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They are perhaps the strangest of all angelic creatures in heaven -- at least the ones we know about. They were described in Ezekiel chapters 1 and 10 in excruciating detail and then almost as if to reassure us that Ezekiel was not eating hallucinogenic mushrooms, John the Revelator describes the same creature in Revelation chapter 4. Nowhere are we given a specific name for these creatures so nobody's quite sure what we should call it. It's obvious from the descriptions given to us that these angels are unique and "ones of a kind." For the sake of our message tonight let's call them "the unique ones."

The unique being described by both Ezekiel and John was definitely alive. But it had a structure unlike anything else. Like other angels, it had six wings, but the wings were used to join them to each other. It's not apparent from the descriptions if they had four bodies or one body but the most striking feature is the fact that they had four faces. One side was the face of a human. On another was the face of a lion. Then was the face of an eagle. And then a face of an ox. Each face faced outward and the creature did not spin as it moved. But as Ezekiel watched he said "they followed wherever the spirit wanted them to go, and they did not turn to the side but always moved forward." In other words if the creature decided that God wanted it to move toward the eagle side, then it moved that direction with the eagle face forward. If it was time to go in the direction that the ox face was pointing, then the ox face led the way. The creature did not spin. At times it moved forward through the eyes of a man, and yet other times it moved forward and acted through the eyes of an eagle, or a lion, or an ox. Yet it definitely is only one creature and as strange as all of this may sound, this creature definitely exists in heaven. God definitely created such a being as "the unique one." And for God to ask two men to record a description of this different creature let's us know that there is something mighty important in this weird vision. Obviously God wanted us to read it and understand something from all of this. God doesn't waste His time.

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Have you ever heard a story of somebody finding out about the existence of treasure in a specific place and then when the word gets out, a treasure hunt begins to find the gold? People will go look for treasure in the most unlikely places if they had been given a hint that it's to be found there.

Jesus gave us a hint of treasure when He told His disciples:

At that time, the New Testament had not been written and the only scriptures that were available to search was the Old Testament. When we think of preaching about Jesus, we think of the New Testament, but Jesus said this of the Old Testament scriptures: "they are they which testify of me!"

And then after His resurrection, we find Jesus joining two disciples on the road to Emmaus and the scriptures say:

Jesus used Old Testament scripture to talk about and teach them about Himself! That's no surprise, we know that there are Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament. But the Bible says that Jesus did so "in all the scriptures." "All" of them. There's our hint of buried treasure. Jesus says that it's possible to preach Jesus and learn of Him in EVERY book of the Old Testament.

Okay, so here we go on our treasure hunt. Genesis is no problem. We can take the sacrificial lamb of Abel and immediately see an example of Jesus there. At the end of the book we find the story of Joseph who is chosen by his father as special and when he comes to his brothers with a special coat on that reveals his majesty, the brothers agree together to get rid of him. Everybody thinks that he's dead, but God lifts him out of the pit and into the throne room! It's easy to see that Joseph was a type of Christ. Jesus was God clothed in flesh, and yet that flesh revealed the glory and plan and majesty of God. His "brethren" the Jewish people conspired to kill Him and he was buried into the earth, but He didn't stay there because God exalted Him and He rules on the throne of the universe! It's not hard to find Jesus in Genesis.

Exodus is no problem either. Jesus was our Passover Lamb. Leviticus is easy because Jesus is our High Priest. Deuteronomy is simple because Jesus is the "prophet like unto Moses." The very name "Joshua" is "Jesus" in Hebrew so no problem there. Judges is simple because Jesus is "the righteous judge of all the earth." In the story of Ruth, we find Jesus represented by Boaz, who takes a Gentile bride and places her into the blessing and lineage of God! The book of Job is not hard either because Job himself said:

