We live, without a doubt, in
the most religious age the world has ever known. Multiplied millions
of dollars are spent every year, given by people with sincerity
to build huge, elaborate, ornate church buildings, spent in religious
organizations, spent to send missionaries around the world,
millions and millions and millions of dollars every year. Sunday
after Sunday, in some places, thousands of people crowd into
a large auditorium to hear a man preach, to sing the songs of
Zion, and they do so with sincerity. I don't question their sincerity.
They hope by their religious devotions to attain everlasting
life and salvation. Every time I drive by one of
these religious monstrosities, I want to cry out like Paul did
when he came into Athens and Mars Hill, beheld the devotion
to those wise Athenians ever seeking some new thing. God Almighty
is not impressed with silver or gold or stone graven by the
art of man's devices. God is spirit. They who worship
him must worship him in spirit and in truth. The apostle later
said, bodily exercise profiteth little. And when he said that,
Paul wasn't talking about physical exercise for your health. He
was talking about the bodily exercise of religion. He is saying
the mere exercise of religious duties and devotions, even when
performed with great sincerity and zeal, are of no benefit to
a man's soul in themselves. But godliness with contentment
is great gain. Godliness. That's not talking
about the performance of godliness by you, rather it is talking
about God living and ruling and reigning in you. Godliness is
Christ in you, the hope of glory. Godliness is the knowledge of
and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and that is indescribably great
gain. That's what I want for myself,
and that's what I want for you. I want you to know Jesus Christ
the Lord. and the blessed experience of
His grace. Not only that I want you to know
the right doctrine, that's meaningless if you don't know Him. I want
you to know Him who is life eternal. Apart from living faith in Christ
Jesus, there is no pardon for sin, no cleansing from iniquity,
no reconciliation with God, no access to God, no acceptance
with God, no peace in your soul, no hope of heaven, no escape
from hell, and no salvation. It is by the divinely ordained
means of gospel preaching that this life and this faith is communicated
to men. The mere exercise of religion
is useless, and yet without this ordained means, No man will ever
come to know our Savior. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing
by the Word of God. We are born again, not of corruptible
seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God which lives and
abides forever. And this is the Word which by
the gospel is preached unto you. Now, we are infallibly taught
in the Scripture that gospel preaching is the divinely appointed
means of spiritual life and blessing. There is no substitute for it.
But as someone once said, if Christless sermons fall on Christless
crowds and are lured by music and bewitching show, then lifeless
will remain lifeless and the bubble will burst in woe. I lay the blame, all of it, for
the current religious world in which we live, the current mass
of deception and confusion, as well as the blame for the current
trends of utter debauchery and immorality in the whole of our
society, squarely at the pulpit of the churches of this day.
Men whose responsibility it is to fill the pulpit with the blessed
gospel of God's grace, rather than proclaiming the pure wheat
of the gospel, Jesus Christ and Him crucified, stand day after
day, week after week, year after year, and do nothing but scatter
chaff, that which is utterly useless to the souls of men. Christ is all in the book of
God. Christ is all in all the purpose
of God. Christ is all in all God's providence,
and Christ is all in this matter of redemption, grace, and salvation. Christ shall be all in heaven. That means He ought to be all
in the pulpit. There is nothing to be preached
except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. God cannot be known, and sinners
cannot be saved. Saints cannot be comforted. edified,
reproved, and challenged, except as God the Holy Spirit reveals
the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ in our hearts
by His Word." Now, most people, when they, and I say most people,
I'm talking about people who are familiar somewhat with the
Scriptures, at least in the letter of the Word. Most people, when
they think of the book of Exodus, three things immediately come
to mind. the exodus of Israel out of Egypt, the giving of the
law at Mount Sinai, and the wilderness wanderings of the children of
Israel and all the various miracles that attended those wanderings.
