Reasoning Through the Bible
Taking a cue from Paul, Reasoning Through the Bible is an expository style walk through the Scriptures that tells you what the Bible says. Reviewing both Old and New Testament books, as well as topical subjects, we methodically teach verse by verse, even phrase by phrase.
We have completed many books of the Bible and offer free lesson plans for teachers. If you want to browse our entire library by book or topic, see our website www.ReasoningThroughTheBible.com.
We primarily do expository teaching but also include a good bit of theology and apologetics. Just like Paul on Mars Hill, Christianity must address both the ancient truths and the questions of the people today. Join Glenn and Steve every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday as they reason with you through the Bible.
Reasoning Through the Bible
The Angel of the LORD in the Old Testament (Topical Series Session 2)
Can we find Jesus in the Old Testament? Who is the Angel of the LORD? Is He different than other angels? Does God ever appear as a man? When the man Jesus appears in the New Testament and claims to be God, is this is new concept, or should the Jewish leaders have been familiar with the idea? This session explains who is the Angel of the LORD and why it matters to our theology. We give a foundation for the Trinity in the Old Testament.
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Music.
Speaker 1:Welcome to Reasoning Through the Bible.
Speaker 1:We're going to be talking today about a very interesting topic that you may have not thought of before, but we're going to be talking about a phrase that we see repeatedly in the Old Testament called the Angel of the Lord, and there's several times in the Old Testament stories where the Angel of the Lord appears and if we're not careful, we just read past that and keep going and think that it's just a normal, regular angel, when in reality it's a very special person.
Speaker 1:What we wanted today was to go through several passages kind of a survey of these passages that deal with the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament and why that's relevant and it's not just dealing with the Old Testament but it's dealing with a very special person we find in the New Testament. We're going to be talking about many passages today that all deal with this idea of the Angel of the Lord appearing to people in the Old Testament and we're going to see who this is and I think we can build a fairly solid case about this and that it's a pretty important theological and doctrinal concept that comes into play in several other doctrines. So, steve, what do you have to say about it to kind of get us kicked off.
Speaker 2:Yes, as you mentioned, the Angel of the Lord is a phrase that is used several times in the Old Testament, roughly around 50 times or so. We only see that phrase in the Old Testament. When we get to the New Testament, we don't see that particular phrase, the Angel of the Lord.
Speaker 1:So this is the Angel of the Lord compared to an Angel of the Lord.
Speaker 2:Correct and in the New Testament that's where we see an Angel of the Lord. We don't see in the New Testament the Angel of the Lord. We only see the Angel of the Lord in the Old Testament In a simplest form. Angel Malak means messenger and, as we've noted before in our other sessions, anywhere you see L-O-R-D capitalized, the word behind that is Yahweh. It's the name of God. Literally, this is talking about the messenger of Yahweh. As we go through this, we'll look and, as you mentioned, I think, we'll build a pretty good case to show that this is not simply an Angel, a messenger alone, that it is something else.
Speaker 1:So two words. We want to make sure, before we jump in too far here, that we're clear on One you just mentioned, which was Yahweh in the Old Testament, which is the translators typically translated capital L, capital O-R-D, with all caps and that's contrasted with the word Lord that'll have lowercase O-R-D, which is a different word, different term. The translators oftentimes, instead of giving God's name, yahweh, they typically just translate it Lord. The other word is for the word Angel, as you just mentioned, just means messenger. Angel, just by itself is a messenger. That's what the word means. The original word is not translated Angel. Sometimes it's translated messenger. So we're talking about a specific phrase where it uses the capital, all capital, o-r-d and the definite article, the Angel of the Lord. That is used in a very specific way in the Old Testament.
Speaker 2:The very first time that we see that phrase. The Angel of the Lord is over in Genesis, chapter 16. This has to deal with Hagar. Hagar was the servant of Sarah, where Abraham and Sarah had devised this plan to have offspring, because God had promised that Abraham was going to have offspring, but the promise was going to be an offspring between Abraham and Sarah herself. But Abraham and Sarah came up with this plan to have offspring through one of her maid servants, hagar. Look at Genesis, chapter 16, verse 7. It says Now the Angel of the Lord found her and this is Hagar by a spring of water in the wilderness, by the spring, on the way to Shur, and he said Hagar, sarah's maid, where have you come from and where are you going?
