24-0414a Transcript

Preacher: Jim Lokenbauer

(1:25) Well, good morning again, everybody. (1:27) It’s a beautiful day we have.

So nice to see blue sky and warmer air compared to the last few days (1:37) we’ve had. Well, this morning, my turn in the rotation to present to you the word of God. (1:48) I’m happy to do that.

I’ve been over the many years presenting you lessons on (1:55) knowing God and knowing the different aspects of him and the way he presents himself. And in my (2:04) personal studies, I’ve tried to find out as much as I can about our God in the Bible. (2:12) And this has been an ongoing process that requires lots of time and effort on my part.

(2:19) And often, life gets in the way of personal studies, so I find myself doing a balancing (2:26) act between studying God’s word and my responsibility to the Christian life I’ve (2:31) been given, along with fighting my natural inclination of laziness. One could say that (2:40) I’m inclined to recline. Knowing that I have this natural proclivity towards laziness, (2:47) I find myself fighting those very carnal feelings more and more as I get older, (2:55) which is strange, because of my age and being on four different heart medications for congestive (3:02) heart failure.

So it really slows me down. So it’s an ongoing battle over the flesh (3:12) to do the spiritual. However, a shout-out goes to Jesus Christ (3:18) for sending Holy Spirit to help us in our time of need.

So when I’m feeling tired, (3:25) I just rely on God to stick with it and get these lessons done. It takes a lot of time, (3:34) at least for me, searching Scripture and making sure that I present you a truthful lesson (3:42) as accurate as I can be. So Christians are led by the Spirit of God, and when we learn (3:53) and exercise the importance of putting His will first in our lives, we learn to deny (4:00) ourselves.

And isn’t that what Jesus wants us to do? To deny ourselves, pick up our cross (4:07) daily, and follow Him. So a lot of times I’d rather just sit in my lazy boy and watch TV, (4:15) but knowing that I have a responsibility to my brothers and sisters in Christ, (4:22) accepting my role as being a part-time preacher, I devote myself to presenting as best of a lesson (4:32) that I can for you. So Yahweh, our great God, that’s His most holy name, also Jehovah is a (4:41) variant of that, has been one of my favorite topics for my sermons for the last, and to my (4:48) surprise, nearly three decades I’ve been presenting different messages about that.

(4:56) And we know that one of the ways that God reveals Himself is through His creation of nature. (5:03) When you ponder the nature around us, you see how complex and awesome nature really is, (5:11) and you can come to the conclusion that an intelligent being (5:16) was responsible for such an intelligent design. It wasn’t random, and it wasn’t by chance, (5:24) and it didn’t take billions and billions of years to come about.

It was a deliberate act (5:31) of intelligent will. Another way that God reveals Himself to mankind is through the lives (5:38) of those who believe in Him. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, we’re told that God pours out His love (5:45) for us into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit forms our image to reflect (5:54) our Savior as we engage in His Word.

So the Spirit and the Word actually start to transform us (6:05) into His image. Our minds are also transferred by the Word and Spirit. (6:13) By being born of the Spirit, we become children of God, and that makes us brothers and sisters (6:19) with Christ.

Through our lives, as we bear fruit for God, outsiders witness that in our lives, (6:27) and God is praised and glorified. Our Father in Heaven and Jesus our Savior (6:34) are revealed through our lives. And the only way to really know about God on any personal level (6:43) is by what He chose to reveal about Himself through His Holy Word, our Bible.

(6:50) Long ago, I presented a sermon titled, The Names of God, and that started really my quest (6:58) for more knowledge about Him as He revealed Himself to mankind over the millennia, (7:04) as recorded in Scripture. Every soul should have the burning desire to know their Creator. (7:13) To know Him is to know what pleases Him and what angers Him.

We need to know what He has said in (7:20) His Holy Word and what He expects out of us and what we can expect out of Him. We need to see (7:28) how He interacted with our predecessors so we can learn from their mistakes and their victories. (7:35) And part of knowing God is knowing how He presented Himself to His people and what He (7:42) said to them.

So examining these interactions of God with His people revealed a lot about our (7:51) great God’s character. Yahweh God told Moses in the wilderness that He would be with them (7:59) on their journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land. So listen to this conversation (8:06) between Yahweh and Moses, and notice that Moses also was on a quest to better know his God.

(8:14) By the way, I think, is this Sean? Thank you, Sean, for coming up here and reading the Scripture. (8:22) That was great. I really appreciate your willingness to not only get in front of (8:30) strangers, but you know we’re brothers and sisters in Christ, and we’re not going to beat you up for (8:35) nothing.

But we thank you. In Exodus 33, 13 through 17, I’m going to give more context (8:43) to what Sean told us. It says, Moses says to God, (8:49) if you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so that I may know you and continue to find favor (8:56) with you.

