“All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.” That’s a line from Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album; “All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.”
That line is what’s known as philosophical materialism, which says that everything can be reduced to physical processes—that there is nothing beyond the physical. There is no such thing as a soul; there is no God or spiritual realm. There is no such thing as thought; that’s just your perception of firing synapses, but there is also no such thing as you; that is just the firing of synapses. The thought that there is anything beyond matter is an illusion. “All you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be.”
Pink Floyd didn’t create that philosophy. It’s the dominant philosophy of our age. That’s how it has made its way into rock songs. It is rarely stated as honestly as Pink Floyd did because it is so terrifying. The fact that this is the prevailing way of thinking today is part of what will make this new series on angels, demons, the new creation, and hell might seem so speculative.
We live in an age in which even the church is somewhat embarrassed by angels and demons because they seem so unscientific. We live in an age in which large swaths of the church think hell is simply a scare tactic and that heaven might just be a beautiful wish. It wasn’t always so. To many throughout church history, these realities were just as real as all you touch and all you see. Our hesitancy with these matters of angels, demons, heaven, and hell has more to do with the age in which we live than with the realities in question.
A man from medieval Europe would find our unawareness of angels and demons quite bewildering. He would find our uncertainties about heaven and hell quite pitiable. There is much to pity about life in 2020 just as there was much to pity about life in medieval Europe. Do you think that everything is better today than it was six hundred years ago?
Scripture corrects the vision of every age and ours is in need of correction in regard to these topics that we will study until Christmas. We, as a culture, are, at best, doubtful of angels, demons, heaven, and hell. We, as a church in this culture, are therefore to some extent unsure about angels, demons, heaven, and hell. The purpose of this series is to help correct that.
Today we begin by studying angels. We will do so in two points. First: angel basics. Second: us and angels. We will work our way through the Scriptures on your sheet.
First: angel basics. We have to piece together our knowledge about angels. As Millard Erickson explains, “every reference [in the Bible] to angels is incidental to some other topic. They are not treated in themselves.” All the information we have about angels is secondary. Moses didn’t tell us about an angel barring the entrance to Eden for the sake of telling us something about angels. He told us that for the sake of telling us that Adam and Eve couldn’t return to Eden. Luke didn’t tell us about an angel speaking to Mary for the sake of telling us something about angels. He told us that for the sake of telling us something about Jesus’ birth. We have to piece our knowledge of angels together from this incidental information.
So what can we piece together? Well, we know that angels were created by God. Psalm 148 invites angels to praise God saying, “Let them praise the name of the Lord, for at His command they were created.” The angels were created. This means that they are nowhere near on par with God and that must be said because there seems to be a regular temptation to worship angels.
The fact that angels were created shows you that they are not the next phase of humanity. Some people think that good people become angels when they die. This is nothing but folk religion and has no basis in Scripture. God created the angels as angels and humans as humans and neither will become the other.
Humans were created to exist as body and spirit. Angels were created to exist as spirit only. As Hebrews 1:14 asks, “Are they not all ministering spirits?” The fact that angels are spirits means that angels don’t really look like anything as we would understand the word “look.” The visual descriptions we have of them are just attempts to describe the indescribable. That’s what’s going on with Isaiah 6, “Above [God] were seraphim, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.”
So angels are spirits, but that doesn’t mean they are omnipresent—meaning being everywhere at once—nor omnipotent—meaning all powerful. They have their limits. You see this in Daniel 10 in which an angel told Daniel that he tried to arrive earlier, but, “the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.” So this angel was fighting a demon who had some connection with Persia until another angel, Michael, came to help overpower that demon.
This same passage shows you that angels each have their own identity. That angel who spoke to Daniel knew where he stopped and the angel Michael began. That might seem obvious, but we differentiate between ourselves in part by way of having different bodies, and angels don’t have those.
Angels have intelligence. You see that in the way that Gabriel fielded Mary’s questions. They have emotion. You see this in their excitement at the birth of Christ; Luke 2:13, “suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.” They have desires. Peter makes this clear saying that, “the angels long to look into these things,” meaning the things of the gospel. Angels have a will, meaning that they make and carry out their own decisions. You see this in Micaiah’s vision of God and His angels speaking of the upcoming death of Ahab in 1 Kings. ‘The Lord said, “Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?” One suggested this, and another that. Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, “I will entice him.”’ That spirit came up with a plan and God approved it.
Angels have their own will, which raises the question of whether angels can choose to disobey God. We will see in our study of the demonic that they certainly could choose to disobey because many of them did. It seems that, now, however those who have chosen to disobey will only disobey and those who have chosen to obey will only obey. This seems to be part of the logic of Psalm 103:20-21, “Praise the Lord, you His angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding,who obey His word. Praise the Lord, all His heavenly hosts, you His servants who do His will.”
It is doubtful as to whether angels have gender. They are universally referred to throughout Scripture with masculine pronouns, but this is to avoid referring to them as an “it.” They are sexless, which is probably the reason renaissance painters portrayed them as feminized men. They are spirits and gender has to do with the body. Now people have taken Jesus’ words, “at the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven,” to mean that we won’t have gender in the new creation, but that doesn’t seem to be Jesus’ point. His point is that we won’t marry or be given in marriage in the new creation.
So in some ways, angels are like us—they have their own identity, intelligence, emotions, desires, and a will. They have limits upon their power and presence. In many ways they are like us and in other ways they are unlike us. They apparently have no gender. They no longer sin. They are purely spiritual beings.
