Ask Pastor Mike Fabarez

Speaker 1

Hey, do you like whodunit mysteries? Well, if you do, you're in for a real treat now as Pastor Mike Febares pieces together the identity of one of the most intriguing figures in all of scripture. Find out who it is today on Focal Point.

Welcome to Focal Point. I'm your host, Dave Drury. Well, we've cleared our regular schedule to sit down with Pastor Mike Fabarez for our end of the week Q and A session. Ask Pastor Mike now. If you have a question you want answered, you can send it in to focalpointradio.org connect.

But right now, I'm passing the mic over to Focal Point's executive director, Jay Wortin, who's in the pastor's study to investigate a unique personality we encounter throughout the Old Testament.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Dave. Let's jump right into today's question. Pastor Mike. A listener asks the book of Genesis mentions the angel of the Lord visiting and speaking to people. Who is this angel of the Lord?

Speaker 3

Yeah, that's a great question.

Speaker 4

And I don't mean to answer it.

Speaker 3

Quickly or simply, and I probably shouldn't, because if you read these texts and you really want to say, who is this? You can look at a passage, say in Genesis 16, or in Exodus 3 with the burning bush, something in Judges, for instance, Judges chapter six, and you could see the angel of the Lord speaking in the first person as God.

You'd say, well, I don't know that that's an ironclad reason that this is Jesus Christ, which many people say that it is, because you'd say, well, the messenger comes. It could be an angel, and it's just speaking the message of God in the first person. And that's maybe grammatically allowable, and that's true.

Speaker 4

But when you look at those texts.

Speaker 3

All three of them that I just mentioned, Genesis 16, Exodus 3, and Judges 6, you find that the messenger himself is identified as the Lord, as Yahweh, and that's harder to get around. And then I think for me, the thing that kicks me over the edge is that in Exodus 3 and Joshua 5, you see the angel of the Lord accepting worship. Right? The angel of the Lord not only accepts it, he demands it. And that is bizarre and odd because the angels in the book of Revelation, chapter 19 and 22, both make it very clear you don't worship anybody but the triune God. The angel would not accept worship in the book of Revelation. But this angel does. This messenger does.

And you should know that the word angel, both in Hebrew and in Greek, means messenger. So the one bringing the messages in those specific texts of the Old Testament where the angel of the Lord is mentioned and he is speaking in the first person as God, as Yahweh, as the Lord, and is identified as Yahweh, and now he receives worship. To me, that makes me think this has got to be some personage of the Godhead.

We learn in the New Testament as Jesus comes on the scene, which would be blasphemy for anyone else, Jesus accepts worship. And not only accepts worship, it's that he makes it clear that he should be worshiped. And so we recognize, okay, if you worship only God, which the Bible is very clear about, this angel must be a person of the Godhead, which makes the most sense to identify him with Christ.

And so we don't have chapter and verse to point to say this is Jesus Christ pre-incarnate in some manifestation of the Old Testament. But we do recognize that this is something very different going on that leads us to conclude we're probably dealing with the pre-incarnate Christ.

Speaker 2

Well, Pastor Mike, some people might say that the angel of the Lord is either the archangel Gabriel or Michael. Can you briefly explain why these angels aren't going to be considered the angel of the Lord?

Speaker 3

Well, yeah, because if the angel of the Lord were Michael or Gabriel, I assume we would see their name in those texts. I would also say we never see Michael or Gabriel accepting worship or demanding worship; it just doesn't make sense. There’s something very different about the angel of the Lord.

I think of Zechariah seeing the angel of the Lord described as an intercessor, a mediator between, you know, the high priest, in that case Zechariah, and God. This is just unique. This is the role of Christ. This is what Christ does. So, the angel of the Lord seems to be equal with Yahweh. It's not Gabriel, and it's not Michael.

Michael very clearly has the limitations that the angel of the Lord doesn't have. He has a kind of humility we see in the New Testament, not even willing to rebuke Satan. Everything about Michael and Gabriel is described differently, though we don't have a lot of identification of them in the Old Testament, mostly in the book of Daniel.