Remember that this nation is your people. The Lord replied, my presence will go (9:05) with you and I will give you rest. And Moses said to him, if your presence does not go with us, (9:11) do not send us up from here.

How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people (9:17) unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all other people on the (9:24) face of the earth? And the Lord said to Moses, I will do everything you have asked because I (9:31) am pleased with you and I know you by name. Yahweh God honored Moses' request to better know him. (9:41) God was pleased with Moses and taught Moses his ways on the mountain as he gave him his (9:47) twice.

Moses went up on the mountain for over 40 days. That’s a lot of one-on-one with God. (9:58) Yahweh.

And we’re going to look at that character on the mountain with Moses. (10:04) And the title of this sermon is God’s Angel. And this angel presented himself in three different (10:12) ways.

And ultimately, the angel is Yahweh. So (10:26) God made Israel a peculiar people and they were chosen from among all the nations of the earth (10:34) by giving them his word and honoring the promises that he made to Abraham and to Isaac (10:43) and to Jacob. And they were now about to become, they’re already a big people.

Now they’re ready (10:51) to take over the land, which was one of the promises that God made to Abraham. Land, family, (10:58) became a great nation. And from that great nation, one would come who would bless all (11:06) the people of the earth.

So we’re going to look at the angels and in particular, (11:14) we’re going to look at covenants. But more context before we get there. We’re going to see (11:24) that for Moses and Israel, God distinguished them from all other nations.

How? He gave them (11:33) his word and he himself led them physically, not invisibly, but physically led them and manifested (11:45) himself in very glorious ways. The Gentile people that they were going to displace in the holy land (11:58) or I should say in Canaan wasn’t holy yet until God was there. The Gentile people recognized that (12:06) about them and feared them.

Remember the story of Balak calling Balaam to curse this people that (12:16) are coming up like a plague out of Egypt. They were fearful of Israel because they knew what had (12:25) happened to Egypt by this great God leading them out. They heard about the plagues.

They see this (12:35) sea of people. And remember there were millions of them. Some estimates, when you include the (12:43) families and everything, close to 3 million people.

Can you imagine what that looks like? (12:56) God said, my presence shall go with you. And that phrase in Hebrew is, (13:02) I don’t know Hebrew, but I know how to work a lexicon. And the Hebrew phase means my faces, (13:14) presence in Hebrew is like our faces.

So it was like him saying, I shall give you varying forms (13:24) of me and my mercy and grace and goodness through your whole journey. Or I shall vary my appearances (13:32) for you. As you face difficult circumstances, I shall appear to you in various forms.

That’s what (13:41) that phrase is basically saying. My presence shall go with you. My faces shall go with you.

(13:50) So he’s revealing that he will be with them as different characters, but it will be him, Yahweh, (14:00) God. We’re going to see that it’s the second person of the Godhead. And to corroborate this (14:08) point, let’s look at Isaiah 63.

And Isaiah recalls Israel’s past in the wilderness with (14:18) Moses. And the first six verses of that talks about the coming Messiah. But we’re going to (14:24) jump down to verse 7 and read through 16.

And this is important because it describes a lot about what (14:33) happened there. And in these verses, Isaiah reveals God’s presence. (14:43) He reveals God’s triune nature of father, son, and spirit.

And they are all in this angel. (14:58) I will mention the loving kindness of the Lord and the praises of the Lord, according to all (15:05) that the Lord has bestowed on us, and the great goodness towards the house of Israel, (15:10) which he has bestowed on them, according to his mercies, according to the multitude (15:15) of his loving kindness. For he said, surely they are my people, children who will not lie.

(15:22) So he became their savior. And all their affliction, he was afflicted. (15:30) And the angel of his presence saved them.

And he bore them and carried them all the days of old. (15:39) But they rebelled and grieved his Holy Spirit. So he turned himself against them as an enemy, (15:46) and he fought against them.

Then he remembered the days of old, Moses and his people, saying, (15:54) Where is he who brought them up out of the sea, with the shepherd of his flock? Where is he who (16:01) put his Holy Spirit within them, who led them by the right hand of Moses, with his glorious arm (16:08) dividing the water before them, to make for himself an everlasting name? Who led them through (16:15) the deep as a horse in the wilderness, that they might not stumble as a beast goes down in the (16:22) valley, and the Spirit of the Lord causes them to rest? So you need your people to make yourself (16:30) a glorious name. Look down from heaven and see your habitation, holy and glorious. Where are (16:38) your zeal and your strength, the yearning of your heart and your mercies towards me? Are they (16:43) restrained? Doubtless you are our father, though Abraham was ignorant of us, and Israel does not (16:51) acknowledge us.

