Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they shall see God (Matthew 5:8).
Who is the Angel of the Lord?
That was the question my eldest grandchild – known to pose the odd penetrating and brain-stretching theological poser – wanted to know!
Apparently that question had surfaced in her small-group Bible study. I
was expected to have answers.
As I considered the issue, the Lord Jesus’ assertion above popped into my mind: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
That statement by the Lord in His Sermon on the Mount was jarring to the
Jewish ear. And it is enigmatic to us.
Why?
Because the Lord God had declared to Moses in Exodus 33:20, no
man shall see Me and live.
And that poses a challenging dimension to our relationship with the Almighty: unlike my relationship with my granddaughter, I’ve never seen, heard, or touched Him.
But our inability to observe
God is much more than His ethereal existence beyond physical matter. Ours is
not a deficiency in our eyes, our vision, or our sight; but rather we possess a
moral deficit in our hearts.
Our sinful nature – that inherited from Adam – restricts us from seeing the One who is absolute holiness, righteousness and moral purity.
And yet, the Old Testament (OT) of the Bible contains infrequent – yet mysterious – stories of people who unexpectedly, occasionally witnessed a physical manifestation of God and His glory in some form.
Theologians call those
examples Theophanies:
- Moses covering his face in the presence of the burning bush in Exodus 3;
- the terrifying and majestic presence of God seen atop Mount Sinai causing the Hebrew exiles liberated from Egypt to retreat in fear (Exodus 19);
- the Commander of the Lord’s army appearing to Joshua, providing an adjustment to his perspective and causing him to fall facedown in reverent worship (Joshua 5);
- Isaiah calling down a curse on himself after his vision of God the Son (see John 12:41) in the Temple as recorded in Isaiah 6;
- Ezekiel – overwhelmed and prostrate – feebly attempting to describe the indescribable: a man-like figure of glowing metal, full of fire and with the aura of a rainbow (Ezekiel 1).
Some theologians have speculated that these theophanies are actually Christophanies. (A Christophany being a pre-Incarnate appearance of God the Son – before He took on a physical body and the absolute nature of man as Jesus of Nazareth.)
And then we encounter the
mysterious OT figure known as the Angel of the LORD, or the Angel of
Yahweh.
Exodus
3:2 - There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of
fire from within a bush.
Of course, every angel is the LORD’s angel, or Yahweh’s messenger. (This naturally excludes fallen angels – more properly referred to as demons, who are under the domain of Satan.)
1
Chronicles 21:16 - And David lifted up his eyes, and saw the
angel of the LORD stand between the earth and the heaven, having a drawn sword
in his hand stretched out over Jerusalem.
As you read through the OT, you’ll see this unique phrase – the Angel of the LORD/Yahweh – although surfacing only occasionally, always in highly decisive situations.
The Angel of the LORD appears in the OT narrative in
approximately 16 incidents and is mentioned in 2 of the Psalms.
But when He appears, that signals something of magnitude, of
significant scale.
Judges 6:12 - When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, "The LORD is with you, mighty warrior."
As you encounter this Character, He is clearly unique.
The Angel of the LORD speaks with greater authority.
And He speaks not only with God and for God, but speaks as
the Lord God.
Genesis 22:15,16 - The angel of the LORD called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, "I swear by myself, declares the LORD…”
Additionally, on some occasions, He received worship, which
no regular angel of God would do.
Judges 13:20 - As the flame blazed up from the altar
towards heaven, the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame. Seeing this,
Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground.
Takeaway: And so the answer to my granddaughter
was a summation of my belief:
God the Son presents Himself in a physical form for special purposes and on
rare occasions to disclose His message.
And,
the Angel of the LORD is one such physical disguise, where the Second Person of the Trinity temporarily assumes an observable form – physical in some way – to address human eyes and ears.
Zechariah 12:8 - On that day the LORD will shield those who live in Jerusalem…and the house of David will be like God, like the Angel of the LORD going before them.
If that’s correct, then we are seeing the Messiah-Christ long before He assumed humanity to be born as Jesus; when the Angel of the LORD emerges in the narrative, Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem is still many centuries in the distant future.
But,
God the Son has always existed; the Almighty is eternally pre-existent.
He is Sovereign. He is omniscient. He is omnipotent.
And – the Angel of the LORD – is our King of kings and Lord of lords.
~ graphic from freepik.com
