Judges chapter 13 and verse 1. The children of Israel did evil
again in the sight of the Lord. And the Lord delivered them into
the hand of the Philistines forty years. And there was a certain
man of Zorah of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah,
and his wife was Baran and Bearnot. And the angel of the Lord appeared
unto the woman and said unto her, Behold, now thou art barren
and barest not, but thou shalt conceive and bear a son. Now therefore beware, I pray
thee, and drink not wine nor strong drink, and eat not any
unclean thing, for lo thou shalt conceive and bear a son, and
no razor shall come on his head, for the child shall be a Nazarite
unto God from the womb, and he shall begin to deliver Israel
out of the hand of the Philistines. Then the woman came and told
her husband, saying, A man of God came unto me, and his countenance
was like the countenance of an angel of God, very terrible. But I asked him not whence he
was, neither told he me his name. But he said unto me, Behold,
thou shalt conceive and bear a son, and now drink no wine
nor strong drink, neither eat any unclean thing, for the child
shall be a Nazarite to God from the womb to the day of his death. Then Manoah entreated the Lord
and said, O my Lord, let the man of God which thou didst send
come again unto us and teach us what we shall do unto the
child that shall be born. And God hearkened to the voice
of Manoah, and the angel of God came again unto the woman as
she sat in the field. But Manoah her husband was not
with her. And the woman made haste and
ran and showed her husband and said unto him, Behold, the man
hath appeared unto me that came unto me the other day. And Manoah
arose, and went after his wife, and came to the man, and said
unto him, Art thou the man that spakest unto the woman? And he
said, I am. And Manoah said, Now let thy
words come to pass. How shall we order the child,
and how shall we do unto him? And the angel of the Lord said
unto Manoah, Of all that I said unto the woman, let her beware. She may not eat of anything that
cometh of the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink,
nor eat any unclean thing. All that I commanded her, let
her observe.' And Manoah said unto the angel of the Lord, I
pray thee, let us detain thee until we shall have made ready
a kid for thee. And the angel of the Lord said
unto Manoah, Though thou detain me, I will not eat of thy bread. And if thou wilt offer a burnt
offering, thou must offer it unto the Lord. For Manoah knew
not that he was an angel of the Lord. And Manoah said unto the
angel of the Lord, What is thy name, that when thy sayings come
to pass, we may do thee honour? And the angel of the Lord said
unto him, Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret? So Manoah took a kid with a meat
offering and offered it upon a rock unto the Lord. And the
angel did wondrously, and Manoah and his wife looked on. For it
came to pass when the flame went up toward heaven from off the
altar, that the angel of the Lord ascended in the flame of
the altar, and Manoah and his wife looked on it and fell on
their faces to the ground. But the angel of the Lord did
no more appear to Manoah and to his wife. Then Manoah knew
that he was an angel of the Lord. And Manoah said unto his wife,
we shall surely die because we have seen God. But his wife said
unto him, If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have
received a burnt offering and a meat offering at our hands.
Neither would he have showed us all these things, nor would
as at this time have told us such things as these. And the
woman bear a son and called his name Samson. And the child grew
and the Lord blessed him. And the spirit of the Lord began
to move him at times in the camp of Dan between Zorah and Eshtoel. Amen. May God bless to us this
reading from his word. We should know and remember that
the Lord Jesus Christ made numerous visits to his people in the Old
Testament. The Lord Jesus Christ appeared
to his people, men like Adam, women like Hagar, Abraham, Jacob,
Moses, Joshua, Gideon, all have testimony of meeting with the
Lord Jesus Christ hundreds, sometimes thousands of years before the
Lord came in his incarnation. The Lord Jesus Christ didn't
come into existence when he was born. The Lord Jesus Christ is
the eternal Son of God. The Lord Jesus Christ is the
creator of all things. Without him, nothing was created. More than that, the Lord Jesus
Christ is the revelation of the Godhead. All that we know of
the Lord God Jehovah We know through the Lord Jesus Christ,
who is the living word and the revealer and the declarer of
the one true God. So the Lord Jesus Christ came
in physical form, came in a body and spoke to people and met with
people and addressed and dealt with people throughout the Old
Testament age. And this is one of those occasions. Because here we see the Lord
Jesus Christ. He is identified in this passage
as the angel of the Lord or an angel of the Lord. And this seems
to be a title that he takes repeatedly throughout the scriptures because
an angel was a messenger. That's all the word means. It's
the same as apostle. So in the New Testament, we're
talking about the acts of the apostles, the acts of the messengers
of God to carry his message to the ends of the earth. And here,
the angels fulfilled a similar sort of role of doing the bidding
of God. But this angel, This was the
angel that was the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we
can see that in verse 22 of the passage that we read here, Manoah
said, we shall surely die because we have seen God. And Manoah was under no misapprehension. He knew that this man that had
appeared was actually an angel, that this angel was the angel
of the Lord. And as his understanding developed
and he appreciated more and more of what this angel was saying
and what he was doing, he saw him to be truly God, the Lord
Jesus Christ. And this angel of the Lord, the
Lord Jesus Christ, comes to speak with, first of all, Manoah's
wife, and then Manoah and them together, and to announce the
birth of Samson. I think we touched on this some
time ago, because we were speaking about the children of promise.
