Jeremy Gronau - The Pillars of Faith: Crucifixion, Resurrection, and God Among Us

hello again I am Jeremy grono welcome to the power of our story and as you remember last week we finished the reading of the Book of Matthew and we are starting a new Journey here today and what I wanted to focus on as we start this New Journey um in the Bible is I wanted to help us build our foundation of faith on the Rock now is no matter where you're at in your walk with Christ no matter matter where you're at as a Believer uh I pray that this lesson helps you see clearer the image of God and who he is and who he has revealed himself to be in scripture and so today what we're going to do is we're going to look at one of the pillars of our faith if if you're a Christian our uh pillars of faith stand on the fact that Jesus is God he is claimed to be God that he lived a perfect life the second pillar is that he actually died on the cross for our sins paid our debts and then the third pillar of our faith is that he rose showing that he has the power to raise us from the dead without that our our faith is futile and so what I want to do is help clarify that picture if we're standing on this rock there may be sand all over the rock that you're standing on but I want to dust off the sand off the rock so you have a clear image of what we are standing on on our faith and before we begin I'm going to lead us in prayer I ask that you would bow your head and pray with me heavenly father I thank you for this time where we as Brothers and Sisters in Christ as your sons and daughters can gather around your holy word Lord I Thank you on this Sommer day on September 11th that you would allow us to come together remembering the souls of our brothers and sisters who have been lost and impacted by that event and by the wars that followed it Lord every single one of us that is here today and I know everyone who is listening has been impacted in some way by what happened on that day in September 11th lord it's it's a moment that is ingrained in my brain and will be in my brain for all of eternity like everyone else that is here and it has made a ripple effect that is unable to track but Lord you are the great healer you redeem all things and Lord I pray that you would be able to redeem the hurts the pains the sufferings that we have all gone through Lord and use it for your purpose to help purify us to become those who walk in the image of your son Lord help us be like Christ willing to suffer for the sins of the people around us willing to stand in the Gap Lord so that way we could heal our nation Lord I pray for Unity acoss across our entire nation Lord there is division everywhere but we need unity in you Lord I pray that you would bless this nation like you've blessed us in the past that you would bring us together around the flag of unity Lord that we would be one nation under God and we would put you first in all the things that we do for that is the only way we can come together Lord is with you at the top of our presidency no no politician no Democrat no Republican will heal us like you can please heal our nation like you have done before and lead us through the suffering that we are in right now father God I lift up my sister Diana I pray that you would give her the power and the ability to bring your holy word to all the people who need it in the prisons Lord I pray that you would be able to bind up any spirit that is preventing her from giving out your word your true word to those who are thirsty for your word Lord and father I I lift up my brother Aaron I know that he has suffered through so much pain and anguish and you know that better than anyone Lord you have been in the pain with him you have been in the suffering with him but he has a purpose that is why he is here today Lord you bring all things together for the good of those who love you and are called according to your purpose and you have a perfect will for his life and and him even showing up here today gives me strength and gives everyone strength here that through his suffering he is still persevering he is still fighting the good fight for his brothers and sisters around him Lord I pray that you would lead him to everyone who is suffering with what he has suffered so he can preach the good news and give them strength in knowing that they can still stand that they can still stand and fight that they can still be one in Christ Lord and they don't need to give up their lives that they can be loved by you no matter what Lord and father I lift up all of our families everyone here today I lift up their daughters their sons their marriages their fathers their mothers their grandparents I lift up all of our families Lord to you that we would that we would come together as one family Brothers and Sisters in Christ and we would take care of each other Lord that you would take care of us and provide all the needs that we have for everything that we need Lord I Thank you for everything that you do for us I pray that we rest in you Lord and and father I I lift up Bonnie I lift her family up her children I pray that you would just be close with her that you would give her a sign that you are taking care of her that you are intimately involved with her in her life and you have had a plan from the very beginning I pray that you would just shower her with your love and your closeness and comfort her as the mighty comforter Lord everyone here is struggling everyone here is dealing with different things in their lives but I pray that you would just sanctify anoint this time we have over the next hour Lord that we would see you clearly that you would grow our faith grow our strength in you and help us to walk in the steps of Jesus Jesus I thank you for this time I bless this time in your name and we lift your mighty name Up in Jesus name amen all right guys well thank you again for being here with me today like I said we are starting a new journey and what I'm going to try to do today is um examine one of the pillars that I had spoken about Jesus being God okay where I first want to start though is I want to start with the fact that every major religion that exists today