Speaker 2:And she said I'm fleeing from the presence of my mistress, sarah. Then the Angel of the Lord said to her Return to your mistress and submit yourself to her authority. Moreover, the Angel of the Lord said to her I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count. The Angel of the Lord said to her further Behold, you are with child and you will bear a son and you shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He will be a wild donkey of a man. His hand will be against everyone and everyone's hand will be against him, and he will live to the east of all of his brothers.
Speaker 2:Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God who sees. For, she said, have I even remained alive here after seeing him? Therefore, the well was called Baer-La-Ha Roy. Behold, it is between Kadesh and Barad. So then it just says so Heghar-Bora Abraham, a son, and Abraham called the son whom Heghar-Bora Ishmael. So that name, baer-la-ha Roy, means literally the well of the living, one who sees me. The point out in this particular passage here is number one is that this was a physical being, person that Heghar was having a conversation with. It wasn't a vision, it wasn't something that she was dreaming, not just a bright light in the sky Correct.
Speaker 2:This is an actual conversation that she's having with number one. Number two is is that this angel of the Lord is giving her direction and also giving a prophecy, so to speak, in regards to what's going to happen in the future? And then the last part. There in verse 13, it says Then she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her. You are a God who sees all, for even I have remained here alive after seeing him. We've seen that in some of our other sessions.
Speaker 1:She calls him a God Correct and is surprised that she's still living Correct.
Speaker 2:And we've seen that in our other sessions, that that's a natural reaction when people actually see or come face to face or encounter God is that they're in fear of their lives, While we're going to make a better case a little bit later with some of the other ones, it's a little bit more clear. This is the first time that we see that phrase in the scripture.
Speaker 1:It's an actual person and it's somebody that Hagar is having a conversation Now contrast that with other places in the Bible where a character will encounter an angel. One, they don't accept being called God and two, they don't accept any sort of homage in that direction. Just a messenger of God will not accept any kind of worship, will accept any kind of being referenced to God.
Speaker 2:Things like that.
Speaker 1:I think of the angel in the latter part of Book of Revelation, where John falls down in front of an angel of the Lord and the angel says no, no, get up, I'm just a fellow worker like you. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:So then I think that's the first place that we see it. Where's the next place?
Speaker 1:The next place I know of is in Genesis 22, at least the next most important one that I've made note of, and this is the passage where God has instructed Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. And in Genesis, chapter 22, verse one. It says there God tested Abraham and said to him to sacrifice his son Isaac. So the beginning of chapter of Genesis 22 very clearly says God tested Abraham. Well down in verses 11 and 12, it says there that the angel of the Lord called unto him. Being Abraham, the angel of the Lord called unto him out of heaven and praised Abraham because he quote, did not withhold your only son from me.
Speaker 1:And the point there is that the beginning of the chapter God was giving the test. God was the one that was commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. But then, after Abraham actually shows that he's willing to follow through with it, then in verses 11 and 12, the angel of the Lord says you didn't withhold your son from me. So this is a very clear claim by the angel of the Lord to be God, god Almighty, not some lesser God, not God with a little G, but the angel of the Lord in Genesis 22 is making a claim to be God Almighty. Now there's other places, like Exodus, chapter three, which is the burning bush, and I don't know anybody that would deny that the burning bush was God that appeared to Moses in the burning bush and gave Moses the directive to go take his people out of Egypt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just real briefly, in that when you read that it says what grabbed Moses' attention was angel or the angel in the midst of the burning bush. But it wasn't just the burning bush itself. There was a presence that was in there and of course, that presence is what has a conversation with Moses.
Speaker 1:It says it very directly. Exodus, chapter three, verse two the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a burning bush. The burning bush is held by everybody to be God Almighty, yet the same chapter says it was the angel of the Lord that was appearing in the burning bush. So, very, very clear claim to be God. Almighty is the angel of the Lord.
