Found in the Presence of His People

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Transcript:

There is in my house somewhere, and I say somewhere because I don’t know exactly where it is at this very moment. There is in my house a stuffed squirrel that we have had since Benjamin was a baby. And this stuffed squirrel has shown up.

It will disappear for long periods of time and then will show up at the most random times and in the most random places. I think one time we found him in my office, and nobody knows how he gets anywhere. The kids swear up and down, and we can pretty much tell when they’re lying.

They do not have good poker faces. The kids swear up and down. They did not move this stuffed squirrel.

By the way, his name is George. I failed to mention that. George.

Benjamin named him. They swear they haven’t moved George. I think we found George in the kitchen.

One day I found George in the garage. He’ll end up inside of other containers. We don’t know.

I have wondered. I know it’s not true. But I’ve had moments where I’ve wondered if Toy Story might not be based on real events.

Because the way George just shows up. One time, I even had a nightmare where I got in my truck and adjusted my rear view mirror and George is in the back seat looking at me. Because George will just show up in the most unexpected places.

I’ll be going through something honey you’ll never guess who I found first few times who what now George yeah I found George George will just show up at unexpected times and places for no reason okay one of these days I’m going to find out somebody is gaslighting me or something is I’m going to find out maybe when my kids are grown they’ll say dad do you remember how George used to show up. Yeah, that was me. But right now it’s a mystery, and I don’t know how or why he shows up when he does, but he does.

There are times and places seemingly random when Jesus shows up in the Old Testament, but unlike George, it’s not totally random. It’s not that there’s no rhyme or reason, and it’s not a mystery how he gets there. There are times, as we’re going to look at this morning, that Jesus shows up in the Old Testament, and it’s because the Father sent him, and he’s there for very specific reasons when his people needed him the most. And we’ve been going through this study the last several weeks on where Jesus was before he was born at Bethlehem.

Because as I’ve explained to you just about every week, I think, I noticed early on in my ministry that a lot of people believed Jesus just started to be at Bethlehem. And if you would ask the question, where was Jesus before that? I don’t know.

They thought he just started to be at Bethlehem. Now, I’m not accusing these people of heresy, because if you ask these same people, is Jesus God? Yes, absolutely.

Is Jesus a member of the Trinity? Absolutely. But the problem is, if you think Jesus had a beginning, then there was a time when Jesus did not exist. That means he’s not eternal, and if he’s not eternal, he’s not God.

But fortunately for us, that’s not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches that he was not only there at the beginning, but he was there before the beginning. There has never been a time and will never be a time when Jesus did not exist. And as a matter of fact, before there was time, Jesus existed.

And the Bible teaches that he was there with the Father at creation. We see echoes of that in the beginning of Genesis when he says, let us make man in our own image. That’s the members of the Trinity talking amongst themselves.

And then we see what’s whispered about in Genesis, explained in a full-throated shout in the book of Colossians, where Paul begins to explain how everything was made by and for Jesus, and everything exists because of him, and everything is held together by him. And we see that he was there from the very beginning. And so we’ve been talking the last few weeks about where he was.

And many of the places we’ve seen him in the Old Testament up to this point are places he’s been talked about. We talked about the promises of God. That from the very beginning of human existence, God has been promising to send a Messiah to deal with our sins.

And we looked at those promises, those times that God said, I am going to send somebody to do for you what you cannot do for yourself, which is to purchase our own forgiveness from our sins. Then there are the prophecies of the Jews. There’s a little bit of overlap between the prophecies and the promises.

But the prophecies are when God said, is how I’m going to do it and this is how you’ll recognize him. Because lots of people before and after Jesus claimed that they were the Messiah. How do we know who the right one is?

How do we know who the real one is? There are some signs and we talked about some of them. Him being born in Bethlehem, him being born of a virgin, him coming from this family and this tribe and this being part of his ministry and him being crucified.

We talked about these things and I walked you briefly through the Old Testament, looking at just a few of those. There are hundreds, and we looked at just a few of them. Then we talked about the pictures of the gospel, the things that God said, let me draw a picture for you so you can understand.

We talked last week, I shared with you about the bronze serpent. I shared with you about the ram that God provided for Abraham to sacrifice instead of Isaac, as though God already then, 1,800 years before Jesus, was saying, no, no, you’re not the one who’s going to sacrifice your son. And I shared with you about the Passover lamb, and I think is one of the most compelling pictures of Jesus in the Old Testament.

Today I want to move past him being found in the promises of God, and him being found in the prophecies of the Jews, and him being found in the pictures of the gospel, and look at him being found in the presence of his people. It wasn’t just that Jesus was talked about and alluded to all throughout the Old Testament. He actually shows up.

