Seeing may indeed be believing,
if the Lord sovereignly wills. it to be so. An interesting and
truly wonderful example of the purity of this truth that I've
tried to present thus far to you this morning is demonstrated
for us from the 13th chapter of the book of Judges. Turn over
in your Old Testaments to Judges chapter 13. While you're turning
there, the context of the text that we're entering into is a
context of a time right after the days of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
and Joseph. We're even right up against the
times of Moses and Joshua. Put this within the criteria
of your understanding. Try to enter in with your imaginations
that are stirred up, touched by the Holy Spirit, you're purified
by the Holy Spirit, by the faith, and put yourself, we're now entering
into a time frame in history that's right after. Moses and
Joshua. It is the period where the children
of the tribes of Israel were settled in their respective allotted
portions of the promised land. Joshua has led them into the
promised land. He has died. He's gone on to
glory. And years, centuries have passed. They're being governed by certain
chosen judges. Hence the title of this portion
of Scripture. Judges that God raised up and
caused to lead his people in accordance to the purity of the
word that had been communicated unto them all through the patriarchs,
all the way down from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, even before
that. The revelation of truth came
to Moses and he authored the Pentateuch, the first five books
of the Bible. God revealed to him the things
that happened in the antediluvian days, even to the dawn of creation. And it is to this purity of the
message of the Scriptures of that time frame that the judges,
that God would raise up, that godly judges would govern and
lead the people according to that purity. That's not unlike
what we are faced with today, but nobody holds to the purity.
Very few even make purity an issue. That's become a subjective
matter. Oh, what you say is pure and
it's true. You can't really dogmatically
make that claim. The Bible is its own interpreter. Those are the last words of Arthur
Pink, by the way. Woke up out of a coma, sat up
in his bed before he breathed his last breath and says, the
scripture interprets itself. Laid back down and off on to
glory he went. The people were not governed
by kings. The book of Judges relates to
us the fickleness of the flesh. and the struggle and the pain
that it causes the children of God as they traverse through
their allotted time in this world unto their eternal destiny. This
text takes us back to approximately the year 1161 B.C., the 13th
chapter of Judges. And it's a time of particular
pain and turmoil for the tribe of Dan. Remember, there's twelve
tribes. And within the tribal, communes
of the respective heads of that tribe. If you're a Danite people,
then you had, you fathered, you sired your family. Your family
became known as whatever your name was. But you were related,
connected by genealogy to your tribal head. These were the Danites.
Verse 1. And the Scripture says, And 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. Now, may I say to you that after
the death of the last judge, there had been twenty years that
the Ammonites had been the ruling authority over the disobedient
children, including these Danites, and Then when the head of the
Ammonites passed away, there was such a slaughter that was
performed by the sanction of God, by the leading of God because
of the evil that his children had done in his sight, that the
weakened Danites were nothing but like ripe fruit ready to
be plucked and plundered for the Philistines. The Philistines
came in and for twenty years the Philistines had ruled over
them up until the occasion of this chapter, the context of
this chapter. Now what we have here is the
beginning of a judge that God's going to raise up to deliver
the Danites from the hand of the Philistines. If you don't
already know who that is, I'm not going to say anything right
at this moment and let it unfold for you. But you'll recognize
it's one of the greatest judges in the whole book, one of the
most famous judges in the whole book. But I'm particularly focusing
upon the days right before this judge is born. I want you to
see how the doctrine of substitutionary atonement has always been the
subject matter of the gospel, of the glory of Jesus Christ,
pre-incarnate, incarnate, Before you were born, after you will
be gone. Before the creation of the world,
after this world is gone. The substitutionary atonement
provided through Jesus Christ is the substance of the gospel
of the glory of God. Hence, verse 1 says, And the
Lord delivered them into the hand of the Philistines forty
years. I wanted to give you kind of a timeline, a time frame of
reference. Verse 2, And there was a certain
man, even when Jesus taught, He would say there was a certain
rich man, and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus. Luke 16. Whenever that word certain is
brought into the scenario, that shows you that God is very particular
with the individuals that make up the constituency of fallen
humanity. And if He names them, the Lord
knows them that are His. In that scenario in Luke 16,
