraphim, the cherub, what have you. We think of an angel in that context. However, an angel means a messenger, an emissary, an ambassador from this holy kingdom.

And there in the bush, Moses met the greatest ambassador the kingdom has to send. He met Jesus Christ in pre-incarnate form in the bush. He met Jesus Christ in the bush. John Calvin, John Owen, Jonathan Edwards, it doesn't matter who you pick.

Every good theologian of all time has looked back at this and said, this is an encounter with Christ. Edwards put it this way. He said, this redemption was by Christ, as is evident from this, that it was wrought by him who appeared to Moses in the bush. For that was the person.

There's three persons. This is the person that was sent to Moses to redeem the people. But that it was Christ is evident, because He is called the angel of the Lord. From the start of Exodus, at the burning bush, from the start, the very beginning, Jesus was on the scene, not just an angel per se, but Jesus.

Jesus in Exodus: Passover, Red Sea, and the Spiritual Rock 10:48

Now, did Jesus show up anywhere else in Exodus? Yes. Honestly, do a study of this and you'll find the second most frequent person to appear in the whole book of Exodus, you have Moses and then you have Jesus. Let me briefly prove this.

In Exodus 14, at the Red Sea, so you had the burning bush, then God delivers the people through the plagues and the Passover. Oh, and by the way, on the Passover night, who was this angel Lord? Who was this destroyer who was sent through the land, it was Christ. Christ is He who cut down the heathen and protected the children.

And then when they came out through, through the Passover, when they ended up at the Red Sea, what happened? In Exodus 14, it said that the angel of the Lord came and shielded, shielded Israel from the Egyptians who were chasing them at that time. The angel of the Lord shows up at this point.

He shows up in the Passover. He shows up in the burning bush. He shows up in Exodus 14. He shows up in today's passage in Exodus 23.

If we were to go all the way to when they finally get into the promised land. Even after Moses has died and Joshua leads them into the promised land, do you know who the first guy they meet is? It's Jesus. Joshua 5 says this, when Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted his eyes and he looked, and behold, a man stood opposite with his sword drawn in his hand.

And Joshua went to him and said, are you for us or for our adversaries? And he said, no. Which is an interesting answer. You're for them or for us? No. No. But as commander of the army of the Lord, I have now come.

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and he worshiped. And he said to him, what is the Lord, what does my Lord say to His servant? And then the commander of the Lord's army said to Joshua, take your sandal off your foot. The place where you stand is holy ground.

Just like in Exodus 3. You see, Jesus shows up at all these different intervals. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus is the angel of the Lord that protected and preserved and led and instructed every step of the way. The Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, he knew this.

He recognized this. He said this in 1 Corinthians 10. He says, brethren, I don't want you to be unaware that all of our fathers, when they're under the cloud and pass through the sea, they're baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea. They ate the same spiritual food.

They drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them. And that rock was Christ. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, protected, preserved.

He was the angel Lord in all the occurrences we see in Exodus. And with those passages in mind, let's listen again to what we see in today's text in verse 20 and 21. Behold, I send an angel before you to keep you in the way and to bring you to the place which I have prepared.

Beware of him, obey his voice, do not provoke him, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him. The angel of the Lord is our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. If you want a stone cold, take it to the bank, lock of the day, that's it. The angel is Christ.

Election and the Doctrine of Sovereign Covenant Love 13:47

All right, let's see what Christ is going to do as we look at verse 23 and 24. For my angel will go before you and bring you into the Amorites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Canaanites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, and I will cut them off. You shall not bow down to their gods, nor shall you serve them, nor do according to their works, but you shall utterly overthrow them and completely break down their sacred pillars.

You know, the theological concept that gives people just the most trouble is what we call the doctrine of predestination, doctrine of election. For centuries, people have the hardest time believing that God can choose those who He wants to choose in order to love, to save. People just — they don't like that, and I get why they don't like it.

There's times when none of us have liked it. It's a hard truth to accept that God acted this way. But what do you see here? We're not going to talk at length here about predestination, but I want to — point is this: God looks at Israel and says, you're mine.

