Advent 3, December 10, 2017
The ANGEL of the LORD Comes With PURPOSE
Judges 13:1-22
In the name of our Savior, dear friends,
I got a call the other day from a fellow who was working for my cell phone company. He wanted to let me know that I’ve had my phone for over two years and I was due for an upgrade. And he had such a deal for me on a new I-phone 10, that was so much better than if I went into the Sprint store. I told him, no, my phone was working fine, I like the size and I wasn’t interested in his upgrade. “But for just a little bit more, you can have the newest one!” I still told him no, I didn’t see the need, there was no purpose. He just couldn’t understand.
Do you always have a purpose in everything that you do? Have you ever asked yourself, “Why am I doing this?” Perhaps you said that the last time you crawled all over the roof to string Christmas lights. I used to do that, but this time I saw a good purpose in a technology upgrade – we’ve got one of those laser lights that projects stars on your house. Just stick the stick into the ground and you’re ready to go.
There are lots of things in life that we do, and we may not see the purpose to it all. When a teacher gives an assignment, have you ever thought to yourself, “What’s the point?” But you do it because it’s required to pass the course. Has your employer ever told you to do something, and you wonder, “What’s the purpose for this? It makes no sense!” But you do it because you are getting paid to do it, whether it makes sense to you or not. Yet it helps to see a purpose, a reason behind it all.
Now there’s another boss, who happens to be the Lord of the entire universe. He often does things that we don’t understand. We don’t always understand how he guides the world. He doesn’t often show up to explain what he has in mind. But sometimes he does. There were times when the Lord himself would come to people to let them know what was going on. When God came to people in a visible form, he was often called the Angel of the Lord. It was God himself, more particularly the second person of the Trinity, who came one day to a humble man and his wife from the tribe of Dan. And today we see that:
The Angel of the LORD Comes With Purpose
Let’s set the scene as we go back to the time of the Judges, about 300 years after the time of Moses. Things were not going well in Israel, and it was their own fault. The people had not listened to God’s commands, and so at the beginning we hear that they were being afflicted by a neighboring people called the Philistines. God’s people were being threatened from the outside, and some of them were hurting on the inside. We see Manoah and his wife, who had remained childless, and in that day and age, that was considered a curse.
So God himself came to Mrs. Manoah, (we don’t know her name) with a special message. He came as the angel of the Lord. Recall that “angel” means “messenger.” She didn’t know exactly who this was, but said later: "A man of God came to me. He looked like an angel of God, very awesome. I didn't ask him where he came from, and he didn't tell me his name. He must have looked like a man, but there was something awesome about him, so she guessed that he might be an angel. What she didn’t know yet is that this was God himself, who took the form of a special messenger with a special message. And this was the main point of his message:
And this was his message: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and he will begin the deliverance of Israel from the hands of the Philistines." There was a reason, a purpose for the fact that she would no longer be childless, but give birth to a son. That son would grow up to bring deliverance from their enemies. They could sing: “My Deliverer is Coming!” The Angel came with a very special purpose. And it all starts with “You will conceive and give birth to a son.”
Do you hear an echo? 1200 years later the angel Gabriel came to a young woman named Mary, and said: “You will conceive and give birth to a son.”And what was the purpose for this baby? He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.” Luke 1:32,33 The promised newborn King was going to arrive, through Mary! My Deliverer is Coming!
What joy for both future mothers! And what joy for us! The third Sunday of Advent is the Sunday of joy! What is the secret to this joy? It comes from the Lord, in the midst of hardships. Happiness is like a perfect vacation when everything is just wonderful and your problems have disappeared. But true joy in the Lord comes especially when earthly things are going wrong. That kind of joy can only come from the Lord and his message, because so much of our joy is based on earthly things instead of the great spiritual joys. And it seems like we start losing our joy.
Let me show you what I mean. What gives us true joy when we gather for church? If the attendance is large and the singing is loud, and the offerings are high, and the sermon is inspiring, everyone is happy! But what happens when people don’t show up, and our group is smaller than usual, and so are the offerings, and the sermon just doesn’t seem to click as well as some Sundays? Do we rejoice in people, or rejoice in the Lord? People can let you down, but Jesus never will.
Think of joys at home. When the bills are paid, and your spouse is really trying to show love, or your son or daughter brings home A’s on the report card for the first time, we are joyful! But what happens when roof leaks, and the spouse is in an angry mood, or you feel all alone with no friends or family paying attention, or little Johnny gets expelled. Is our joy completely gone? People will let you down, but Jesus never will.
