Judges 13:15-25
The idea of being able to be a messenger for the king and not take any honor for delivering it has been everywhere I look lately. Taking credit for a miracle or message that God uses you to deliver would be the same as a kings servant delivering treasures of gold saying this is from the king and then when the recipient says, “thank you, how can I ever repay you”, taking the credit for himself. Another example that comes to mind would be paying for someone’s meal with my dads debit card but leading the recipient to believe that the meal was from me. The angels response was twice to give the glory back to God. First he is asked to stay and receive a meal. The angel replies by telling him to sacrifice the goat to the Lord. Again Manoah is enamored with who he thinks is a man and he asks for his name so he can honor him when his prophecy comes true. The Angel responds by telling him he would not understand even if he told him his name. What happens next is awesome. As Manoah and his wife are offering the sacrifice the angle gets whisked up to heaven in the fire. It was not until the man did not come back that Manoah realizes it was an angel of the Lord. Manoah was real slow. It had been a long time under oppression. It was then that he finally stops giving credit to the “messenger”, and says “We will die, for we have seen God.” He finally acknowledges God. His response is hilarious, “OH GREAT… We just saw GOD… we are SO dead!” His wife then brings a little bit of sense to the situation. She sounds like she is saying, stop over exaggerating, God would not have excepted our sacrifice, He would not have appeared to us, and he wouldn’t have done all of these miracles. Calm down babe. I get that way sometimes and my wife has to tell me to just calm down.
