«The word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.»
Okay, visions are things you see. Otherwise you wouldn't call it a vision!
Now, biblical material, this is where I want to get a little deeper into the weeds.
So we've looked at a few verses, and you can see where you can read them
and come out with two figures.
But I want to get into the more explicit material, Genesis 15:1 is a good place to start.
«After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.»
Now, when we hear or read "word of the Lord",
we tend to think that this is God speaking to somebody in their head.
Like it's an inner head, mental experience, a voice in the head.
You look at what the text says,
«the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision.»
Okay, visions are things you see. Otherwise you wouldn't call it a vision.
Okay? Visions are things you see. «“Fear not, Abram, I am your shield;
your reward shall be very great.”» And God and Abram have a conversation,
God takes him outside. Again, this is language of activity,
like two people walking together, so on and so forth.
So the word of the Lord can denote a visual experience of God.
And that's an important thought.
1 Samuel 3, this is a story that we're very familiar with.
Samuel is a little boy, he's growing up in the tabernacle complex, or you know,
where the Ark is, whatever that is, with Eli. This is after the conquests,
the days of the judges. And so, he's been promised to Eli, we know the story
of Hannah and her praying and asking for a son, and it's Samuel.
So Samuel's staying there. And one night, he and Eli are getting ready to go to sleep.
And so the situation was that Samuel hears this voice calling to him "Samuel! Samuel!"
And twice he goes to Eli. You know, it happens several times, actually.
But he goes to Eli and says, Okay, what do you want?
And Eli says; well, it wasn't me. And Eli soon figures out after the repetition
that okay, this must be God. So he tells Samuel, look, the next time this happens,
say Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. And that's what he does.
And that's where we pick up the story here. Verse 9,
«Therefore Eli said to Samuel, “Go, lie down, and if he calls you, you shall say,
‘Speak, Lord, for your servant hears.’” So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
And the Lord came and stood.»
And Lord there is in all small caps, this is the divine name, Yahweh.
«The Lord came and stood, calling as at other times, “Samuel! Samuel!”
And Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant hears.” Then the Lord said to Samuel,
“Behold, I am about to do a thing in Israel
at which the two ears of everyone who hears it will tingle.»
God says, I got difficult news, I got bad news, you know, salacious news here.
And he's going to talk about what's going to happen to Eli.
Now the setting for this, let's go back a little bit in 1 Samuel, is interesting.
Let's see here. We go back to chapter 1.
Let's go to chapter 3, the beginning of chapter 3, let's just settle for that here.
«Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord in the presence of Eli»,
which we mentioned. And here's this line,
«the word of the Lord was rare in those days.»
Now, if we stopped there, again, we have this conception that
this is a voice in the head, oh, God wasn't talking to people in their head very often.
It's not what it says. «There was no frequent vision.»
Again, visions are things you see. What this is actually talking about is
the frequency of incidences where God would show up as a man
and talk to people like he had done with Moses. Like he had done with Joshua,
like he had done with the patriarchs before them, that was unusual.
It's the period of the Judges. It's a period of judgment.
Everyone's doing what's right in his own eyes. I mean, it's a mess.
Judges chapter 2 where the angel of the Lord says, bye! I'm not going to help you,
you know, all that kind of stuff. So that's the situation.
So God's showing up as a man to have these conversations is unusual.
And of course, this is what happens to Samuel.
The word of the Lord comes at other times,
comes to Samuel, and this is what we get, we get the word of the Lord appearing,
but look at what it says in verse 10. We'll go back to verse 10. «The Lord came and stood.»
Okay, this is the language of embodiment.
This is anthropomorphic language. This is the language
of a supernatural being, God, being embodied, because this is posture.
If there's no visual appearance of Yahweh as a man in the room,
how would you know that he's standing? You wouldn't.
This is God as man in the Old Testament, and he's referred to as the word of the Lord.
And that's obviously going to be important.
If the New Testamen's ringing in your head already, good.
Because this is the backdrop for a lot of that language in the New Testament.
You go to the end of the chapter. And just a real interesting comment,
«Samuel grew, and the Lord was with him
[Yahweh was with him] and let none of his words fall to the ground.
And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew
that Samuel was established as a prophet of the Lord.» Well how they know that?
«The Lord appeared [and this is visual] again at Shiloh [which is where they were],
for the Lord revealed himself to Samuel at Shiloh by [or you can translate it "as"]
the word of the Lord.» The word of the Lord in the Old Testament
can be a visual appearance of God as a man.
That's what we're getting at. And again, that's obviously going to prep
Jewish readers for what they're going to encounter when Jesus shows up
and starts preaching and things like him being the Son of God,
and this notion that, you know, this notion of deity,
God has come as a man. John chapter 1, the word of the Lord.
And there's an Old Testament antecedent to that. Look at this one.
And Jewish thinkers and rabbis and scholars and anybody who's reading the text,
I mean, they know this. This is part of their Bible.
«Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb
I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you;
I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”» So this is Jeremiah's call.
And who's calling him? Well, it's the word of the Lord.
Jeremiah refers to him in verse 6, «“Ah, Lord God!"»
And this is the divine name, when it's all in small caps, the divine name.
«"Behold, I do not know how to speak"» so on and so forth. You get to verse 9,
the Lord «Then the Lord [Yahweh, the divine name] put out his hand
and touched [Jeremiah's] mouth.»
Now we've gone from embodiment to a tactile experience.
And God as man, as this embodied being is referred to as the word of the Lord.
So again, this is a significant trajectory. These aren't the only passages
where you could look at and get this point.
But we're trying to go through this quickly. You get the idea that
okay, in the Old Testament, the Old Testament teaches us that
God can show up in human form, and he's referred to as the word of the Lord.