I don't know whether you remember a sermon called the children
of promise, because Isaac was called a child of promise. And
he was obviously promised to Abraham. And we reminded ourselves
that there were several children of promise revealed to us in
scripture. John the Baptist, for example,
and the Lord Jesus Christ himself. And Samson was the other example
that we used on that occasion. So we have touched upon this
story in the relatively recent past. But here we see that the
Lord Jesus Christ has come. He has manifested himself, he
has revealed himself to men and women. He has come, sometimes
he revealed himself in visions, sometimes physically as on this
occasion. It is the Lord Jesus Christ in
a visible form in a body of flesh before the incarnation. And Manoah saw God. This is the gospel in the Old
Testament. This is the message of God coming
to man. When we think about the New Testament
beginning with the story of the incarnation, how that God became
man, but God was man and spoke to his people in the Old Testament
as well. And he came with a message, he
came with a revelation. Sometimes he sent prophets, Sometimes
he sent those that had a message particularly for the Lord. Sometimes
God revealed himself in very public ways and sometimes in
very private ways. And here he is speaking to Manoah
and his wife. He tells them that there is going
to be good news. There is going to be a deliverance
out of the hands of the enemy for Israel, the people of God,
the Old Testament people of God and the Lord's people. Us today,
we should always be reading our Bibles with an eye to the Lord
Jesus Christ, looking for the Saviour, looking for pictures,
looking for analogies, looking for types, looking for occasions
when we can see parallels in the way in which God has revealed
his purpose of redemption and salvation in shadow form before
the full dawning of the reality. Do you remember that the Lord
Jesus Christ in the book of Malachi is called the Son of Righteousness? And that sun is spelt S-U-N,
that the sun of righteousness would rise with healing in his
wings. And ye shall go forth, said Malachi,
chapter four, verse two, and grow up as calves of the stall. What's a calf of the stall? A
calf of the stall is the calf that didn't have to go and look
for its own food. A calf of the stall was like
the fattied calf that got all its food given to it because
it lived in the barn and it got its food provided every morning.
And so what Malachi is saying is that soon, soon people, he's
speaking to the Old Testament people right at the end of that
Old Testament age and he's saying soon, This darkness is going
to disappear. The sun of righteousness is going
to arise with healing in his wings. There is going to be a
people that will go forth in liberty and be like the calves
of the stall in prosperity. He was speaking about the coming
of the Lord Jesus Christ. But I said that we should always
have an eye to the Lord in these Old Testament passages. Do you
know that Samson means the rising sun? That's what the word means. And so here we see in picture
form the Lord Jesus Christ being typified, that there is a picture
here being given, a shadow as it were being given to us of
a child that should be born who would begin the deliverance of
his people. We began this passage by saying
that the Israelites had been 40 years under the heel of the
Philistines. 40 years. The children of Israel
did evil again in the sight of the Lord. The Lord delivered
them into the hand of the Philistines. 40 years. These Philistines were
a coastal people down that edge of Canaan and the Promised Land. and they were frequent antagonists
of the children of Israel. They were always fighting together. We see that throughout the time
of the judges. In fact, they're even mentioned,
I think, in the books of Moses, and it is only at the time of
the reign of David that they are finally subdued. They had been a constant problem
throughout the days of Joshua and the judges and the kings
up to the time of Saul. So these Philistines were given
rule over the children of Israel, or at least sufficient rule to
be a problem to them. And we discover that they both
shamed the children of Israel, they took away their weapons,
they took away their food, they dominated them, and the children
of Israel were delivered into the hands of the Philistines. And I thought about that for
a moment and I thought, 40 years. That's a long time. Four decades. Some of you guys
aren't even 40 yet, that's a whole of your lifetime. Can you imagine
being under that sort of oppression for the whole of your life? That's
what had happened because of the sin of the people of God.