Speaker 2:The next place that it's mentioned and we're not going to go through and look at it, but I'll mention it for the listeners so that they can go is in Numbers, chapter 22.
Speaker 2:And throughout that chapter it talks about a priest that had been hired by a king to give a curse upon the nation of Israel, and this priest starts on his way riding a donkey, and throughout this whole area there's a reference to mention to the angel of the Lord that stands in the way several times on three different occasions, and the donkey sees this angel of the Lord, the angel of the Lord standing in the way and does things to avoid it and belong. The priest beats on the donkey, and then there's a conversation at the end. The readers can go and read that accounting of it, but again, this is a another encounter where there's an actual being that the priest has a conversation with. First the donkey had seen it, then the angel of the Lord makes himself available to be seen by Balom himself. So that's the third occasion that we see the angel of the Lord. I think the next one then is somewhere in Judges.
Speaker 1:Actually I've got three places in Judges that I'm thinking of. There's early in the book Judges, chapter 2, verse 1,. The angel of the Lord is speaking to Israel and says I led you up out of Egypt. Well, the only I led Israel out of Egypt was the Lord, god Almighty. So when the angel of the Lord said I led you up, it's either some created being that's usurping the rights that only go to God, in which case it's a demon and would immediately get banished, or, what's very clear from the passage, this is the Lord, this is Yahweh saying, in the form of the angel of Yahweh, I led you up out of Egypt. And then there's in Judges, chapter six, with Gideon. The angel of the Lord sat down under a tree and spoke with Gideon and in verse 14 of that chapter, judges 614, says the man under the tree is Yahweh who spoke with him.
Speaker 2:Once again, it's a conversation that is taking place between a physical being and Gideon, and the angel of the Lord is telling him, calling him a great man of valor, and you'll hear more about that when we go through the book of Judges. But the point to make out is here it's an actual physical being.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that gets brought out in Judges, chapter 13. This is where the angel of the Lord appears to the parents of Samson. They were in Judges 13, were without child and it says there I believe it's six times or five times it says a man appeared to them, but it is a man who is called the angel of the Lord. Appears to Samson's parents and they describe him as a man. Judges chapter 13, verses 21 and 22.
Speaker 1:The angel of the Lord has repeatedly called a man in this passage. Doesn't have wings, not floating three feet off the ground, not glowing with light. At one point in the story in Judges 13, the husband couldn't tell who it was. It was just a man. After he was gone oh, now I know it was the angel of the Lord. In Judges 13, 11, samson's father asked the angel, are you the man? And the angel of the Lord says yes. The end of verse 16,. Samson's father did not know he was the angel of the Lord. So if this was some sort of an overwhelmingly glowing bright light or something like the amount of transfiguration, or what I think of is Ezekiel, chapter one, that's got all the fire and the rainbows and the train of his robe fills the temple and the smoke.
Speaker 1:No, this is a man that in Judges 13, 16, samson's father did not know he was the angel of the Lord until he had left. And then he says oh, now I know it was the angel of the Lord. And it specifically says there that this was Yahweh that was speaking. He specifically takes the credit of what we're trying to build. Here is a case from all these passages that God appeared as a man, as a regular man, in the Old Testament, and we would hold this to be the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2:In that passage, there with Samson's parents, they even acknowledge there we're going to die now because we've seen God, we've been in the presence of God. The wife says no, no, no. If we were going to get killed we would have been killed already.
Speaker 1:We were in the presence of Yahweh Lord the Lord.
Speaker 2:It's pretty clear that they understood who that they were talking with.
Speaker 1:And there's other passages. The two that I want to take a little bit of time on is Isaiah 63, verses seven through 10. And let me just read those three verses here for you. This is Isaiah 63, starting in verse seven, I will tell of the faithful acts of the Lord, and that's again. All caps Yahweh.