Those other guys, they're not. I have chosen you for reasons that have nothing to do with you. Dear heavens, you can be as unlovable as they are, and yet I made a covenant with Abraham: to his descendants, they would be mine. And I keep my covenants.

And because of that, I'm going to be with you when you face Amorites and Jebusites and Hittites and Canaanites and all the other ites combined. They are not mine. Their gods are not me. Their ways are not my ways.

And you remember that when you go into their land, and you tear down every pillar that you find, and you do not, you do not follow them in their ways, lest they corrupt you, and cause you to turn from me. That's what we see in verses 23 and 24. Now, the people were not, as we said a moment ago, they were not so darn lovable that God couldn't resist loving Israel.

It really wasn't the case. Dear heavens, read the Old Testament and tell me how lovable the Israelites were on any given day. They weren't so lovable that God sat there and said, oh, I can't help myself. Oh, my heart just — I can't help you.

You're just so wonderful. No, dear heavens, they were just bad and naughty as some of the pagan nations at times. Look back at our study of Ezekiel and you see that. And yet they were his.

Yet he had a relationship that was unique with them. And it caused him to respond and act in certain ways that he did not act to the Philistines, to the Jebusites, Amorites, Hittites, or Egyptians. You know what the proof was that God didn't love the Egyptians but He did love Israel? He brought Israel through the Red Sea.

He drowned the Egyptians in the midst of it. God chooses. God elects. Why?

I don't know.

Divine Protection and Provision for the Covenant People 16:31

It's above my pay grade, but He does what He does, and we see it here in this text. All right, let's look at verses 25 and 26. Verse 25. So you shall serve the Lord your God, and He will bless your bread and your water.

And I will take sickness away from the midst of you. No one will suffer miscarriage or be barren in your land. I will fulfill the number of your days. You know, if someone were to ask you whether you want God to protect you or to provide for you, to protect you or provide for you, and you had to choose, do you want God to protect you or provide for you?

The right answer is yes. We want both. Why? Because we need both.

Sometimes we get so hooked up on a provision when we're praying, but we need Him to protect that which He provides and blesses us with. You know, if Pastor Fish comes and gives you a million dollars, and I come and take the million dollars away, what's the problem? Well, you suddenly have a problem with your pastor, but beyond that — beyond that, here's the point.

You don't just need the provision. You also need the protection that it is yours and that it will remain yours. God says, I'm going to bless you and I'm going to look out for you. I'm going to grant you the food and the water and the sustenance and provision you need to live and to survive and even to thrive as you go into this land.

But I'm also going to hedge you in so that which I give you cannot be taken away, cannot be removed. And I will do it through supernatural means, and I'm not granting anyone else. During this hard season, this difficult season — you're in a wilderness now, you're going to be facing these enemies — then, during this season, I'm going to demonstrate my protection for you in this sense: your women shall not be barren, they shall not miscarry, sickness will be removed from your — your sandals won't even wear out off your feet.

This will be a sign to you, because that's unusual across history — mankind — that's not the way things work. But God says, this is gonna be a sign to you that I'm with you. Even the mundane things — I got this.

Blessings and Curses of the Old Covenant 18:30

With your sandals not wearing out or catching colds or what have you — I am with you through this season. However, we see in verses 25 and 26 there's a caveat here. Verse 25 says, you shall serve the Lord, and He will bless. The old covenant that really is founded there at Sinai — the old covenant had really two things.

There was blessings, which we like, right? We like a good blessing. There was blessings, and then there was curses. And God says, look, I've got such a grasp on your situation.

You see the quail and the manna and all the things I've been feeding you with? Well, I'm going to keep doing that. I'm also going to look over your health, your wives and your children. I'm going to protect you, and I'm going to preserve you.

And as I'm doing all this, don't turn to the other gods. Obey and listen to me. Obey what I've told you to do, and things are going to go wonderful, and the blessings that you receive in times past are just a foretaste of that which I will do for you in the future.