Our redeemer is Jesus! I don't have time to go through all the books, so let me just throw a few more out there to make my point. In the Samuels, Jesus is the shepherd and the offspring of King David. In Psalms, we read prophecy after prophecy of the One to come. Even in Song of Solomon, we can learn something about Jesus by making it an allegory with the bridegroom representing Jesus and the bride representing the church. You don't have to go far into Isaiah to find a verse about Jesus. In fact you could probably almost find Him in every verse! He would be born of a virgin. This son would be none other than "the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." In Daniel, He is the Ancient of Days who will rule the earth. In Micah He is the one whose going forth has been from everlasting to everlasting and yet would be born in Bethlehem. We find Jesus Himself talking about the sign of Jonah and that just as Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, so would the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth. And what Jesus didn't add, but we can figure out is that just like Jonah made it out of the whale on dry ground, so the grave wouldn't hold Jesus either! I'm preaching to you Jesus from the Old Testament! He's the potter in Jeremiah! He's the Wisdom of Proverbs. He's the returning conqueror with nail scars in Zechariah! They really do speak of Jesus! The treasure of understanding more about Jesus really is found throughout the Old Testament! He is the Living Word and ALL of it proclaims His truth!

That's good and great, but what about that hallucinating, dung eating, freak show that the Bible calls Ezekiel? Quick! Somebody quote me a Messianic prophecy that you have memorized from Ezekiel! That's what I thought! But I thought that we could find a portrait of Christ in every book? So what about Ezekiel?

I believe that one place we can find and learn about Jesus in Ezekiel is in the created, four headed, unique angel that we first read about. That angel was created in the image of God and yet it had four faces and was still only one being. The four faces worked together to create one creature that was perfectly obedient to the spirit of God. I believe that the unique ones of heaven was a type of the "Unique One" that came to earth.

Jesus was unique! There has never been anyone like Him and there will not be anyone ever to come that will be like Him! We are human and we can have God's Spirit inside of us, but that doesn't make us Jesus. He was more than just an ordinary human being with God's Spirit, but rather was the Spirit of God becoming a human being. That's quite a difference and yet it's sort of hard for us to understand and fathom and picture. We can believe and understand that Jesus came. But to understand exactly who He was can sometimes clog the brain wires.

People today do a poor job of explaining Jesus Christ. The problem comes from the traditional but errant doctrine of the trinity. The trinity tries to explain Jesus by placing as one part of a three person Godhead. But the scripture teaches not that Jesus is in the Godhead, but rather that the Godhead is in Jesus. Paul wrote:

The Colossian church had some false teachers that were having trouble explaining who Jesus was and were messing it up. And Paul wrote the book just to set the record straight. Let me give you a quick overview of Colossians chapter 1:

vs 14 - Jesus' blood saves us

vs 15 - Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature

vs 16 - Jesus created all things and all things were created for Him.

vs 17 - Jesus is before all things

vs 18 - Jesus is the head of the church

vs 19 - All the fullness of the Father dwells in Jesus.

If there was two other persons in the Godhead, there wouldn't be much left for them to do! Jesus was the creator! He is the Father in flesh. He is the image of the invisible God. He saves us. He is the head of all things, in heaven or in earth. He is before all things, which would include any other gods with Him. The false concept doesn't do anything except confuse people on who Jesus is. It's not scriptural, it's not logical, and it only messes up the minds of people further in finding and understanding Jesus.

In our other text, we find that at the crucifixion the Roman soldiers took Jesus' coat and gambled for it. The coat of a person back then was what they always wore and it identified who the person was. It represented your identity. It represented who you really were. It represented your person. It's interesting that the scriptures say that the heathens "gambled" for Jesus' coat because when you just take somebody's word for who Jesus is and just assume that tradition is right, then you are taking a gamble with Jesus' identity!

But the scripture says that the soldiers first divided the inner coat into four parts. And yet it also says that the outermost coat was without seam and could not be divided. It was woven from the top to the bottom as one piece. The seamstress hadn't made a front and a back and sewn it together, but rather it was all one bolt and flowing robe.