I think sometimes our views, our timescales are too short.
God's judgment must run its course. God will not be mocked when it
comes to the sins of people. This time of chastening would
go on. And the people may have thought,
well, you know, that's been 10 years. That's long enough, Lord. Surely that's long enough. That's
been 20 years. Oh, I've lost my children to
these Philistines. I've lost my crops. I've lost
my home. I've lost my health to these
Philistines. And the 20 years became 30 years.
and the 30 years became 40 years. Do you remember we spoke about
40? I think last week or the week before, how it was often,
it was in the context of the Lord's 40 days in the wilderness,
that it's often a time of trial. And here we see 40 years, and
then the angel appears to Manoah, and he says that there is going
to be a change, that there is going to be a son born, and that
this son would begin to deliver Israel out of the hands of the
Philistines. Well, we're going to think about
Samson perhaps on another occasion, but I want us just to realise
that when the Lord speaks about correcting his people, It is
because there is something in their lives that needs to be
corrected. And indeed, we should never think
of God vindictively correcting his people. He always does it
lovingly. He always does it purposefully. He always does it in order to
bring a better outcome out of the trial that his people have
gone through. And we should be careful and
we should be wise. We ask God for blessing and we
pray for blessing and we hope for blessing. Did I say we expect
blessing? But sometimes those blessings
are brought to us through trial. And we need to be aware that
if we ask for the Lord's blessing, he won't always give us that
blessing without having first taken something away. And it
might be something that we love, and it might be something that
we cherish, and it might be something that we didn't think we were
going to have to give up in order to deepen our relationship with
the Lord. You see, correction in itself
is a blessing. And that's hard for us to grasp
when we are so easily hurt and easily downcast and easily troubled. But the reality is that whatever
brings us closer to God in our personal experience with Him
is a blessing. Let me say that again because
it's something that I need to remember. Whatever brings us
closer to God in our personal spiritual experience of Him is
a blessing. And if the Lord has to take something
away from us that we cherish and value in order to put us
on our knees to ask for His help, That's a blessing, so that even
our challenges are blessings when we are the Lord's people
and trust Him. And the reality is that we become
a people that grumble and complain as the Lord does good things
to us. As the Lord deals graciously
with us, we grumble and complain all the louder. Isn't there an
irony in that? It shows us what kind of people
we really are. Proverbs 3, verse 12 says this,
whom the Lord loveth, he correcteth, even as a father the son in whom
he delighteth. And if we see our boy or our
girl as a parent, as a mum or a dad, doing things that they
shouldn't do. Do we just let them go on and
do that when we know that it's dangerous, when we know that
it's detrimental, when we know that it's not going to do them
good, or do we say, stop, enough? And what's the reaction that
we get from the children when we say that? Oh, you just always
want to stop the things that I like doing. You always just
want to make my life harder and more difficult. And that's how
we react to God. Why does the parent do that to
the child? Because the parent cares. And why does the Lord lead us
through some hard, difficult times? Because he cares. Because he cares for us. Let's
get back to the story of Manoah and his wife. and the true identity
of this angel of the Lord. There are a number of things
which shows the identity, and I'm quite convinced that this
was the Lord Jesus Christ that was here. One of the first reasons
is the name that is given by this angel. He says to Manoah,
why askest thou after my name, seeing it is secret? Now, I'm
pretty sure that what you deduced from that statement there is,
why are you asking my name? It's a secret, I'm not telling
you. Right? That's not what he says. What
he says is, why have you asked my name? My name's secret. That was his name. That was his
name and that word secret also means wonderful. And we discover
in the Old Testament scriptures and the prophetic scriptures
that this name Wonderful or Secret is a name that is given to the
Lord Jesus Christ. Do you remember in Isaiah chapter
nine, his name shall be called Wonderful, the Prince of Peace. This is a name of Christ. And
we see furthermore that not only is the name indicative of the
true identity of this angel, but the actions of the angel
also reveal the true person of Christ. We are told that the
angel did wondrously as Manoah and his wife watched. There were
wonderful things done before them, wonderful things revealed
to them in verse 21. And we also discover that this
angel accepted the burnt offering that was made. That was an obvious
act of worship. That's not how it started out.