But, for the love of Pete, if you don't do that, what do you think is going to happen? Well, things are going to go poorly. If you put me, Jehovah, here, and you take Baal or Tammuz or any other god and put him here, and you turn to this guy instead of me, what's going to happen?

Things are going to go poorly for you. Blessings and curses is what we see in these verses. All right, let's look at the blessings. Let's look at verses 27 through 31 as he expands on the blessings, the provision, the protection that he'll grant to his people, even as they face great and numerous enemies.

Verse 27. I will send my fear before you, I will cause confusion among all the people to whom you come, and I'll make your enemies turn their backs to you. I will send hornets before you that will drive out the Hivite and the Canaanite and the Hittite from before you. I will not drive them out from before you in one year, lest land become desolate and the beasts of the field become too numerous for you.

But little by little I'll drive them out from before you, until you have increased and you inherit the land. Now set your bounds from the Red Sea to the sea, Philistia, from the desert to the river. I will deliver you from the inhabitants of the land into your hand, and you shall drive them out before you.

Why God Removes Obstacles Little by Little 20:49

All right. In your own life, you probably have obstacles that don't include Philistines or Canaanites or Jebusites or Amorites or what have you. So we look at this and we say, well, amen and amen. God was going to take care of those ites, those guys here in scripture.

But as we sit centuries later in Gulfport, Mississippi, we have different ites. We have different obstacles. We have different things on our radar. So how does something like this apply?

Well, what we wish is probably the same thing that the Israelites kind of wished. God, you say that that land is mine. You make me promises. Okay, snap your fingers.

Send me in. I'm ready. I'm ready to claim everything you've said. Just snap your fingers, remove all the obstacles, bring me from A to B in the most linear path possible.

That's sort of what we want. That's sort of what they would have wanted. They don't want hardship. They don't want to spend years, let alone decades in the wilderness before they got to that point.

They want God just to do it all at once. But even in this text, God says, no, no, no, no, no. He says there's the law of unintended consequences. If I do it the way that you want me to do it, things are actually going to be worse than if we do it my way.

Let's do it my way, God says here. Now, why? Why in your own life doesn't he just remove all the obstacles at once? Why doesn't he do what we would like him to do?

Well, again, in this text alone, we see two reasons. The first is the law of unintended consequences. Here, if God had driven out the Canaanites, they were that which was most formidable on the radar of the people at this time. If God drove them out right away, God tells them, hey, you guys might want that, but, you know, there's some unintended consequences of that.

While those Canaanites are there and the Jebusites and the Amorites and the Hittites and all those guys, you know what they're doing? They're tending the land that's going to be yours. They're keeping the soil. And not only are they keeping the soil for you that's going to be yours, but they're also keeping the wild beasts at bay and they're driving them out and the like.

It's actually better that they stay where they're at. And I'll drive them out in my time, step by step. We'll nudge them on out, knock them on out. We'll get rid of them.

But for the time being, they serve my purpose. You might think I should snap my fingers, but no, you don't have the picture that I have. In our own lives, this is true. What we would think should be an A to B, a linear path for God to choose, God has a better lay of the land.

And he knows all the unintended consequences. He knows the ways that we are going to be blessed through his path above and beyond what our path might be.

God Appoints Jerichos to Try and Refine Our Faith 23:13

So that's one observation we see in this text. The second observation is this. God knows this much, that our faith grows when we face, when we face obstacles. The faith of God's people was going to be tried the minute they got into the promised land when they faced a mighty people seated behind a mighty wall in a place that we know as Jericho.

God knows that your faith needs Jerichos to grow. God knows that our faith is cultivated by the existence of Jerichos, by the existence of opposition that, when he overcomes it in our full view, has the net effect of strengthening our sense of who he is and our willingness to worship him and turn to him.

And so God did this throughout the Old Testament and into the New and into the Church Age and into your own life. God appoints Jerichos for us. In Israel's case, he appointed Jerichos, he appointed Goliaths, he appointed Babylon, he appointed Assyria. He appointed fiery furnaces.