This teaches us something about Jesus' identity. He was only one person, and He was not a Godhead of persons in a unity. You couldn't divide Him into parts without tearing out who He was and to divide Him into separate identities would be to ruin the garment. But if you really wanted to get His identity down on a human level where our little minds could understand, then you should divide it in your mind into four parts. It doesn't make Him four persons or any other division, but it does help us understand that within the fabric of who He is, there is four distinct "faces" of who He is. That's why I told you that I believe you can find a type of Jesus in the unique "four-faced" angels that God created that we have talked about. They had four distinct faces and yet they were one being moving perfectly as the Spirit of God directed them to do so. They were unique above all of the creation. The type fits Jesus perfectly. And before you think that I've gone off the deep end, remember that when God wanted us to be able to read about Jesus' ministry, that He did not choose just one big book to be written, but rather He moved upon four -- that's right four -- separate men to write books about the life of Christ and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, all presented Jesus from a different perspective. Obviously God thought that for men to understand who He was, they would need to see it from four "faces" or four perspectives. There was only one Jesus, but you only fully realize who He is when you view Him from four directions!

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Let me preach to you who Jesus is from these four faces of scripture! We've found Jesus in Ezekiel, but now let's seek to understand what we found. One of the faces of the unique one is:

The Eagle is the noblest and most powerful bird. It is the king of the skies and the heavens. It has the ability to soar far above the earth and see everything from a high perspective. It rules and reigns over the winds.

Jesus is God Almighty of Heaven. There is no other explanation. He was not a part of God, but He is God. We've already talked about how that Colossians says that Jesus made all things and all things were made for Him. But in Isaiah, the one Jehovah God of Israel proclaimed:

The One Jehovah God said "I make all things" and I created the earth and heavens "all by myself." If you believe that Jesus is not the Father of all things, God Almighty, then we have a contradiction of terms here. But Jesus is none other than the Great Creator of the Universe come to save His creation! The scripture says that He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. The book of Revelation says that there is one throne in heaven and One who sits upon it who is the Alpha and the Omega and the first and the last, and then reading on we find Jesus saying "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last!" 1 Timothy 3:16 says that "God was manifest in the flesh." Colossian 1:15 says that Jesus is the "image of the invisible God." Isaiah 9:6 says that this child to be born, this son, would be "the mighty God, the everlasting Father!" Jesus looked at Phillip in John 14 and said "if you have seen me you have seen the Father." Jesus is the eagle that rules the heavens! There is no one else! Jesus is the mighty Creator who watches His creation from above!

Of the four gospels, John presented Jesus as the ruling King of Glory. That's why John's gospel begins with:

You can't really know who Jesus is until you understand the face of the eagle! He is the ruler of the heavens!

To fully understand who Jesus Christ is, you can't just see Him as the ruler of the heavens, but you must also see Him as the supreme King of all the earth! Like the lion, Jesus is the true "King of the Jungle." When He created Adam and Eve, God placed within them the ability to rule the earth. When Adam and Eve sinned, they transferred that rulership of the earth to the devil. That's why the devil was able to rightfully tempt Jesus by offering Him the earth, if He would but worship Satan. But Jesus paid the price of sin which was death and then conquered it! By doing so He fulfilled the law of sin and death and took back the rulership of earth. He bound the "strongman" and took his keys and now the devil doesn't even have access to his own house. Jesus is the King Almighty of the earth! He will one day rule and reign on this earth for a thousand years and then create a new earth and rule and reign on it!

But you don't have to wait until the Millennial Reign for Jesus to be the King of your Jungle! He wants to rule and be king in your life right now! There are a lot of people who view Jesus as the King of the Heavens but don't want Him to be King of their life. They say "let Jesus rule up there and let everything be done to please Him up there" but they don't want to view Jesus as the Lion on earth. But Jesus taught us to pray "thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." Jesus taught us that we needed to not only to see Him as the King of Glory, but as the King of our life down here! You don't have a true revelation of who Jesus Christ really is until you see Him as the Lion reigning in your everyday life!

The scriptures call Him the "Lion from the tribe of Judah." "Judah" means "praise." My wife noticed something the other day about the scripture that we always quote about God inhabiting our praises:

What my wife noticed was that most of the modern English translations do not have "inhabits" but rather this:

Instead of "inhabits" they have "enthroned" and sure enough that is a more exact meaning of the word in the Hebrew. "Enthroned" means "to place upon the throne." "To set up to rule." The reason that we feel God's presence so strongly when we praise God is that He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. He will rule and reign in the life of those who praise Him. Praise is permission for God to rule in our life! Praise is permission for the King of Kings to be King of our situation! God is a gentleman and He won't force Himself upon you, but if you will praise Him, He will come into your life and change your situation! When you don't praise Him, you are telling God that "I don't want you to be King in my life." He is only the Lion of the tribe of Judah. If you want to have a complete revelation of who Jesus is, then we must praise Him!

