Manner Or Mission

Hey, listen, if you will be taking your Bibles and turning with me to the book of Judges, chapter 13, I'm going to join you there in just a moment.

Judges 13 · chapter mention

It is Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms, whether uh that is uh, you know, like you have gone through the process of birth or adopting, or you're just the ant that everyone loves, whatever it is.

Happy Mother's Day for you.

Thank you for your ministry.

Now, this is because it is Mother's Day, it's my opportunity typically to open up Proverbs chapter 31 and lay some heavy yoke on you, uh some rules and regulations, some things that you're not currently doing, and you know, you we all feel bad about as parents.

Proverbs 31 · chapter mention

And but that's not what I want to do, right?

What I want to do this morning is I want you to experience the freedom that comes with knowing that you do not parent alone.

Parenting is tough.

Moms, can I get a witness?

I mean, let's face it, it perhaps has never been more difficult.

And I'm not just talking about the sleepless nights, the impossible schedules, the teenage years that feel more like a hostage negotiation than parenting.

Uh, I'm talking about just the state of the world that we're in.

I mean, we have a society that has jettisoned jettisoned everything that has nailed us down for many years, and everything has been caught into question and flipped upside down, and the rules are all to pieces, and you're facing challenges that I mean your parents did not face.

And then, you know, we have situations like we we want to prepare, we want to provide, we want to protect our children against things like uh um, well, against situations like shiny uh shiny hunters.

I never heard of them until day before yesterday.

Uh the Iran situation, you can Google it, by the way, later after service.

Uh shiny hunters, the Iran situation, and AI.

Like, what do we do with our kids with all of these things that that they that we know they're about to face?

And the real question comes down to just one simple statement.

We can sum it up with the question of what do we do with them?

Now, I know that's a common question you ask whenever maybe they run to their room and slam the door, or perhaps whenever they just won't eat their peas, or you know, whenever they won't come in from outside, or they won't stop talking that way, you throw your hands up and you ask the question, well, what do we do with them?

But at the kernel of all of that thought, there is the legitimate question of what do we what do we do with this individual that God has trusted us with, this person who has their own identity, their own gifts, their own ability, their own future.

I'm just curious, has anyone else as a parent ever wondered that you were going to mess your kid up?

That like they they're this person and they have this future and they have this possibility, and I'm as their parent, like I'm just gonna get in the way of all of that, and I really, really don't want to be in the way of whatever their full potential may be.

Well, sometimes we face these questions and we think we're the only ones who wrestle with them, or at least the only ones who wrestle with them the way that we do.

But the truth is people have not changed.

They've not changed in the last hundred years, they've not changed in the last thousand years, they were the same 4,000 years ago whenever we meet an individual named Manoah and his wife, who in Judges chapter 13 is actually not named, they ask the same question.

Judges 13 · chapter mention

You're gonna see it here in a moment in the text.

They want to know what they're going to do with this child of theirs.

And along the way, the text reveals to us three principles, three places where God is active and involved in parenting.

I want to give them to you now just so you know where we're heading in the text.

And well, also so you know whenever the sermon's about over.

Here they are.

Number one, God invites.

Number two, God informs.

Sorry, let me do that again.

Number one, God initiates, number two, God informs, and number three, God invites.

So you're going to see these three truths rise out of the text.

So let's just walk through this together.

Judges chapter 13.

Judges 13 · chapter mention

We begin by reading a familiar refrain.

If you're familiar with the book of Judges, this is something we've seen multiple times throughout the text.

And the people of Israel, again, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.

That's never a good thing.

God is the great parent.

He will uh chasten us, he will make sure that we go to time out if we need to go to timeout.

God will do anything to your world to save your soul, because he loves your soul, he loves you.

And so, whenever the children of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and they went out pursuing other gods and treating people wickedly and with great violence, the Lord gave them into the hands of the people who became their arch enemies for many, many years, the Philistines.

Now, they were in, they were being oppressed by the Philistines for over 40 years.

It's easy to read that number and just to gloss over it and just assign some arbitrary image of what that must have been like, but most of us in this room, like we would have trouble remembering 40 years ago.

That's a long time.

And especially in this culture, where the average life expectancy wasn't as, you know, it wasn't much more than that in many cases.