Manoah thought, here's a man in the field, good, Hospitality
requires, demands that I prepare this man a meal. So he says,
Tarry here, wait for a little while until I go and prepare
a kid and I'll bring you something to eat. That was what was in
Manoah's mind. He knew that this man was special.
He knew that it was important that he heard his words, but
he didn't understand who he really was. And the man, the angel said,
I'm not going to eat your food. but if you will offer it, it
has to be an offering to Jehovah. And then the acceptance of that
offering as an obvious act of worship and that which the angel
did as he performed wondrously as the offering was consumed
upon the rock, showed Manoah and his wife the true identity
of this being before whom they stood. So clearly, Manoah believed
that they had seen God, and as a consequence of this, he feared
for his life in verse 22. Now this is interesting, I think,
because remember, we're still in the days of the judges here,
and there's no example at this stage in Scripture that the people
should be afraid of seeing the Lord. But it was a view that Jacob
also had held. He said that he had looked upon
the face of God. And we discover in Exodus 33
and 20, and then later in John 1 verse 18, that God is only
revealed in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. But obviously Manoah was concerned
that he and his wife were going to die because they had been
in such close proximity to the living God. And here we have the wife's reply. And this, I guess, is where I
want us to get to today. I want us to think about verse
23. That's the principal area of
our attention. The wife's reply. Take this as
my text, if you like. And perhaps if we can draw one
or two personal comforts and encouragements from this verse
in times of our own trial, then we might be blessed of the Lord
this morning. So Judges chapter 13 and verse
23, but his wife said unto him, If the Lord were pleased to kill
us, he would not have received a burnt offering and a meat offering
at our hands, neither would he have showed us all these things,
nor would, as at this time, have told us such things as these. Now these were words of reassurance
to Manoah. Manoah had started to panic. Manoah was getting himself into
a stew. He was getting himself into a
place where he was beginning to fear for his life. Suddenly
the realisation of the magnitude, the extent of the situation that
he was in was dawning upon this man. And he's realising this
isn't just a man. This isn't just a man of God.
This is an angel of God. This is God himself. I'm going
to die. And you can see the anxiety building
in his mind as he goes through this process. But his wife had more insight
than Minoa had, more wisdom, more understanding of the situation. She grasped the implications
of what was happening here, what was transpiring, why there had
been a visitation, what the message meant. And more than that, it
wasn't just, as it were, a bare intelligence or that she deduced
because she was a little bit sharper than he was, that that
just didn't make sense. She had faith. Faith was the
crucial factor in this woman's reaction and response. And Manoa
had faith, but it was weak faith. and his wife's faith was stronger. So we can see Manoah's faith
if we look in verse 12. He said to this stranger, now
let thy words come to pass. How shall we order the child?
So he had no doubt that what was being told to him, that this
child was going to be born, was true. He said, well, let your
words come to pass. Let the child that you've promised,
you've prophesied, be born indeed. Now how shall we raise this child? What shall we do with this child
when he is born? That's another way of saying,
so be it. Or another way of saying, amen.
That's what Manoah said to this man. He said, there's a child
going to be born? Amen. Amen. That's great. That's great. Now, when this
child's born, how are we to raise it? That was what Manoah had
to say. How are we going to raise this
boy? Look at verse 12. He says, Teach
us what we should do. How shall we order the child?