You, O Yahweh, our Father, our Redeemer from everlasting, is your name. Does (17:03) that sound familiar to you? I see so many other verses from Isaiah within these words about the (17:13) And we all know who Messiah is. It’s Jesus, the second figure of the Godhead.

So from this passage (17:25) of scripture we can see the interchangeability of the Godhead associated with the angel of God’s (17:34) presence, who is Yahweh. In this passage the names for him are Savior, Redeemer, Holy Spirit, (17:43) Shepherd, Spirit of the Lord, Father, and Everlasting is your name, which is the same as (17:51) Yahweh, Ancient of Days. And if you were to consider the first six verses of this chapter (17:57) again, you would see that it starts out by talking about this character who is the Messiah.

(18:07) There is similar language in Isaiah’s prophecy about the birth of the Messiah in Isaiah 9.6, (18:16) where he is called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace. (18:26) And that’s talking about the Messiah. Within the Messiah, all of those names of the Godhead (18:36) Father, Son, and Spirit are in this person, who happens to also be called the angel of his (18:45) presence, or even the angel of the Lord and the angel of the covenant.

So this angel wears many (18:55) hats, many faces, the presence of God. And that’s why in John 14 when he was asked by Philip (19:09) great namesake, Philip’s waving, (19:14) Jesus, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us. And what was Jesus' response? (19:20) Philip, you have been with me all this time, and you don’t know me.

Don’t you know that when you (19:27) see me, you see the Father. Could that be more plain? The oneness, the unity of the Trinity, (19:42) the Godhead, the Trinity, the Elohim. Elohim, every time you see the word God, (19:48) and the Old Testament is what our modern day translators call God.

They didn’t put the actual (19:58) Hebrew name Elohim in there. Elohim means the unity being of the Trinity, the triune, (20:08) El being God, and him being plural masculine. Within that name is Father, Son, and Spirit.

(20:23) Now one of the main points I want us to understand in these lessons on Yahweh the Great I Am is that (20:31) the member of the Godhead who always interacts with mankind has been the second person of the (20:40) Godhead. We know him as Jesus. He is Yahweh.

In the Old Testament period it was Jesus as Jehovah’s (20:50) Angel of his presence that dealt with mankind directly, and he would appear to them as one of (20:58) his many faces. Now how did he appear to them? Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 10 that he (21:05) was the rock that provided them drink in the desert, and the one who provided the manna. (21:14) He was the one in the pillar of fire at night and the cloud of smoke by day.

(21:25) The angel of the Lord, the angel of Jehovah, the angel of Yahweh was his name. So he was always the (21:34) one interfacing with man. Remember in the Gospel of John, John brought out the fact that Jesus the (21:44) Messiah was trying to get his people to understand who he was, which was Yahweh himself, and from (21:52) past lessons do you remember what Yahweh means? It’s a tense of the name Iy.

Iy is I am that I am, (22:06) and in the Gospel of John how many I am statements does Jesus make? And ultimately in chapter 18 of (22:17) John where the guard comes to arrest Jesus, they say where is Jesus of Nazareth? And Jesus stepped (22:25) in front of his disciples and said I am, and they all fell over at the power of that name. (22:36) Jesus is the I am, Yahweh. Now he also appeared to Israel as Melech, Yahweh, the angel of the Lord.

(22:53) First to Moses who recorded for us that the holy being in the burning bush was the angel of the (23:00) Lord, and in that conversation as the angel of the Lord was commissioning Moses to lead (23:08) Israel out of Egypt, he called himself Elohim and Yahweh in those verses. So he was showing her (23:23) I am that I am, that being in the bush was God, and that’s why Moses was frightened, (23:34) and that’s why the being said take off your sandals. You are standing on holy ground.

(23:42) It’s where the Lord is. It’s holy. So he referred to himself as Elohim and Yahweh.

(24:11) And Elohim is always written in singular in the Old Testament. It doesn’t say God (24:20) in plural, even though the word Elohim is plural in Hebrew. It’s always written in singular, God.

(24:28) And when Moses said to Israel, our God, Yahweh, our God is one, he meant it. (24:38) And I’m going to present a lesson in weeks to come dealing with that oneness (24:47) and how the Trinity works, so to speak. But anyhow, I digress.

(24:57) And in that conversation that the angel of the Lord had with Moses in the burning bush, (25:07) and not only did he refer to himself as those two titles for God, but he also revealed (25:14) by implying that he is the God of your father Abraham, the God of your father Isaac, and the (25:22) God of your father Jacob, and they knew him as El Shaddai, God Almighty. So Yahweh is saying, (25:32) I’m also God Almighty. That’s what they knew me as back then.