40 years was a generation.

For most of the people who lived in this area, this is all they knew.

All they knew was the oppression of the Philistines.

In fact, we see it later in this story where the people of Israel come to one of the judges and says, Don't you know the Philistines rule over us?

This is just how it is.

How many of you know that just how it is is not how it has to be?

You get into this mindset.

We are programmed to believe that because this is just how it's been, because this is the rhythm that we're under, that there can't be a new rhythm.

And I'm here to tell you God can initiate a new rhythm.

And that's certainly what he does here.

The text now zooms in on one particular family and tells us that there was just this certain man of Zora of the tribe of the Danites.

Now, if you were an Israelite, you would you would immediately kind of cringe a little bit whenever you read the name Danites.

These were, this was not the most powerful tribe.

In fact, this was the last tribe to take control of its inheritance, and they really became something of nomads for a while.

And so this was not the place you would go to to pick out a leader or a ruler or a savior or someone who was going to benefit society.

But yet the text zone zooms in on the this particular individual, and this individual's name was Manoah.

Now, in Hebrew, his name means the one who rests or the one from rest.

But how many of you know that sometimes names don't carry the weight that they should?

This guy was not a resting individual.

How could he rest whenever the Philistines were oppressing them and laying heavy burdens on them, imprisoning them, putting them to service, robbing their children, taking their children away.

And then in addition to the cultural problems that Manoah was facing, there was the problem at home.

I mean, if you had one or the other, you can get by.

But whenever there's problems in the home and outside the home, it's like a two-front war.

And the war for Manoah was heavy because the text tells us that his wife was barren and had no children.

Now, for us today, like that's tough.

If you have, if you have wrestled with infertility or you have friends or family who have, you know, what a heartbreaking, difficult season that is in life.

And for these people, it would have been even more so because, as we've talked about before, children were your retirement plan.

There was no Social Security, there was no bailout plan, there was no bank where you could take your money and invest and watch it grow at you know 0.4% or whatever it's getting now per year.

You invested in your children and you anticipated in your old years they would take care of you.

And so Manoah and his wife were looking down the road of retirement and realizing that there were issues, there were problems that lay ahead of them.

But again, it's not a problem for God because the way things were is not necessarily how things have to be.

Whenever God intervenes, things change radically.

Most of us in this room who are followers of Christ know the experience of having that encounter with God and knowing, okay, we were here.

This is what I was before.

But now that the Holy Spirit has entered my life, man, that things change.

Not necessarily overnight, but they begin to nudge and move, and you look back after a few years and you realize that what God initiated, he has continued to work with, and he's about to initiate something here.

God initiates a pregnancy.

Look at verse number three.

Now, the angel of the Lord, stop there for a minute.

That's that's probably reference to either a theophany, an earthly appearance of the Lord, or perhaps even a pre-incarnate expression or visit of Jesus Christ.

It's it's not just an angel, whenever it's phrased this way.

This is, and you will see this shortly in the text, this is God Himself in some form coming down, and he appears to the woman and says to her, he begins by telling her the state that she's in.

Behold, you are barren and have not born any children.

And I'm not sure, but I'm I'm pretty sure after the comma, there's supposed to be the word from from Manoah's wife.

She says, duh.

I mean, it's kind of funny, right?

That she comes down, the angel Lord comes down and says, Hey, you're barren and haven't had any kids.

And she's like, What tell me something new?

I mean, I'm aware of the state that I'm in.

It's grace, though.

Whenever God comes and tells you the state that you're in, whenever He makes you aware of the brokenness, the struggle, the heartache that you're facing, and it doesn't feel good because the last thing you want to hear is the truth about the sorrow, the future, the pain, the agony to be reminded of what has happened.

But the truth is it's grace whenever God comes down and tells us, reminds us exactly where we are, because it's an awareness of where we are that tells us, helps us to know who we need.

Did you get that?

It's an awareness of where we are that helps us understand who it is that we need.

There's no hope here.

You don't have children.

By the way, you can see it in the text here.

You are barren.

That's a reference to her present situation, and you have not born any children.

That's a reference to her past situation.

Can you see what the author, what the what the speaker is doing, or what God is doing here?