And how shall we do unto him? Teach us what we've to do with
respect to this boy. Why is it man always wants to
have a do part? We always want to be doing something,
don't we? So the angel comes to Manoah's
wife and says, there's going to be a child born. He is going
to deliver, begin to deliver the children of Israel out of
the hands of the Philistines under whose heel they have been
for 40 years. And O says, Manoah, how am I
going to sort out this boy's upbringing. How am I going to
raise this boy? Manoah wasn't thinking about
the big picture. He was thinking about himself
and he was thinking about how he would react when this child
is born. And so it is with all of us,
is it not? We always take even the great things and we think
about it in our own personal context. Look at verse 17 because I think
this is another aspect of the lack of Manoah's faith. He says,
what is thy name? He says to the angel, what is
thy name? Now, We need to realise that
names in scripture had importance. They were more than just what
someone was called. We choose names for our children
and we try and do it wisely so that, I don't know, we don't
give them some sort of cartoon name or some name that's a terrible
person from history. There's a little bit of thought
goes into it. But in The scriptures, a name often
had to do with the character of the individual. And that's
what is being sought here. What is thy name? Jacob asked
that same question when he wrestled with the Lord. He said, what's
thy name? I'm not going to let you go until
you tell me your name. Of all the questions he could
have asked, why that? Moses asked the same question
too. I want to know your name. Tell
me your name. And I don't think that was just
curiosity. I think that what was being asked
there is that there was a desire to peer into those things which
are beyond our understanding. To look at the incomprehensible. to in some way get a hold of
the infinite God. That's what these men were asking
and that's what Manoah was asking here. In Proverbs chapter 30
in verse 4 we read these words. Who hath ascended up into heaven
or descended Who hath gathered the wind in his fists? Who hath
bound the waters in a garment? Who hath established all the
ends of the earth? What is his name, and what is
his son's name, if thou canst tell? This is the mighty God
that we are dealing with. This is the infinite. This is
the one whose attributes, whose nature, whose immensity, whose
holiness is beyond our comprehension. And yet whenever the Lord has
any dealings with us, our first reaction is to say, what's your
name? Explain yourself. Tell me what
you're about. Tell me who you are. Tell me
what you're doing. Tell me what I should be doing.
And this betrays a lack of faith on our part. It is us asking
God for an explanation as to why he's doing the things that
he's doing. Manoah had faith, but it was
weak faith. And that weakness of faith left
him fearful in the presence of God, left him full of doubt. And maybe you feel sometimes,
all the time, that your faith is like that. You hear the gospel. You see wonderful things presented
in that message. You even accept it as being true. You believe it to be true, to
be real. But you feel as if you want more.
You feel as if you need some evidence. You need something
tangible. You need something extra to be
given. You need an explanation. You're
saying to God, God, you need to justify your ways to me. You
need to tell me why this is happening. You need to tell me why I'm going
through this. You need to explain yourself.
I'm not prepared just to accept that this is the way things have
to be. And we turn around and we say
to God, what's your name? Explain yourself. Now, if we contrast his wife,
His wife's faith was strong. She only knew the same as Minoa
knew. There was nothing else. It wasn't
that somebody had seen much more than the other person. They had
been given the same information. And yet what she saw in this
episode was the Lord God Jehovah. That was what she says in verse
23. If the Lord, and you'll notice
in your Bibles there, if you've got that kind of Bible, the Lord
is in capital letters. That means that the translators
translated the word Jehovah as Lord, a Yahweh. This is speaking
about the eternal God. She said, if the Lord Jehovah
were pleased to kill us, he'd have done it by now, basically. So when Manoah panicked, his
wife said, wait a minute, hold on a moment. Think about this. Why would the Lord do all this? Why would the Lord show us all
this? Why would the Lord accept our
offering and then kill us? That doesn't make sense. Why
would he do that? that's just blind unbelief, Manoah. You're not thinking this through.
And she took these three evidences as witnesses from the angel of
the Lord. First she said that he received
our Sacrifice. He received our offering. He
received an acceptable sacrifice. This was made as an offering
to the Lord. The angel had directed, he said,
I'm not going to eat your food, but you can make an offering
to the Lord. So this had moved out from just being hospitality
to being an act of worship. And the woman realized this,
and she realized that that act of worship had been accepted
by the angel. So there's peace here. An act
of worship accepted speaks of peace between the two that are
coming together. It's peace and not anger that
is to be seen in evidence here. It's reconciliation, not indignation. And it's a beautiful, gracious
picture of this angel accepting the worship and approving of
it. Paul used a little phrase. He
spoke of a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to God. That's the snow coming off the
roof. Now if a sacrifice is rejected
like Cain's was, that's another matter altogether. But there's reason for hope if
a sacrifice is accepted. And that's what Manoa's wife
grasped. Second thing she said, not only
had that sacrifice been accepted, But look what we've been shown.
