A substantial number of people wanted to know what Hulk Hogan’s kitchen looked like. That’s was the idea behind the TV show Cribs. In this show, a celebrity gives you a tour of their home. You can see billionaire Richard Branson’s 74-acre private island in the Caribbean. You can see the room in Mariah Carey’s house that is totally devoted to shoes. The show works because the public has an interest in these people.
As far as I know there is no corresponding show for celebrities that takes them on tours of the homes of people like us. My guess is that Leonardo DiCaprio won’t be sitting down tonight for a guided tour of some random house in Sandpoint, Idaho. I can’t imagine Taylor Swift texting back and forth with Selena Gomez as they both watch a walkthrough of that house to the west of church with the new driveway.
Now the public’s interest in Mariah Carey’s home is understandable, but I imagine that that the owner of that home to the west of church would be utterly bewildered to find out that two platinum selling singers are fascinated by the layout of his kitchen.
His bewilderment is probably shared by the angels when they consider our fascination with them. They are tasked with taking an interest in us; that’s Hebrews 1:14, “are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”
We were not tasked with focusing on angels; they were tasked with focusing on us; that’s why it seems to me that assigning names like Uriel, Haniel, Cassiel, Jophiel, and Raziel to angels in the Bible and not in the Bible must be bewildering to the angels. That’s why it seems to me that creating elaborate classifications of angels based on little more than incidental references in Scripture must be bewildering to the angels. God’s word tells us very little about angels because it is the angels’ interest in us that matters. We are the celebrities in this analogy and the angels are interested in us. The angels minister to us. That is the claim of this sermon: the angels minister to us.
We will study this in five points; these are five of the ways that angels minister to us. First, they are messengers. Second: caretakers. Third: guardians. Fourth: instruments of judgment. Fifth: fellow worshippers. We will be working our way through the Scriptures on your sheet.
First: messengers. The Hebrew word we translate as “angel” is the same as the word translated as “messenger.” It was “malakim” who ascended and descended between earth and heaven in Jacob’s vision and it was “malakim” who the Israelites sent to Sihon king of the Amorites asking him for passage through his country. The first we translate as “angels”, the second we translate as “messengers.”
The same holds true in Greek. It was an “angelos” who descended from heaven, rolled back the stone from Jesus’ tomb, and sat on it. It was an “angelos” who Paul sent to the Philippians with his letter. The first we translate as “angel”, the second we translate as “messenger.”
The shared use of this same word in both Hebrew and Greek doesn’t mean that every angel is a human messenger nor that every human messenger was actually an angel; it means that the role of a messenger is tied up with what it means to be an angel.
The angel who met Daniel spoke of this role, “Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.” An angel told Samson’s parents that they would have a boy. Angels were instrumental in communicating the law at Sinai. The prophet Zechariah regularly mentioned the angel who spoke to him. It was angels who first announced the good news of Jesus’ birth and his resurrection. It was an angel who spoke to Cornelius in an act that made clear the full inclusion of the Gentiles. Angels are messengers.
God has appointed angels to deliver messages; these messages, and hence angelic appearances, are most frequent at momentous moments in the history of redemption. That’s why you have angelic appearances at the Exodus, the giving of the Law, the conquest of the Promised Land, and especially the birth and resurrection of Jesus. Now, you have already received the full message of redemption in Christ, which means that no angel will be delivering any new message about it; that’s what Paul told the Galatians, “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!”
You already have that message, and so you shouldn’t expect angels to bring you any new messages. There are seemingly credible accounts of Muslims coming to know Jesus through visions that they attribute to angels, but that is the same message of redemption.
God uses angels as messengers, but we have at least one instance of an angelic messenger being delayed; the angel told Daniel, “Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.”
So angels can be detained. Do you think that God Himself could have delivered the knowledge of that vision Daniel without delay? Of course. So why work through that angel? Why introduce limits? Well, why work through Moses? God could have undoubtedly handled everything Moses did without Moses’ limitations. Why work through any finite creature? Because God likes to work through finite creatures. Do you have children? God seems to like to work His purposes for your children out through you. He could do it without you and your errors, but He likes to do it through you. He knows Your shortcomings. They are part of His plan. He knew that angel would be detained. That was part of His plan.