He appointed lions' dens. Why? Because that was the means by which the faith of his people was tried and refined. And that means it's okay if you have a Jericho in your life today.

The question is not will you face hardships and doubts and anxieties. Of course you will. You know the way this world works. But God tells you the same thing He tells His people here.

He says, I won't leave you alone as you face it. But I am with you, and I'm capable of defending and protecting those that are my own. Those who trust me and turn to me in these moments. God allows these things to exist because they try and refine our faith.

Even those who face death — even facing death itself tries and refines our faith.

Death as the Last Jericho Before the Promised Land 25:06

Death is the one Jericho we all must face. But we have the same promise that God's people had at this hour in Scripture, that he will see us through into the promised land intact. When God promised the Israelites that He'd get them to the promised land, a place flowing with milk and honey, that was a type of shadow someplace better.

What we see as death is the last Jericho that will fall before God escorts us, carries us intact into the promise that awaits. We may not see that right now, just as we do not see the unseen hand. And yet it's true.

Make No Covenant with Idols: A Call to Holiness 25:47

All right, let's wrap up with a look at our final verses, verses 32 and 33. Verse 32. You shall make no covenant with them, with the ites. You shall make no covenant with them, nor with their gods.

They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me. For if you serve their gods, it will surely, as the day follows the night, it will surely be a snare to you. You know, when I was younger, I was probably only, I don't know, five or six or something like this.

I remember my mom dressed me up for church one time. This is back when we did that. My mom dressed me up for church one time. We put on what they called the Sunday finest, and, you know, it was this fancy-looking suit.

And my mom knew this. She knew I was a rambunctious five- or six-year-old kid. And she says, all right, after church lets out, you don't join the other boys down the hill, you know, playing the football or what have you. You don't go and do that.

Well, why, Mom? Because you're going to ruin your suit. You're going to ruin your clothes. Of course, you know, in my equation, the value proposition here really didn't add up so much, but my mom's premise was this, that if I go and do what she knows I'm inclined to do, I'm going to get dirty and grimy and sweaty as a result, and then ruin my suit to the point I won't look different from any other kid out there.

In a sense, God is telling His people here in verses 32 and 33. He was saying, you — you — I've called you out of this world. I've made you holy. I've made you distinct.

Don't go rolling around in the grime. Don't go rolling around to such a degree that that which you appear to be before the world is no different than the world. He says, you shall make no covenant with the people whose lands I'm sending you, neither with their gods. They should not even dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me.

For if you serve their gods, it will be a snare to you. If God was okay raising up pagans, He would have left the Israelites in Egypt. He would have left them in Egypt because they had plenty of paganism there, but that's not what he wants, and it's not what he wants for us either.

Meeting God in His Word and Slaying the Heart's Idols 27:54

Let me close with this exhortation. Here in these verses, here in this text here in scripture, just as God met with His people at Sinai, he meets with us, he meets with you through his word. There's not an ounce of truth in this that is less distinct and less authoritative over you than that which was said on Sinai with a booming voice from heavens.

Today you've met with God. Did you recognize it? You met with God through this, through the reading of His holy word. In today's worship, God has met with us in His word just as he met with the Israelites at Sinai.

In this morning's worship, he has pointed you to the promised land just as he appointed Israelites to the promised land at Sinai. This morning's worship, he has reminded you that he'll be with you just as he was with the Israelites at Sinai, but he's also telling you to be on your guard. Be on your guard in this fallen world just as he warned the Israelites at Sinai.

I am the Lord thy God. There shall have no other gods before me. The biggest threat to the Israelites in this particular season and the biggest threat to you and to your families in the season in which you live right now, the biggest threat is the same. It's the idol factory that exists in our own hearts and which inclines us to do that which God would not have us do.

This week, we're called to put our idols to death and not to go bow down before them. And this is a concept we're going to return to in a couple weeks when we see that these same exact people are going to bow down before the golden calf. Let's pray.