has a version of Jesus okay I'm not saying this to put anybody's religion down what I'm doing is trying to bring light to us to understand that there is one version that is correct or they're all incorrect the law of non-contradiction states that two contradictory claims cannot be true at the same time and so if if there are these different versions of Jesus right none of them can be TR or excuse me all of them cannot be true at the same time and so I'm going to take this on this on this road where we can evaluate who God is and is Jesus who he claims to be that is where we're going to go on this first pillar of of the journey so what I want to First do is I want to tell you who Jesus is in every religion and then we're going to decide for ourselves if we have it right as Christians so first in Judaism they believe that Jesus was not the Messiah he was not the Son of God he was viewed as a historical figure possibly a teacher or a prophet but he was not considered Divine in Islam they believe that Jesus was considered one of the greatest prophets however um he was not the Son of God and he did not die on the cross he was not Divine in the sense that he was God he was a prophet but he was not the Son of God okay in Mormonism Mormons believe that Jesus is the son of God the savior of the world he is considered Divine but he is separate he's different from God the father he is the literal Spirit brother of all humans and also Lucifer he is the spirit brother of Lucifer he's a created being after God the father so he's dis distinct and different from God the Father when you look at Jehovah's Witnesses the jws believe that Jesus is the son of God but not equal to God the father he is considered the first creation of God Mighty spirit being and he is not part of the Trinity because they do not believe in the Trinity when you look at Hinduism Jesus is sometimes viewed as a wise teacher he's a yogi he's Divine figure however he is not God himself he's considered Divine by some but the role of the unique incarnation of God they do not believe that when you look at Buddhism Jesus is often regarded as a wise teacher and enlightened being but he is not the Son of God Jesus Jesus to them is seen as Divine in a different way but he is not God when you look at universalism they believe that Jesus was a great teacher a moral Prophet but he was not God they typ Ally consider Divine they consider him Divine but they also believe that all roads lead to heaven the new age belief the new age beliefs Jesus is often considered a wise teacher again he's enlightened being um an ascended master who taught about spiritual growth but he is not considered the Son of God so this comes to Christianity here what makes Christianity distinct from every other religion is that Christians believe that Jesus is the son of God who is prophesied in the scriptures he is the second person of the Trinity father son Holy Spirit he is one being with the three Father Son and Holy Spirit but one distinct person so we believe as Christians there's one being of God but three Persons Of God father son Holy Spirit he is fully God he's not a part of God a third of God he is fully God fully man he is the Messiah who has been crucified resurrected and through that crucifixion and Resurrection is what provides Humanity salvation he is fully Divine and he is God incarnate the God made flesh okay so that's a that's a truth claim that we're making as Christians now what we need to evaluate and be able to stand on is that truth claim true so what I want to do is I first want to go to the Old Testament and I want to evaluate some scriptures that will help us bridge this Gap because it's a if you just look at Christianity and you say that these Jewish Believers in the first century believe that Jesus was God that's a pretty large jump for somebody who's in the Jewish faith to believe that a man was God unless you understand the scriptures what I'm going to try to do today is shorten the Gap that you have to make from God who is Spirit to God becoming flesh so I'm going to help put this picture together so you guys have a clearer picture today in John 4:24 it says God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and truth so we know that God is Spirit I'm not saying God is only the Holy Spirit but as we Christians believe Jesus is the visible form of the invisible God okay what we're first going to look at in the Old Testament is what's called theophanies and if You' heard that term before a theophany is the visible or tangible manifestation of God that is being made known to human beings the word Theos means god Fano means in uh to appear so God appearing is what a theophonic to the New Testament so that way people don't view the Old Testament and New Testament as completely two different topics that have nothing to do with each other in fact it's the complete opposite all right so where I'm first going to go is back to the beginning we're going to go to Genesis chapter 3 if you could turn there with me I'm going to highlight a few things in this text okay if we remember in the first two days God created the heavens and the Earth he had the six days of creation one day he rested he made Adam and Eve all right chapter three is What's called the fall this is what happens creation was good God said everything was good he said that humankind was very good that he was we were the tip of his creation the very last thing to be created women were actually the last of the last to be created I think he saved the best for last so you women were the best and the last um but let's pick up on chapter 3: one now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made he said to the woman and I just want to say that the that God did create him it says that right there the Lord had made continuing on he said to the woman did God actually say you shall not eat from the tree in the garden and the woman said to the serpent we may eat of the fruit of the tree in the garden but God said You shall not eat from the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden neither shall you touch it lest you die but the serpent said to her and this is what this is what