Now, sometimes throughout Scripture what appeared to be an angel delivering a message actually turned out to be God Himself. That was the case for Moses. Exodus 3:2, ‘There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.’ In the beginning it seems we are dealing with an angel but by the end, we know that we are dealing with God. That is often the case when the phrase “the angel of the Lord” is used.
The clearest instance of God being His own messenger is seen in the incarnation. Jesus is not only the messenger; he is the message. He is the word made flesh. Please don’t get so focused on angels as messengers that you forget that they were sent to communicate the message of redemption and that is Jesus Christ.
That’s the first task angels do; they are messengers; secondly, they are caretakers. Elijah experienced the care of angels as he ran from Jezebel. 1 Kings 19:5, “he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.’ Jesus experienced similar caretaking after withstanding Satan’s temptations; “the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.” The angels brought care to Jesus in his neediest time in Gethsemane, “an angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.”
Manna may be a picture of care. Psalm 78:25, “Men ate the bread of angels; He sent them all the food they could eat.” One way to interpret that is by seeing manna as bread brought by angels rather than a sort of bread like spirits would eat.
There is a likely picture of the caretaking ministries of the angels in Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus; “there was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side.”
Now this is only a parable, but I can’t imagine that Jesus would have any reason for taking literary license regarding the work of angels so to me it seems likely to say that angels have a role in taking believers to glory. I was pondering this, this past week when praying with Ken VanBeek. “The time came when Ken died and the angels carried him to God.”
Angels like to give care. As far as I know I’ve never experienced angelic caretaking, but Hebrews 13:2 tells us, “do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it”; it’s even easier to imagine this working the other way round—people receiving care from angels without knowing it.
If some of this seems a bit unbelievable to you, please recognize that angels seem to function a lot like spotlights. Spotlights exist to put the focus on something else and not on themselves. Angels seem kind of shy about putting focus on themselves so perhaps your struggle with wrapping your mind around angels is exactly as it should be. They don’t seem to invite focus on themselves.
Let’s move on to our third point: guardians; angels act as guardians. Psalm 91 deserves pride of place here; “He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” That was David’s experience when his life was threatened; in Psalm 34, he testified that, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and he delivers them.” Daniel testifies to that saying, “My God sent His angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions.” When Elisha was surrounded by the Arameans, he told his servant, ‘“Don’t be afraid [because] those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.’ On the night that Jesus was betrayed, he told Peter that he needed no human protection; he asked his disciple, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”
Angels act as guardians. Now, if you take deep comfort in this, I want you to ask yourself, “why?” You already live in a universe governed by God’s providence. What does the idea of angels guarding you add to that? It’s good to recognize that God does, at times, work that providence out through angels, but to find solace from angels in and of themselves is misguided. John Gilhooly is right, “it is bad doctrine that makes creatures secure by creatures. We should not look to angels to preserve us, but to God. Anything less is superstitious at best and blasphemous at worst.” God is your refuge and your strength. Sometimes the angels are how He manifests that power.
Let’s move on to our fourth point to see how angels act as instruments of God’s judgment. Throughout Scripture, angels enact God’s judgment. You see that first with the wrath poured upon Sodom. As Lot fled the Sodom, he asked an angel to allow him to run to the little city of Zoar before bringing the disaster. The angel replied, “I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee there quickly, because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” It is clear that the angels were sent as instruments of God’s judgment on Sodom.
Now what’s very interesting here is that right after this, we read, “Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens.” Who brought the judgment—was it the angels or was it the Lord? Yes. In some moments angels seem like expressions of the power of God and in other moments the focus is put on their own identity and activity; that is part of what makes them so difficult to understand.