Few people, very, very few people ever have the idea that this
blessed book of inspiration, as is true of every word written
in the whole book of God, the book of Exodus, is written to
reveal Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Now that's my purpose in preaching
this series of messages to you from the book of Exodus. I pray
that as I preach to you, God the Holy Spirit will cause you
in your heart with joy to discover Christ in this book, in the book
that He's written. Now with that in mind, let's
read the first ten verses of this chapter again. Exodus chapter
three. Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro,
his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock
to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God,
even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared
unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and he
looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush
was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn
aside and see this great sight why the bush is not burnt. And
when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto
him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses, and he
said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither,
put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God
of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God
of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon
God. And the Lord said, I have surely
seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have
heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters. For I know
their sorrows, and am come down to deliver them out of the hand
of the Egyptians. and to bring them out of that
land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk
and honey, unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites,
and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
Now therefore behold, the cry of the children of Israel is,
Come unto me. And I have also seen the oppression
wherewith the Egyptians oppressed them. Come now, therefore, and
I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth
my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." Now I want us
to take another look at this title given to our Savior, the
angel of the Lord. In verse 2 we read, "...the angel
of the Lord appeared unto him." I'm not interested just in showing
you that this title applies to our Savior. I'm interested very
much in showing you what it means for our Savior to appear to men
as the angel of the Lord. Now, throughout the Old Testament,
you have many, many, many appearances of the Lord Jesus in what we
call theophanies, that is, revelations of God in the flesh before he
came in human flesh. pre-incarnate manifestations
of our Lord Jesus Christ. He came and appeared to Adam
in the garden. He came and appeared to Abraham. He came and appeared to Isaac.
He came and appeared to Jacob. He appears to Moses here over
and over again. He appears to men as the angel
of the Lord, as if to say to us, this is what I shall come
to accomplish. He appears in His glory. as the angel of the Lord, the
messenger of the covenant. Now, Lord Jesus here clearly
identifies himself as that one who is himself God. He said God
spoke to him out of the bush, and the one speaking to him is
the angel of the Lord. He is the I Am, the absolute
I Am that I Am who sends Moses to deliver Israel. This was a
manifestation of God himself. Moses hid his face from him.
He was afraid to look on God. No man can look on him and live. This is the same thing that Abraham
saw 400 years earlier. And God speaks of himself here
and identifies himself as God, and yet he always identifies
himself, this angel of the Lord, as one who is sent of God to
men. The angel of the Lord is described
throughout the Old Testament. You can look at these at your
own leisure and see the various places, but he's revealed throughout
the Old Testament in exactly the same character as our Lord
Jesus Christ is set before us in the New Testament. In Exodus
14, we see him guiding and protecting his people. In Exodus 23, We
see him as the constant companion of his chosen in the wilderness
through which they wandered, the one who constantly keeps
his people in the way. The Lord Jesus is revealed as
the angel of the Lord, as that one who punishes sin in 2 Samuel
24. We see him in 1 Kings 19 ministering. to his servant Elijah just as
he ministers to his own in this world today. The angel of the
Lord is that one who fights our battles and always wins them
in 1 Chronicles. And the angel of the Lord is
always seen, as is revealed through the book, as one who is dependent
upon and obedient to the Lord God who sent him, showing him
to be the servant of the Lord. So when you see this phrase,
the angel of the Lord appeared, it is telling us that the Lord
Jesus Christ, who is Jehovah's servant, who would come in human
flesh, appeared to this one who he stands before as God's messenger
to reveal God and his work to men. And yet, this angel of the
Lord, who is Jehovah's messenger and Jehovah's servant, is himself
God Almighty. Throughout the Old Testament,
men and women recognized that they had seen God. Jacob said,
I've seen God face-to-face. Moses said, I've seen the Lord,
but Noah and his wife said, we've seen the Lord face-to-face. He
was worshiped as God. Men prayed to him as God. They
offered sacrifices to him as God, and he accepted the sacrifices
as God. So that throughout the Old Testament,
we see the angel of the Lord stands before men as a man. He
eats with men and drinks with them, stands before them in bodily
form, and yet he is God Almighty, worshipped as God. Clearly, the
angel of the Lord, then, is one with God in all the glory of
his being. He is the Shekinah, the glory
of God, for the glory of God shines only in one place, and
that one place where the glory of God is revealed is in the
face of Jesus Christ, our crucified, risen Savior and Lord. These
appearances of him in the Old Testament, as I see how that
Moses responds to him. He comes to Moses, and Moses
sees the bush burning, and yet it defies the fire that burns
And the angel of the Lord speaks to Moses out of the midst of
that burning bush. And Moses hides his face before
him, fearing to look upon the Lord God, whom he recognized
as God. The same was true when Manoah
and his wife saw the angel of the Lord appearing to them. And
throughout the scriptures, Isaiah saw him, and he said, when I
saw him in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw him sitting
upon His throne, high and lifted up, and I heard the seraph sing
the song of His holiness, and I cried, Woe is me, for I am
a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean
lips. And the Spirit of God tells us
in John 12, this is what Isaiah said when he saw the Lord. He's talking about Jesus Christ
the Lord. So these appearances of our Lord seem to be appearances
of Him as He appeared after His resurrection in the four Gospels.