But the point is this personage stands out: the angel of the Lord. There are not a lot of passages I'm going to say for sure that this is the pre-incarnate Christ, but there are a few that are hard to find any other conclusion.

Speaker 2

So if Jesus is the angel of the Lord that's mentioned in the Old Testament, does that change the way we read about Jesus in the New Testament? What does that do for us in terms of understanding who Christ is?

Speaker 3

Well, I think what we have to recognize is that there's something unique about those appearances if we're right on this conclusion. Because in the New Testament, in John for instance, we see that the Word becomes flesh and dwells among us with the coming of Christ. So that's unique.

From the time of the Incarnation, which starts obviously in Mary's body in Nazareth and then he comes into the world in Bethlehem, that is a unique manifestation of the second person of the Godhead that doesn't change. I mean, he changes in that he gets glorified at the end of the Gospels, at the resurrection. But we don't have this appearance and non-appearance. In other words, we don't have a spiritual existence of the second person of the Godhead coming in and out of that into physical and then out of physical back into spiritual.

Jesus Christ right now exists in a glorified tangible body somewhere in heaven at the right hand of God. So I'm not going to change my view of the incarnation over this. I'm not going to change my view of Christ really coming into time and space in a way that's permanent, if I can put it that way, with an asterisk, because he does change at the glorification.

So I don't want to change a lot of what traditional theology would teach about the incarnation of Christ. Because the incarnation of Christ is unique, it's different. He puts on flesh and dwells among us. It's not like these appearances in the Old Testament. There is a distinction there, and definitely.

Speaker 2

It gives us an understanding of his eternality.

Speaker 3

Of course, and this happens all the time. I was just reading recently Jesus' high priestly prayer in John 17, and he talks about the glory he had before the incarnation. I'm thinking, okay, those people that want to teach that Jesus is not God, you've got to come up with your own category for them. Because there's something very unique about someone who has a pre-existence, who's claiming earlier in the Gospel of John that he existed before Abraham, and Abraham was glad to see his day come.

I mean, there's no category for this person other than to say Jesus is the second person of a triune God, a triune eternal fellowship, completely self-contained. The triune God didn't need to create angels, didn't need to create human beings. He does that all for their benefit ultimately. And I say that because we, being created, now have the opportunity to benefit from knowing the perfect triune God.

All of that understanding of the coming of Christ, his pre-existence, helps us recognize Jesus is not like any other prophet, not like any other personage described in the Bible. And then, when we have this strange appearance of the angel of the Lord who's receiving worship, identified as the Lord, it just leads us to the conclusion—with a little mystery to it, I'll admit—that this must be the Christ.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. It's been an interesting conversation about this and we're going to keep it going with a message from the Angels and Demons series called the angel of the Lord.

Speaker 4

Let's talk about the angel of the Lord. The title "Lord," whenever you see O R D with caps, small caps, albeit small caps, is the word Yahweh. Yahweh is the Hebrew proper name of God used some 6,828 times in the Old Testament, by far the most common reference to God in all of the Bible. Yahweh. What is Yahweh? It is God's proper name. I have a proper name. It's Michael. Okay? That proper name is God's name, Yahweh.

Whenever the word Yahweh appears in the Hebrew text, almost every time I'll explain. When it's not, you will see capital L, small cap O, small cap R, small cap D. Which, let's just call them for short, all caps. Okay? Another important word you've heard many, many times is Adonai. Adonai is not God's name. Adonai is God's title. I have a title? You have a title. You got a business card. It's got a title on it. My business card says Pastor. Pastor is my title. Mike is my name. God's title is Adonai. God's name is Yahweh.

We talk a lot about Elohim, the angels of Elohim, the sons of Elohim. Elohim is God's position. God is God. That's the word we translate as God. Who is he? He's God. What's his title? Lord Adonai. What's his name? Yahweh.