God uses His angels to bring judgment. In 2 Samuel 24, the Lord brought judgment on David’s sin in the form of an angel spreading a plague. In Exodus 23, God promised judgment upon the people of the land saying, “if you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.” In 2 Kings 19, the Assyrian commander mocks God and we read, “That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp.”
Perhaps the most famous judgment dealing angel was seen in the final plague upon Egypt; “When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.” Other famous angels of judgment appear throughout the book of Revelation, which has far more references to angels than any other book of Scripture. Most of Jesus’ teachings on the end times and parables about the final judgment include angels. They are God’s army, or His host—the heavenly host. When the sin and transgression of this perverse world is judged for all to see, the angels will have a role. If you long to see that justice, consider the angels your servants on that day.
For our fifth and final point, we see that angels are fellow worshippers. The angels worship God. The most familiar account of this is enacted every Christmas; ‘Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.”’ The angels worshipped at the dawn of creation. As God asked Job, “who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?”
The angels don’t merely worship the Father; they worship Christ because, of course, He is God. They, like us, worship the God-man. Hebrews 1, ‘when God brings His firstborn into the world, He says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”’
The angels are worshipping right now. Listen to John in Revelation 5, ‘I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”’
When you approach God, you are joining in that worship. That is part of the point of Hebrews 12:22, “You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly.” I find that to be a help when I come to this sanctuary. I’m not starting worship. I’m joining into worship that is already occurring. That’s a help to me; “are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”
The angels minister to you. They minister to you because you will inherit salvation so don’t put the focus on them; put the focus on that salvation. Put the focus on the Savior.
Think about it this way and with this we close. Imagine that you are running a marathon. As you run there will be people holding out cups of water for you to drink. How much focus do you put on those people? Not much at all, and they are fine with that because they know that you are focused on the race. They gave you that water to help you on your way to the finish line. That’s what angels do. They serve us who will inherit salvation. Amen.
“Hebrews 1:14, “are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?”
Daniel 10:14, “Now I have come to explain to you what will happen to your people in the future, for the vision concerns a time yet to come.”
Galatians 1:8, “even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse!”
Exodus 3:2-6, ‘There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, “I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up.” When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And Moses said, “Here I am.” “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.’
1 Kings 9:5-8, “he lay down under the bush and fell asleep. All at once an angel touched him and said, “Get up and eat.” He looked around, and there by his head was some bread baked over hot coals, and a jar of water. He ate and drank and then lay down again. The angel of the Lord came back a second time and touched him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you.” So he got up and ate and drank. Strengthened by that food, he traveled forty days and forty nights until he reached Horeb, the mountain of God.’
Matthew 4:11, “the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.”
Psalm 78:25, “Men ate the bread of angels; He sent them all the food they could eat.”
Luke 16:19-22, “there was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side.”
Hebrews 13:2, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.”
Psalm 91:11-12, “He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”
Psalm 34:7, “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and he delivers them.”
Daniel 6:22, “My God sent His angel, and he shut the mouths of the lions.”
2 Kings 6:16-17, ‘“Don’t be afraid [because] those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.’
Matthew 26:53, “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?”
Genesis 19:18-24, ‘“I can’t flee to the mountains; this disaster will overtake me, and I’ll die. Look, here is a town near enough to run to, and it is small. Let me flee to it—it is very small, isn’t it? Then my life will be spared.” He said to him, “Very well, I will grant this request too; I will not overthrow the town you speak of. But flee there quickly because I cannot do anything until you reach it.” (That is why the town was called Zoar.) By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah—from the Lord out of the heavens.”
Exodus 23:22-23, “if you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you. My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.”
2 Kings 19:35, “That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand in the Assyrian camp.”
Exodus 12:23, “When the Lord goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, he will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.”
Luke 2:13-14, ‘Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.”’
Job 38:6-7, “who laid its cornerstone—while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?”
Hebrews 1:6, ‘when God brings His firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”’
Revelation 5:11-12, ‘I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand. They encircled the throne and the living creatures and the elders. In a loud voice they were saying: “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!”’
Hebrews 12:22, “You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly.””