So all these titles are wrapped up (25:41) in this second holy being of the Trinity. At times, the angel of the Lord led them by being (25:52) out in front, confronting any dangers to them, and then guarding their rear as they traveled (26:00) through the wilderness, protecting them. He was responsible for their well-being.

He had to (26:08) provide them with food and water, shelter, rest, and safety. And what job does that sound like? (26:16) That is why Jesus could say, I am the good shepherd. In John chapter 10, (26:25) Jesus said those very words, I am the good shepherd.

And in these verses in the Old Testament, (26:32) we see that depiction as the angel of the Lord is the column of smoke by day. He was leading his (26:41) people, protecting, feeding, giving them drink, making them lay down to rest until they reach (26:48) the promised land. He was responsible for millions of lives and millions of animals that they brought (26:59) with them.

What a horde! And he was leading them. God said in Exodus 23, 20 through 23, (27:09) see, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you (27:14) to the place I have prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to what he says.

Do not rebel (27:21) against him. He will not forgive your rebellion since my name is in him. If you listen carefully (27:31) to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those (27:37) who oppose you.

My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, (27:44) Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites, and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. God’s name, Yahweh, (27:55) is this angel, and this angel is Yahweh. In the past, lessons I’ve shown from the Old Testament, (28:09) Yahweh’s face is, it gave great detail about the angel of the Lord and his interactions, (28:19) and also he was known as the angel of the covenant, the Malach Habereth, mentioned in Malachi 3.1. (28:31) And I want us to examine this angel and his covenants.

The holy being called the angel of (28:39) the covenant is also the angel of the Lord and the angel of his presence who was in the burning bush (28:47) talking to Moses. He commissioned Moses and gave them their covenants. So he was the holy being (28:58) who was also in the Shekinah, if I’m saying that right, the great black cloud that engulfed Mount (29:06) Sinai, where there was lightning and thunder and trumpets blasting and fire and earthquakes (29:14) that sent not only fear to all the people of Israel, but even Moses said, I am trembling to (29:22) the point of death.

He was scared to death of this angel who descended upon the mountain. (29:37) But the angel of the covenant called Moses up on that mountain to go into the Shekinah, (29:45) and all the people saw brave Moses. Can you imagine climbing the mountain into that? (29:57) That showed Moses' determination and trust in God, being scared to death and yet going through (30:05) and doing the hard thing.

It’s no wonder Moses was called a type of Christ. (30:20) Moses was a foreshadow of the Savior to come. Moses led the people out of Egypt, out of sin, (30:29) you can say, and into a promised land.

And that’s exactly what Jesus Christ does. (30:37) He saves us from sin, and he did the hard thing. He went to the cross and endured the worst (30:50) cruelty that man could come up with how to kill somebody.

And he did it for us. He did the hard (31:01) thing. And he was frightened, though true bravery, even though you may be frightened by what you’re (31:09) facing, true bravery makes you go through it, to push through it.

And Christ did that. (31:17) Moses did that, doing the hard thing. They’re our example.

We one day may be faced with doing (31:27) hard things. And just remember your Savior. He did it for us.

So there are hard things that we’ll (31:37) be asked to do, and we’ll have to push through it. Right now this congregation’s struggling. (31:52) COVID-19 scared a lot of people away.

Trouble in the congregation scared a lot of people away. (32:02) They weren’t brave. They didn’t push through.

We got to do the hard thing. We got to keep on (32:12) keeping on for the Lord and not give up. Wasn’t that what Jesus expects out of his people, Mark (32:23) 13, 13, 1331? Not give up.

Be faithful till the end. That’s what we got to do. (32:36) That’s what the angel did.

He did the hard thing, leading Israel into the wilderness, (32:46) keeping them on track. He had to make some strong decisions when they rebelled. He had (32:52) to take lives.

I’m not suggesting we take lives here, not at all. But he had to do the hard thing, (33:00) and he pushed through, and he accomplished his task. Jesus Christ is not done.

He ascended into (33:09) heaven. There he reigns with God on the throne. He has given his Holy Spirit in his absence (33:18) to indwell in us.

We’re not alone. We’ve got God and Jesus cheering from heaven. (33:27) We have Holy Spirit in us to guide us and help us through whatever we face, (33:35) so that we can push through and do the hard thing.

Whatever it may be, if you have not named (33:48) Jesus Christ as your Savior, you have opportunity right now to do it. (33:58) If you want to put Christ on in baptism, we can accommodate you to do that. (34:05) This evening, we’re going to conclude this lesson, and we’re going to look at (34:12) God’s angel and his covenants.

So if you need the prayers of the church or any need at all, (34:18) this is the invitation. So just come, and we will help you in whatever way we can (34:24) as we stand and sing the invitation song.