which one went to heaven? the one that's named. The rich
man, Jesus never mentions his name. There was a certain rich
man that fared sumptuously every day. There was a certain beggar
who was allowed to lay outside his gate and feed on the crumbs
from off his table. He was full of sores. His best
friends were the dogs that came and licked his sores. And Jesus
tells how one dies, goes into glory, and the other dies and
is buried. Big funeral, but he opens his
eyes in the flames of hell. There was a certain man, the
Hebrew word for man, I want you to know, is the word ish. There's
two words that can be used. One is a word you're familiar
with. Adam. Adam. Ish. By comparison, when man is referred
to and described with the word ish, it's focusing on his frailty. His mortality. It's actually,
I see it as not the atom that was originally created, which
was a glorious creature. No sin was a part of the equation
in that original state. But by the time ish comes into
play, you're mortalized and sin is there. Ish. And there was
a certain ish, there was a certain man, the Bible tells us here
in Judges 13, of Zorah. Now that tells us of what section,
what area. And you know what Zorah means
in the Hebrew? Nest of hornets. And it says there was a certain
man of Zorah of this nest of hornets. And God always named
things by virtue of being descriptive. what they were, like a nest of
hornets. And the name of this man, he
was of the family of the Danites, we know that, whose name was
Manoah. Now Manoah, his name means rest. So what we have by God's sovereignty
is a man named Rest who lived in the midst of a nest of hornets. And he goes on to reveal in verse
2, and his wife was barren. And the Hebrew word there for
barren means literally sterile. She could not have kids. And
bear not. Hence it says, and bear not.
Verse 3, And the angel of the Lord appeared, revelatory experience,
unto the woman, and said unto her, Behold, now thou art barren,
and bearest not. thou shalt conceive and bear
a son." Now, do you see any parallels here? Does this bring to mind
any particular parallel experience? We see thus far in the revelatory
experience of Manoah's wife a clear parallel with the experience
of Mary. God's choice to be the mother of Jesus, the eternal
Son of God manifested in human flesh. Just exactly what Paul
declares in 1 Timothy 3.16? God manifested in the flesh. He's talking about the Son of
God. The correlation between the experience
of the two women of two different generations, two different times,
two different places on the line, the historical line of fallen
humanity, the correlation between the two experiences becomes even
closer when we see that the angel of the Lord declares that Manoah's
son is divinely destined to be a Nazarite. Once again, this
is just like Jesus of Nazareth. Also, the son of Manoah is declared
in advance to be the one that would save his Danite people
from being in bondage to their enemies, the Philistines. Even so, the angel declared to
Mary that Jesus was to be born because he would save his people
from the bondage of their sins, the enemy of their souls. Matthew
1.21. There was a certain man of Zorah,
of the family of the Danites, whose name was Manoah, and his
wife was barren and bare not. 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 And he gives her some mandates that strictly follow
the purity of the rules of the vow of the Nazarites. And we
get down to verse 6. But, well, in verse 5, the child
shall be called the Nazarite unto God from the womb, and he
shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines.
He'll be the Savior of the Danites from the Philistines. Now, then
note Judges 13, verses 6 through 7. Then the woman came and told
her husband, saying, A man of God. Now, here's an interesting
way in which she relates the experience. The angel, it says,
it's the angel. The Bible tells us the Holy Spirit
reveals to us right up front. This is an angel of the Lord
that revealed himself to her. She recognized him as one of
her. She uses the same term for man
that the Bible uses to describe Manoah. Ish. But she comes and
she tells her husband, an ish of Elohim. Boy, you can't get
two further poles apart than mortal fallen man and triune
God, Father, Son and Spirit. Elohim is the plural name for
God. She saw that this was a mortal
man of Elohim. Now why would she make that conclusion?
Well, she was barren. She was sterile. She couldn't
have kids. This guy made some pretty amazing announcements
to her. Pretty great news to this poor woman. She wanted to
have babies. Couldn't. A man of God, an Ish
of Elohim, which would be a rather eloquent Old Testament way to
describe the God-man, came unto me, and his countenance," she
says, was like the countenance of an angel of God. Very terrible
is what our King James says. The word terrible means really,
though, frighteningly reverent. I mean, it was Knocked me off
my feet. I mean, it was just awe-inspiring
what I saw with a vision of him. But there's a reverence. It wasn't
a dread. But I asked him not whence he
was, neither told me his name. She know thou brought this up
to her husband because he's probably going to ask her, well, where
did this guy come from? Who is this man? What did he say? But
he said unto me, Behold, thou shalt conceive and bear a son.
There was also, by the angel of the Lord communicated to the
woman, the way in which she was to nourish herself during both
the preconception of the baby and during the gestation period
of human development. That's that portion that I didn't
read to you, which we'll go back and fill in. Behold, he says
in verse 4, Beware, I pray thee, and drink not wine, nor strong
drink, and eat not any unclean thing, for lo, thou shalt conceive.
Preconception. and bear a son. And no razor
shall come on his head. A child shall be a Nazarite."
So the instructions, the divine instructions come with a strictness
in a pure fashion and to follow things to the letter. Turn over
to Numbers chapter 6 real quick and just read the Nazarite vow
as the Scriptures have delivered it to us. This is Numbers chapter
6. The first five verses. Here we
are now. This is right after the days
of Moses. We're now about the year 1490,
thereabouts. This is 1161. So we're a couple
of hundred years, a couple of centuries removed from Moses.
When Moses received these instructions, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying,
Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When either
man or woman Notice that, ladies, shall separate themselves to
vow a vow of a Nazarite, which word means to separate. To separate
themselves unto the Lord, he shall separate himself from wine
and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine or vinegar
of strong drink, neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes,
nor eat moist grapes or dried. All the days of his separation
shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree from the
kernels even to the husk. All the days of the vow of his
separation, there shall no razor come upon his head until the
days be fulfilled in the which he separates himself unto the
Lord. He shall be holy and shall let
the locks of the hair of his head grow. All the days that
he separates himself unto the Lord, he shall come at no dead
body. He shall not make himself unclean
for his father. Or for his mother, for his brother,
for his sister when they die. Because the consecration of his
God is upon his head all the days of his separation. He is
holy unto the Lord. Our Lord Jesus was holy from
conception to ascension to the throne where he sits. When you
just know, if you don't already know who this judge is that we're
talking about, this little boy is going to become. you realize
he did not fulfill the vow of the Nazarite. But his substitute
did. And he came to know that. Back
to the story. When Manoah heard the testimony
of the experience that his sterile wife had, he behaves in accordance
with the biblical description of a true child of God. Verse
8, then Manoah, it says, entreated the Lord. That is literally,
Here's what that word, entreat, means. The Hebrew word is graphic. It pictures someone who burns
incense. It goes through the ceremonial
process of seeking God. He burns ceremonial incense in
earnest, prayerful worship of the Lord God. In fact, the word
so used for entreated is in itself illuminatingly connected by its
etymological root to what we shall see will unfold for us
the gospel the gospel doctrine of eternal atonement for sin
by divine substitution. So we even see substitutionary
atonement in this word for entreated. The Holy Spirit now is interjected
into the experience of Manoah hearing the news from his wife.
There's no doubts. There's only a seeking from the
Lord. He entreats the Lord. Manoah's
prayer was this, Oh my Lord, And it's interesting to note
the way he addresses the Lord. It's Adonai Jehovah. Adonai is the plural for Lord. It's not used as many times as
Elohim is, which is the plural for God. But here, Adonai points
to the plurality of God seen in the Son, who is the Lord. For in Him dwells all the fullness
of the Godhead. in bodily form, and you are complete
in Him, the Lord. And when you think, when you
pray, Lord, perhaps the Holy Spirit will seal this from this
point on, that when you pray, you're praying to Father, Son,
and Spirit embodied in your substitute. Not a single person of the divine
great triumvirate is left out. All are being addressed. The
Spirit is urging you to cry out, Have a Father! But you know you
have no right to that claim, except that you've already been
predestined to be adopted into the family of the Father through
the Son. And here, Manoah is overwhelmed. This is a Spirit-prompted prayer. This is a prayer of faith. Oh
my Lord, let the man of God, the Ish of Elohim, that's how
he refers to Him now, Which thou didst send. Which thou didst
send. Don't miss the point that Manoah
understands that the plural, Lord, Father, Son, and Spirit
in the Lord sent this man of God. This man like me that can
relate to me because he's one of me. He's like an ish. But
he's God. He's Elohim. This ish of Elohim
whom thou didst send. We just read it when we started
this study this morning. This is the will of Him that
sent me. Everyone that sees the Son. Jesus
has identified Himself, I'm the Son of God and He sent me. This description can easily once
again be correlated to Jesus. in his continual declaration
that God the Father was the one that sent him into this world
to be the Christ, to be the Savior. He says, O my Lord, let the man
of God, the Ish of Elohim, which Thou didst send, come again unto
us and teach us what we shall do unto the child that shall
be born. All of this is cohesively connected.
What did Paul say when he received by revelation the Gospel? He
did not confer with flesh and blood. Where did He go? Well,
He's by Himself. He's not by Himself. He may be
alone as an ish, a mortal man. But the ish of Elohim is with
Him. His substitute is with Him. And
His substitute is teaching Him. And here, Manoah is praying,
send the ish of Elohim back to teach us. We need to be taught. Well, you know the vows of the
Nazarite. What do you need to be taught? You know the law.
Just follow the law. He knew. I need to be taught. What we shall do unto the child
that shall be born. Note how Manoah is led of the
Spirit in his praying to seek from God His teaching, His guidance. Dean prayed this morning for
us all. Teach us. Oh, that's our only hope of learning
anything, isn't it? What we learn, if it's outside
the teaching of God, is worthless anyhow. When Peter and John were
brought up before the Sanhedrin for preaching the gospel of the
glory of Christ to the masses, and they were upbraided by the
Sanhedrin, the Bible, Luke says, they were amazed that these uneducated
fishermen knew so much. They only knew this, that they
had been, obviously, they'd been with Jesus. That's all I want
people to say about John Carter. I don't know where He'd get all
his learning from, but I just wanted people to say about me,
it's obvious he's been with Jesus. Don't you want that about you?
Teach and have him be the teacher. He's the rabbi of our souls. He was seeking from God his teaching,
his guidance in reference to the events that the angel of
the Lord had announced to his wife that would be taking place.
There's not a hint of doubt or unbelief that is expressed from
Enoah in his prayer of faith. His prayer of faith about the
fact that his sterile wife would be giving birth to a son. And
verse 9 gives us the pure truth of what happens whenever a genuine
prayer of faith is truly given. Look at verse 9. It says, And
God hearkened. He heard and answered. The word
hearkened always includes hearing and answering. It isn't just
that God heard. That's nice to know. God hears.
John's the one that writes to us in 1 John 5. And we know,
if we pray in the name of the Son of God, that God hears us.
And if we know that He hears us, we know that we have the
petitions. Remember that? That's a promise
of Scripture that's near and dear to our hearts. But where
does it rest? What's it founded upon? The person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As John writes,
whosoever these things I write unto you that believe on the
name of the only begotten Son of God, that you may know that
you have eternal life and that you may believe in the name of
the only begotten Son of God. Makes it very plain. It's so
plain and clear. How can any deny it? And God
hearkened to the voice of Manoah, and the angel of God came again
unto the woman. That is, the angel of the Lord
revealed himself again unto the woman. Verse 10, And the woman
made haste, and ran, and showed her husband, and said unto him,
Now, the word showed there means literally she got right in her
husband's face, Manoah, Manoah what? He came again. I saw him
again. He came to me again. Well, this
got Manoah's attention. Whenever somebody comes to you
like that, you react the same way that Manoah did. And said
to 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, There he was. He made
haste. Art thou the man that spoke unto
the woman? Verse 10, And he said, See it in your Bible? How d'ye
answer him? He said, I am. Hear any echoes
there? That's exactly what Moses inquired
of the Lord. Who shall I say sent me? If I
go down there, they're not going to believe that I actually had
this encounter with a bush that didn't burn up. Come on. I'm
not the guy. You tell them I am sent you.
How many times did Jesus, many times, told the Pharisees before
Abraham was, I am. You know what is in the term
I am? We touched on it last week, or
tried to, on only begotten. That's an expression that refers
to Christ. That His conception had to have
been in an eternity because it connotes what I describe, try
to communicate to you as unoriginated relationship. He's the only begotten
of the Father. But it's an unoriginated relationship. The Father did not have Him.
He was the Son before His birth. in this world. He's the eternal
Son of God. I Am connotes the uncreated One. Same thing. The uncreated One. I Am. With God, there is no past. With God, there is no future.
