Jesus the Angel of the Lord
Let's look at the next picture of Jesus, which is in the Old Testament. And in fact, the Old Testament is filled with pictures of Jesus. A lot of different things point to Jesus in various ways.
The Old Testament characters were what we call types of Christ. In other words, they represented a part of who Christ would be fully. The same is true of the tabernacle - everything in the tabernacle pointed to Christ. And many of the miracles we see in the Old Testament point to Christ, such as manna from heaven being a pointer to Jesus being the bread of life; and water coming from the rock symbolizes Christ being our living water.
Christ as Angel
And so when you start to think like this, the Old Testament becomes fascinating and you see Christ everywhere. But I want to show us another picture of Christ in the Old Testament today and that is when Christ would appear as “the angel of the Lord”.
In the Old Testament, whenever you see the angel of the Lord, the people worship this being. And in fact, in Genesis 48, Jacob uses the name God and angel interchangeably as he's talking about the angel of the Lord. At the burning bush, the angel of the Lord appeared in Exodus 3, but Moses, we see in verse 6, hides his face because he's too afraid to look at God in this angel.
And so search the Old Testament for “the angel of the Lord” and you see Christ appearing. Why is this important? Because Christ is distinguished from all other angels. We know that there are angels that God sends to look after us and to watch over us. We see that in various points in the Bible. But Christ, the angel of the Lord is higher than this. He is uncreated. He is in fact part of God the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Eternal Presence Revealed
And so as we look at Christ's life in 10 pictures, let's remember that he was there at the beginning and he was there throughout the whole Old Testament - not only being pointed to in various ways, but actually active for God, coming into the world to speak to God's people when needed, waiting for the right time to come down once for all as a human being.
Praise him today, friends. He is great. There is none like him, and he is so worthy of our worship today.