He's talking to her about where she has been and where she is.

But again, we must say that the way things have been is not the way things have to be in the future.

But you shall conceive a son.

It's going to happen.

What you've been waiting on is going to be here, but it's not just about you.

Your children, by the way, any blessing you receive, they're not about you.

God has a plan, and all of our lives, including the lives that we create as parents, are made to bring glory to God.

It's really all about Him.

And so the author or the uh the Lord here gives some instructions concerning what she's to do with the life of this child.

She says to him, Hey, you know, you're not, and we'll see, read this here in a second.

You're you're not supposed to, you know, don't drink any wine or eat anything unclean because this child is going to be a Nazirite from his birth.

What God is essentially saying to her by giving her these instructions as he initiates this birth in her life, what he's saying to her is the same thing he could essentially say to you.

What grows in you and through you does not belong to you.

That's important for us to remember as parents.

Ladies, the the miracle that happened in your body whenever you created this life is I mean, it's it's wondrous, isn't it?

Whenever you watch this happen to friends or family and you know, children, grandchildren, like I mean, with us and and watching our first grandchild come into this world.

I mean, it was it was just awe-striking to me.

But in the middle of all that wonder, we have to be reminded that what grows in you is not is not for you.

It's not about you.

What grows in you and through you does not belong to you.

That's that's a heavy weight, but it's also a great, it's a great freedom.

The morning I woke up and realized that maybe at least one of my children had not gone in the direction that I wanted them to go.

And I did the math in my life the same way you did the math to figure out where I went wrong, so that in the future I could figure out how I could correct the mess that I had made in the life of my kids.

That's heavy weight.

But whenever I realized when the Spirit of God spoke to me, and I realized that they they were my kids, but they were not mine.

They do not belong to me, they belong to God.

He initiated them, he created them.

Now, if you're sitting there saying, well, Major, okay, that's in the story, and clearly that's what happened to Manoah and his wife with this child, but yet that's not my story.

I didn't get a visit from the angel of the Lord.

So does that really apply to me?

And the answer is yes.

Psalm, the very popular, Psalm 139, verse 13 and 14, says, concerning all of us, in this great hymn that everyone was called to sing.

Psalms 139:13

For you formed me in my inward parts and knitted me together in my mother's womb.

He did it.

See, the miracle of life isn't just a miracle if you're barren and haven't had children.

The miracle of life is a miracle, no matter how many kids you've had.

It's a miracle, it's a spark of life.

We were knit together, and for this reason, the psalmist says, I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

Wonderful are your works.

My soul knows it very well.

Deep inside of me, I know.

I I my parents, right?

They they they parented me, they brought me into life from the biological standpoint, but that does not happen without the Spirit of God quickening and bringing life into existence, fearfully and wonderfully made.

What I'm saying to you is God initiates.

God initiates.

Now, of course, beyond the initiation, God allows you and I to raise these children.

I I wonder about that sometimes.

I'm like, you know, before, before, you know, I was able to do anything, before we're able to do anything, we have to go get a permit, we have to get a license.

And I mean, there's some sort of validation that you're able to control the thing that you're you're using.

And but with kids, man, God just allows us to have kids.

And he, I'm just wondering sometimes, whenever I look at uh my own parenting style, I think to myself, was that really responsible for God to do?

In his grace and his mercy, he allows us this rich experience to have our own children or to help raise the children of others, lives that he initiated, and he provides for us instructions.

Now, of course, for us as Christians, we understand these instructions come out of his word.

They come through the gospel message that dads, please listen.

Dads, you can do no better than to minister the gospel in the life of your children.

In other words, to tell them the truth in love.

Moms, especially, like this is your day, so this is like this is a word for you.

You can do no better than to minister the gospel in the life of your children, to tell them the truth in love, to do for them what Jesus has done for you.

Whenever the angel of the Lord comes down, he gives, he gives Manoah's wife instructions specifically about her, what kind of what she needed to do to parent, about the child, what kind of life he was going to live and rules for him, and then what he was going to accomplish.

Now that sounds like a lot.

I don't know about you, but I would love to have received an email from God with that information.