Now, you never have angels of Yahweh. You only have angel of Yahweh. And what you have is a grammatical definite, as a definite article.

Speaker 3

Or a grammatical definite in Hebrew.

Speaker 4

It is a, let's put it this way, the angel of the Lord. No angels of the Lord and no an angel of the Lord. They're always the angel of the Lord. In the New Testament with the word Kyrios, you do have the combination angel of the Lord, but it is always an indefinite article. It's an angel of the Lord. You always have definite angel of the Lord. Old Testament. You always have indefinite angel, Lord, New Testament.

All right, let's talk about his words. Let's go to Genesis 16. We've got 56 examples, but let me just give you a couple. I'm going to show you how it's used in the first person, and then we're going to look at how it's identified as Yahweh himself. Okay? Genesis 16, are you there? Verse 10. And the angel is what we always should expect. The angel of the Lord said to her, Hagar, now I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered. This is Hagar going to get shoved out. Ishmael, you remember the whole story.

And the angel of the Lord, remember, these are all caps, right? This is angel of Yahweh. The angel of Yahweh said to her, behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. And you shall call him Ishmael because the Lord has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man. I'm not sure how that makes her feel. His hand against everyone, and everyone's hand against him. And he shall dwell over and against all of his kinsmen.

So she called the name Yahweh had spoken to her. You are a God of seeing, El Roye Elroy, God of seeing. For she said, truly, I have seen him who looks after me. No, what you saw was the angel of the Lord. That was an angel of Yahweh. That's the pattern we find everywhere. The angel Lord speaks. He speaks as though he's God. And the people say, hey, God just said something to me. Now you can say, oh, well, that's just the messenger. But often we find when it's not the angel, Lord, they say the angel said it because it's Gabriel or it's Michael.

Speaker 3

Here.

Speaker 4

Now we miss the intermediary, and it just becomes, "Yahweh said it to me." Let's give you two more examples. Exodus 3 presents the burning bush episode with Moses. In verse 1, we see that he was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. The angel of Yahweh, which is a phrase we see 56 times, appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. If you weren't paying attention, you might think it was God, but the text is set up to indicate that it's not God; it's the angel of the Lord.

Moses looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. In verse 3, Moses said, "I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned." In verse 4, when Yahweh saw that he had turned aside to see, Elohim called to him out of the bush, saying, "Moses, Moses." And he said, "Here I am." Do you catch all that? The angel of the Lord appears in a bush, and in verse 4, Yahweh sees him turn aside to look at it, and Elohim speaks to him, saying, "Moses." Who is that in the bush? Well, it's the angel of the Lord, but he is speaking as though he is God, identified as God.

This pattern continues in Judges 6:12 and Judges 6:14, where the angel of the Lord speaks in the first person and is identified as Yahweh. In Judges 6, during the calling of Gideon, verse 12 states that the angel of Yahweh appeared to him and said, "Yahweh is with you, O mighty man of valor." Gideon responded, "Please, sir, if Yahweh is with us, then why has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, 'Did not Yahweh bring us up out of Egypt?' But now Yahweh has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian."

Then Yahweh turned to him and said, "Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian. Do I not send you?" Who's talking? It was the angel of the Lord, but now it's Yahweh. Do you see that pattern all over the place? It's not like we see with the rest of the angelic beings who are speaking and bringing messages on behalf of God. This messenger, the angel of Yahweh, speaks in the first person and is identified in the text as though he is Yahweh.

Now, you can back off of that and say, "Well, it's just all in the same; the message is coming from God." You know, we're just kind of taking the messenger out of the equation. This becomes a problem when we talk about the angel of the Lord receiving worship. For instance, just for some background, angels of God do not accept worship, right? You know this from a couple of passages. We don't need to look at these, but you know them. In Revelation, twice, for some reason, John falls down to worship the angel in Revelation 19 and Revelation 22. Both times, the angel says, "No, don't do that. Worship God."

