{"id":10180,"date":"2014-12-18T01:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-12-18T09:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/?p=10180"},"modified":"2014-12-16T22:53:57","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T06:53:57","slug":"jesus-was-older-than-he-looked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/2014\/12\/18\/jesus-was-older-than-he-looked\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus Was Older than He Looked"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Roger Alcaraz<\/em><\/p>\n

Here in our college ministry, we’ve been looking at Jesus\u2019 earthly ministry in the book of John. I’ve been most impressed with Jesus\u2019 radical teaching and his amazing love. But what was Jesus\u2019 ministry before he took on flesh? After all, John 1:1 says that Jesus was in the beginning, which begs the question, \u201cWhat was he doing up to the earthly birth?<\/p>\n

Jesus Visits Moses<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Exodus 3:6, it\u2019s clear that God is the one speaking to Moses when he says, \u201cI am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.\u201d Then when Moses asks God about who he should say sent him, God responds, \u201cI am who I am, tell them I am has sent you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I bring this up to show that Jesus is claiming to be the one who spoke from the burning bush. Exodus 3:2 states, \u201cthe angel of the LORD appeared to him in the flame of fire out of the midst of the bush.\u201d There is no distinction between the angel of the LORD and God himself. Some argue that an angel came with God in the bush, so that the angel could get Moses\u2019 attention and then God would speak to him. The problem is that there\u2019s no account of God entering the bushes and we see no interaction between the angel and God that we would expect between two separate persons. The natural conclusion is that the angel of the LORD and the LORD himself are seen as separate in person but equal in their nature.<\/p>\n

This mirrors the proximity of Jesus and God the Father when Jesus declares that he and the Father are one (John 10:30). Again, he wants himself and the Father to be seen as one and the same. If it were Jesus who appeared to Moses, then perhaps he was involved in the lives of others throughout the OT.<\/p>\n

Jesus its Jacob and Manoah<\/strong><\/p>\n

In Genesis 32:26-30 Jacob wrestles with God whom he initially thinks is a man. By the end of the encounter Jacob says, \u201cI have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been delivered.\u201d The passage is particularly interesting when looked at along with Judges 13:15-23 where we read about the angel of the Lord appearing to Manoah and his wife. They also initially think he is a man.<\/p>\n

You can read the accounts on your own, but to summarize the main similarities: a man appears to both Jacob and Manoah; the man blesses both Jacob and Manoah; afterward, both Jacob and Manoah ask for his name; the man responds to both, \u201cWhy do you ask?\u201d Then both realize they should have died because they just saw God.<\/p>\n

If we consider the possibility that the angel here were Jesus, then why didn’t he say he was Jesus? After all, he was asked by both for his very name\u2014a perfect opportunity to reveal himself in the Old Testament.<\/p>\n

Still, if the angel simply said, \u201cWhy do you ask?\u201d then perhaps he just wanted to avoid being worshiped. But the angel added, \u201c\u2026seeing it is wonderful?\u201d (Pene<\/em> in Hebrew). The only other time this word is used is in Psalm 139:6 when the Psalmist writes about the LORD\u2019s knowledge being too pene<\/em> to grasp. So the word has the idea of being incomprehensible or being secret, which helps us understand the angel\u2019s response as saying \u201c\u2026seeing it is beyond understanding?\u201d This is how some English translations take it. What a strange response to give. Certainly if this were a man or an angel trying to deny worship, he would not consider himself pene<\/em>.<\/p>\n

So what does it mean that the angel of the LORD\u2019s name was beyond understanding or secret? For this we turn to Ephesians 3:4-5 where Paul writes about \u201c…the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations<\/em> as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.\u201d The subject here is the mystery of Christ, specifically, that Christ would save Gentiles (v. 6), but part of keeping the ministry of Christ a secret was to veil the person of Christ as well. Therefore, the reason that the angel of the LORD did not reveal himself was because it was not his time to.<\/p>\n

Jesus Acts as a Link<\/strong><\/p>\n

This doesn’t mean that every time the angel of the LORD is used in the OT that it is referring to Jesus. It might be the case that every manifestation of God was, in fact, Jesus but some accounts of God\u2019s appearance don\u2019t give us enough detail to know for sure. I could mention other accounts where Christ is seen in the OT, like the mention of two LORDs (Genesis 23:24), or when he visits Joshua (Joshua 5:13-15), or when Isaiah sees a vision of Jesus (Isaiah 6:1-6; John 12:41). But the point isn’t only just to show that Jesus appeared to different people but to see what role he played in the OT.<\/p>\n

In essence, Christ was providing a link between transcendent God and man. The OT saints longed for the day they could see God\u2019s face, but at the same time, they were rightfully afraid because no one can see God\u2019s face and live. When Christ appeared to individuals, he revealed a bit of who God is, but it was always incomplete and they couldn’t explain how it is that the infinitely glorious God could be in their presence for them to behold. The answer is Jesus.<\/p>\n

For it was in Jesus\u2019 earthly ministry when Jesus makes it plain that \u201cwhoever has seen me has seen the Father\u201d (John 14:8). Paul adds that \u201cJesus is the image of the invisible God\u201d (Colossians 1:15). These statements aren’t just true of Jesus in the NT but also the OT. So what did Jacob, Manoah, and others like Abraham, David, Isaiah see? They saw the image of the invisible God. They saw the Father. But they saw Him in the second person of the Trinity.<\/p>\n

Jesus has always been mankind\u2019s visible access to invisible God and when he showed himself to OT saints, it was a foreshadow of the incarnation. For they knew they were looking at God and yet didn’t know how. Now, because of Jesus\u2019 incarnation, death, and resurrection, we can know God more intimately than ever, even more than all of the OT saints.<\/p>\n

How often do we take the revelation of Christ in the NT for granted? If anything, we should be reading about Christ every day and drawing nearer to God, having a greater access to him than even Moses did. We also take hope in the future because even with Christ bringing us to God, there are some things we still long for, like being ushered into glory where we will be in the presence of God the Father, Son, and Spirit in the fullest way possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Roger Alcaraz Here in our college ministry, we’ve been looking at Jesus\u2019 earthly ministry in the book of John. I’ve been most impressed with Jesus\u2019 radical teaching and his amazing love. But what was Jesus\u2019 ministry before he took on flesh? After all, John 1:1 says that Jesus was in the beginning, which begs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-affinity-groups","category-college"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10184,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10180\/revisions\/10184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}