Detailed instructions on what I was supposed to do, like day-to-day, an email every single morning when I wake up saying, today you need to do this, or instructions on what the child what the child should do and not do.

How do I cultivate their skills and their abilities and help them with their struggles and their faults and their failures?

Or how many of you would love to have gotten an email from God saying, hey, in 20 years, this is what your kid's going to be.

This is what they're going to do.

Some of you are like, no, I don't want to know what my kid's going to do in 20 years at all.

God comes to Manoah's wife and he tells her, here's what needs to happen.

He gives her instructions.

So we talked about God initiates.

Number two, God instructs.

Look at verse number four.

Based on this initiation, this gift that I'm about to give you, therefore, be careful, he says, and do not drink any wine or strong drink, or eat any unclean thing, for behold, you shall conceive and bear a son.

He's restating that promise.

No razor shall be upon his head, for the child shall be called a Nazarite from the womb.

Now, what's going on here?

Well, in the book of Numbers, there were rules that were given for a particular kind of vow.

Individuals who wanted to present themselves to the Lord for service could do so and make this vow.

And it involved more than not shaving your hair.

We know that because of the story that we read here and the direction in the book of Numbers, the hair was simply a symbol.

It was a way of saying to the world, I have dedicated myself to the Lord.

Now we don't necessarily have to do that today to indicate that we've dedicated ourselves to the Lord.

At least I hope that we don't have to do that today.

There are other ways that we indicate, that we indicate that we have committed ourselves to the Lord.

She, from the from the moment she is conceiving, God is saying to her, this child is going to be something different.

And because of that, for you in particular, no wine, no unclean animal.

You shouldn't eat any unclean animal, which by the way, she should not be eating an unclean animal, anyways.

It's part of the God's part of God's law.

And beyond that, when the child is born, don't lay a razor on his head because he's going to be a Nazirite.

Normally the Nazirite vow was made by individuals.

It was a voluntary agreement, but at this point, God said, This kid's being drafted into my cause.

And for this reason, here's what you should be, here's what you should do.

Now, whenever I look at these instructions here, there are three statements.

I think to myself, man, there's a lot more God could have said, a lot more information that He could have provided, but this is all that He gave to her.

Now for me as a parent, there is a there A lot of questions that I would have loved for God to have answered.

But unfortunately, He didn't.

He gave me His word.

I'm called to follow that word.

Sometimes the details are not all there.

I mean, how many of you know that the information that God gives us is important information, but it's not comprehensive?

And for the stuff that we don't know, you and I are called to a posture of trust.

More on that here in a moment.

So here's what happens.

So the angel comes to her and he tells her, You're going to bear a child, gonna be a Nazarite, no wine, no unclean animals, and don't lay a razor on his head.

Now, here's the thing that you probably didn't notice, but if you were hearing this story for the first time back in these days, it would have stood out to you.

Is the angel of the Lord came to her, came to a woman.

Now, today, like that would just be like an average Monday.

Like for me, I I don't know about uh I don't know about the other men in the room, but God has often used my wife to speak truth into my life.

There there have been times where I have been afraid, I've been worried, I've been concerned, and the spirit has come through Kim, and she has just spoken such truth and such grace, which I typically ignore, but that's my own fault.

We know that God speaks to both men and women, but in this culture, because of the state of things in society at this time, it was it was totally off the cuff.

It was something unexpected.

And so immediately she rises and she goes and she finds Manoah, her husband, and says, You're never going to believe what has just happened to me.

The angel of the Lord came and he spoke to me and he told me that I was going to conceive and bear a child.

Now she leaves out an important piece of information.

Along with the instruction on how she should live her life, the angel of the Lord tells her that this is important because your son Samson is going to begin to save Israel from the hand of the Philistines.

He's going to start something that is going to be very important.

How many of you know that with when it comes to your children, you're only starting something.

You're not always going to be able to see the end of the effort, the work that you have poured into your child.

That's important for you to remember because for some of you, you are going to live and you're going to pray and you're going to struggle, and then the Lord's going to call you home, and you're going to wonder what's what's going to happen to the next 20, 30, 40 years of my child's life.

God instructs, but He that instruction doesn't give you everything that you need to know for a lifetime.

We have to trust beyond that.