With God, you're standing before Him as according to His will
and purpose and grace which was given to you in Christ before
time began. 2 Timothy 1.9. I am the uncreated
one. That has to be the Creator. He's
the only uncreated one. Are you the man that spoke to
my wife? I am. He's talking to Jesus. He doesn't
know Him. Jesus is revealing Himself as
being the God, Person of God that He is, without giving Him
His name. And He didn't say, I am and I
will be called Jesus. We know that because we got the
book. The written Word of God in its
purity that reveals to us these truths. How vividly clear and
plain it now is that this is the encounter with the pre-incarnate
God-man, the Lord Christ Himself. And having heard the response
of the angel of the Lord in giving His answer, by simply acknowledging
Himself to be, I am. Manoah said this in verse 12,
Now let thy words come to pass. Suddenly, there is integrity
within the word that has been delivered. The word of the The
evangelistic word, the good news has been delivered to this couple,
this childless couple, as a part of the tribe of Dan, in this
foreboding period of time, under the thumb of the Philistines,
of all the rotten people to have to be subject to. The Philistines
were the worst. And they were helpless against
them. And they cry, O God, send us
a Deliverer. Deliver us from the Philistines.
Twenty years and running, these prayers are going up. The cries
of the elect of God, day and night, unto the Father, their
Heavenly Father, deliver us from these Philistines. And the Isshav
Elohim shows up. The God-man. Is this real? I
am. Now, let thy words come to pass."
See, that's the integrity of the pure truth of the gospel.
It's a fulfillment. God always fulfills the Scriptures. That's what makes 1 Corinthians
15, when it says, according to the Scriptures, so important.
You've got to go to the Scriptures. What about the death of Christ
in the Scripture described? It's more than just the simple
phrase, and then you stand on that little narrow ledge and
say, I believe in the death of Jesus Christ. I accept it. I
accept Him as my Savior, that He died for me. Maybe He died
for you, and maybe He didn't. Preach that gospel. That'll make
you step back a little bit, won't it? Make you have to look and
search the Scriptures. Just like Jesus accused the Pharisees
of, or revealed to them. He exposed. You search the Scriptures.
For in them you think you have eternal life, but you will not
come to me that you might have one. And I'm the one that's sent
by the Father. The Scriptures bear witness of
me. The Scriptures are fulfilled
in me. Now let thy words come to pass. How shall we order the
child? How shall we do unto him? Or
literally, what shall be the manner of the child or his work?
is actually what the Hebrew is bringing out here. "...to which
the Lord was pleased to reiterate to Manoah the mandates of the
holy vow of the Nazarite that was to be the significant mark
of identifying who the boy was to be." The Nazarite vow. Just like Jesus was to be recognized
as Jesus of Nazareth. I don't think there's anyone
who can deny the strictness of that Nazarite vow. Who of us
could really honor in perfection, the mandates of that vow. I don't
think any of us could. There's none that did except
Jesus. This is the most famous Nazarite, other than Jesus, in
the Bible that we're referring to. But this is not unlike the
substance of the announcement of the angel unto Mary that the
conception that she would experience would be holy, impossible to
sin, even because it would be of the Holy Spirit. And therefore,
her son would be called the Son of God. Hence, it is true that
the holy conception of Christ has significantly identified
him as being the eternal Son of God. Next, Manoah and his
wife wish that they could entertain their guest with a meal in his
honor. I'm going to read this to you
because time has flown by me again. But the ish of Elohim,
will not eat with them. He does, however, adamantly instruct
them. I mean, Manoah says, stay, eat
with us. We'll kill a goat. We'll make
a nice meal because you've been so kind to deliver this to us.
Stay with us. His reply is instructions. His
instructions pertain to the offering of the burnt offering. I apologize
that I've taken so much time with you. I hope this is still
interesting to you. I don't want you to leave without
getting to the consummation because it really reveals the substitutionary
atonement of our Lord and Savior on your behalf, on my behalf,
on behalf of his whole body. The instructions that they must
present a burnt offering and that when they do, they need
to be sure and presented unto the Lord. You see the evil that
the Danites and the other children of Israel had performed in God's
sight that precipitated his delivering them over to the Philistines
for 40 years. Well, here's another wilderness
journey in total. The evil they committed was idolatry. When they performed their ceremonial
tasks involved in the rituals of the sacrifices, idolatry became
the substance of their performance. Much like what church has become
today in the experience of many professing believers in Christ. That's each two hearts stand
up. Don't let it get to you. Remember, verse one tells us
of the apostasy. that Israel was directly involved
in. And Scripture here in verse 16 specifically tells us that
Manoah at this juncture did not know. Verse 16 tells us that
Manoah did not know that this special man was in fact an angel
of the Lord. The Holy Spirit revealed that
to us all through this story. That it was an angel of the Lord.
But to Manoah and his wife, it was a man of God. It was a man just like them,
but of God. They related to Him. He was relating
to them. He had this message. They may
have thought, this is a new prophet. Maybe this is a new judge. Here,
all the judges come that God has intended to raise up. But
this isn't Him. This is the pre-incarnate Christ. This is where the encounter begins
to become profoundly pregnant, no pun intended, with meaning
concerning the gospel doctrine of atonement by a divinely provided
substitute. Verse 17 of the text says, And
when Noah said unto the angel of the Lord, What is thy name? That when thy sayings come to
pass, not doubting that they will, but when they come to pass.
And literally in the Hebrew, it's the Hebrew word for word.
which is just as poignant, just as powerful as Logos is in the
Greek. This is Hebrew. When thy word
comes to pass, when the purity of what you're saying manifests
itself, why askest thou thus, and the angel says, we may do
thee honor, verse 18, and the angel of the Lord said unto him,
why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret? Now, if you're just reading your
King James Bible and you're going to go on to the next verse, you're
going to say, well, he just shut him up. He didn't even answer
him. But he did answer him. Remember the word entreated that
I pointed out to you was related etymologically to a word that
pertains to Christ, our substitute. Here's another word. That same
etymological line from the same root. The word secret. You know what it means in the
Hebrew? Exactly. Remember in Isaiah 9,
6, when the Lord revealed Isaiah, how do I identify him? Who is he? His name shall be
called Wonderful, Counselor, Prince of Peace, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father, Emmanuel. Everyone said Jesus. But he told
me he was going to be born of a virgin. His name would be Wonderful.
Here, this ish of Elohim. Why do you ask about my name?
Seeing it is wonder. That's what the word secret means.
And the word entreated is related to the same word. That's one
thing that's really wonderful about our Savior. He ever lives
to make intercession for us. That's Hebrews 7.25, which says,
speaking of Christ Jesus, He is able also to save them to
the uttermost that come unto God by Him. There's no other
way to get to God except by Christ. seeing he ever lives to make
intercession for them. So the angel of the Lord, the
Ish of Elohim, the God-man pre-incarnate, identified himself as being the
pre-incarnate Son of God, the sovereign Savior substitute for
all who are of the household of the faith, who are his people,
saved by grace. Verse 19 says, So Manoah took
a kid of the goats with a meat offering, or literally a gift
offering, and offered it up upon a rock unto the Lord. And verse
19 says, And the angel did wondrously. Here again, another word that's
related to the word just used for secret that's also used before
in the word entreated. It's from the same root that
directly relates to the divine description of Christ our substitute.
And the Bible says here in verse 19, And Manoah and his wife looked
on. It means they looked on with eyes wide open. They're going,
Wow! Now, what you have here, stay
with us. We'll kill a goat and have a
nice meal. Beware when you offer a sacrifice
that you offer it unto the Lord. Now, Noah gets a goat and he
prepares on a rock. He doesn't build an altar. This
is before the king. This is before the temple. And he had to perform. If he's
going to be a good Israelite, and you're going to follow the
mandates of what Moses and Mount Sinai had laid down, that the
only way to approach God is going to be through a sacrifice that's
in His place. A substitute sacrifice. He's
got to offer that to the Lord. And the purity of that sacrificial
rite is given as a warning from the Isha of Elohim. When you
offer a sacrifice, Be sure you do it unto the Lord. It better
be pure. And he kills this goat. He puts
it on a rock. And when it says that the angel
did wondrously, even the best scholars that decipher this phrase
of Scripture, there isn't any real conclusive. statement here,
but it has to do something with the way the sacrifice ultimately
ended up. Because Manoah, after they laid
their sacrifice down on the makeshift altar that that rock became.
It was just a plain old rock. They stood back and the angel
of the Lord did wondrously and they looked on. Wow! I can't help but think that there
was a flame from heaven that ignited that offering unto the
Lord. And I say that because of what
happens next. They became observers. Manoah and his wife simply became
observers and recipients of what was actually taking place upon
the altar of their acceptable sacrifice unto the Lord God.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the only acceptable sacrifice unto
God for our sins. Ephesians 1, 6, that we find
ourselves having been accepted in the Beloved. In the Beloved.
