Angel of the Lord in Exodus 3:1-3, the question is, who’s in the bush? Now Moses…the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. But look at verse 4, when the Lord saw he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush. Well, that makes it sound like Lord and God, they’re two different things, one’s referring to the other, but you already know the angel is in the bush. You got at least two in the bush, and they’re both deity. Well, how can you be sure about the angel of the Lord being deity? By the time we hit Exodus 3, the angel of the Lord has a history in the biblical text.
This is the Jacob and Laban story in Genesis 31:10-13, when Jacob has been instructed what to do with his flocks, so that they multiply against Labans and in verse 11 and Jacob is relating it, he says then the angel of God said to me in the dream, Jacob, and I said, Here I am. He said, lift up your eyes and see all the goats. In verse 13, the angel tells Jacob, I am the God of Bethel. Bethel is the place where Jacob first encountered Yahweh when he lift home, and he built an altar there to him, that’s where the angel tells Jacob, I’m the God of Bethel.
In Genesis 48:14-16, This is Jacob’s prayer. He’s blessing Joseph’s children, and the old man, Jacob gets the older and the younger mixed up and he crosses his hands and bless them. And Joseph tries to correct him, because you’re supposed to bless the firstborn a special way, and then the other one and Jacob says, No, don’t correct me. We get that part of the story, but we miss what he actually prays. In verse 14, but Israel, Jacob (Jacob’s name has been changed to Israel) and he blessed Joseph, saying… What he prays, there’s three stanzas to the prayer. “The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked.” “The God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day.” Now, the third stanza, you expect it to be the God who did something else, that’s not what you get. “The Angel who has redeemed me from all harm, may he bless these lads.” In Hebrew, the verb is singular. You cannot translate it, may they bless, like God and the angel are separate, God and the angel, they’re both Yahweh. May HE bless the lads.
The tradition of the Jews used to teach that there were two Yahweh figures. There was the invisible transcendent one and then there was this second one who was the same in terms of being Yahweh, but was also distinct in some ways and one of the ways that gets expressed is the angel. Where did we lose this, it used to be part of our theology, in between the testaments, even before Jesus ever showed up as a man. They had this theology.
The example from the letter of Jude in the New Testament, it claims to be written by Jesus’ brother. In the gospel of John we’re told that none of Jesus’ brothers believed him until after the resurrection. So here’s someone who is close to Jesus, and the fact that they’re writing a letter now, and he calls himself a servant of Messiah Jesus, means he’s a full conversion of his imagination. Jude’s brother walked around saying he was God incarnate, he’s creator embodied as human. So in Jude verse 4, he just called Jesus the Lord. Then in Jude verse 5, He says, I desire to remind you all, though you know all this, that the Lord after saving a people out of Egypt. So he’s putting Jesus in the angel of the Lord slot.
Now, keep all this in mind as we start talking about Jesus. In the opening of the gospel of John, we’re told that from all eternity Jesus was with God and was God, distinct from God and also God. That’s the same paradox we saw with the angel of Yahweh. And then John says that God’s word became human and set up a tabernacle among us, the temple presence of the invisible God. There’s a story about when Jesus took three of his followers up to a mountain and his true identity was revealed, he was transformed into a glorious human figure. So the angel of the Lord was God appearing like a human, and Jesus is God now, become a human. In the New Testament, no one ever uses the phrase angel of the Lord to describe Jesus. Why not? They wanted to avoid the idea that Jesus was merely an angel. For them, Jesus was Yahweh God become human, in order to fulfill his ultimate mission to fully reunite heaven and earth once and for all.
These authors were guided by God’s spirit to portray God in these very complex ways. And these ways approach boundary lines that make exclusive monotheists a bit twitchy, at least modern monotheists. So, there’s this character, the angel of Yahweh, and when you say angel of Yahweh, you should be picturing a human figure. Other biblical stories about prophets who get a glimpse into God’s space like Isaiah, Ezekiel or Daniel, and what they see is a glorious human figure on a throne who’s called Yahweh. So the one on the throne and the angel of Yahweh, this is the same person. The tabernacle is the throne room of God himself, the angel of the Lord is the royal glory of Yahweh appearing as a human. When this human figure appears, this human being isn’t the sum total of Yahweh’s identity, Yahweh is still greater and above all, this is a localized expression of Yahweh, but it’s not all that Yahweh is. In the Old Testament, you have a category of the one God Yahweh having a manifestation of himself that is in some way distinct from Yahweh, called the angel of the Lord, but who in essence is Jesus.