I saw an example of this yesterday.

It's been an emotionally fraught weekend for Kim and I.

We had a close friend, the best man at my wedding, uh, passed away, Jason.

Loved that dude a lot.

I don't know that I would have made it through high school without him and his friendship and and the group that I ran with, man.

We were it was it was a special relationship.

Loved them a lot.

Um later in life, Jason made some really bad decisions and and um he fell victim to substance abuse.

And I know his mother prayed for him and agonized over him.

She went on to be with the Lord, but but uh Jason lived on, and I'm sure whenever she passed away, she thought to herself, what's gonna happen to my son?

A few weeks or months before Jason passed away, um, he came back to the Lord in a very clear and a public way, reconciled with his son.

And yesterday, as we were at the memorial service, his son stood up.

He's been called into the ministry, he's heading out to seminary, already gone to Bible college, and his son stood up and delivered the eulogy, and it was an outstanding presentation of the gospel.

I hope you get what I'm saying.

There are a lot of people along the way that would have wondered what's the end of this.

But I'm here to tell you that even in the struggles of life, God is doing something, He's initiating something, and you have the information, you don't know the future, you don't know why God's taking your child around the bend or down through the valley that he's taking him through them through.

But I promise you, God loves your child more than you and I could ever possibly love them, and he is going to do whatever it takes to bring them to a place of full surrender and salvation before they leave this world.

That's God's objective.

He's going, if there's a way to reach the heart of your child, don't you know that God is going to do it?

I mean, for me, that's liberating because I've been informed God has told me the thing that I should be doing with my children.

I read scripture and out of it I gain some incredible insights for how I should love and support and encourage my children, but I don't get all the facts.

I don't know, I don't know the full story.

I don't know where God's going to take them to.

Do you think for a moment, I mean, because like we're talking about God instructing us, the angel of the Lord, without any doubt, knew what this child was going to be.

He knew Samson's life.

He knew about the uh the the donkey that had died and the honey that was inside of it that Samson snuck out and gave to his parents as a joke.

He knew about the riddle that Samson told later and cost him the marriage to his first wife.

He knew about Samson's uh anger, he knew about Samson's perversion, he knew Samson would love to visit prostitutes, he knew about Delilah, the angel of the Lord knew all of that.

And yet the angel of the Lord didn't sit down and say to Manoah and his wife, hey, here are some things that you may want to watch out for.

Why didn't he do that?

It's because God isn't just interested, he's highly interested in the destination.

He's highly interested in where we get to in this life.

But where we get to in this life is highly determined by how we get there.

God is interested in the journey.

And he has our children on the path that he has us on for the same reason that he has us on the path that he's put us on.

And it's so that we can arrive at a place of full surrender.

All right.

So look at verse number eight.

So Manoah comes and he prays to the Lord and he says, Oh Lord, please let the man of God whom you sent come down again and to teach me and we are to what we are to do with this child who is to be born.

Now, of course, the angel of the Lord has already given them instructions concerning the manner of life, concerning the way that the child is to be raised and the way the mother should conduct herself.

And yeah, there's more details needed.

We have those details in God's word, but specifically, this is about the manner of life.

Manoah is not asking about the manner of life, he's asking about the mission.

He's asking about the child's future.

Not just how should I parent, but what is this child going to be?

Why is he asking that?

Because he knows if this child is going to be a famous baseball player, he's going to go out and get a ball and glove and he's going to step out into the front yard, and every single day he's going to practice with this child how to swing and how to hit a how to hit a ball.

That's what he wants to do.

Because the problem is, is, is, is that if if these parents had known what Samson was going to go through, they would have graciously and lovingly gotten in the way of God's plan for Samson's life.

So Manoah prays to the angel of the Lord in verse number 12, or when the angel of the Lord comes down and revisits the couple and restates the command that he had given to the wife of Manoah.

Manoah says to the angel of the Lord, now when your words come true, what is to be the child's manner of life?

And what is his mission?

This is what he's after.

Tell me what the child is going to do in his life.

Why?

So that I can get involved, so that I can help out.

And there are many ways as parents that you and I are called to help out as parents, but the truth is at the end of the day, God is working on a project in their heart that you and I cannot always be involved in.

