 Okay, so the topic for tonight is the angel of the Lord. Who is he and should you be worshiped now? the most important divide between Judaism and Christianity has to be the defecation of Jesus and the devotion and worship of him for centuries upon dark centuries Jewish people have chosen to die rather than to direct any devotion towards Jesus Now it's not because Jews love death In fact, we know that the Jewish culture values life above everything however the Jews stands in a covenantal relationship with the creator of heaven and earth and the loyalty and the devotion that the church was demanding for Jesus is seen by the Jew as The deepest violation of that covenant and that relationship that's not because we hate Jesus but it's rather because we love God and So the devotion of our hearts belong to God and to God alone. No one else and Essence of this relationship is God's love for us his people and our love and our devotion to him as our God and So the focus of tonight's lecture over here is to discuss an argument that has been put forth by Christian missionaries to try and persuade Jews that Worshiping Jesus is not a violation of our relationship with God As I mentioned before For most of our history, this has been a closed case It was unthinkable for any Jew to ever consider violating this relationship with Hashem with God No matter what a Jewish persons Observence level in terms of keeping the Torah and the Mitzvot nevertheless Not a single Jew would ever consider violating this relationship with God by serving anyone but God however unfortunately Due to the sustained missionary crusade and a lack of proper Jewish education both on an academic level and an emotional level many Jews unfortunately have been led astray by these misleading arguments and This is what I want to address tonight. So let's get started In order to justify the devotion and divine worship of Jesus Missionaries have combed through the Jewish scriptures and Jewish literature to try and find support for the doctrine of the incarnation and the Trinity Now as they go through the scriptures one of the discoveries that they like to present As support for their worship of Jesus are a number of instances in the scriptures that Have an angel of the Lord That appears to Abraham to Jacob to Moses and to others throughout the scriptures They argue these missionaries argue that these appearances Are instances in the scripture in which we read about an incarnation of God In other words, they see these passages is describing God himself appearing as an angel or as a man and this they believe Supports their belief in the doctrine of the incarnation In fact, I've heard Christians say that any time you see the angel of the Lord in scripture It's a reference to Jesus Now before we look at these passages about the angel of the Lord, it's important to point out That in all the stories of this angel of the Lord This angel is never worshipped and furthermore. There's never a commandment to Either allow or to command us to direct any divine worship towards this angel Now another very important point Over here that I'd like to make is about the word angel itself The English word angel is not a translation The English word angel is an anglicized way of saying the greek word angolos It's a bit like christ And messiah messiah is not a translation messiah is just an anglicized way of saying masiach Right, which is the Hebrew equivalent to christ in greek, which means anointed. So here angel Is really an anglicized way of saying angelos, which is The same as the Hebrew word malach, which both in Hebrew and in greek simply means messenger That's what it means a messenger Or a representative now the fact that this messenger Is charged with a miss with a miss with a mission by god It's clear That this being is a being other than god who is here to do god's Bidding and is subservient to god, right? Obviously if i'm sending a messenger to somebody else This person may be representing me But he's not me And usually if i'm sending someone else that person is subservient to the one who's sending him on that mission Keeping these two points in mind. Let's take a closer look at the issue There are passages in which in the scriptures in which god seems to be interchangeable with an angel For example, we read the story in genesis chapter 18 Where this is a time when abraham is just after his circumcision And we're told that god appears to him at the trees of mamre as he was sitting in the tent In the heat of the day and so in verse two of genesis chapter 18 We read that he lifted his eyes and looked and behold three men were standing by him And when he saw them he ran from the tent door to meet them and bound himself to the ground Verse three and said my lord if i have now found favor in your sight. Do not pass by your servant Verse four says But please let a little water be brought and wash your feet and rest yourselves under the tree So what do we have we have verse one telling us that god appears to Abraham and then we go on to read how there are three angels standing there and so What's going on if you read a little bit a little bit further In the story we find out that two of these angels two of these men End up going off to sedom to save lot the nephew of abraham and one We don't know what happens to him. He seems The scriptures don't tell us what happened to him But what we do know is that in verse eight in verse In verse 22 it says Then the men turned away from there and went towards sedom, but abraham still stood before the lord and so The argument is Who's this third Person is it god? Who's this third angel? Is it god? And so christians will argue that this was an instance of god taking run new human semblance just like the angels in the story Now according to jewish commentators rushbam and ibn ezra They argue that the third man was actually an angel Who was called by god's name? We know that angels have different names and sometimes you have an angel who could be called by god's name i.e the angel of the lord It is this third angel whom abraham was speaking to and addressing as lord So in the beginning when he when when he speaks and says lord He's referring to this angel who is called by god's name. That's one way of reading the story