This is interesting in Revelation chapters 19 and 22 because the angels say, "Don't worship me. I'm not God. Don't worship me. Only worship God." Do you know how the whole thing started? In Revelation chapters 4 and 5, they're all worshiping the Lamb who was slain. What's that all about? Well, it's about the fact that he must not be just a messenger. We're only supposed to worship God. He's asking for worship and receiving worship. The 24 elders are falling down and saying, "Dominion, power, majesty belong to God and to the Lamb that sits on the throne." Don't run your mind past that; it's big. We're going to worship the Lamb, and God who sits on the throne must be more than just a Jewish rabbi.

The angel of the Lord, though, in the Old Testament, demands worship. For the sake of time, we'll hurry along to Exodus 3:5-6, which is the burning bush episode. You do remember this line: "Take off your sandals, for the ground on which you're standing is holy ground." Here is this sense of getting down and worshiping, and the angel of the Lord is the one who is manifest in this scene. The same thing happens in Joshua 5:13-15. If the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament and the Lamb of God in the New Testament are receiving worship, and God is the only one to be worshiped, you can see where we start to say this is no ordinary angel.

Maybe these statements about the angel speaking as though he's God are because he is God. Let's turn to the book of Zechariah. In Zechariah chapter 1, look at verses 12 and 13. Then the angel of Yahweh said, "O Lord of hosts, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem and the cities of Judah against which you've been angry all these 70 years?" And Yahweh answered graciously, with comforting words to the angel who talked to me.

Now, this angel who receives worship, this angel who speaks as God, is now saying, "O Lord, how long will you have no mercy on Jerusalem?" You're asking Yahweh a question, messenger of Yahweh. Then Yahweh answers back to the messenger of Yahweh, who speaks as God and receives worship as God, saying, "Here are some gracious and comforting words," whatever those were, but they calmed down the query of the angel of the Lord.

So, the angel of the Lord in this text is serving as some kind of intercessor, concerned about Jerusalem, wanting the oppression against Jerusalem to stop. He's told to wait, much like we see in Revelation chapter 4. Go to Zechariah 3, and I'll add another word here. He seems to serve as an advocate or a mediator. In Zechariah 3:1, it says, "He showed me Joshua, the high priest, standing before the angel of Yahweh, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him."

Yahweh said to Satan, "Yahweh rebuke you, O Satan! Yahweh, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you. Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?" Speaking of Joshua, the high priest, this is not Joshua, Moses' understudy; this is another Joshua from post-exilic times, the high priest at this time. Now, Joshua is standing before the angel, clothed in filthy rags. It's a great story, but what's the point? Go back up and read it again.

In verse 1, Joshua, the high priest, is standing before the angel of the Lord, with Satan standing there to accuse Joshua. Yahweh says to Satan, "Yahweh rebuke you." What kind of schizophrenia is that? Right? We have the angel of the Lord speaking as Yahweh to Yahweh. This starts to tie together all this Elohim talk of a plurality in the Godhead. I know people think, "Oh, they'll..."

Speaker 3

Come to your door and say, oh.

Speaker 4

They came up with that in the fourth century, you know. No, they didn't. There's a triune God here. Summary. Here's what we're saying. The angel of the Lord is equal with Yahweh, wouldn't receive worship, wouldn't speak as Yahweh, wouldn't say things like he's going to multiply offspring. That's what God does. He said he would do that to Abraham in Genesis 12. Now he's saying it to Hagar in Genesis. This is God. There's enough information and data to say that the angel of the Lord is in some way equal with Yahweh.

Then the angel of the Lord is in some way not the same as Yahweh; he speaks to Yahweh as though he's a different person than Yahweh, and yet he's speaking as Yahweh. So the conclusion seems to be that that's the exact doctrine we draw from the New Testament when we think about Christ. Maybe it is that the angel of the Lord is the pre-incarnate Christ. And then when we get to the New Testament, we never see him again. Once he's incarnate, we don't see the angel of the Lord; we see an angel of God. No reference to the angel of the Lord ever again after the Old Testament. Interesting. That is interesting.