He initiates and he informs.

All right, look at verse number 13.

The angel restates the promise, the commands.

He said, All that I have said to the woman, be careful, uh, let her be careful to do.

Uh, she may not eat of anything that comes out of the vine, neither let her drink any strong drink, uh, and eat anything unclean.

All that I've commanded her, let her observe.

So, in other words, what's happening here?

Please don't miss this.

The angel of the Lord is simply restating what he had stated at the beginning.

Now remember, we're talking about God informing us as parents.

We want more information.

We want to know the future.

I want a magic eight ball that tells me what my kids are going to face in the future so that I can help them through it.

And how often it is that I go to the Lord and I pray for that kind of wisdom.

And the word that comes back to me is simply the word that has come to me before.

It is the word of Scripture.

God simply, so often when we're praying for information, God simply turns our attention back to the information we've ignored in his word.

Let me repeat that because some of you missed that.

So often when we're praying for new information, which is what Manoah is doing here, the greatest thing that God can do for us isn't to give us new information, but to point us back to the information we've already ignored in his word.

The angel of the Lord says to him, Listen, I've already told her everything that she needs to know.

She can't know everything.

You can't know everything.

All you need to know is the command that I've given you.

And everything else beyond that, and this is tough, ladies and gentlemen, trust me, I know.

Everything else beyond that requires us to trust.

God initiates, God informs, and thirdly, God invites us to trust.

That's a tough place to live in, isn't it?

To know that I am not in charge of anything.

To know that I cannot lay out the destiny to protect my children from all the woes and sorrows and frustrations.

But there is a God who can see them through it all.

God knew that.

They could not have known what Samson was going to face.

They couldn't have known about the blindness at the end of his life, the beating and the mocking, the way that his life would end.

But they also could not have known how God would use that horrific moment in his life as a liberating piece to save the life of countless thousands.

This requires us to do great, uh, to perform acts of great trust.

It's not easy.

It wasn't easy for Manoah.

We as parents, we want to control the seed of what happened in the garden, where we believed that we could be our own God.

We could be like God.

That still lives inside of me as a father and moms.

I know it still lives inside of you as well.

It's difficult to trust.

We can see it in the life of Manoah.

Look at what he does here very quickly.

Verse 15, he said the text tells us that Manoah came in, came up to the angel, and he says, Hey, please let us detain you for a while and let us prepare a young goat for you.

Now, this looks like hospitality, and in some way it was, but in this particular day, there was a um cultural quid quo pro that if I give something to you, you have to do something for me.

If I invite you over to have pizza at my house, you know you're probably moving a couch, right?

I mean, we still do some of this today.

That's exactly what he's doing.

He's saying, let me just, uh, yeah, okay, that's cool.

If you don't want to tell me anything else, why don't you stick around and let me make you a meal?

Can I just tell you the angel of the Lord cannot be fed into submission?

There's no quick quote pro.

There's no, Lord, I'm going to do for you and then I'm going to twist your arm and force you to do for me.

That's not how God works.

The angel of the Lord says to him, Hey, you're welcome to make a meal.

I'm not going to have it, but if you want to prepare a burnt offering, then that's great.

Go and do that.

And so Manoah, he goes and he starts the process and gets everyone working in the kitchen, and he comes back out to the angel of the Lord and he says, Listen, while the while the meal's working back there, I'm just curious, let's talk for a little bit.

And he asked the angel of the Lord in verse number 17, What is your name?

So that when your words come true, we may honor you.

Now, obviously, Manoah knows that he's dealing with a being who's not of this world.

And in this culture at this time, to know the name of that being, to know the name of a spirit or the name of a celestial being was to have some authority over them.

And so here again, what Manoah is attempting to do is to leverage some power over God.

Give me your name so that I may honor you.

And in his mind, he's thinking to himself, if I know the name of this deity, if I know the name of this celestial being, then I'll have some power over him.

And of course, the angel of the Lord isn't going to have that either because God will not surrender to our manipulation.

So the angel of the Lord responds and says, Why do you ask my name, seeing as it is wonderful?

Kind of an awkward response.

I may, Carrie, I may try to do that at the next pastor's conference.