Speaker 1:I will tell of the faithful acts of the Lord, of the Lord's praiseworthy deeds. I will tell about all the Lord did for us, the many good things he did for the family of Israel because of his compassion and the great faithfulness. He said certainly they will be my people, children who are not disloyal. He became their deliverer, verse nine. Through all that they suffered, he suffered too. So who is the only person that suffered? That is our deliverer, jesus Christ. So, isaiah 63, nine Through all that they suffered, he suffered too. The angel, sent from his very presence, delivered them.
Speaker 1:So here we have, the angel that sent from the presence of the Lord, suffering and being a deliverer. Well, who does that remind you of? There's only one it's Jesus Christ. In his love and mercy he protected them. He lifted up and carried them through ancient times Verse 10,. But they rebelled and offended his Holy Spirit, so he turned into an enemy and fought against them. So that tells us all three persons of the Trinity here. You offended the Holy Spirit. You can only offend a person. You can't offend a force. You can't offend electromagnetism or gravity, you can only offend a person. So in Isaiah 63, verses seven through 10, we have all three persons of the Trinity here specifically saying that the angel of the Lord was sent from the very presence of the Lord. The angel of Yahweh was sent from Yahweh and suffered and was the deliverer of the people. So that to me is a very clear passage of what we're trying to say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this is the same Holy Spirit, or the same Spirit that we see throughout the Old Testament, that the Lord says came upon Samson, that the Lord came upon Saul. But at the same time, we also see that later on, when Saul was going astray, the Spirit of the Lord left Saul and the Spirit of the Lord left Samson. Glenn, you just went through where it says all three in this one little four verse. Here it's again something that we see throughout the Old Testament in regards to the Trinity and the Spirit of the Lord.
Speaker 1:Yes, another really great passage is the Book of Zechariah, one of the prophets, in the latter part of the Old Testament, book of Zechariah, chapter one, verse 12, it talks there about the angel of the Lord speaking to Yahweh. So it mentions it specifically there, zechariah 112. And then in chapter 12, there's a couple of places In Zechariah 12 especially, the first verse of the chapter starts off with thus says the Lord. Everywhere that's mentioned it's God speaking. Thus says the Lord. And then in that same chapter, the Lord is speaking, zechariah 12,.
Speaker 1:We get down to verses eight through 10. In that day shall Yahweh, the Lord, defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem, and he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David, and the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of Yahweh before them. So the house of David, it's not talking about the brick and mortar, the wood and the windows. It's talking about his descendants, his people that came from him, specifically His lineage, the one person who's gonna be as God, which is Jesus, jesus. So again, zechariah 12, the house of David shall be as God, as the angel of the Lord before them, and it shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. And I will pour upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication, and they shall look unto me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one mourns for his only son. Okay, so think about that.
Speaker 1:The beginning of the chapter thus says the Lord, god speaking, they shall look unto me whom they've pierced. Well, who's the only one that's pierced? Yeah, jesus, jesus. So the Lord here is saying they shall look unto me whom they've pierced, but they're gonna mourn for him. It changes the pronouns in the same sentence. So we have two people here. There's two persons talking with each other. There's no way to make this be one person. They shall look unto me whom they've pierced, but they shall mourn for him as one mourns for his only son. So, very clearly, here we have more than one person that's dealing with it, and it's very clearly Yahweh. So when we take the Zechariah 12 passage and the Isaiah passage, we have the Lord, god Almighty, sending the Lord, god Almighty, as a messenger to go die and be a deliverer. And that's why the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament is important.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's also where in other passages in the New Testament it talks about where God could be the just and the justifier as well.
Speaker 1:It's the same concept.
Speaker 2:One last area that I'd like to mention. If we go back back into Genesis, so now that we've established that, where it talks about the angel of the Lord being actually Yahweh himself in the form of actual person, if we go back into Genesis, chapter 18, this is after where we talked about in chapter 16. And we pick up and it says there in verse one of chapter 18. Now the Lord appeared to him and this is Abraham, okay by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. And when he, abraham, lifted up his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him, and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed himself to the earth and said my Lord. Now, this Lord is small, l-o-r-d, so that's Adonai, that just means a regular person who's in charge, right?