Jesus is God both on heaven and on earth. That the King of Glory humbled Himself to become as one of His creation does not make Him any less God or Creator. But it does make Him awesome!

God was manifest or revealed or made visible in flesh. The Word became flesh. When God came to earth, He became a human being. The scriptures say:

The God of glory became completely and totally human. There is a movement that says that Jesus was only some sort of "divine flesh" and that Mary was only an incubator for this heavenly flesh that only came from above, but that is false doctrine. Because you cannot never fully see Jesus as who He really is until you realize that He became flesh and was a man "tempted like as we are, yet without sin." He didn't have the sinful nature that you and I do because He did not inherit the sinful nature from His daddy's side. But He was still completely human. Adam was not created with a sin nature originally but he was still completely human when he first breathed his breath.

Think about how awesome it is! Jesus has viewed the universe through the eyes of an eagle as God Almighty on High. He has viewed the earth through the eyes of a Lion as King of this planet. But Jesus has also viewed life on earth through the eyes of a man! Remember that Jesus only ministered for three and a half years and didn't start His ministry until He was thirty years old. For thirty years, He did not do one miracle, but rather just lived life as a human being. He knows what it's like to have heartaches. He knows what it's like to lose a loved one. He knows what it's like to feel pain and heartache, both physical and mentally. He knows what it's like to get up for years and go to the same job and do the same things, trying to earn a living for His family. He knows what it is like to have to lead a family that is dependent upon Him for their decisions. He knows what it is like to experience rejection from His friends and loved ones and have His own brothers and sisters doubt Him. He knows what it is like to have blisters on your feet. He knows what it is like to be hungry. He knows what it is like to have to battle fleshly desires. He knows how hard it is to watch your tongue. He knows what it's like to cry and weep. When you cry out to Him, you can't forget that He is not some High Priest that cannot be touched by the feelings of what we are going through, but He understands your emotions because He has viewed the earth not only as an eagle and a lion but from the eyes of a man!

The portrait of Christ is incomplete without realizing that He also is an ox. That doesn't sound very complimentary does it? People don't look at someone and say "you ox" and mean it a positive thing. Oxen are lowly creatures. They are useful only because of their ability to work and to labor. They were the "engines" and "tractors" of Bible times. They were kept by men to be servants to their desires. The lowly ox is a workhorse doing what others do not want to do.

Jesus became a servant to humanity. Above all others, Peter recognized who Jesus really was. He recognized his humanity but Peter also recognized that Jesus was the Creator of the Universe and the King of Kings. I think Peter grasped Jesus' identity far more quickly than some of the other disciples. But Peter still had a lesson to learn because when Jesus got up from supper and grabbed a towel like a common servant and began to wash the disciples feet, Peter protested and said "never will you wash my feet." There was a side of Jesus that Peter yet needed to learn and that was the face of the ox, the servant of humanity.

Jesus did not enter into Jerusalem on a horse, but chose a donkey. He did not find a job in the temple or in a throne room but worked eighteen years as a small town carpenter. He did not come into the world in the finest delivery room of a midwife but was born into a stable with a hay trough as His first bed. He did not come into His ministry with trumpets blazing and the red carpet rolled out to celebrate the king that He was, but rather used a scruffy, locust eating wilderness preacher to announce His arrival. He didn't seek disciples from the rich and the elite but chose fishermen and tax collectors and such. He would be rejected because the people could not bring themselves to fathom a King and a Messiah who would teach such things as "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" and "go the extra mile" and "he who exalteth himself will be abased" and "take the lowest seat at the feast." People expect a king to act like a king, but this King became as an ox, a servant taking the low road, a man dedicated to reaching and blessing humanity.