Real quickly, for what this is worth, Christological parallels, which is not an argument in itself, but once you start to buy that conclusion, you can start to see a lot of parallels. For instance, the visible manifestation of God. You don't need to turn to these, but a couple of references. We know that that's what the angel of the Lord is. The angel shows up; they can see God now in some way. They're afraid to look at the bush because they didn't want to see God. But then they see God and they live. This is the representation of God. Isn't that what John 1 is all about? The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. What glory is it? It is the glory of the only Son, the monogene Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. No one's ever seen God; the monogeneous God who is at the Father's side has seen him.

All this schizophrenia is the tri-unity of God, which is what the church has been teaching the whole time. And it's what the Bible teaches. Another Christological parallel: He reveals God and his name. This one may be a little deep, but it's a super interesting way that Jesus describes what he's done in John 17. Look at how Jesus prays in John 17. I have manifested. That's the Word revealed. I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. Yours they were, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. What? I'm the revealer of your name. He says any Jew in the first century is going to say the revealer of the name of God was the angel of the Lord in the burning bush. And he says, I'm the one manifesting the name of God.

There are so many verses we could look at—Hebrews 13, a lot of New Testament texts. But look at this: In the Old Testament, it says the angel of the Lord, the angel of Yahweh, encamps around those who fear him and delivers them. He's the protector; he's the deliverer, the presence and protection of Christ. With us is the picture of the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament. He's encamping around us, leading in judgment. Sorry to end on this one, but he's the leader in judgment. Revelation 19 and the one sitting on it, that is the white horse, is called Faithful and True. This is the battle of Armageddon. And in righteousness, he judges and makes war. He's clothed in a robe dipped in blood. And the name by which he is called is the Logos of God, the word of God—that John 1 picture of the expression of God. The Word was with God, the Word was God.

Here is the incarnate God leading the army, coming back to execute judgment on the planet. That is the picture throughout the Old Testament. But he's also called the captain of the Lord's Army. In Joshua 5, he is the one leading the judgment against the Canaanites. There's a lot of Christological parallels, and we're out of time.

Speaker 1

An exciting picture of the pre-incarnate Christ. That's Pastor Mike Fabarez tracing Christ's appearance throughout history. And you're listening to Focal Point. You know, hearing a focal point message like this one challenges us to better understand difficult concepts like the triune Godhead. We're committed to answer the hard questions of the Bible so you can have confidence in what scriptures really say.

And when you give to this ministry, you make it possible for others to be gripped by the powerful truth of Pastor Mike's teaching, just as you are. You can give a much-needed financial gift today by calling us at 888-320-5885 or simply go online to focalpointradio.org. You can also write to Focal Point. Our address is Post Office Box 2850, Laguna Hills, CA 92654.

To say thanks, we're going to send you a book from CJ Mahaney titled *Resisting the Seduction of a Fallen World*. Though the enemy's got this world rigged, you can arm yourself to counteract worldly temptations. When you request the book *Worldliness* at 888-320-5885 or go to focalpointradio.org, for your gift of over $75, we'll add a special companion CD that goes along with the book *Worldliness*.

Now, before we close, I want to share a letter from a listener named Christian who writes, "I've just recently found Focal Point on OnePlace when the series on marriage caught my eye. I found it to be one of the most complete series on marriage that I've ever heard. It has something for everyone, good or bad marriages. Keep up the great work."

Well, if you're like Christian and look forward to a relational tune-up, be sure to find the Countryside Conference on our website. It's a three-day conference themed *Marriage and Singleness*, held on February 16th through the 18th this year, and we're pleased to announce that Pastor Mike's main sessions on marriage will be live-streamed when you link into the conference site at Focal Point Radio.

I'm Dave Drewy inviting you back after the weekend when Pastor Mike Fabarez continues our journey through Luke. Be here next week for Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries.

Speaker 4

It.