Speaker 1:Like an English Lord. Yes.
Speaker 2:If now I have found favor in your sight, please do not pass your servant by.
Speaker 2:Please let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree and I'll bring out a piece of bread and et cetera.
Speaker 2:This, as we see, this story goes on. This man, the three, has a conversation with Abraham and tells him, and gives him again another promise that he's gonna have offspring and that they're gonna be a great lineage and they're gonna be a blessing to the nations and et cetera. After that he mentions in the middle of that chapter 18, that the outcry of Sodom has become great. They're gonna go down there to Sodom and see if it's bad enough or not. When we looked at verse one of chapter 19, it says now the two angels came to Sodom and while we finish chapter 18, we see a conversation taking place between Abraham and this third man who was one of the three angels that had been meeting with him. And this is the part where Abraham kinda has a bargaining with this third angel, this third messenger, talking about well, if you're not gonna destroy Sodom if we find at least 1,000 people there or 500 people there.
Speaker 2:Abraham's pleading for the people trying to keep God from killing them, and that's kinda where I'm leading. Is that this person that he's talking to, that he talked to before talking about giving him confirmation that he's gonna have a son, and all that tells him okay, no, if you can find 1,000 there or 500, I won't destroy it. And Abraham pleads with him again and gets it down to 10. If we can just find 10 people, you won't destroy it. And this man, this angel messenger, who's standing there, says, okay, if we find 10 people down there, it won't be destroyed.
Speaker 2:And then you go into chapter 19 and you have the story of actually see what happens, in that there are not 10 people, that's only lot in his family, which is less than 10, and they escape. But the point to make here is is that this is again an actual, physical person that Abraham is having a conversation with all throughout chapter 18 and at the end of chapter 18, and that this physical person that he's talking with has the power of God to take life, and not only take life but to destroy a whole city. This to me, glenn, shows that, as we see throughout the Old Testament, that God is not just a being that is up in the heavens, but throughout the life of the nation of Israel, and even from its conception, and dealing with Abraham, that he's a God who periodically comes in a physical form to converse and to talk to the different prophets, leaders, women of the nation of Israel in a physical form.
Speaker 1:Yes, and one of the words you use there is important for our listeners to know is periodically yes, we are not saying that every time in the Old Testament says the Lord spoke, that it was a man's. There were times where voice from the cloud or voice from the Word of the.
Speaker 1:Lord, the Word of the Lord. It could have been a disembodied voice coming out of the temple, things like that. So it is not the case that every single time it says thus says the Lord, it was a man standing there. But we're saying, is these passages that we're mentioning here, there was a man standing there. It is called the Lord. Another one of those I think of is Genesis 32. This was Jacob. Remember the story where he was wrestling with the man all night.
Speaker 1:It says he wrestled with a man all night. I don't know about you and I'm not going to get very far if I start trying to wrestle with the angel that's flying around. This was a man and it doesn't say in Genesis 32 that it doesn't use the words the angel of the Lord, but it's very clear that it was God in the form of a man that he was wrestling with Genesis 32, 28. It hints that the man is God. It says you struggled with God in that passage and the man changes Jacob's name, changes it from Jacob to Israel, and only God is the one who changes, at least in the Bible. And when Jacob asked his name in Genesis 32, 29, he wouldn't give his name to Jacob, which was very similar to when the angel of the Lord appeared to Samson's parents. It's very similar to the burning bush where the name is why are you asking my name? We have here in Genesis 32, jacob wrestling with a human being that is the Lord, god Almighty.
Speaker 2:I know, glenn. Do you have any other examples as we wrap up there?
Speaker 1:There's a couple of places in Joshua, chapter 5, when there's it doesn't use the word the angel of the Lord, but there's a man standing there with a sword and he made it very clear that this was God. And in Daniel remember Daniel, chapter 3, when Shadrach, meshach and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace there was a fourth one there that the pagan king describes as looking at a son of the gods. He recognizes that's a divine being. I think there's enough there. Psalm 347 speaks of the angel of the Lord as a deliverer, in the sense that Jesus is a deliverer.
