SERMON OF THE WEEK First Presbyterian Church of Honolulu December 14, 2008 Angels We Have Heard on High Rev. Dr. Dan Chun Luke 2:9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. Luke 2:10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. Luke 2:11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. Luke 2:12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. Luke 2:13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Luke 2:14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. It s the 3rd Sunday of Advent, a season where we think of Christmas and the Messiah to come. As we read the Christmas passages in the Bible, we discover that heavenly beings called angels play a major role throughout the Christmas story. What are angels? Do they take human form? Are they big or small? What is their role? Movies often train our brains on what angels are like. Here is a sample of what Hollywood thinks of angels. (Movie clips from It s A Wonderful Life and Angels in the Outfield are shown.) In case you ve not have noticed this before there is an angelic thread throughout the entire Bible where angels play major roles in God s redeeming process. Billy Graham wrote a great book on angels that I highly recommend. It s entitled Angels. And it s for sale today at the Fellowship Hall. Why is it important to learn the truth about angels? For one, angels are very popular today. And because of this, I think it is important, maybe even imperative to differentiate between the fact and fiction surrounding them. (After all, Lucifer has been described as an angel of light in 2 Cor. 11:14.) Many New Age movements have picked angels as part of their theology but they propagate a lot of mistruths about angels, like the claim that angels are dead people (like in It s a Wonderful Life ). A second reason we should learn about angels is that angels play a major part throughout the Bible and especially in the Christmas story. Did you know that there are five major events in the Christmas story and angels play a significant role in every one of them! 1 First event: The angel Gabriel told Mary she would have Jesus. (Luke 1:28) Second event: Gabriel told Joseph that Mary was pregnant. (Luke 1:26-33) Third event: An angel told Joseph to flee to Egypt with his family to escape from Herod s soldiers. (Matthew 2:13-14) Fourth event: A heavenly host of angels announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds (Luke 2:19) And the fifth event: Angels sang out in celebration on the night Jesus was born (Luke 2:23). What a holy Happy Birthday song that must have been! There s a third reason we need to know about angels. Angels play a role in our every day lives. How so? They protect us, guide us and support us. They help us, inform us, and literally fight for us! To be informed believers, we certainly should know about angels. It says in Psalm 91:11, For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. When I pray with my children before they go to sleep, I used to pray this: Lord, may Your angels protect our home from above, below and on the side.
Upon hearing this, my daughter Noelle, when she was very young, said, Daddy, don t forget diagonal. So for years it became, Lord, may Noelle, Dylan and Quinn have good dreams, no bad dreams and may Your angels surround our home while we sleep from above, below, on the side and diagonal. So what do we need to know about angels? Who are they? Angels are spiritual beings who have higher knowledge, power and mobility than humans. God created them. Their chief responsibility is to carry out God s orders in the universe. The Bible says that we were created a little lower than the angels (Heb. 2:7). But after the resurrection we, who follow Christ, will rule over them. What do angels do? They serve. Heb. 1:14 Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? Angels don t have physical bodies, unless God desires them to have them for a specific mission. Conceivably they could be much larger. In the Bible, when angels appear before people, they often said, Do not be afraid. Why is that? Maybe it s because the angels are big, or perhaps weirdlooking or maybe the people just looked so surprised. How many angels are there in the universe? No one knows exactly except to say there are a lot. Psalm 68:17 records King David saying that there were 20,000 chariots accompanying God coming down from Mount Sinai. Angels in the Bible are sometimes referred to as chariots of God. We know there were tens of thousands of angels who came down on Mount Sinai to confirm God s holy presence when Moses received the 10 Commandments, as reported in Deuteronomy 33:2. The LORD came from Sinai, and dawned from Seir upon us; He shone forth from Mount Paran. With Him were myriads of holy ones; at His right, a host of His own. Some of your Bible translations says a myriad of angels, and myriad is the word for 10,000. In Revelation 5:11 the apostle John reports in Revelation 5:11that ten thousand angels times ten thousand angels ministered to Jesus in the throne room of the universe. So now we are talking about millions of angels. And in the final battle of Armageddon, the armies of angels will join Jesus to defeat Satan and his armies. This is a bigger final battle than the Lord of the Rings where elves and humans fought Sauron, orcs, urukais and goblins. When Jesus comes back again, Jesus will be revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels, says 2 Thessalonians 1:7. When God created the angels, one third of them decided to follow Lucifer who, to this day, wages a rebellion against God (Rev. 12:4). But more on that later. So what is the mission of angels? It is simply this: to serve God. They have no agenda but to bring people