They seem to be the same appearance that was made of Him to the Apostle
Paul on the Damascus Road when he saw a light shining from heaven.
They seem to be the same as that which Peter, James, and John
saw when our Lord Jesus was transfigured on the Mount of Transfiguration.
They seem to be revelations made of Christ in His glory. The revelation
of Jesus Christ the God-man, our Savior, having fully accomplished
all the work of redemption for our souls, and now rewarded with
glory. This One who is the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world is that One who is revealed as
not only the One who shall in time accomplish redemption, but
He by whom redemption has forever been accomplished in the mind
and purpose of God. I've been meditating on this
for Two or three days now. The other day, Shelby and I were
reading in 2 Samuel. You remember when Nathan came
to David, confronted him with his sin. David said, the fellow
who's done this, he'll surely be put to death. Nathan said,
thou art the man. And David said, I have sinned.
Do you remember what the Lord said to him? God's prophet said
to him, the Lord shall forgive your sin. Is that what he said?
That's what he said. He said, the Lord hath put away
thy sin. But now, wait a minute. Christ
had not yet come in the fullness of time. He had not yet accomplished
redemption upon the cross. Oh, but he had accomplished redemption
as the angel of the Lord, the angel of the covenant, back yonder
before the world began in the blessed covenant of God's grace.
Let me briefly summarize what the scriptures reveal about the
angel of the Lord. The angel of the Lord is distinct
from God, and yet he is one with God and identical with God, even
as he reveals himself in all the scriptures. His name is Jehovah. That name is given to none, not
rightly, except to God himself. His presence is the presence
of the Lord. The angel of the Lord is the
preexistent Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the second
person of the Holy Trinity. Turn to John chapter 1, let me
show you. The angel of the Lord appeared
to men many, many times in the Old Testament age. Then in the
fullness of time, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made
under the law, to redeem them that were under the law. And
the angel of the Lord appeared once in the end of the world
in the man, Jesus Christ, to make atonement for our sins,
to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. Look here at John
chapter 1, verse 14. And the Word, this Word which
was with God and was God, by whom all things were made that
were made, the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and
we beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth. John bare witness of him, and
cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake. He that cometh
after me is preferred before me, for he was before me." He's
coming after me, but he was before me. And of his fullness, Have
all we received grace for grace? For the law was given by Moses,
but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man has seen God at
any time." What an important statement. God cannot be seen
and cannot be known and cannot be heard except in the person
of his Son. Did you hear me? God cannot be
seen, and cannot be known, and cannot be heard, except in the
person of his Son, the God-man, our Savior. No man has seen God
at any time. You mean Adam didn't see God
in the garden? No. No. Not God in his absolute
essential being. Didn't Moses see God on the Mount?