Look what we've seen here. What have we seen? Hold on to
your hats. What had he seen? They'd seen
God in the flesh. They'd seen God in flesh. They had seen the incarnation
all those years ago. Before the Lord Jesus Christ
ever came, they saw the Lord Jesus Christ. This is Emmanuel,
God with us. Manoah and his wife, and his
wife grasped it. She realized that here was God
himself and he was God reconciled to them. An acceptable sacrifice,
an acceptable offering had been made and received. God had come in the flesh in
order to begin the deliverance of the people of God. He had
come in the flesh in order to announce the birth of Samson
who would deliver his people out of the hands of the Philistines. Is there a parallel here in anybody's
mind? Is there something starting to
ring? Are you beginning to see where this type, where this analogy
is leading us to? This is the gospel, this is the
coming of Christ revealed to this man and his wife hundreds
of years before in the time of the judges, even before the monarchy
had been established in Israel. This is showing us the divine
work of God in this pre-incarnation revelation of the Lord Jesus
Christ. I think Manoa's wife was a good
wife because at this stage in many conversations between a
man and his wife, she would have been saying, Manoa, you nearly
blew it there, didn't you? She would have been getting on
to him for not seeing what she had seen. So ladies, even when you're right,
you don't have to rub it in. The third thing that Manoah's
wife understood and discerned was what they had been told.
She understood that the offering had been accepted, she understood
that she had seen God revealed as a man, and she understood
the significance of what they had been told. A saviour is to
be born. That was the message. A redeemer
is going to be born. A deliverer is going to be born.
Okay, it was Samson. And of course, Samson, the rising
sun, was a picture of that rising sun that Malachi would later
talk about, who would rise with healing in his wings, the Lord
Jesus Christ. But she understood that this
was good news. She understood that this was
gospel truth. that God had come to throw off
the yoke of the oppressor. It was a message of a promised
child. Come to set the captives free. This is pure gospel right here
in this passage. And Manoah's wife understood
exactly what was happening. And I want us to notice this
as well. I want us to notice that Manoah's wife took this
understanding, she gained this knowledge, she drew this strength,
this faith, the strength of her faith from the Lord himself. She didn't get it from some second-hand
place or third-person involvement. She got this information from
the Lord himself. We could call Manoah's, in the
words of the hymn writer, we could call Manoah's lack of faith,
blind unbelief. And William Cooper says, blind
unbelief is sure to err and scan his work in vain. God is his
own interpreter and he will make it plain. And that's what Manoah's
wife understood. God himself would interpret what
it was that was happening here. I want to say this as simply
as I can. She looked at what the Lord had done. She looked
at what the Lord had shown them. She looked at what the Lord had
said. And she said to herself, that's
enough. That's enough. I believe this. And that was all she was asked
to do. All she was asked. Manoah said, how are we going
to raise this boy? Tell us your name. Oh, I'm going
to die. Poor Manoah. He didn't see the
big picture, but Manoah's wife did. She grasped what was happening. And she said, I can believe that.
God has come. He has told us that this is going
to happen. I can believe that. That's faith,
that's it. It's as simple as that. God has
come. He has sent, the Father has sent
the Son. The Lord Jesus Christ has come
into the world. The Lord Jesus Christ lived a
perfect life. He taught his people the words
of God. He proved his authority by the
things that he did. He went to the cross. He opened
his hands and his side and his brow to the sharp piercings of
sinful man's brutality against him. And he carried our sins
in his body on the tree. And I don't want you to say,
what am I going to do? What's your name? Explain this
to me. I want you just to say, that's
enough. I can accept that. I can believe
that. I can trust him. That's sufficient
for me. And that's the gospel. It's not
about what you do. It's not about what you give.
It's not about how you labour. It's not about what you understand.
It is simply saying, that's enough. What Christ has done is enough. And if you can say that, you're
walking in the footsteps of Manoah's wife. He has shown us the grounds of
our acceptance. The sacrifice that was made by
Manoah and his wife was accepted. He has shown us the grounds of
our acceptance, the precious blood of Jesus Christ. That's
it, that's all. And we say, that's enough. We
say, I need no other sacrifice. I need no other sacrifice and
you need no other sacrifice. An acceptable sacrifice is a
sufficient sacrifice, and Christ's sacrifice is both. Eliza Hewitt said, my faith has
found a resting place, not in device or creed, I trust the
ever-living one. His wounds for me shall plead. And maybe you're a bit like Manoah. Maybe you're saying, oh, God
is holy and I'm so sinful. I don't deserve his goodness.