Think of the joys at Christmas time. We have expectations that things will be wonderful and the family will all be there, and the food and the presents are just right. But so many of those things go wrong. Will that rob you of joy? There is more than one Christmas Eve when the pressures of the season and the sermons and services have caused me to be less than happy and nice to my family, because of the stress. Oh, I knew and always knew that Jesus is the reason for the season and the source of our joy, but knowing something doesn’t always make it so. It is hard sometimes to transfer the joy we know in our head and have it in our hearts. Our joy is based on a little baby who came to take all those sins away, and replace it forgiveness and peace with God and certainly of our place in God’s family. That’s what brings us joy.
So there was a certain man named Manoah whose wife who had heard some good news of great joy. They would have a son. He didn’t doubt it when he wife told him about the angel of the Lord. But there was a lot that he didn’t understand, so he prayed. He prayed that this “man of God” might return to tell them more, tell them what they should do. And the angel of the Lord came back! But he looked like a regular man, perhaps like a traveling prophet. After the Lord repeated his message, Manoah asked him his name and invited him in to stay for a meal. The heavenly messenger refused, and suggested that instead, Manoah use the goat as a burnt offering to the Lord. Let’s pick up the story directly from Scriptures, as they show that this angel really is God. This part is printed in your bulletin.
17 Then Manoah inquired of the angel of the LORD, "What is your name, so that we may honor you when your word comes true?" 18 He replied, "Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding. " [19] Then Manoah took a young goat, together with the grain offering, and sacrificed it on a rock to the LORD. And the LORD did an amazing thing while Manoah and his wife watched: Notice that the angel of the Lord is here called simply “the LORD” the very name of God. [20] As the flame blazed up from the altar toward heaven, the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame. Seeing this, Manoah and his wife fell with their faces to the ground. And so the Lord in his visible form left them and returned to heaven in the flame of the sacrifice. [21] When the angel of the LORD did not show himself again to Manoah and his wife, Manoah realized that it was the angel of the LORD. 22 "We are doomed to die!" he said to his wife. "We have seen God!"
Manoah was dumbfounded and fearful. God himself had come to them! After this, he surely pondered all the words that the Lord had spoken. What had the Lord said? "Why do you ask my name? It is beyond understanding. " The name of the Lord is beyond understanding, as he is the great I AM, the one who is and was and is to come, always faithful, always forgiving, always ready to punish the wicked. But do you know that this is just one possible meaning for what the Lord said? Literally: “Why do you ask my name? It is “wonder” or “miracle.” It is exactly the same name that Isaiah would use when he prophesied, For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and his name shall be called, WONDERFUL. Counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Yes, here is Jesus, here is that wonder, that miracle. The angel of the Lord who called himself miracle, would be a miracle of a man, born of a virgin, with a miraculous star and angels announcing his birth. “A great and mighty wonder, a glorious mystery, A virgin bears an infant who veils his deity.” He would do great wonders and miracles but the greatest of them all was how he would die for our sins and rise again. He no longer veils or hides his deity, but shows himself to be God, the one who defeated death itself that we might have deliverance.
And so long ago, that messenger of the Lord came to announce deliverance to Manoah and wife. Their son would be the great champion, the person chosen by God to deliver his people from oppression and strife. But remember that the promised help didn’t happen immediately. Their son not only had to be born, but had to grow up to be the great deliverer. It would take some time. Just like it took time for Jesus to fulfill his destiny. When the Savior was born, only a handful of people knew about it, and when King Herod learned about it, that brought nothing but disaster to Bethlehem.. With great glory, the angels announced our deliverance: Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you, he is Christ, the Lord.” It would be 33 more years before he would fulfill his destiny.
So there time when we too must wait for answers to prayer or for the blessings God intends for us. The children wait for Christmas, sometimes not too patiently. And sometimes we too must wait for deliverance. Perhaps you have been waiting to be delivered from sickness. And it just doesn’t seem to happen. Or you’re waiting for some sorrow in your life to end. And it doesn’t seem to go away. Sometimes this time of year increases the burden, because there are loved ones that we remember and miss. But remember the deliverance! Just as the angel of the Lord came to this barren couple with a purpose and gave them comfort in their older years, and gave them a son, and announced that he would be the deliverer, so the Lord has come to us through his Word today, and has announced that we will be delivered from all pain and sorrow, from all our enemies. All because of Jesus.
And the son of Mr. & Mrs. Manoah? Who was he? You know him as Samson, whose name means “sun child.” And so before Jesus was born, he was called the rising sun, the dayspring from on high. And Samson would bring his mother great joy and great grief. So we hear these words spoken to Mary: This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against. And a sword will pierce your own soul too. But the parallel ends there. Samson, the promised child, hurt his mother with flagrant sins and deserved his suffering. Jesus, the promised child, brought hurt to his mother because he suffered so much at the hands of others and didn’t deserve a bit of it. Samson almost lost his life for eternity. Jesus did lose his life--for our eternity. The angel of the Lord came with that purpose. So we sing with hearts filled with faith: Joy to the World, the Lord is come! Amen.