Verse 20. for it came to pass." Or in other
words, the integrity of the Word pans out to be perfectly true
and reliable. Here, actually, Manoah's prayer
is being answered, exceeding abundantly above all that he
could ask or think. He's thinking, now, let thy words
come to pass. Let's have a baby. Let's have
a baby boy. Not only that, Manoah, but the
sacrifice for the sins of your soul. is going to be accepted. When the flame went up toward
heaven from off the altar, for it came to pass, when the flame
went up toward heaven from off the altar, or revealing to us
the eternality of Christ's wonderful atonement, from the altar up
to heaven, from where the angel of the Lord came, even from eternity,
the abiding place, of that dimension which encompasses all of us,
even right now, at all times, and to which we are all headed,
the Bible says, and the angel of the Lord stepped up and ascended
in the flame of the altar. You get the picture? The ish
of Elohim. You look at Him. I relate to
you. You're a man. I'm a man. There's
something different about you. And you're telling me we're going
to have a baby? She's sterile. You're the one? I am. Let your
words come to pass. Eat with us. When you offer a
sacrifice, be sure you do it in purity and in truth. You offered
unto the Lord. They bring a sacrifice. They
put it on the rock. The angel of the Lord did wondrously.
The burnt offering is ignited. The flame and the smoke rising
up. The ish of Elohim steps up on
the rock and ascends with the flame of the sacrifice right
before their eyes. This is Christ dying according
to the Scriptures. We don't have Him being buried
and resurrected, but this is the ish of Elohim. And the ascension
when He left. You've got the same picture of
the apostles standing there with their eyes wide open as they
watch the Savior ascend out of sight. I'm reminded of John 3,
verse 13, when Jesus told Nicodemus, No man hath ascended into heaven
except he who descended down from heaven, even the Son of
man who is now in heaven. If that isn't saying, I am, in
those many words, then nothing. Herein is the substance of. Herein
is the pure truth, details of the amazing revelatory experience
of Manoah and his wife with the God of sovereign grace. And Manoah
and his wife looked on it, the Bible says, and they fell on
their faces to the ground. We would too, wouldn't we? This
indeed is the only appropriate thing for fallen sinners to do.
The wonderful Savior's substitute, right before their very eyes,
unites himself with, identifies himself with, as accepting the
offering of the gift sacrifice for their sins and ascends straight
on up to heaven as a token of their completed atonement. Praise
the holy name of the Lord, our Savior, God Almighty. Finally,
note the manner that this particular text declares unto us how we
may be assured of our having been accepted in the Beloved.
This is the last few verses of the chapter. Verse 21, But the
angel of the Lord, it says, did no more appear to Manoah and
his wife. Hebrews 9.24 says this, Christ
is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which
are the figures of the truth, but into heaven itself. Now,
to appear in the presence of God for us, to put away sin by
the sacrifice of himself. Hebrews 9 also points out that
the priests that performed these sacrifices, they did so every
year because there was a constant reminder of their sins. But when
Christ did it, he disappeared. He went into heaven and sat down,
having purged our sins by himself. There's no more conscience of
sins. Guilt is washed away. Upon witnessing
the manner of the ascension of the angel of the Lord, Manoah's
spiritual eyes were suddenly opened and a natural holy fear
overwhelmed him. Then Manoah knew, it says, that
he was an angel of the Lord. This is where his eyes were opened.
When? When he saw him ascend in the
flame and the smoke of his sacrifice, which related to him that his
sacrifice was accepted. And he knew this is an angel
of the Lord. The revelation of who the Ish
of Elohim really was as being sent from heaven, an angel of
the Lord had taken place. But Noah was immediately forever
different. Verse 22 says, when Noah said
to his wife, We shall surely die because we have seen God. This is a completely natural,
godly apprehension at being on the very brink of being identified
in oneself as an eternal outcast. It comes over Manoah, just like
with Isaiah. That's the way he felt, isn't
it? Woe is me! I'm a man of unclean lips, and
I dwell among a people. Manoah had the same experience.