Satan does he twists the word of God that's one of his deceptions he said to her you will not surely die for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing Good and Evil so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was delightful to her eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise she took of it its fruit and ate and she gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked and they SED fig leaves together and made themselves loin cloths and they heard heard here's the part we need to pay attention to and they heard the sound of the Lord God walking okay I want you guys to say that Walking In The Garden in the cool what was God doing he was walking it's not just his presence was there God was actually physically manifested there walking in the garden with them in the cool of the day and the man Adam and his wife Eve hid themselves from the Pres pres of the Lord God Among the Trees of the garden but the Lord God Called To The Man and said to him where are you and he said I heard the sound again he heard something he heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself he said who told you that you were naked have you eaten of the tree of which I command you not to eat let me just tell you something anytime God asks a question he already knows the answer all right he's asking the question for your sake not his all right verse 12 the man said the woman whom you gave me gave to be with me she gave me the fruit of the tree and I ate of it there it is that's what men usually do we point to others as the problems that we have in our lives right we blamed it he first thing he tried to do was blame it on Eve for eating the fruit yet he was standing there with her and he could have stopped her from eating it then God the Lord God said to the woman what is this that you have done the woman said the serpent deceived me and I ate okay there is so much here but we're not going to dig into this too deeply because I'm what I'm trying to build a picture of is this theophany of God taking forms in the Old Testament so that way we can bridge the gap between God taking forms to God becoming flesh in the New Testament okay so did everybody see that God showed himself he was is walking okay if you're not in a in an embodied form you cannot walk and there's reason for that language there so we're going to jump over to Genesis 18 this is this picture is going to become more clear as we continue these readings today so go to Genesis Chapter 18 okay to give some context here fast forward God decides to pick Abraham in in chapter 12 of Genesis he picks Abraham he's old in age he's married to a woman him and his wife have never been able to have children at this point in the scriptures where we're reading Abraham was uh 99 years old and Sarah was 89 years old so Abraham is almost a hundred years old when this is taking place and his wife is 89 years old just to give us some context here okay verse one and the Lord appeared the Lord appeared to him by The Oaks of mamry and he sat at the door of his tent In The Heat Of The Day He lifted up his eyes and looked and behold three men were standing in front of him so here Abraham is in front of his tent three men walk up to the tent okay when he saw them he ran from the tent to meet them and bowed himself to the Earth and said oh Lord if I have found favor in your sight do not pass by your servant let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourself under the tree while I bring a morsel of bread and you may you may refresh yourself and after you may pass on since you have come to your servant so they did so do as you said and Abraham went quickly into the tent to Sarah and said quick three seas of fine flour knead it and make cakes and Abraham ran to the herd and took a calf tender and good and gave it to a young man who prepared it quickly then he took the curds of the milk and the calf that he had prepared and set it before them and he stood by them under the tree while they ate so here Abraham is an encounter with three men okay he understands who these men are he understands who one of the men is and he goes and prepares a meal for them because he knows he's the servant of one of these men I'm going to continue on here verse n they said to him where is Sarah your wife and he said she is in the tent the Lord said and this word Lord anytime you seen the ESV L O R D spelled out in all capitals that word is actually translated from the Hebrew Hebrew word Yahweh okay so this is Yahweh Yahweh said I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife shall have a son so here God Is Standing before um Abraham and he is prophesying that Sarah is going to have a child this very time next year and Sarah was listening at the tent door behind him now Abraham and Sarah were old advanced in years I told you they were almost 190 years old the way way of the woman had ceased to be with Sarah what this is saying is Sarah can no longer bear children the way of the woman has ceased to be with her so Sarah laughed to herself laughed at God saying after I am worn out and my Lord is old shall I have pleasure the Lord said to Abraham why did Sarah laugh and say shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old is anything too hard for the Lord is any way anything too hard for Yahweh at the appointed time I will return to you about this time next year and Sarah shall have a son so he reiterates what he just said to to Abraham but Sarah denied laughing saying I did not laugh for she was afraid so she knew recognized that she just laughed at God's promise and she was afraid to even admit that she had laughed at God's promise he said no but you did laugh so God calls her out on it it's like hey I know that you're laughing um verse 16 then the men set out from there and they looked down to Sodom and Abraham went with them to set them on their way the Lord yahwe said shall I hide from Abraham so these are the three men they're about to leave after they had just eaten and had this encounter with Abraham and Sarah and Yahweh shall says shall shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the Earth shall be blessed in him for