GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
JUDGES 13:19-23
19 Manoah took a young goat and a grain offering and offered them on a rock to the LORD.
Manoah brought the young male goat, and slaughtered it there on his own temporary altar, a single large rock. It was not what the LORD had commanded through Moses, but he had been commanded by this person he knew to be a man of God (hadn’t he known that he and his wife had no children? Hadn’t he spoken boldly to them about the Lord’s plans for them?). So on this altar, far from the tabernacle which even now rested at Shiloh (Judges 18:31; 1 Samuel 1:3; Psalm 78:60), he killed the goat and cut it into the pieces specified through Moses, arranging them on the rock on top of the fire he had made there. The grain offering was made as well, and the goat’s blood was poured out all around the base of the altar.
Then the LORD did something wonderful while Manoah and his wife were watching. 20 As the flames rose up from the altar toward the sky, the angel of the LORD ascended in the flame of the altar. When Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell down with their faces to the ground. 21 The angel of the LORD did not appear again to Manoah and his wife. Then Manoah realized that it was the angel of the LORD.
As the flames rose, the angel—God himself—stepped up (or leapt up!) and ascended in the rising flame. The Hebrew construction at this point is deceptively simple: “flame” has no “the” or article, but “altar” does. So the expression seems to me to be that he leaped up in a flame of the altar, but it might not be that complicated or specific. What it certain is that Manoah and his wife watched it happen—our author says it twice, so that we have two witnesses (Deut. 19:15).
In a similar incident, the prophet Elijah was taken to heaven in a whirlwind (that is, a tornado) while chariots of fire and horses of fire kept his protégé Elisha from being carried up with him (2 Kings 2;11-12). However, when Jesus ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives, Luke reports only that “he was taken up before their very eyes” into the clouds while his eleven Apostles watched (Acts 1:8; Luke 24:51; cp. Mark 16:19). The only other occasion to consider like these is the ascension of Enoch, which is expressed in almost the same terms as the ascension of Jesus: He “walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away” (Genesis 5:24), and “He did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away” (Hebrews 11:5). In each case, God was the one who transported the individuals from earth up to heaven. He used the chariots and horses to keep the zealously loyal Elisha from joining his master. He often (but not always) permitted witnesses. The only other difference to consider is whether the verbs in question are active or passive. When Enoch end Elijah were taken, their role was passive: they were taken by God. When the angel of the Lord left Manoah and his wife, he was active, and we know that the angel was in fact God. When Jesus ascended, Luke and Mark use passive verbs to emphasize the approval of God the Father on the work of his Son. There is gospel comfort even in these active and passive verbs, which teach us that when it comes time for each of us to ascend into heaven, it will be God’s doing and not ours. We will be taken.
22 “We will certainly die,” he said to his wife, “because we have seen God! ”
Manoah thought they would die. His terror was not just a matter of a windblown leaf spooking a man without the gospel (Lev. 26:36), but real fear. God had said, “No one may see me and live” (Exodus 33:20).
23 But his wife said to him, “If the LORD were going to kill us, he would not have accepted the burnt offering and the grain offering from us, and he would not have shown us all these things or told to us this.”
Her logic was based on her good foundation of faith. “Sustain me according to your promise, and I will live” (Psalm 119:116). The Lord would never have shown himself to them in the way that he did if there had been any danger of them seeing him in all his holiness. Instead, he had cloaked himself in a form they could see without any danger.
This seems to me to be one of many examples in the Bible that would answer John Calvin’s argument against the historical Christian doctrine (and to Calvin, epitomized as the Lutheran doctrine) of the real presence of Jesus’ body in the Lord’s Supper. Calvin said: “It is essential to a real body to have its particular form and dimensions and to be contained within some certain space. Let us hear no more, then, of this ridiculous notion which fastens the minds of men, and Christ himself, to the bread.” (Institutes IV, 17, 29). And again he said: “‘The Lutherans chatter about an invisible presence” which exceeds his corporeal dimensions and which represents his body “as in different places at once” (ibid, IV, 17,19).
Luther’s response was that “their whole argument rests on this, that Christ’s body can only be at one place, in a physical and tangible manner, as a peasant fills out jacket and breeches or straw in a sack.”
It is no more a wonder to be told by Matthew, Mark, Luke and Paul (1 Corinthians 11:24) that when Jesus offered the bread to his disciples, he used the simple words, “This is my body” (Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19). When Israelites like Manoah offered other sacrifices, it was commanded by Moses that they share the meat with the priest and his family, and all of them would share in it and in the rest of the sacrifice. So it is with Jesus. He is our priest, he was the worshiper who brought the sacrifice, and he was the sacrifice itself all in one—and he offers the communal meal to us, his true family. For he said, “Whoever does God’s will is my brother and my sister and my mother” (Mark 3:35). If a priest tending a sacrifice made by an Israelite would turn around and hand the man who had brought the goat a loaf of stale bread and said, “Here, this represents your offering—be content with it,” he would have been answerable to the high priest. God commanded his priests: “See that you do all I command you; do no add to it or take away from it” (Deuteronomy 12:32). A priest before God’s altar who took away the sacrifice to be shared would have been guilty, shamed, and certainly defrocked if not stoned as a thief and worse. Like Eli’s sons, he would be treating the Lord’s offering with contempt (1 Samuel 2:17). And that is what Calvin has done to generations of Protestant Christians who gladly received the gospel of forgiveness only to have its choicest morsel torn from their hands.
“If a man sins against another man, God may mediate for him; but if a man sins against the LORD, who will intercede for him?” (1 Samuel 2:25). Do not rob anyone of the gospel. Give it freely, and give it whole, filled up to the very top and overflowing like David’s cup (Psalm 23:5). Our Savior has once again been taken into heaven. He is seated at the right hand of God (Col. 3:1) and yet he is also with us always (Matthew 28:20, not merely stuffed into a peasant’s jacket and breeches) and it is our privilege to share this news with the world!
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota