God heard the boy crying, and God’s angel called to Hagar from heaven. He said, “What is wrong, Hagar? Don’t be afraid! God has heard the boy crying there.
He was the Angel who saved me from all my troubles. Now I pray that he will bless these boys. May my name be known through these boys, and may the names of my ancestors Abraham and Isaac be known through them. May they have many descendants on the earth.”
Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the Lord came down on it in fire. The smoke rose from the mountain like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain shook wildly.
“Go and gather the elders and tell them this: ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to me. He said, I care about you, and I have seen what has happened to you in Egypt.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you. When you cross rivers, you will not drown. When you walk through fire, you will not be burned, nor will the flames hurt you.
When they suffered, he suffered also. He sent his own angel to save them. Because of his love and kindness, he saved them. Since long ago he has picked them up and carried them.
When they came out, the governors, assistant governors, captains of the soldiers, and royal advisers crowded around them and saw that the fire had not harmed their bodies. Their hair was not burned, their robes were not burned, and they didn’t even smell like smoke!
“Sword, hit the shepherd. Attack the man who is my friend,” says the Lord All-Powerful. “Kill the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter, and I will punish the little ones.”
The Lord All-Powerful says, “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way for me. Suddenly, the Lord you are looking for will come to his Temple; the messenger of the agreement, whom you want, will come.”
Surely you have read what God said about people rising from the dead. In the book in which Moses wrote about the burning bush, it says that God told Moses, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’
Even Moses clearly showed that the dead are raised to life. When he wrote about the burning bush, he said that the Lord is ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’
The law was without power, because the law was made weak by our sinful selves. But God did what the law could not do. He sent his own Son to earth with the same human life that others use for sin. By sending his Son to be an offering for sin, God used a human life to destroy sin.
Let the full earth give the best fruits, and let the Lord who lived in the burning bush be pleased. May these blessings rest on the head of Joseph, on the forehead of the one who was blessed among his brothers.