to God. They are not like the Holy Spirit who actually convinces or convicts people to 2 turn to God. They are not equal to the Trinity. They are not to be prayed to or talked to or worshipped. They serve God. But boy, are they happy when someone becomes a Christian. Jesus said, Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. Luke 15:10) Imagine, the day you became a Christian angels were so happy that they cheered and sang. When the 30 people walked forward last month to either accept Christ or recommit their lives to Him, we would have heard a tremendous ovation and cheering by the angels if we had our ears tuned to the right angelic frequency. We will be baptizing a baby next Sunday and there will be great joy in heaven for the dedication of this child where the parents will promise that this child will be discipled to become a fully committed follower of you Lord, to study His word and be obedient to Him. This is one of the best kinds of drama we can have here in the sanctuary. Which brings us to our next point: Not only do angels bring us to God and cheer for us, they protect us. We know in the story of Daniel in the lion s den (Daniel 6:22) where Daniel said, My God sent His angel and shut the lion s mouths so that they would not hurt me. Normally angels are invisible. The Bible says the angels are always watching us and sometimes are in our midst. Hebrew 13:2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.
But sometimes angels are visible as in the stories of Abraham, Elijah, John the Baptist and Christmas. Now you may ask, Are there different kinds of angels? Yes. At the top level is the Archangel. Not archangels, but only one Archangel. And his name is Michael (Jude 9). Michael means, who is like unto the Lord? Michael is the angel above all angels. He is also known as the Prince of Heaven, like the Prime Minister in God s administration of the universe. He is the chief administrator for God s judgment. The next level has only one known angel and that is Gabriel, whose name means, God s hero, the Mighty One, God is great! Gabriel is God s special messenger of mercy and praise (Daniel 8:16, 9:21, Luke 1:9, 26-33). Giving messages and announcements is his thing but he might do a lot more. At the next level are the Seraphim. In the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy, we sing. Cherubim and seraphim falling down before Thee, which wert and art and ever more shall be. So what are Cherubim and Seraphim? Let s start with the Seraphim. They are below Gabriel. There is some disagreement on their duties but this we do know. The Seraphim constantly glorify God. They praise His name and character. In the book of Isaiah it says they have six wings and that they sit above God s throne. Then come the Cherubim. They have wings, feet and hands. Ezekiel 10 says they are also full of eyes, encompassed by wheels within wheels. (There is some speculation that UFO s might actually be angels because of how Ezekiel describes angels. But the Cherubim are also tough guys! Their duty is to guard the Holy place where God s throne is. They are kind of like God s Holy Secret Service men. (Boy, I would love to see an Angel. Some people in our church say they have.) After the Cherubim come the ones I do NOT want to see. They are Lucifer (or Satan) and his followers, also referred to as demons or satanic angels. Satan is real. He has one third of the angels in his army. Rev. 12:4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, so that he might devour her child as soon as it was born. Scholars say the word stars in this verse refer to angels, and Satan took a third of them. In the Old Testament Satan is referred to sometimes as the King of Tyre. In Ezekiel 28:12-17 He is described as a beautiful angel. He looks perfect and appears full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. This description of Lucifer reminds us that evil sometimes comes very slick, pretty and perfect in the world s eyes. In fact, 2 Corinthians 11:14-15 says Satan will look like an angel of light. People will think he is good. And many of his human leaders disguise themselves as Christian leaders (2 Cor. 11:14-15). It s another reason that we all need to read the Bible so we are able to detect false leaders. Lucifer wanted supreme authority. It s graphically shown in Isaiah 14 where Satan states his 3 five I will statements, all pompous and arrogant in the face of a Holy God. Satan said, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God. I will set my throne on high. I will sit on the mount of the congregation. I will ascend above the heights of the cloud. I will make myself like the Most High. The Isaiah passage ends with the prophet saying that Satan will be thrown in the pit for eternity and people will wonder, Was this the one who thought himself to be so powerful? So think on this: Our loving, most wonderful God who cares for us, who knows our pain, and who knows the danger in this world did not abandon us. From the day you were born, God has literally watched out for us. The Bible says we are a spectacle to the angels (1 Cor. 4:9) meaning, they always watch us. Just picture this truth from the Bible: every day, every hour, every second, behind closed doors or in the public, angels, and more importantly God, watch what we do. It may be a reminder again to live a life of integrity. God is not fooled. What we do on the internet or in secret, He and His angels know because they keep watch over us. They re not fooled. It s a call for authenticity and integrity. Who are you when no one is looking? Or rather, when no human is looking. The angels are not there to be nosy but to protect us. They work to bring us to God. Do angels really protect us?