We now turn our attention in full to a comparison of us and the angels. That’s our second point: us and the angels. People tend to view the angels as superior to themselves, and in many ways they are. They are superior in power and knowledge. They never die. We are lower than them in this creation; that’s Psalm 8:5, “you made him a little lower than the heavenly beings.” Intelligence and power, however, are not usually what people have in mind when they think of angels as superior to themselves. People tend to view angels as superior to them because they believe that the angel’s purely spiritual nature is better than our bodily existence.
These people believe, on some level, that bodies are bad. Now each of us knows the sinful desires of our flesh; each of us knows the pain that comes from giving in to those desires. It is only a small step from there to assuming that life would be better without bodies. Many people take this step and assume that the bodily is bad and the spiritual is good.
That is a common way of thinking, but it is mistaken. The flesh does have its sinful desires but so does the spirit. We will see that in its purest form when we study the demonic. Remember, the demons are just as much spirits as are the angels. We are familiar with the temptations of the flesh, but we also sin by the temptations of the spirit, most notably pride.
Both the flesh and the spirit can be and are infected with sin, which is just one of the reasons that religions that merely try to get rid of the impure body in order to free the pure spirit are so mistaken. They are mistaken to assume that the spiritual must be good; they are mistaken to assume that the bodily must be bad.
That mistake is common today and it was common in Paul’s day. It is quite a different perspective than the one offered by Christianity. Christianity says that both the body and spirit are now fallen and in need of redemption. However, Christians don’t want to live without bodies, like the angels; we want to live with resurrected bodies, like Jesus. As Paul explained to the Corinthians, “while we are in this tent,” meaning this body, “we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed,” as in live only as spirits, “but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling,” that is the resurrected body, “so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.” There is no shame in having a body. The fact that you will have a resurrected body in eternity will not make you morally inferior to the angels.
So, please do not compare yourself negatively to angels because they are purely spiritual while you have a body. If you need more proof, consider the incarnation. God Himself took on flesh. If there was something inherently unworthy about having flesh, the Son of God never would have done it and he would certainly not continue to have flesh, but that is what we see. We see flesh in the Godhead and so it will remain forever, and so if you think that there is something morally inferior about having a body, think again.
That’s a word about us and the angels in regard to our nature. Now let’s think about us and the angels in regard to redemption. It seems that angels who have sinned cannot and will not be redeemed. Humans who have sinned can be redeemed. This is a small part of what is going on in Hebrews 2:16-17, “For surely it is not angels [Christ] helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.” The Son of God did not take on angelic nature to save fallen angels as he took on human form to save fallen humans.
It seems there is no salvation possible for fallen angels. God doesn’t need to redeem any of them just as He doesn’t need to redeem any of us. He has chosen to make salvation possible for us, but not for them. Perhaps the reason has to do with something in their nature; it seems that the angels who did right at the fall of the angels can now only do right and those who did wrong at the fall of the angels can now only do wrong. Either way, since you are a sinner, be thankful that you are a sinful human rather than a sinful angel.
That’s a word about us and the angels in regard to redemption. Let’s close by thinking about us and the angels in regard to position. In this creation, we humans are lower than the angels. That’s Psalm 8:5, “You have made him a little lower than the angels.” In the new creation, it is possible that we will be higher than the angels.
If we change position, it is because the Son of God took on human nature. Jesus was made lower than the angels in the flesh and is now high above the angels. That’s Hebrews 2:9, we “see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor [as in far above the angels].”
He shared in our humiliation. We share in his exaltation. You see that in Ephesians 1 and 2. Ephesians 1 tells us that now the Son is sitting at God’s “right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion,” which are other words for angels. So Jesus is now far above all the angels. Paul then says that, “God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” We will be seated with Christ in the new creation. That might very well mean that we will have more glory than angels in the new creation because the Son of God took on our flesh in this creation.
When you consider the angels, consider that you are a sinner who can be redeemed and that the angels who sinned will not be redeemed. Consider that you sinned and yet you will have more glory than the angels who didn’t sin. All of that is to say for every one thought you give to the angels, give one hundred thoughts to Christ. That is the logic of Hebrews 1. It seems the people were putting misguided focus on the angels and so the author asked, ‘“to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father”… when God brings His firstborn into the world, He says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”’ If you find that you are putting more focus on the angels than on Jesus, you’ve missed the point. Even the angels put their focus on Jesus. Amen.
“Psalm 148:5, “Let them praise the name of the Lord, for at His command they were created.”
Hebrews 1:14, “Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”
Isaiah 6:2, “Above [God] were seraphim, each with six wings: with two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.”
Daniel 10:12-14, “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia.”
Luke 2:13, “suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God.”
1 Peter 1:12, “Even angels long to look into these things.”
1 Kings 22:20-21, ‘The Lord said, “Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?” One suggested this, and another that. Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, “I will entice him.”’
Psalm 103:20-21, “Praise the Lord, you His angels, you mighty ones who do His bidding, who obey His word. Praise the Lord, all His heavenly hosts, you His servants who do His will.”
Matthew 22:30, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”
2 Corinthians 5:4, “For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life.”
Hebrews 2:16-17, “ For surely it is not angels [Christ] helps, but Abraham’s descendants. For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.”
Revelation 22:9, “I am a fellow servant with you and with your fellow prophets and with all who keep the words of this scroll.”
Psalm 8:5, “You have made him a little lower than the angels.”
Hebrews 2:9-11, we “see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.”
Ephesians 1:19-21 and 2:6-7, “That power is the same as the mighty strength He exerted when He raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come… God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”
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