He looks at his wife. We shall surely die. This was
God. We have seen God. He knows the
pure truth of the matter, that neither he nor his wife are perfectly
holy, and therefore must be forever unacceptable unto God. Right
at the very outset of this study this morning, I tried to make
the point that true regeneration, a true regenerating revelatory
experience involves you seeing with the eyes of your understanding
that it had been Holy Spirit quickened and exalted Christ
and a debased self. Verse 23, there's only 25 verses,
but his wife said unto him, here's the comfort. And what a comfort
it is, men, to have a wife by your side that the Lord can use
to speak words of comfort to your heart when you need to hear
them. She said, if the Lord were pleased, or literally in the
Hebrew, if He were inclined to kill us, He would not have received
a burnt offering and a gift offering at our hands. Substitutionary
atonement. She's the one that pointed that
out. Our substitute has been accepted on our behalf. If He
intended to kill us, He never would have received it. Neither
would He have showed us or literally revealed to us the light of the
truth of all these things about me having a baby, and how the
baby is to be raised, and how I'm supposed to eat and drink
before we even have the conception, and how it's supposed to be after
His birth. He wouldn't have showed us all
these things, nor would, as at this time, have allowed us to
hear Him as He was, told us such things as these. Hebrews 4, 20,
21, But you have not so learned Christ, if so be that you have
heard Him, and have been taught by Him as the truth, the pure
truth, is in Jesus. Here's a threefold platform of
eternal assurance that is descriptively declared unto us whereby we may
rest, like Manoah's name means rest, in Christ's person, though
we're in the midst of a nest of hornets at all times in this
world. We rest in Christ's person and
work of his eternal atonement for our sins. That's where we
rest. Number one, we shall not die because Christ's death as
our sacrifice has been well received. for all eternity by just and
righteous Almighty and Holy God. Number two, He has healed us
and He's opened our spiritual eyes, the eyes of our understanding,
whereby we may behold the pure truth of the things that pertain
to the eternality of our standing before God in Christ. That's where your salvation assurance
is, beloved. It's in Jesus Christ, your substitute. It's not ever in you, not ever
will be in you. God doesn't expect anything from
you. You are what you are as a fallen
sinner. Christ is what He is as a great
Savior of fallen sinners just like you. Third, He has even
caused it to happen that He Himself is our Teacher concerning the
eternal things in Himself that pertain to our salvation. we
have been given ears to hear, from which experience the bestowal
of the faith of Jesus Christ is experientially realized. Faith
comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. From being taught by Him does
the grace of faith come to us. The whole manner of former conversation
has been by the Holy Spirit put off That's the old man. Now,
you have put off the old man with his lusts. And Christ himself
has been put off. Paul concluded his letter to
the Romans, putting on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision
for the flesh to obey it in its lusts. The spiritual revelatory
experience that Manoah and his wife had were the divine method
of eternal substitutionary atonement and how that and that alone is
the substance of their salvation. It totally changed their sterile,
unfulfilled lives. Last two verses of the chapter. And the woman bare a son and
called his name Samson. And the child grew and the Lord
blessed him. Verse 25. And the Spirit of the
Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan, between Zorah,
a nest of hornets, and Eshtael. You know what Eshtael means?
Petition. Fills up our prayers, doesn't
it? When you're living in the midst of a nest of hornets, you've
got a lot of reasons to give petitions. And the great man
Samson. And it took 20 years before Samson
began to show himself in his strength. That's why I believe
it says in verse 1 that God had delivered them over to the Philistines
for 40 years. But look, 20 years had gone by. The cries had been going up.
In the midst of their cries, the petitions are being made.
This visitation from heaven occurs to Manoah, whose name was Rest,
and his wife, who was sterile. He came with an announcement
of a birth. And the birth became a type of
Christ. And we know what happened to Samson. That's a whole other
story. He broke his vow. He revealed
wherein his strength was considered to come from. You couldn't look
at Samson and figure out how is it that he could be so strong?
How is it that such might could come from this package of humanity? It doesn't make sense. It didn't
correlate. This is what puzzled the Philistines.
Why can't we kill this man? Why can't we overcome him? The
Holy Spirit was the difference. But he failed. He was a fallen
sinner. But he was recovered. God in
his grace recovered him. All this to set things up. It's
like the book of Hebrews says in the Old Testament. These types
were figures of that which is to be true. The man from Nazareth
did show up, and his vows were never, it wasn't possible for
him to break his vows because of his holiness. Thanks for listening
to me. James Lee of Sinclair.