No. Not in his absolute essential
being. But didn't Isaiah see God? No. Not in his absolute essential
being. God was seen in that man, the
pre-incarnate man, Jesus Christ our Lord, the angel of the Lord. No man has seen God at any time. It can't happen. God's Spirit. The only way God can be seen
is to make himself one of us. The only way God can be known
is to make himself one of us. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, which
is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. He's opened Him up and showed
Him to us. He who is the image of the invisible
God, the firstborn of every creature, He is the revealer of God. for
in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. At the
appointed time he came here to redeem and save us. So the angel
of the Lord is none other than the Word who was with God and
was God, the Word made flesh who came to his own. who came
here and dwelt among us, and yet is no newcomer. Micah said,
his goings forth have been of old from everlasting. This is
he of whom Moses speaks back here in Exodus chapter 3. The
angel of the Lord is perfectly revealed in the person and work
of Jesus Christ in the fullness of time. God manifests himself
fully in the visible form of the person of our Savior, His
darling Son. Again, this is what Isaiah saw,
this is what Moses saw. The angel of the Lord in the
Old Testament is Himself, Jesus Christ, the God-man, our Savior,
and this is how John describes it, that which was from the beginning. which we have heard, which we
have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our
hands have handled, the word of life. For the life was manifested,
and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that
eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested, revealed
unto us." Now, back here next to chapter 3, it is this angel
of the Lord who comes to Moses, the angel of the Lord appeared
unto Moses. Forty years had passed since
Moses fled from Pharaoh. Moses who knew, back yonder forty
years earlier, God had ordained him to be a deliverer. He knew
that. He presumed that the time had
come for him to deliver Israel, and he ran before he was sent.
But don't misunderstand, Moses knew that he was appointed of
God to be a deliverer. Can you imagine what frustration,
what pain, what disappointment he must have experienced those
40 years on the backside of the desert? 40 years have passed. The man's
now 80 years old. 80 years old. The fact is you
can bank on it. If God is pleased to use you
or me, That which precedes usefulness
is preparation that is the experience of bitterness and pain and stripping. If God is pleased to manifest
his blessing to you or to me, you can be sure he will first
manifest trouble to us. My dear friend, Brother John
Mitchell, Woke up one morning a couple of years ago, me and
my wife, reading the scriptures. I got done reading and praying,
and John said, Verla, I just got a feeling we're going to have some trouble.
Because God has so blessed us recently. And that very morning
got a call, trouble no man can describe. His oldest son killed his wife,
and now he's sitting in prison. Moses had been on the back side
of the desert for 40 years, and now the set time had arrived
when deliverance must be accomplished. Therefore, the angel of the Lord
appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the
bush, and he turned aside to see this great sight, at first
stunned, and then reverent, just overcome with reverence. The Lord God said, Pull off your
shoes, Moses. The place on which you stand
is holy, hallowed, sanctified ground. What made it so? Because God was there. Wherever God speaks to you, wherever
God manifests himself to you, wherever the Lord God comes to
you, that place is holy ground. And I'm not talking about a physical
place. If the Lord God is pleased to visit us tonight, Let us pull
off all idle shoes of curiosity and just stand before Him, bow
before Him, to hear His Word and worship Him. God's presence
made this place holy. And again, we know this is the
appearance of Christ. All these appearances of the
angel of the Lord are our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Nowhere in this book did the Father ever appear in the form
of a man. Nowhere in this book did the Holy Spirit ever appear
in the form of a man. But He who appears to men as
the Redeemer of men, as the Angel of the Lord, is Himself God over
all, blessed forever, the Son of God. What caused our Savior
to come and make Himself known to Moses in this burning bush?
What was it that moved His holy heart to appear? Look at verse
7 and you'll see the answer. The Lord said, I have surely
seen the affliction of my people. Oh, what exquisite tenderness
that is. We are assured of His compassion
for His people. Our Savior ever appears to comfort
the sorrowing. The Son of God ever appears to
meet the needs of His people. Our blessed Lord Jesus Christ
is always God at hand. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. Let your
moderation be known to all men. The Lord's at hand. He's saying
to us, never think in the hour of trial. Never doubt in time
of trouble and sorrow. The angel of the Lord is near.