Some of you may be thinking, well, I don’t remember that passage. We’re going to look at some of them this morning. There were several places where Jesus showed up among his people when they needed him long before Bethlehem.

And the Bible, many of the times that it speaks about the angel of the Lord in the Old Testament, you’re going to find some similarities there that in many cases lead us to the conclusion that that’s Jesus showing up before the incarnation. The incarnation meaning when he put on flesh and was born at Bethlehem. Now, other times it talks about an angel of the Lord.

But the angel of the Lord many times, more often than not, is referring to Jesus. That’s because the Bible uses the word angel in a very general way. The Hebrew word malak and the Greek word angelos, they both really mean somebody who’s a messenger.

I could be an angel. I’m not. But I could be an angel.

You could be an angel in that sense of being a messenger. and that just means somebody who brings a message, somebody who brings tidings, especially from the king. And that word is used, that messenger word, angel, is used in a few different ways.

They’re the angels of the seven churches in Revelation and those are people who are ministers of the gospel. Those are people who speak the Lord’s message to the churches. In this case, in this case only, I would be the angel of the church at Trinity.

You never thought of me as an angel, Carla, did you? My wife will tell you I’m not. But in the sense of it meaning a messenger, that’s what he’s talking about.

Then there are the angels that we most often think of that are the created spiritual beings. You know, if you’ve watched Touched by an Angel, or you see it in cartoons, and the things with wings and halos and harps, and I don’t know if they really have halos and harps, but that’s what we think of, these created spiritual beings, kind of like the ones that appeared around the throne of God in Isaiah’s vision in Isaiah chapter 6, or the ones who appeared in the skies around Bethlehem to announce Jesus’ birth to the shepherds. The Bible calls those cherubim and seraphim.

That’s another kind of angel. But again, keeping in mind that the word angel in Greek and Hebrew means a messenger, there are angels who show up throughout the Old Testament who act more like God than they do like the cherubim and seraphim that we read about and we think about when we see the word. And there are a few of those that we’re going to look at this morning before we get to the main point here.

One is in Genesis chapter 16, where there’s an angel that shows up. The angel of the Lord shows up to Hagar after she is pregnant with Ishmael, and Sarah has thrown her out of Abraham’s house, and she’s wandering away, and she’s terrified and afraid, you know, basically single mother, no means of support. What am I going to do?

I’m out in the desert. I’m going to have this baby. And the angel of the Lord shows up to comfort her.

She recognizes the angel of the Lord as God. She calls him Lord and she calls him God. And I know people can be confused, but the angel never corrects her.

The angel never corrects her. And that’s going to be important in just a minute. Because the angels of the Lord, the angels who work for the Lord, let me say it in a less confusing way.

The angels who work for the Lord, if they’re offered worship, if they’re offered a title or worship that belongs only to God, they will say, stop. And we see that at the end of Revelation, where John, even as spiritual and godly a man as he was, and writing down these visions that he received from God, he sees these angels and he’s so overwhelmed that he falls down and begins to worship and they say, stop, only worship God. And yet in Genesis 16, the angel of the Lord shows up, She calls him Lord and God, and he doesn’t correct her.

We see in Judges chapter 6, there was an angel who spoke to Gideon. And many of you who are here on Sunday nights may remember that story. As we talked about Gideon being called from the threshing, well, he was threshing wheat, but he was called from the wine press.

He was down hiding somewhere where it wasn’t good to thresh wheat, but he was doing that because he was in hiding and had no better place to do it, just trying to eke out some food that the Midianites wouldn’t steal so he could feed his family. And the angel of the Lord shows up and says, I want you to raise an army and defend Israel. And he says, who, me?

The angel of the Lord calls him to do that. And later on in the chapter, as he’s having this conversation with the angel, it’ll say, the angel says this, Gideon says this, the angel says this, Gideon says this, the Lord says, and Gideon says this. The angel of the Lord and the Lord seem to be interchangeable in that.

And we see that with Abraham too. When three men appeared to Abraham and explained how Abraham and Sarah would have a child, two of these went on to visit Lot and explained the destruction of Sodom. These were angels.

The third man who shows up is identified as the angel of the Lord and is also identified as God in the passage. Now, the writers of the Old Testament were strict monotheists. Understand that.

The Jews today still don’t accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah because in claiming to be the Messiah, he claimed to be the Son of God. And the Jews said, no, no, no, there is only one God and still maintain that today. So it’s not like the writers of the Old Testament were confused and thought, maybe these angels are other gods.

No, they were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. They were identifying these angels as God. Not created beings who turned into God, but God showing up, God the Son showing up as a messenger of his Father.