Speaker 1:So, I think we could build a pretty solid case from these things, and I think here we could probably wrap up and spend a couple of minutes just giving some conclusions to this.
Speaker 2:So one of the things with our podcast, one of our goals, is to show that both the Old Testament and the New Testament it's all one cohesive narrative and they're not two separate narratives. And this is one of the things is that whenever Jesus comes on the scene in the New Testament, it is God in the form of a man, and he's fully God and he's fully man. Now it's a little bit different than the Old Testament because those physical beings men, show and then they leave. With Jesus. He's there and he starts out as a child, a baby and born of a virgin, and then he grows and then he has that three year ministry when he's at 30. But the point being is that God in the form of a man visiting the people of Israel is not a new concept, or shouldn't be a new concept to the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the leaders of the Jewish nation at that time.
Speaker 1:Correct. They should have understood this concept. We know from Scripture that God is not contained in a physical body. We're not claiming that. God is just no more than a man. First Kings 827, solomon is dedicating the temple and he says there that heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain God. So his point was this building is not going to contain God, because God can't fit inside a building. John 424 says God is spirit. Yet these passages that we've just quoted in this session very clearly say that God appeared as a man. Jesus, in John 858, claimed to be the I am of the burning bush. He claimed in other places the accepted worship. We have here the doctrine of the deity of Christ. That appeared not only in the New Testament, but he appeared as a man in the Old Testament. And the angel of the Lord pre-existed as a man in the Old Testament. The pre-incarnate son, the angel of God, yahweh, god Almighty, appears in physical human body as a man in the Old Testament. In the Isaiah and the Zechariah passages it's very clear there's more than one person there. This is the foundation for at least one of the foundations for the doctrine of the Trinity.
Speaker 1:The Trinity has always been considered a key, essential doctrine of the faith, and denying it has always been considered heresy. I'll go as far as to say I've made kind of a minor study of this. Every group that I've ever seen that denied the Trinity also had some other essential doctrine that got off track. There's something that gets added or subtracted to salvation, there's some sort of work that has to be done for salvation or something. There could be a group out there that denies the Trinity, that's still orthodox in their view of salvation, but I've not found them. I would then just wrap this up with an appeal and I say this to my oneness, friends in the apostolic and Pentecostal communities I say this as humbly and respectfully as I can that the Trinity is found by name in writing as early as 175 AD. We'll have the references to that on our resources page in our podcast.
Speaker 1:In the 200s there was a man named Sibelius who taught what is called modalism, which says that God is one. He denied the Trinity. He taught that Jesus appeared as the father in the Old Testament and appeared as the son in the New Testament and now appears as the Holy Spirit, sort of three modes. Well, sibelius was excommunicated as a heretic in the year 220 and then in the early 300s there was a man named Arius that taught that Jesus was a created being. So that was a different heresy. The Council of Nicaea was in 325 and dealt with the Arian heresy.
Speaker 1:Well, the reason I bring that all up is that many of our friends in the oneness communities I have seen the leaders and have heard them conflate the two. The Council of Nicaea did not invent the Trinity, it just did not. It's just a factually incorrect and any group whose leaders claim this, they're just either not good historians or they've not been genious. With you Again, I appeal with all humility to my friends in the oneness community to please study these doctrines a little carefully. Look at Scripture from an Orthodox standpoint Again. We'll give the references to these in our resources page on our website. But the Old Testament clearly teaches that the angel of the Lord is a pre-incarnate Christ, who is a different person than the Father. They're both the one God and that's what the Bible teaches.
Speaker 2:So, as we leave this session, this is part of our topical series. You can find out more information on all of our sessions and everything that we do on our site, reasoningthroughthebiblecom. We have a resource page there. Everything that Glenn mentioned and everything that we have mentioned here will be in a document that'll be titled the Angel of the Lord in conjunction with this, and you'll be able to look at all of those resources. So thank you for joining us and we'll see you next time on Reasoning Through the Bible.