I have chosen him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord this is the way of the Lord listen to this by doing righteousness and Justice that's the way of the Lord so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised to him then the Lord said because the outcries again Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave I will go down to see whether they have done this alt together according to the outcries that has come to me and if not I will know so what God is saying he's reiterating a promise that he already made to Abraham that he's going to bless all the nations through his seed and then he's saying there's many people out crying because of all of the sin that is going on in Sodom and Gomorrah and he says I'm going to go do a reconnaissance mission and I'm going to go check it out myself to see if what everybody is saying is actually true so God is getting involved and saying I'm going to go evaluate if they are doing Justice and righteousness and then I'm going to make my determination okay all of that what you just read is God in the form of a man he is interacting with Abraham he has feet he has hands he's talking he ate all of those things that only an embodied person or an embodied form can actually interact with Abraham okay continuing on to verse 22 so the men turned from there and went toward Sodom and Abraham still stood before the Lord so there was three men two of them turned went to Sodom one of the men stayed with Abraham okay stood before the Lord so Yahweh is still standing there then Abraham Drew near and said will you indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked suppose that there are 50 righteous within the city will you then sweep away the place and not spare it for the 50 righteous who are in it so here we see Abraham is saying but what if there's righteous people in the city are you going to destroy the whole city and he says far be it from you to do such a thing to put the righteous to death with the wicked so that the righteous shall fare as the wicked far be it from you shall not not the judge of all the Earth do what is just if you had any doubt of who this is Abraham says it shall not the judge of all the Earth God is the judge of all the Earth he is stating for not the so God Is Standing before him shall not the God of all the Earth do what is just and the Lord said if I find at Sodom 50 righteous in the city I will spare the whole place for their sake Abraham answered and said behold I have undertaken to speak to the Lord so he's speaking to and and you see Lord lowercase that that's the word Adonai I who am but dust and Ashes so he's humbling himself suppose five of the 50 righteous are lacking will you destroy the whole city because of the five lacking and I'm going to kind of generalize this paragraph so we can skip on and I can get to the main points but basically Abraham says if there's what if there's 45 people what if there's 40 what if there's 35 righteous men he goes all the way down to 10 and God says if there's 10 righteous men in the city I will spare the city okay so that's what God is saying I will spare the city even if there's 10 righteous men okay so let's see if God finds 10 righteous men in the city continuing on to verse 19 just to give a quick backstory here lot who has talked about here is Abraham's nephew the reason why Abraham was asking these questions to God is because his nephew lot is is one who lives in the city of Sodom so Abraham was asking because he knows that lot is a believer in God and he's in the city and he doesn't want to see his nephew get destroyed so that's why he was he was caring for his nephew and asking these questions okay verse verse one of chapter 19 the two angels okay here's something I I also want to highlight to you the word Ang angels as we know it in our culture is completely different than how a first century Jewish person would have understood the word Angels one these two people were already described as men here it's described as Angels the word here used for Angels is malum okay um this word actually means Messengers The the description and the definition of these words means um Messengers and and as we continue to read I'll help bring this to light I'm not saying they're not Spiritual Beings but they are taking physical form as the form of men and they are messengers going into the city of Sodom okay um so there's some of this in during the translation that you lose the full context as you read this and you have to really dig deep to this so the two angels the two Messengers came to Sodom the two that were with God previously uh in front of Adam in the evening and lot was sitting in the gate of Sodom when lot saw them he rose to meet them and bowed himself with his face to the Earth and said my lords please turn aside to your Servants house and spend the night and wash your feet then you may rise up early and go on your way they said no we will spend the night in the Town Square but he pressed them strongly so they turned aside to him and entered his house and he made them a feast and baked unleavened bread and they ate but before they laay down the men of the city the men of Sodom both young and old all the people to the last man surrounded the house of lot and they called to lot where are the men who came to you tonight so here we are this is probably a small village sodom's everybody knows everybody two men come into the city lot grabs the men brings them into his house because he knows of the debauchery that happens in the city especially at night however the the me the men of the city saw the two men and they go to lot's house to go and confront him and they called to lot where are the men who came to you tonight bring them out to us that we may know them anytime the Bible says knowing somebody in this reference it's a euphemism for sexual intercourse okay when it says that Abraham knew Sarah that's saying that they had a sexual encounter okay so what they're saying is these men want to rape these two other men that just came down Okay it's saying this in different terms but they may know them okay that's what the Bible uses as that that term and lot