And that term angel is applied as a messenger. A couple other examples. There is a man who wrestled with Jacob.

Go back and read that story. And you’ll see why most people who read that, most Christians who read that say, yeah, he wrestled with God. And he’s identified as the angel of the Lord in the story, but he wrestled with God.

Then there’s the fourth man in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace. This is almost the one I preached on as the main point this morning. But I preached on that one so many times.

I don’t want it to become my hobby horse. But they throw Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace for refusing to bow down to Nebuchadnezzar’s statue. And this furnace is so hot that it cooked the people who even got close enough to throw them in.

And yet they are unhurt, unsinged, unburned in the furnace. And the people look in and they’re astonished. The Babylonians look in and they’re astonished.

And they see a fourth man walking in there with them in the fire. And he looks like the Son of God. Well, here’s an idea.

If he looks like the Son of God, maybe it’s because he is. And I firmly believe that it is Jesus in there with them. And then what we’re going to look at this morning, which is the captain of the Lord’s host in Joshua chapter 5.

Now, how do we know that the captain of the Lord’s host was Jesus? Let’s read the passage before we get into that part. We’re going to start at verse 13, and we’re going to go through verse 5 of chapter 6, so we’re going to look at about eight verses here.

It says in verse 13, And it came to pass when Joshua was by Jericho that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand. And Joshua went unto him and said unto him, Art thou for us or for our adversaries? So Joshua’s standing there planning.

He’s near Jericho, but not right up next to it. And he’s looking at Jericho in the distance and seeing what a formidable city with its giant walls that it is and pondering, how can we possibly take the city of Jericho? Because God has sent us in to conquer this land.

and when he’s looking he sees a man with his sword drawn and Joshua begins to wonder are you for us or are you for our enemies are you coming at me to help me are you coming at me with the sword drawn because you’re from here you’re from Jericho and you’re here to cut me down and he said nay now this drives me crazy it’s like my child it’s like Benjamin we were having bible study together the other night and I was asking him I can’t remember what I was asking him oh I was asking him is it right or wrong to do this? And he said, no. It’s not a yes or no question. It’s a right or wrong question.

I asked you, is it right or wrong? And you said no. So it’s neither. I don’t understand what you’re wanting to answer me here.

That’s frustrating to me. And Joshua said, are you for us or for them? And he starts his answer with no. But in this case, it really was, there really was a third answer.

I’m not for you or your adversaries. I’m not for one side or another, meaning I’m not I’m not bound to support one of you right or wrong either way, no matter what you do. I’m here because I serve God, and he happens to be on your side.

And that’s his answer. He said, nay, but as captain of the host of the Lord, I am now come. So he’s the captain of the Lord’s host, meaning he’s the commander of God’s army.

And Joshua fell on his face to the earth and did worship and said unto him, what saith my Lord unto his servant? Now, don’t get confused because the word Lord here. You’ll notice if you’re in the King James, it’s not capitalized like the other one.

The one that’s all capitalized is the one we would say Yahweh or Jehovah, his proper name. The lowercase is Adonai, which means master. It’s a title that’s applied to God, but it’s not the same thing as seeing it in all caps.

And the captain of the Lord’s host said unto Joshua, Loose thy shoe from off thy foot, for the place whereon thou standest is holy. And Joshua did so. So he says he immediately recognizes him as his master.

I tell you that to say it’s not the same as God’s proper name, but it is a title that’s applied to God to call him Adonai. And so he says, what would Adonai, what would my master have me to do? And the captain of the Lord’s host looks at him and says, take off your shoes because you’re standing on holy ground.

So a couple of things here that tell us that this is not just an angel. This is not just some guy that God sent. It was God as evidenced by the fact that he accepted worship from Joshua.

Joshua fell on his face in verse 14 and began to worship him. And if this had been an angel, a regular created being with the halo and wings, then he would have said, no, stop worshiping me, only worship God. Instead, he encourages the view that there was something supernatural and something worthy of worship about him when his answer to Joshua after this is, take off your shoes, Joshua, because you’re on holy ground.

He didn’t refuse the worship. In fact, he encouraged it. Angels don’t accept worship.

As I said in Revelation 22, John said, I saw these things and heard them. And when I had heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel, which showed me these things. Then saith he unto me, see thou do it not, for I am thy fellow servant.

The angel said, don’t worship me. I work for God just like you do. Worship him.

Okay, so another thing that shows us this is not just a regular angel, this is Jesus. When he’s speaking to Joshua, the comment about take off your shoes because you’re on holy ground. Does anybody remember, and this is not a trick question, I tell you that because sometimes I ask questions, y’all look at me like you’re afraid to answer because it’s a trick question.

