The Angel of the Lord

I am constantly amazed at how many pre-cursers to Christ there are in the Old Testament.  From the very beginning, in Genesis, God found Adam and Eve after they had eaten of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.  They realized that they were naked, and had tried to cover themselves with leaves.  Leaves were opaque, and would hide them for a time, but they would crumble away in time, exposing them again and again.  God took animal skins, which means that animals had to be sacrificed, in order to cover them on a more permanent basis.

Do you realize that this is the only time in the Bible that God, by His own hand, shed the blood of animals?  The sacrifice of the animals was to cover the sin of the people, and later the people would begin a practice of animal sacrifice, and follow the example that God started in the very Garden of Eden.

The only other sacrifice Almighty God made on behalf of mankind was the sacrifice of His Son.  Jesus, who was God in the flesh, shed His blood to cover our sins.  Amazing.

I saw another example this week in my quiet time.  I was reading in Exodus, chapter 23.  God had just finished giving Moses the Ten Commandments in chapter 20.  There followed some other laws and practical explanations of the Law in chapters 21 and 22.  Then, right in the middle of Exodus 23 we find this passage:

See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard  you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.  Pay attention to him and listen to what he says.  Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my Name is in him.  If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.  My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out. --Exodus 23:20-23

Many times in the Old Testament, there is a reference to the Angel of the Lord.  This Angel stood in the place of God, with the authority to forgive sin.  In another passage we will look at later in Zechariah chapter 3, we see the Angel of the Lord standing before God against the Accuser, with authority over Satan.

Who else could this be besides the pre-incarnate Christ?

Let's look closer at what God's instructions were regarding this Angel:

• He will bring you to the place I have prepared for you.
• Pay attention to him, and listen to him.
• Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion.
• My Name is in him.
• Listen to what he says, and do what I say.
• He will go before you against your enemies, and I will wipe them out.

I believe there is too much equivalency here for God to be talking about just a messenger, which is what the word "angel" means.  I think God did not introduce Him as "my Son" to the Israelites, because they might think that there were multiple gods; that would make Judaism no different than the pagan religions, which all had multiple deities.  Yet the very first name of God used in the Bible, Elohim, is a plural form of a proper noun.  In the beginning, God said, "Let us create man in our image."  Was he talking to the angels?  More likely, he was talking to The Angel of The Lord, who would later come as a baby born of a virgin and laid in a manger, who would grow to reveal himself as the Son of God.

Look at Zechariah 3.  Joshua the high priest was standing before God, with Satan on one side and the angel of the Lord on the other.  Satan accused him, pointing out his filthy garments from his just having come back from exile.  How could he effectively minister at the Temple?  But the angel of the Lord rebuked Satan, and forgave Joshua, and gave him a new covering.

We who were born after Christ came in the flesh often talk about being covered by the blood of the Lamb.  That is our covering now; it is what God sees when Satan accuses us.  The Blood that washes us white as snow, that blood that was shed as a sacrifice for me, represents the last time God shed blood on man's behalf.