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We have seen four portraits of Jesus Christ revealed to us by the unique angelic creatures, and yet the robe of His identity is really not four parts but seamless and Jesus Christ merged perfectly the four sides that we have examined. At times, He moved in the face of a human, and at other times he moved in the face of an eagle, and so on, but He was only one person, and was only One God come to reveal Himself to mankind! To have Jesus you must understand all four. The garment of His identity was seamless and perfect. He was the most balanced human being that ever lived.

There is a point to all of this that applies to you and I. The scriptures command almost what would seem an unthinkable task, that we should be "like Jesus." We are commanded to "walk as He walked." We are commanded to be as "He is." We are to have the "mind of Christ." Paul said it like this:

It's a high mark, to reach toward the perfection of Jesus Christ! How do we do that? Where do you start trying to strive for such a high calling!?

We can start by developing the four faces of Christ within us. We must learn to act and view life through four different sets of eyes, and we must do so as the spirit directs us.

We need to learn to soar in the Spirit and to allow the heavenly aspects of the kingdom of God to reign in us. We need to move and live as an Eagle. We need to respond to His Spirit in our services and allow the supernatural and things that are not of this world to operate within our lives! We need powerful, miraculous, soarings of the Wind of the Spirit. We need to view our life through the eyes of an eagle.

We need the side of the Lion also! We must allow God to rule and reign in our everyday lives. I've known people who can speak in tongues on Sunday and then violate fifteen commandments of scripture on Monday. They've developed the face of the eagle, but they also need the lion -- for God to be God of their world on earth. We must praise Him continually! We must exalt Him in our lives through our actions and our lifestyles! He wants to be king of our jungle! If we are to ever be like Jesus, we must have the face of the lion in our lives.

We must never forget that we are also humans. We have this heavenly treasure in earthen vessels. It's okay to have a sense of humor. It's okay to laugh and cut up. Just remember that it's not your only side! We must be balanced. I've known people to be shocked when Christians got together to fellowship or eat or just have Godly fun. There's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with spending time with your family. Some people are shocked that I play golf as if I should be spending those four hours in fervent prayer or heavenly visions or something. I'll spend most of my time each week developing those other faces, but I need recreation and time off too. Even Jesus took His disciples and left Israel for a "vacation" from ministering full-time.

And we must remember that we must be compassionate to people's human circumstances. We are not super humans. We all get sick. We all get tired. We all get frustrated. We all get our feelings hurt. We all are emotional in some way. Like Jesus, we need constant prayer to keep us in God's will. We need God's help in viewing life through human eyes properly!

And we'll never be like Jesus unless we also develop the face of the ox. How many people are sensitive to the supernatural movings, obedient to God's Word in their everyday life, human in their emotions and yet will not serve or work for the kingdom of God? There's a part of Peter in all of us that such things go against the grain. But if we are to be like Jesus, then we must be willing to pick up the towel of work and of serving our fellow brothers and sisters and get on our knees.

God help us that we would never be "too good" to clean the church, or to teach Sunday School, or to mow the lawn, or to help out with bread, or to drive the youth somewhere, or to mop the fellowship hall. I'm not saying that you should do all of that all of the time, but you will never truly be like Jesus until you view the kingdom through the eyes of an ox. And too many times, we will serve until we let our feelings get hurt or somebody does something to wrong us and then we fold up the towel. But Jesus knew that He was being betrayed and still He got down on His knees and washed the feet even of Judas Iscariot! The attitude of a servant is "you cannot deter me from serving and you cannot hurt me to make me quit!" That's the attitude of someone who has the ox at work in their life!

God has called us to be unique. He has called us to be different. But not different just for the sake of being strange. He wants us to be as He is. He wants us to follow after the example of Jesus Christ. We need to have a perfect balance between the eagle, the lion, the man, and the ox. When we strive for that balance, people will see Jesus in our life! When we press for that mark, we will have picked up the coat of His identity and become as He has desired us to be. It's time that the body of Christ picked up His mantle and put it on! We must put on the four parts first so that we can have the seamless mantle of who He really is. We must be more like the Unique One!