Does anybody remember another time in the Bible when somebody was told take off your shoes, you’re on holy ground? Moses, very good. When he was out there minding his own business, taking care of sheep, and that burning bush caught his attention.

And it caught his attention because it was on fire, but it wasn’t burned up ever. It just kept burning, but never burned up. And he walked over there to it.

God called him and God spoke to him. And God said, take off your shoes because you’re on holy ground. Treat this place with respect.

Treat my presence with respect. This parallels exactly what God told Moses. So it’s not by accident that God, if he showed up in Joshua’s day, would tell Moses’ successor the same thing.

Because this is the guy that took over for Moses. So Joshua showed up. I’m sorry.

Joshua is leading the people to try to take Jericho. Because God told him, go in and possess the land. I’ve promised you this land.

And God shows up at what’s going to be one of their most difficult battles. When they needed him most, God shows up. God the Son, and says, I’m the captain of the Lord’s host. And chapter 6, verse 1.

This makes more sense when you realize that the chapter divisions didn’t exist in the earliest days. They’re not wrong. That’s something we put in there, the chapters and verses, to divide it up and help us find stuff.

But this is one continuous thought. It’s not, okay, that’s over. He took off his shoes.

What happened there? And then next, he’s talking to God. No, it’s he took off his shoes, And it says, chapter 6, verse 1, now Jericho was straightly shut up because of the children of Israel.

None went out, none came in. He’s saying, now there’s a problem because Jericho is locked down tight. It’s got the massive walls and the gates shut because the Israelites are camped outside.

They’re terrified of the Israelites. And so nobody’s coming in or out there not opening the gate. And the Lord said unto Joshua, because he’s still having a conversation with the Lord.

It’s not a different conversation from the end of chapter 5. He’s still having a conversation with the Lord. And you’ll notice that time it is in all caps because it’s talking about the proper name of God, Yahweh or Jehovah.

And the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hand Jericho and the king thereof and the mighty men of valor. And ye shall compass the city, all ye men of war, and go round about the city once. Thus shalt thou do six days.

And seven priests shall bear before the ark seven trumpets of ram’s horns. And the seventh day you shall compass the city seven times, and the priests shall blow with the trumpets. And it shall come to pass that when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn, and when you hear the sound of the trumpet, all the people shall shout with a great shout, and the wall of the city shall fall down, and the people shall ascend up every man straight before him.

So what’s happened is in chapter 5, he’s calling himself the captain of the Lord’s host. But by chapter 6, Joshua has realized he’s speaking to the Lord. Now the Bible does tell us no man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son has declared him.

And what that means is nobody’s seen the Father. We couldn’t see the Father face to face and live, but we’ve seen Jesus Christ. Maybe not you and I with our eyes, but plenty of people have seen Jesus Christ, both in his earthly existence from the time of Bethlehem to the time of his ascension, but before that other people saw Jesus Christ. And so God showed up at this difficult time for his people to take care of his people. I’m going to go through these points very quickly because we’ve already laid the foundation, laid the groundwork here.

If you’re following along with the notes in your bulletin, Jesus showed up to defend God’s people from their enemies. Jesus showed up to defend God’s people from their enemies. The battle against Jericho was going to be huge.

It was going to be difficult. There was going to be loss of life. So Jesus, as the commander of his father’s armies, shows up and says, I’ve already won the battle for you.

All you’ve got to do, he says, I’ve delivered them into your hand, the city, the king, the mighty warriors. I’ve done it all. All you have to do is walk around and blow your trumpet and shout and watch what I can do.

Jesus showed up to defend God’s people from their enemies. When they needed him most, Jesus was there. And there’s a lesson for us in that.

When we need him the most, Jesus is there. And second of all, this morning, Jesus showed up to fulfill the promises of God. And I think this one’s even more important, because God always keeps his word.

Now, there are some promises he’s made in Scripture that have not come to pass yet. But when God said it’s going to happen in this order, and it’s going to happen in this time frame, it’s going to happen in this way, it has. He’s got a 100% track record on that.

And one of the ways he fulfilled his promises was by sending Jesus. When he says in verse 2 of chapter 6, the Lord said unto Joshua, See, I have given into thine hands Jericho and the king thereof, and the mighty men of valor. That’s not just God.

That’s not just Jesus, God the Son, showing up to deal with his people’s enemies and protect them. That’s him fulfilling the promises that his father made centuries ago. Because you see, if you look at Genesis 13 and several other places in Genesis, as a matter of fact, God made promises to Abraham and his descendants to give them the land of Israel, that they would come in and they would possess it and that they would be as numerous as the dust on the earth and the stars in the sky.