May people introduce themselves to me and they ask me my name, I can say, hey, why do you ask my name, seeing as it is it's great and it's wonderful?

That would be a very awkward way for me to introduce myself to people, but not if you're God.

If you're God, it's the perfect thing to say because essentially what he is saying, by the way, don't get lost.

We're talking about God's invitation to trust.

He is saying to Manoah, who wants to use God's name to manipulate him.

My name is far more than information.

You're still seeking information, Manoah, because you think information leads to awareness.

You think that information leads to security, but it doesn't.

My name is too wonderful, it's too great.

It's out there, it's beyond anything that words can express.

Ladies and gentlemen, that's the kind of God you can trust.

The kind of God that you can manipulate is not the kind of God that you can trust.

Because you cannot trust yourself to manipulate, to not manipulate something into a chaotic moment or a crisis.

But a God who stands firm on truth, a God who stands firm in love, is the kind of God that you can trust.

At this moment, they bring the meal out and they set it before the angel of the Lord, and immediately, like this would be about the moment where Manoah would go and he would light the burnt offering for the Lord, but he doesn't have to.

A fire erupts on the stone, the entire offering is annihilated, it's completely obliterated, and immediately the angel of the Lord is zipped up.

Think, like in my mind, I think Star Trek, it's like zipped up into the sky and he immediately vanishes.

That'd be a well, that'd be trippy.

Um, in fact, it would be frightful.

And for Manoah and his wife, they fell to the ground and immediately they were horribly afraid because they realized that this wasn't just some celestial being, this wasn't just some angel, this was the God whose name is wondrous, the one who is calling them, the one who initiates, the one who informs, and the one who invites us to trust.

And then Manoah has this moment.

Manoah sees this being just completely evaporate in front of him, and he realizes this is this was God himself.

And he knows what the law teaches, that no one can, what the word teaches that no one can see the Lord and live.

He's he's a being who cannot be seen with human eyes.

And so he says, uh, we've seen the Lord and we're going to die.

And his wife looks over him and says, Don't be stupid.

Sometimes it's necessary, ladies.

Sometimes we we have to hear that, you know, as guys, we we need to stop doing the the dumb thing that we're doing.

His wife says to him, Listen, you need to think through this.

If the Lord, verse number 23, if the Lord had meant to kill us, he would not have accepted the burnt offering and a grain offering at our hand, or shown us all of these things, or now announced to us such things as these.

In other words, just to paraphrase it one more time, the wife of Manoah says to her husband, He has promised that I'm going to give birth to a child that's going to be hard to do if I'm dead.

I think we're okay.

I mean, it's a beautiful bit of reason.

The word of God is so clear to us and it gives us such great direct instructions, but there is so much that you and I can learn just by meditating on the word of God as it's been given to us.

So much reason, so much promise that comes as we read God's word and we take it in its in its in its form and we treat it as though it's true, and then we step back and say, Because he's done this, what else is he willing to do?

See, she reasoned from what God had done to trust what God was going to do.

You and I are able to do the same.

He's done all of this, and because he's done all of this, we know he's going to follow through and to walk with us across whatever comes next, Manoah.

Can I just tell you that you and I can reason the same way from the promises of God?

Think about it for a minute.

God initiates.

And we've seen in his word that this is not just God initiating the births of the Billy Graham's and the, you know, the St.

Peter's and the Samsons of life.

God initiates the life of everybody.

God initiates.

God informs.

Yeah, he doesn't tell us everything that we need, he doesn't tell us everything that we would like to know, but he tells us everything that we need to know because if I knew everything, I would for sure get in the way of his will.

God initiates, God informs.

Can I just tell you that if God starts something, God does not quit.

Moms, please hear what I'm saying to you.

God has initiated the life of that child.

He has started the life of that child.

And he has informed you.

Do you think God is up in heaven saying, oh, we forgot to send her the manual?

If only we had sent her the manual, things would have been different.

No, you, God is in his grace and his mercy, has given us everything that we need through his word and through his spirit in plain reason out of his word and his spirit.

We have been informed.

We have been, we've watched these children who are initiated.

If God starts, please hear me.

If God initiates something and goes to the trouble of telling us how to raise children, don't you know that we can trust him with their future?