went out to the men at the entrance shut the door after them and he said I beg you my brothers do not act so wickedly behold I have two daughters who have not who have not known any men so I have two virgin daughters he's offering up because they have not known a man do you understand the context there let me bring them out to you and do to them as you please only do nothing to these men for they have come under the shelter of my roof but they so these men of the city they said stand back and they said this fellow came as a soj sojer and he has become the judge now we will now we will deal worse with you than with them then they pressed hard against the man lot and Drew near to break the door so there's there's probably this you know dozens of men outside the house they're coming to literally rape these two men who came into the village Lots trying to stand between them not let them in he offered up his daughters instead of the two angels and they're still pressing in and they're going to say that we're going to do worse things to you now lot then they pressed harder against the man lot and Drew near to break to break the door but the men reached out their hands and brought lot in to the house with them and shut the door so the two angels the two messengers of God grab lot bring him into the house because they see everything that's happening verse 11 and they struck with blindness The Men Who were at the entrance of the house both small and great so that they wore themselves out groping for the door so now you know for sure that these aren't just regular men they struck all the men outside the door with blindness okay and they pulled lot into the house then the men said to lot have you anyone else here son-in-laws Sons daughters or anyone you have in the city bring them out of this place um for we are about to destroy this place because the outcries against the people who have become great before the Lord the Lord has sent us to destroy it um so here these men are talking about they've just confirmed the wickedness of Sodom right they just saw it firsthand so they know now that the city is going to be destroyed okay I'm going to skip down to verse 15 because I want to make my point about the Angels at morning dawn the Angels urge Lodge saying up take your wife and your two daughters who are here lest you be swept away in the punishment of the city but he lingered so the men seized him and his wife and his two daughters by hand the Lord is merciful to him and they brought him out and set him outside of the city okay so the two angels that were with God at the very beginning grab lot and his family and start dragging him out of the city okay I'm going to skip down because I'm I want to make some clear points here to go down to verse 23 God destroy Sodom the son had risen on the earth when lot came to zorah then the Lord reigned on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord that word is Yahweh from Yahweh out of heaven and he overthrew those in the city okay I'm going to read verse 24 one more time then Yahweh reigned on Sodom and gomorra sulfur and fire from Yahweh Out of Heaven there's two Yahweh in this verse okay Yahweh reigned on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from Yahweh Out of Heaven this is the first picture that we see in Genesis where there's two descriptions of Yahweh one on earth one in heaven remember there was a man who who Abraham knew as Yahweh who he was just talking to on the earth okay this theophonic form of God on Earth while there's also an invisible form of God in heaven that's what we would describe as Father and Son as Christians so here we see Yahweh on Earth calls down fire from Yahweh in heaven the son called down fire from the Father in Heaven okay you have to understand these pictures in order to start Bridging the Gap in the Old Testament so I just wanted to highlight that part I know there was a lot that I read this is one of the most intense things if you ever want to like you don't need to watch Jerry Springer you just read your Bible because there's crazy things that are happening in the Bible most people have no idea about it so uh okay let's continue on I hope you guys understood that what I'm trying to build the case for is that God can take on human form that is one of the most clear instances that you see in in Genesis where God is in the form of a man okay let's move on let's see here to verse excuse me chapter 32 of Genesis okay fast forward here this is Jacob Jacob is the son of Isaac who is the son of Abraham so Abraham and Sarah just like God prophesied the very next year they had a son named Isaac guess what the name Isaac means he laughs so who had the last laugh wasn't Sarah God had what he said he was going to do Sarah has the child and they name the child he laughs I just think that's so funny God has a sense of humor um but Isaac has two sons Jacob and Esau Jacob is the son that was born second they were twins so by Birthright Esau is supposed to have the birthright however Jacob deceives his brother Esau over a pot of soup and basically steals the birthright from his brother Esau and then he runs away because he's afraid that his brother is going to kill him and so in this picture here this is jaob coming back after I think it was like almost 20 years of being away and staying at his uncle 's house and marrying two women and having a bunch of children um he's then called back by God to come back to the the land of which he was promised and so he's coming back he hears of his brother and he's afraid that his brother is had has all this pent up anger against Jacob that has been unresolved okay so that's kind of the backstory of where we're at briefly and 32 Jacob went on his way and the angels of the Lord malakam is the plural word for angels of God met him and when Jacob saw that he said this is God's Camp so he called the name of the place Maha okay and Jacob sent Messengers here's what's interesting in the Hebrew language that word Messengers is the same exact word in the two verses prior that says Angels those are the same words malum okay we just translate it because one is of spiritual descent the other is a human form Jacob sends humans human Messengers to go ahead of him where before it was describing Spiritual Beings that God had sent okay but it's the same word in the Hebrew Okay continuing on then Jacob sent Messengers before him to Esau his brother to the land of sire the country of Adam instructing them thus you shall say to my Lord Esau I'm going to skip through this most of this because I want to highlight something specific what happens over these next few uh verses um Esau has excuse me Jacob has uh his 12 sons at this point he's got um a bunch of um different cattle that he has he came across with nothing and now he's been blessed and he has all of he's got a huge family and he's got all of this different cattle he separates his cattle into two different camps in case Esau comes to kill him one of the camps would be destroyed and the other one could flee so he separates them as as a way to conserve at least some of his family if he gets attacked by Esau all right so that's basically what happens over this feel free to read it and go back to this but I want to bring us to verse 22 here Jacob wrestles with God that same night he rose and and took his two wives and his two female servants and his 11 children and crossed the the Ford of jbac and he took them and sent them across the stream and everything else that he had and Jacob was left alone so he sends his family across he's there alone at this Brook and let's read about what's happening here here's another theophany a man wrestled with him a man wrestled with Jacob until the breaking of the day when the man saw he did not Prevail against Jacob he touched his hip socket and Jacob's hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him so this man just touched his hip and his hip goes out of socket immediately then he said let me go for the day has broken but Jacob said I will not let you go unless you bless me okay so Jacob is starting to understand that this is no regular man and he's asking this man to bless him okay um where was I oh verse 27 and he said to him what is your name so the man he's wrestling with asks Jacob what his name is and he says Jacob the name Jacob means heel catcher okay when he came out of the womb he was grasping his brother's heel as he came out of the womb right so so what that is signifying is that from his very birth he was grasping his brother's blessing as he came out of the womb that's what it means that's why he stole the blessing from his his brother is he was after the blessing of his brother his brother he was he was trying to grasp for blessings from people okay so here's what's amazing God asks him his name not just because he wants to know who he is he's asking of what is the character of your nature Jacob and he's one that is grasping the heel of his brother he's a heel catcher okay and then he said your name shall no longer be called Jacob but Israel the name Israel means God contends or he who wrestles with God representing Jacob's struggle with God and new identity as the father of the nation of Israel okay so God says you're no longer wrestling with with man and asking for man's blessing you're now one who has wrestled with me and you're going to ask for my blessings for you have have striven with God and with man and you have prevailed then Jacob asked him please tell me your name but he said why is it that you're asking my name and there he blessed him so Jacob called the name of the place penel saying for I have seen God face to face and yet my life has been delivered so this man that Jacob was wrestling with he is saying I wrestled with God face to face okay so Jacob wasn't just like wrestling with a cloud he was wrestling with God in human form and God changes his name to Israel th that that who wrestles with God that's what that name means and only God can change his name the sun rose upon him as he passed panu limping because of his hip okay so what I'm trying to highlight to you again is God can take on physical forms and we see this very early on in the Bible okay a lot of people completely miss this as they're reading through Genesis so God here was the here was the third time in Genesis where he took on human form and I'm going to try to go through two more passages here to help bring this together and I'm going to tie tie everything together if you could go to um Exodus 3 here for me turn to it myself okay so fast forward here this this part's about Moses all right Moses um he was uh a Hebrew boy who Pharaoh's da took in because Pharaoh wanted to kill all the Hebrew men but he was put into a little Ark in the water and his and he was taken by Pharaoh's daughter and raised up in the Royal courts okay um so that's who Moses is now Moses was keeping the flock he Moses at this point he killed an Egyptian man who was um targeting the Hebrews um because he he was tired of their condemnation against the Hebrews he knew he was a Hebrew boy and so he had to flee from Egypt because he was afraid of what was going to happen to him after killing this Egyptian man so at this point he had left he's at his father-in-law's house in Jethro um now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro the priest of Midian and he led his flock to the west side of the Wilderness and came to herob the Mountain of God and the Ang Angel Malak is the is the word the angel of the Lord the Malak of Yahweh appeared to him in a flame of a fire out in the midst of the Bush he looked and behold the burn the Bush was burning but was not yet consumed and Moses said I will turn aside to see this great sight why the bush is not burned when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see God Called to him out of the Bush Moses Moses and he said here I am then he saido not come near take your sandals off of your feet for the place of which you are now standing is on Holy Ground and he said I am the god of your father the god of Abraham the god of Isaac and the god of Jacob and Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look at God okay who's in the bush God he's taking on physical form he's saying that land this the the ground of which he's standing on is Holy and U Moses is interacting