Most Likely To Succeed (Theme From Ray Pritchard) Series

But is the God of the Bible worthy of our full trust – especially if we can’t always understand his ways? I mean you wouldn’t invest in a business venture just because some stranger said: “It will be great. Trust me!” The God of the Bible of course is not a crook who is eager to rip us off. That truth was illustrated for Manoah and his wife. As the Angel of the Lord had requested, Manoah prepared the goat as a sacrifice to God. Then two miracles happened. First, fire shot up out of the rock to consume the offering. Then the Angel of the Lord jumped into the fire and blazed up to heaven with the flames! It was only at this moment that Manoah and his wife realized that they had been speaking to God himself! Manoah was terrified. He was certain they would die, for sinners can’t normally come into contact with a holy God and survive any more than a bundle of newspapers can withstand being tossed into a roaring campfire.

But Manoah’s wife was spiritually quicker than her husband on this occasion. She said: “If the LORD had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted a burnt offering… from our hands, nor shown us all these things or now told us this” (Judges 13:23). Let’s start with her last point. If God had meant to kill them, he wouldn’t have promised that they were going to have a son. No parents. No son. Besides, God had accepted their sacrifice. He had burned up the goat when he could have just as easily turned the fire on them! What a blessing a believing spouse is. Someone who knows well our fears and can allay them, not with earthly platitudes, but with heavenly promises firmly rooted in God’s Word!

But what I think is really interesting is how the Angel of the Lord went up in the flame – as if he himself was the sacrifice… Do you see where I am going with this? You might if you remember who the Angel of the Lord is. He was sent by God but he also was God, as Manoah confessed. The Angel of the Lord is often an Old Testament name for the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son of God who, of course, is now known as…Jesus. This Jesus did actually leap into the flame of God’s wrath over our sin. That happened on Good Friday when he was jammed onto that piece of kindling we call the cross.

What does that mean for you? Well, we started this section by asking how can you trust a God you can’t fully understand. I trust him because he has proven his love for me at the cross. And so even though I don’t fully understand his ways, I know that he always has my best interest in mind. It’s like having a friend who is a mechanic. You might not always understand what he’s talking about when he’s discussing what work needs to be done on your car but you’ll entrust him with that work because as your friend, he’s already shown that he cares about you and wouldn’t do anything to intentionally harm you or rip you off. You won’t even freak out when he’s taken your car apart and has pieces of it lying all over your driveway. Likewise when it feels as if God has taken your life apart and the pieces are lying all over the driveway, you can trust that he’s going to put them back together again so that you’ll be spiritually better off than you were before. I mean if God was willing to die for you, is he going to withhold from you now anything that you really need? No, not even when he chastises us as he did the Israelites of Samson’s day by allowing them to suffer under the heavy hand of the Philistines. That oppression lasted 40 years – a lifetime for many! Yet since it came from a loving God, it’s exactly what the Israelites needed so they would repent of their sins and enjoy God’s love forever in heaven.