We may walk through dark valleys. Our road may be rough. If it is, it will be. And it's
best that it should be in this world. We're so carnal. If he didn't
break our hearts with this world, we'd never be willing to leave
it. Every relationship, the sweetest
there is in this world, has its measure of bitterness. Every
relationship. sooner or later it's going to
cause you pain. We may indeed face trouble rolling
over us, wave after wave, all our days in this world. The Lord
may graciously and wisely cause our pillow to be a hard stone
on which to lay, but His eye, His infinite, eternal love ever
watches over us. His ear of compassion ever hears
your cry and the groans of your heart. His hand of mercy is ever
outstretched to help. He is ever quick to run to the
aid of His own. Our Savior constantly appears
to meet our need and comfort us in time of need. This is what
the psalmist said, He brought me forth also into a large place. He delivered me because He delighted
in me. And whenever you're found in
a straight place, be sure, my friend, if you're His, because
He delights in you, and He does delight in you if you're His,
He will bring you into a large place, and He will deliver you
at the appointed time. This is Moses' lifelong remembered experience. This is his Ebenezer. The angel
of the Lord appears to him when he's 80 years old and after 40
more years. And if you want to see what those
years were like, we tend to think of them as years of great glory,
and they were. We tend to think of them as years
of great revelations, and they were. We tend to think of them
as years of great blessing, and they were. But those 40 years
in the wilderness, were years of constant warfare and trouble
and heartache and pain to this man Moses. And after 40 years,
just before the grave silences his lips forever, Moses remembers
this day and that which God revealed to him in the bush. And he pronounces
blessings upon the people of God, splendorous with prophetic
truths to be revealed in the fullness of God's time. He pronounces
upon them the blessings of the precious things of heaven and
of earth. And he says it's all according
to the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush. I can almost picture
Moses when he comes to the Red Sea, and Israel wants to kill
him. And he remembers the goodwill
of him that dwelt in the bush. They cross the Red Sea and see
Pharaoh and his armies dumped in the river, and he comes to
the bitter waters of Marah, and Israel wants to kill him. And
he remembers the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush. Korah,
Dathan, and Abiram raise up their rebellion against him, and Israel
sides with them. And Moses remembers the goodwill
of him that dwelt in the bush. All through the battles, he remembers
the goodwill of him that dwelt in the bush. That is, he remembers
what God revealed to him on this occasion when the Lord Jesus
Christ came and said, I've come down to deliver my people. And with this, his soul was sustained.
and his heart was comforted, his spirit was revived, and his
courage enlivened continually. Oh, may God give us grace ever,
ever to behold our Savior, the angel of the Lord, and to bask
in the revelation of his grace in him. Now, it's obvious that
this term, the angel of the Lord, primarily means that Christ is
the mediator between God and man, the only one by whom and
in whom God is revealed to men. He and he alone, he and he alone
is the channel of communication between heaven and earth. There
was a day in Eden's happy hours when God and man walked together
in blessed harmony. Adam walked with God, drew near
to God as a child, draws near to his father, and was welcomed
just as a father welcomes his darling child. Walked with God
in the cool of the day in sweet communion, as friend with friend. And then sin entered the world,
and death by sin. And there was a breach between
God and man, a chasm. a great gulf fixed. How can the
breach be mended? Who can span the gulf and reconcile
man to God? Behold, the angel of the Lord
comes. and makes himself known to Adam
and Eve even before he drives them out of the garden and promises
that soon he will come as that one who is the seed of woman
to crush the serpent's head. Our Lord Jesus Christ comes and
reveals himself to sinners as the mediator and a ladder is
established upon the earth that reaches up into heaven. Turn
over to Genesis 28, let me show you this ladder. A ladder constructed
by God Almighty, resting upon the earth, and yet reaching to
heaven. A ladder by which God comes down
to man, and man ascends up to God. Genesis 28, verse 10. Now don't miss the language.
Jacob went out from Beersheba, and went toward Haman. And he
lied upon a certain place and tarried there all night, because
the sun was set. Generally, when the Lord comes
to reveal himself in your soul, he'll come in a night of weeping
and sorrow. And he took of the stones of
that place and put them for his pillows. That's a strange pillow. Usually, he comes to reveal himself
in your soul in mercy when he makes every place of rest a hard
rock for your head to lay on. Read on. And he laid down in
that place to sleep, and he dreamed, and behold, a ladder set up on
the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold,
the angels of God ascending and descending on it. The Lord Jesus
Christ, the God-man, our Savior. He comes down here. Every time
you read in the Old Testament, the angel of the Lord appeared.