with a visible form of God calling him God and is afraid to even look at it because of how holy God is verse 7 then the Lord said I have surely seen the Affliction of my people in Egypt and have heard the cry because of their task Mass Masters I know they're suffering isn't it just I just want to pause here for a second God sees everything yes there's suffering in this world and yes we all suffer but he sees it I know there's suffering God is patient and loving not wanting anyone to suffer but he has a plan for our suffering and he will redeem us chist in the Christian faith we know that the judge of all the creator of all will judge right in the end we may not see our judgment in this life but we will see judgment and we will see all things put together correctly for those who have suffered for God God says I know their suffering and I have come down to deliver them he is our deliverer I deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians to bring them up out of the land to a good broad land a land flowing with milk and honey okay well you can you can go back to this text and read it what I'm trying to highlight to you is God is in a visible form this is another theophany in which now Moses is interacting with God we saw Abraham who is the father of our nation the father of the Jews the father of faith we saw um you you can see it with Isaac we saw it with Jacob and now we're seeing it with Moses these are all these figures in the Old Testament who are having direct interaction with God in visible form okay I'm going to go to one more text here in judges 6 and I'm going to bring it all together for us okay let's see just go down to verse 11 with me now the angel of the Lord I've talked about what that word angel means and Lord is all capitalized that's Yahweh the angel of Yahweh came and sat under the terab benth of Oprah okay he sat okay only somebody in physical form can sit which belonged to joash the azerite while the son of Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press to hide it from the midianites and the angel of the Lord appeared to him and said to him the Lord is with you oh mighty man of Valor and gidad said to Hime please my Lord if the Lord if Yahweh is with us why then has all this happened to us isn't that the question that we all have why is all this suffering going on Lord if you were really with us why is this happening let's watch this and where are all of his wonderful Deeds that our fathers recounted to us saying did not the Lord bring us out of Egypt but now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian and the Lord turned to him and said go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of the midians do not I send you and he said to him please Lord how can I save Israel behold my clan is the weakest in Manasseh and I am the least of my father's house so if you read about Moses he does basically the same thing when he encounters God God calls him you can go back to the text he says you're going to go to pharaoh and you're going to tell him that I am sent you and he needs to let my people go and Moses goes but I'm a man of terrible words and I've done I I I can't be the one that goes and tells him and he comes up with excuse after excuse after excuse of why he shouldn't follow God's word and here we see this again with Gideon and he says I'm the least of the ones that you should call I'm in a small Clan and why I'm a weak man of manasse the least of my father's house let's listen to how God replies and I want to share some wisdom here and the Lord said to him but I will be with you and you shall strike the midianites as one man and he said to him if now I have found favor in your eyes then show me a sign that is that it is you who speak to me please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you and he said I will stay till you return okay I want let's think about this for a second there's a man who's talking to Gideon Gideon is a Hebrew boy who believes in God he is talking to a man that he is sensing is God but he's not fully aware that it is God so that means that God is hiding his full presence in order to have communication with Gideon cuz both the wicked and the righteous when they're standing before God will know that He Is God When God is in his full Glory everyone is a Believer there's no one who after this life is over everyone becomes a Believer right I'm not saying everybody goes to heaven but everybody knows that the god of Abraham Isaac and Jacob is the God of all creation but God is hiding his full nature in human form so that way he can interact with Gideon it says in the Bible that we would surely die if we saw the face of the Lord so the Lord is hiding himself for the benefit of being able to communicate with Gideon verse 19 so Gideon went into his house and prepared a young goat in un leved cakes from epah of bread from an epha of bread the meat he put in a basket the broth he put in a pot he brought them to him under the terab benth and presented them and the angel of God said to him take the meat and the unleavened cakes and put them on the Rock and pour the broth over them and he did so so he's taking the cake he's wetting the cakes putting it on the Rock then the angel of the Lord reached out the tip of his staff that was in his hand he has a hand he's got a staff he's embodied right God is embodied and fire sprang up from the Rock and consumed the meat and the unleavened cakes and the angel of the Lord vanished from his sight then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord and Gideon said alas oh Lord God for now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face but the Lord said to him peace be to you do not fear you shall not die then Gideon built an altar there to the Lord and called it the Lord is peace I'm going to stop there so Gideon has an encounter with a man he perceived to be God God does a miracle he knows instantly because the guy because the man he's standing with does the miracle Boop and then disappears I don't know about you but I can't do that I'm not that good of a magician but he disappears Gideon knows immediately that this man was actually God and then he