I'll come back to this passage, but for now let's deal with this idea of an angel bearing god's the name of god It's very common In the jewish scriptures that when god wants to appear to prophets He often sends an angel to represent him for the purpose of passing on his message to the prophet Now what we see in the scripture is that the angel or better yet i'd rather use the word messenger This messenger speaks the word of god and the prophet will address god by speaking to this angel or speaking to this messenger However the angel Or the messenger is not god The reason why i stress the word messenger is because In the jewish scriptures, we find that god will communicate through human beings as well As we find in the story of king david and the prophet nathan We find over their story where king nathan comes along with a message from god And david seems to be making the confession to god But idra he's speaking to nathan and nathan gives him immediately the response from god And so what we see over here is there's a human being that god is sending his message Through but this person's not god In fact in hagai chapter 1 verse 13 We see that hagai himself Who is one of the prophets he's called malah hashem and the angel of the lord only here If you look the bibles that you'll open will translate it as the messenger Of the lord's messenger. They don't translate it as the lord's angel They translate it as the lord's messenger because that would be more of an accurate translation But what we see over here is that hagai a human being is called the messenger of god And yet we know that hagai wasn't god But what about this angel of the lord that we find in other places through scriptures so for example in In uh In number in in genesis chapter in chapter in in genesis chapter 22 We find that there's an angel that calls out to abraham. This is at the The climax of the story with abraham taking isaac up the mountain And he's about to slaughter him and by yikra el of malah hashem the lord the angel of the lord calls god calls out from him And he says abraham abraham and he says yes, i'm here and he says don't touch don't touch him Don't kill him right and then what we read in verse 15 Is that the angel of the lord calls out to him again Then the angel of the lord called to abraham a second time out of heaven and said By myself i have sworn says the lord that because you did this thing and did not spare your son your only son I will surely bless you and i will greatly multiply your offspring like the stars of the heaven And like the sand that is upon the sea shore and your offspring will inherit The gates of their enemies all nations of the earth bless themselves by your offsprings because you have a obeyed my voice So here we have is god through the angel Telling abraham that he's going to be blessed for obeying god's voice But whose voice did abraham actually hear? The angel Because it's interchangeable the angel speaks god's word and it's as if god himself is speaking And when abraham speaks back to the angel or whoever it is communicates back to the angel It can be considered as if he was speaking to god and this happens many times throughout scriptures We find this a similar story in in in numbers chapter 22 Where we have the story of billum We know about billum was hired by balak to come and to curse the jewish people And we know the whole story with the donkey and the donkey all of a sudden sees the angel of the lord standing in the way And he says what's going on and then finally when God opened up the eyes of billum to see that the angel of the lord was standing there Billum wasn't sure what to do. Should I go back? What do you want me to do now? So he says no go and only the words that I will tell you to speak You shall speak But what do we find in the next chapter? God puts the words into billum's mouth So which one is it the angel or god? So what we see over here is they're interchangeable god often sends Messages through messengers, but these are distinct beings and never are there One and the same as god co-equal with god or ever worshiped as god So in short god uses messengers both human and angelic through whom he brings his word to this physical world world But there is no indication That any worship is to be directed to these messengers These messengers are clearly distinct from god and as such are not deserving of worship So now let's go back to genesis 18 for example and the story of the three angels who appeared there The truth is that just like everything in Judaism and in Torah There are different opinions about how to understand any particular passage. So when it comes to this passage What we find is a widely held Jewish interpretation of this passage posits that there are four separate entities appearing to abram god appears in verse one in a prophetic vision and then three men Because we know that throughout scriptures you find that visions of god are sometimes accompanied By the sighting of angels And this is just another example where we find this story with with Gideon It's the same idea that when god wanted to appear to him There were angels that that that appeared to Gideon as well So according to this it's possible to say that when the two angels left Right that we read about in genesis 18 and they go off to Saddam It's possible that the third the third angel stayed behind while god spoke to Abraham and there's nothing contextually Wrong with reading it that way However, as I mentioned before some Jewish commentators say that no, it's not four appearances. Uh, it's not four It's not god and three But rather it's the angel of the lord Which was one of the angels and he and Abraham addressed it addressed him as lord because he was the angel bearing God's name and so in light of all these texts and many more similar examples in scripture we can confidently say That the jewish interpretation that it was the angel of the lord That abram saw and not an incarnation of god is firmly rooted in the words of scripture The christian interpretation that insists that it was god himself incarnate in man Is without scripture foundation and in reality There is absolutely no justification for directing divine worship to any created being whether physical or spiritual Including jesus