Every time you read those words, understand He is saying to the
one to whom He appears, there is a day coming when I shall
descend from heaven and I shall descend from heaven with all
the blessing of God for your soul. It was necessary that if
he redeem us, he must be made like unto his brethren. It behooved
him in all things to be made like unto his brethren, that
he may be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining
to God. It is as the angel of the Lord that he reveals God
to men. He lived our life, died our death,
suffered our sufferings, paid our debt, bore our curse, made
atonement for our transgressions, redeemed us from all iniquity,
and washed out all our sins from the record book of heaven, having
worked out for us a heaven-deserving robe of perfect righteousness
with which he clothes us by his grace. But that's not all. He
comes and reveals God to us. the glory of God, the work of
God, the will of God. He comes and hides nothing. To those who are taught of God,
for all who are taught of God, it is their privilege to know
that Jesus Christ, the angel of the Lord, the Son of God,
is the angel of the covenant. The very last word God gave to
his people in the Old Testament by the prophet Malachi was given
in Malachi chapter 3. He says, Behold, I will send
my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord
whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger
of the covenant whom ye delight in. Behold, he shall come, saith
the Lord of hosts." Oh, what a great privilege to know that
between God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a covenant
was made. before the world began, by which
our everlasting salvation was arranged, accomplished, and secured
from eternity. And what a blessing to know that
everything in that covenant hangs, hangs completely, hangs entirely
upon the Lord Jesus Christ, so much so that Christ himself is
the covenant. When we talk about the covenant
of grace, we're not just talking about some kind of a binding
legal agreement, though that's true. Like when we talk about
the resurrection. We believe there's a day coming
when we're going to be raised from the dead. We believe that
we have been raised from the dead spiritually by the new birth. We believe we were raised together
with Christ when he arose. But when Martha talked to him,
said, Lord, I know when the last day my brother's going to rise
from the dead. He said, Martha, I'm not talking to you now about
a doctrine or a theory. I'm talking to you about me.
I am the resurrection. He is the resurrection. He is
the life. He is justification. He is salvation. He is the covenant. Twice in
the Old Testament, Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 49, the Lord God says,
I will give thee for a covenant to my people. He himself is the covenant. All
the stipulations of the covenant hang on him. He is the surety
of the covenant whom the Father trusted with our souls before
the world began, and in whom you also trust when you've been
called by His grace, trusting Him for everything. He is the
covenant, and all the blessings of the covenant, all the promises
of the covenant, everything secured in the covenant, Jesus Christ
is, and being united to Him in living faith, all that He is,
is made ours in the sweet experience of grace. The scriptures speak
of him, his message of the covenant, revealing to us how the eternal
counsels of God are accomplished, how all the glory of God is revealed. In this world, we go through
much. Ezekiel describes Man's experience
in this world is nothing but lamentation and mourning and
woe. Misery stalks us through this
time world. Wretchedness sets on every family
hearth. Tears flow from every eye. Every
mortal heart heaves with sorrow sometime or another. Earthquakes
and storms and floods and pestilence and war and rumor of war All
these things constantly perplex the hearts and minds and lives
of men and women while we live in this world of woe. And men
cry continually, where is the love of God in all this? And
then the angel of the Lord appears to his own, and all is bright,
and we see God is love. The proof of it is in his mission. God commendeth His love toward
us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. How can I then, beholding Him,
dying in my stead, ever question His goodness and love in the
exercise of it to me, even in the most bitter circumstances? The love of God rules the world
on my behalf. Beholding the crucified Christ,
I ought to be continually convinced of it. He fully satisfied all the justice
of God, magnified the law and made it honorable. By mercy and
truth, He purged our iniquities, It is written in the Scripture,
without holiness no man shall see the Lord, but the angel of
the Lord appears and assures us that perfect holiness is ours
in Him. As the angel of the Lord appeared
to you. Oh, blessed Lord Jesus, angel
of God, surety of the covenant, messenger of mercy, appear to
our souls. Speak to us as you spoke to Moses
and make us to know your good will. Here I raise mine Ebenezer
hither by thy help I've come and I hope by thy good pleasure
safely to arrive at home according to the word of the angel of the
Lord. the goodwill of him that dwelt
in the bush. Amen.