I deserve to die. And there's truth in that. There's
truth in that. But I say to Manoa, Manoa, you
know better than that. You've been shown more than that. You've heard better than that.
You have seen an acceptable sacrifice. There today, when that flame
came out of the rock, when it consumed that sacrifice, when
the angel of the Lord did wondrously and ascended up in the smoke
of that sacrifice, you saw God accepting your sacrifice. You
know better than thinking you're going to die. That's not good
enough. That's not faith. That's blind
unbelief, Manoa. And it won't do. You've been shown more. You've
been shown Christ. You've seen more. You've seen
the bloodshed. You've been told more. You've
been told that it's an acceptable sacrifice. You have learned Christ. Will that not suffice? I'm going to mention a couple
of things in closing and then we're done. I think these things that we've
learned today or we've thought about today can be a help to
each of us in our own personal walk with the Lord. And also
as we endeavour to help and encourage and support and comfort one another. Doubt and fear and anxiety and
lack of assurance does afflict the people of God. It did Minoa,
it does me, and it will you. This is a battle that we are
in. We are engaged in a war in this world. We have an enemy. And Satan will take opportunity
to bring us down as much as he can. And the Lord has given us
tools. He has given us helps. He has
given us comforts. He has given us what he has shown
us. He has given us what he has revealed.
He has given us the presence of God here upon earth with men
and women. He has given us an acceptable
sacrifice in the blood of Jesus Christ. And I think as far as Manoah
was concerned, God gave him a helpmate. God gave him a helpmate. He gave
him someone to help him through his times of doubt and fear and
anxiety. He gave him his wife. Isn't that
lovely? God knew what Manoah needed that
day. He needed a wife like Manoah's
wife. Lord didn't give her a name in
scripture, so we can't give her a name, but God knew what Minoa
needed. And I want to be a Minoa's wife
to you. That's what I want to be. And
I want you to be I'm a Noah's wife to me. I want us to encourage
one another. I want us to realise that there
are times of doubt and there are times of anxiety and there
are times when we say, I'm going to die because God is so holy
and I'm so unworthy. But we need to say, would God
have shown us this? Would God have revealed to us
this? Would God have accepted this
only to kill us? No. No. God has blessed us. God has revealed
himself to us. God has shown us the ground of
our salvation, an acceptable sacrifice in the blood of Jesus
Christ. And we will encourage one another
in the midst of our trials in these days. and may the Holy Spirit be the
comforter to all of our souls and bring us to remember and
recollect all that that great Emmanuel has spoken and said
and done for his people. Second thing is this, Jacob asked
the name of God when he wrestled with him in the night. Moses
asked the name of God And Manoa asked, what's your name? Tell me your name. Have you ever thought how blessed
we are to know the name of God in Jesus Christ? Because that's
what he's done. He has told us his name. Call his name Jesus, for he shall
save his people from their sin. That's his name. His name is
Savior. He is the Lord Jesus Christ,
the Anointed One, the Chosen One, the Messiah, our Lord God,
The saviour acceptable. That's who God has revealed himself
to be. We no longer have to go around
saying, what's your name? What's your name? Tell us who
you are. We know who he is. He's the Lord
Jesus Christ. That name is no longer secret. Mary was told that she would
bring forth a son. Call his name Jesus. And now
we know him with that lovely name Jesus. Jesus. Wonderful Jesus. The one who
has been brought forth as the Lord, our righteousness, and
all of the other precious names that he takes in scripture by
the very revelation of God to man. These are all telling us
who God is by revealing to us all the nature and all the attributes
of God in the person of Jesus Christ. For all that is to be
known of God is revealed to us in the person of his Son, and
we know his name. And we trust in him, and we believe
in him, and it's enough. Psalm 9, verse 10 says, And they
that know thy name will put their trust in thee. for thou, Lord,
hast not forsaken them that seek thee. May we learn the name of
Christ in our own hearts and in our own souls, and may we
find that name to sustain us as we trust in him. Amen.