If I have gone through so much suffering, then where were God and His angels when I needed them? These are two really good questions. First, do they protect us? Yes. I have mentioned some Bible passages of Daniel and his friends being saved by angels in the furnace and the lion s den. We know that an angel came to Joseph and saved him and the holy family by telling them to run for their lives and go to Egypt (Matthew 2). There are some post-biblical accounts that can t be scientifically proven but they are there for the examination. Our own Dr. Don Fancher went with a medical team to a Nigerian Christian clinic in 1993 during a time of rioting. The staff told him that only days before, a band of Muslim terrorists had come to destroy and burn their village because of the Christian doctors and medical clinic there. All night the entire hospital staff walked the perimeter of the hospital grounds praying for God to send angels to protect the property and the patients. Later, it was learned from one of the terrorists that when they came to burn the medical compound they saw that it was already encircled by flames so they fled! God had answered the prayers of the brave Christian medical team and it seemed His angels heard the prayers and put up the flaming wall. I don t know if there are private personal guardian angels. John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian movement, would say there are legions of angels who protect us. But this I know, from the time of our birth angels watch over us. In Matthew 18:10, Jesus says in talking about children, Matt. 18:10 See that you do not despise one of these little ones; for I tell you that in heaven THEIR ANGELS [the angels of these children] always behold the face of my father who is in heaven. That verse is on our Compassion wall in the hallway of the other wing. In our Christmas story about Mary giving birth to Jesus, we have the answer to that second difficult question, if I have gone through so much suffering then where were God and His angels when I needed them? In the birth of Christ, in the Christmas story we have the answer to that question. Jesus offers us something that the angels do not. In Christ, we have the Great Exchange God gives grace in exchange for our sin, forgiveness for anything we have done wrong, and the miraculous reality that with God good can come from bad. Though our burdens might not be lifted, our shoulders will be made stronger to carry that burden. You see, when Jesus was born, when Gabriel the angel proclaimed that reality to come, it meant that God loved us so much that He would come down here in the form of a human to live with us. He would tell us that the pain we go through will not be for eternity. And if we have suffered loss for His sake, He will make it up to us, maybe not in this life but in the next. 4 He was also saying that if some of the pain we have experienced, makes us come closer to God, then we have gained much from the pain. Jesus in His ministry again and again told us that if we are rejected by people, if we have lost a loved one in death, if we are sick, if we are poor in finances, if we are poor in spirit, it doesn t all have to end there. Jesus is here. Emmanuel has come. And the greatest thing you can do this Christmas season is to focus on the Lord. For only in Him is our pain put in perspective and our success is humbly put into context. Angels always point to God and to His salvation. They don t point to themselves or their good work. They aren t there merely for decoration, as some of our current pop art would lead us to believe. Angels reflect the glory of God. Their beauty only reflects of God s beauty. Angels proclaim the works of God. They tell us about God. Are you looking for angels? If you are, that is fine, but it s not enough. Don t stop there. Look further. Look at WHO the angels are pointing to: Jesus the son of God come to earth. Look at WHAT the angels are pointing to: God s perfect redeeming love made manifest in Jesus. He wants you to know Him personally. Look at WHY the angels are pointing to God: Because God invites you also to come and worship His son.
When the heavenly host appeared over the fields of Bethlehem, it wasn t for mere spectacle. They came to herald the coming of Jesus and to point the shepherds in the fields to Christ. The question is no, Do you believe in angels? But rather, Do you believe in the One who sent them, in God and His Son Jesus whose birth the angels celebrate? For as the angels told the shepherds on that Christmas night, For unto you is born this day in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ, the Lord. And this will be a sign for you; you will find a babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men with whom he is pleased (Luke 2:11-14). Amen! Let s pray. 5