This is the Jacob and Laban story in Genesis 31:10-13, when Jacob has been instructed what to do with his flocks, so that they multiply against Labans and in verse 11 and Jacob is relating it, he says then the angel of God said to me in the dream, Jacob, and I said, Here I am. He said, lift up your eyes and see all the goats. In verse 13, the angel tells Jacob, I am the God of Bethel. Bethel is the place where Jacob first encountered Yahweh when he lift home, and he built an altar there to him, that’s where the angel tells Jacob, I’m the God of Bethel.
In Genesis 48:14-16, This is Jacob’s prayer. He’s blessing Joseph’s children, and the old man, Jacob gets the older and the younger mixed up and he crosses his hands and bless them. And Joseph tries to correct him, because you’re supposed to bless the firstborn a special way, and then the other one and Jacob says, No, don’t correct me. We get that part of the story, but we miss what he actually prays. In verse 14, but Israel, Jacob (Jacob’s name has been changed to Israel) and he blessed Joseph, saying… What he prays, there’s three stanzas to the prayer. “The God in whose ways my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked.” “The God who has been my shepherd from my birth to this day.” Now, the third stanza, you expect it to be the God who did something else, that’s not what you get. “The Angel who has redeemed me from all harm, may he bless these lads.” In Hebrew, the verb is singular. You cannot translate it, may they bless, like God and the angel are separate, God and the angel, they’re both Yahweh. May HE bless the lads.
The tradition of the Jews used to teach that there were two Yahweh figures. There was the invisible transcendent one and then there was this second one who was the same in terms of being Yahweh, but was also distinct in some ways and one of the ways that gets expressed is the angel. Where did we lose this, it used to be part of our theology, in between the testaments, even before Jesus ever showed up as a man. They had this theology.
The example from the letter of Jude in the New Testament, it claims to be written by Jesus’ brother. In the gospel of John we’re told that none of Jesus’ brothers believed him until after the resurrection. So here’s someone who is close to Jesus, and the fact that they’re writing a letter now, and he calls himself a servant of Messiah Jesus, means he’s a full conversion of his imagination. Jude’s brother walked around saying he was God incarnate, he’s creator embodied as human. So in Jude verse 4, he just called Jesus the Lord. Then in Jude verse 5, He says, I desire to remind you all, though you know all this, that the Lord after saving a people out of Egypt. So he’s putting Jesus in the angel of the Lord slot.
Now, keep all this in mind as we start talking about Jesus. In the opening of the gospel of John, we’re told that from all eternity Jesus was with God and was God, distinct from God and also God. That’s the same paradox we saw with the angel of Yahweh. And then John says that God’s word became human and set up a tabernacle among us, the temple presence of the invisible God. There’s a story about when Jesus took three of his followers up to a mountain and his true identity was revealed, he was transformed into a glorious human figure. So the angel of the Lord was God appearing like a human, and Jesus is God now, become a human. In the New Testament, no one ever uses the phrase angel of the Lord to describe Jesus. Why not? They wanted to avoid the idea that Jesus was merely an angel. For them, Jesus was Yahweh God become human, in order to fulfill his ultimate mission to fully reunite heaven and earth once and for all.
These authors were guided by God’s spirit to portray God in these very complex ways. And these ways approach boundary lines that make exclusive monotheists a bit twitchy, at least modern monotheists. So, there’s this character, the angel of Yahweh, and when you say angel of Yahweh, you should be picturing a human figure. Other biblical stories about prophets who get a glimpse into God’s space like Isaiah, Ezekiel or Daniel, and what they see is a glorious human figure on a throne who’s called Yahweh. So the one on the throne and the angel of Yahweh, this is the same person. The tabernacle is the throne room of God himself, the angel of the Lord is the royal glory of Yahweh appearing as a human. When this human figure appears, this human being isn’t the sum total of Yahweh’s identity, Yahweh is still greater and above all, this is a localized expression of Yahweh, but it’s not all that Yahweh is. In the Old Testament, you have a category of the one God Yahweh having a manifestation of himself that is in some way distinct from Yahweh, called the angel of the Lord, but who in essence is Jesus.