And God made these promises. And one of the things that he promised was that they would have this promised land, that they would have this area around Jericho. And so Jesus shows up to do battle for them, not just to protect them, but because God promised that they would have it and they couldn’t do it on their own.

So God says, I’m going to do it. God, the son says, I’m going to fulfill the promise. And everybody knew it.

See, it wasn’t just some dusty old promise back in the days of Abraham. If you look earlier in the book of Joshua, Joshua 2. 9, Rahab, the harlot, the prostitute, that they hid out in her house when the guards were looking for the Israelite spies, Rahab said unto the men, I know that the Lord hath given you the land, and that your terror has fallen upon us, and that all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you.

They said, everybody is panicking, because we know that God has promised you this land, and so we’re terrified. So it wasn’t just God promised this hundreds of years earlier, 400 years before to Abraham, and now he’s forgotten about it. You know, like sometimes I’ll promise my child to take him for ice cream and I hope he forgets before it comes due.

God doesn’t do that with us. And by the way, my son never forgets either. I still have to take him for ice cream.

God doesn’t do that with us. Say, oh, it’s a dusty old promise. That was 400 years ago.

I’m not going to do it. No, God comes through. It was a promise then and now that even the enemies were saying, we know that God has promised you this, and we know that God’s going to come through for you, and that’s why we’re terrified.

So Jesus showed up to fulfill the promises of God. That’s not even the most important time. Here’s the point of where this is going.

Jesus shows up among his people to fulfill God’s promises. There’s a time even more important than that, when Jesus showed up among his people to fulfill God’s promises. Romans begins this way in chapter 1, verse 1.

Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle separated unto the gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures concerning his son Jesus Christ, our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name. There’s a promise running all throughout the Old Testament. That’s what all of this has been about, the Messiah coming.

There’s a promise that runs all throughout the Old Testament that God was going to deal with the problem of sin because we got ourselves into it and couldn’t get ourselves out of it. And God could have said, all right, enjoy your sin, enjoy separation from me, enjoy death, enjoy hell, all that. I’m done with you, you ungrateful children.

And that’s what I might have done. But instead, God looked at us and loved us enough that even though we got ourselves into this problem and we got into it by rebelling against him and not caring what he said or thought, he loved us anyway and he made a promise that he was going to deal with the problem of sin that was destroying us and that we couldn’t get ourselves out of and he promised to send the Messiah to do it and you know what Jesus showed up to fulfill the promise of God and he did so at great personal cost to fulfill the promise that the father made it required Jesus to be nailed to the cross to be humiliated to be tortured to shed his blood and to die at the hands of the very people that he was there to die for so that you and I could be forgiven. Because you and I couldn’t do enough good to undo the wrong that we’ve done.

You and I couldn’t endure enough punishment for the crime that we’ve committed of disobeying a holy and sovereign God. There’s nothing that you and I could do to change our standing before God or our eternity. There’s nothing we could do.

And so God in his love and his kindness promised to do it for us. And what the Father promised, Jesus, once again, just as he did throughout several instances in the Old Testament, Jesus did again in the New Testament, showed up among his people to fulfill the promise of God. And that promise, as it says in the book of Acts, was not just to them, but to their children, meaning the generations coming, and to those who are far off, as many as the Lord our God shall call, meaning God’s promise of salvation was not just to the Jews in the Old Testament, it was not just to the people in the New Testament days, it’s to you as well.

Because we’re the succeeding generations and we’re in a far-off country. God’s promise of salvation is to us too. God promises to you that your sins can be forgiven, that you can have a relationship with him as your father, and that you can have eternal life with him in heaven.

And Jesus stepped up to fulfill that promise for you. That’s why he was born. It wasn’t to look pretty on a Christmas card or in my yard.

It wasn’t so we could have poinsettias and lights and rides down at the wellness center, it was so that he could step up and fulfill the promise of God to purchase your salvation. And this morning, if you’ve never trusted him as a savior, I’d invite you to do so. He’s already done the work.

Jesus showed up to fulfill the promise of God. It’s all been taken care of. His death on the cross paid for your sin, past, present, and future in full.

All that’s necessary for you to do is believe that you’re a sinner who needs that salvation. To believe that Jesus Christ died as the one and only person who could pay for it in full, and then believing that he died for you, ask God to forgive you because of what Jesus Christ did. There’s not a bunch of hoops and religious rituals for you to get through, not a bunch of good stuff for you to do.

It’s simply believing that you’ve sinned and need forgiveness and asking him for it, believing that he’ll give it to you because of what Jesus Christ did.

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