builds an altar the Lord is peace okay so that was I'm going to be honest with you guys there probably like 50 different theophanies in the Old Testament that are similar to this I only picked out a few but God takes on an embodied form throughout the entire Old Testament in different ways and with different prophets and with different people he calls what I what I'm trying to help you build the case of is if you go to let's say a Jehovah Witness and they say that God can't be a man or if you go to a Muslim who says that God cannot be a man how can Jesus be man and God that doesn't make sense you can use the scriptures to show them that God has already done this previously in the Old Testament the leap from God taking on human form and putting on flesh that you see that's described in John 1 God became flesh God was the word and dwelt Among Us is not a huge leap because God is already doing these things I'm not saying this is the Incarnate but I believe in a lot of theologians believe this is Jesus showing himself throughout the Old Testament the pre-incarnate version of Jesus before he put on flesh he's showing himself in the form of a man that you are seeing here today in the scripture okay this is very significant because it's not that large of a leap to get to a point where we can say okay if God created everything why would he not be able to go inside of his creation and show himself to be the very creation of which he created right in John 1 verse4 it says the word became flesh and dwelt Among Us Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of God's presence with Humanity I also want to highlight something that's very important that you saw both with Gideon and that you saw with Moses and you see throughout the scripture the reason why he called Abraham is not because he was this strong amazing man of Faith Abraham before he met God was a moon worshiper he was a moon worshipper he took somebody who was a moon worshipper who was 80 years old 100 years old and blessed him and gave him a child Gideon if you continue to read Gideon he he builds an army to go fight the midianites god makes him he has 32,000 men at first God makes him get rid of all of the men but 300 and then goes to battle with the midianites destroys all the midianites because God didn't want the people to believe that they took the midianites by their hand he wanted to show them that it was God who delivered them so God is one who wants the praise and worship to be on himself because he wants us to understand that he has the power to deliver us and you see that fully perfected in the man God Jesus so the Lord chooses weak human vessels who are clothed with the spirit as the instruments of his Deliverance it is always in the context of human weakness that the Lord achieves his greatest victories it's through our weakness that's why Paul says we should boast in our weakness even the weakness of his son his own son's death on the cross the weakest moment was actually the the moment that brought us all salvation through his death and as we saw in the lesson today in Genesis 18:32 Exodus 3 and here in in judges 6 God can appear in visible form to his creation so that way he can act in the world that we live in so in applying this to us God is personal and he is present he has appeared to our forefathers why would he not appear to us in different ways those of you who have had spiritual encounters right we we have all seen and felt the presence of God in some way whether with his word whether with his people whether whether just having a knowing that he is with us and it's an amazing thing that he cares so much about his creation that he would give us those moments to have faith in him to know that he has the power to deliver us so we should trust in God's plan when everything looks chaotic when it looks like everything's falling apart that maybe the very setting God wants so that way he can display his power and his miracles remember there was people who were asking about a man who was blind was it his father who had sinned was it he who had sinned and Jesus said none of those things it wasn't because he had sinned it's because God wanted to show his glory and his power through him we need to embrace Jesus as the full revelation of God and live in the light of the Resurrection I thank you guys for being with me I'm going to close us in prayer Heavenly Father we thank you for this time we thank you for your word we thank you that we can gather together in Freedom that we can gather together around your word and we know that we are not persecuted in this great nation for being Believers in Christ yes we face opposition and yes we Face ridicule and sometimes things happen but for the most part we are free in this nation we lived in a we live in a blessed Nation who allows us to pursue you Lord I pray that your freedom would reign in this country that we would continue to be able to um come together as Brothers and Sisters in Christ to hear your words of truth and that you may grow our faith Lord help us continue to see you in the scripture help us continue to see you in nature lord it's through your wisdom and your creativeness that we see you everywhere Lord I see you in the people around me I see you in the love in my children I thank you for giving me all those moments in my life and I know everyone here thanks you Lord for all of those small moments where you make an interaction and a connection for us Lord I pray that over this next week you would encounter every single person here Lord Lord that you would encounter them with your love and your presence and your Holiness that we would feel you and interact with you and just know that you have our lives in your hand Lord that there is a purpose for all the pain for all the suffering for everything that we have gone through Lord we know that you are in it we see it on the cross Lord you are not a God who is far away who left us here you are one who took on humanity and you suffered worse than anybody else to show us the way to life Lord you are intimately involved in our lives Lord we give you all the glory all the honor all the praise it's in Jesus name we pray amen