A Theology of Angels (Hebrews 1:7)

Kootenai Church

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Please turn your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, to chapter 1. Hebrews chapter 1.

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When you've found your place, let's begin with prayer before we read this together. Our Father, we are so thankful for all that your word reveals to us about the seen and the unseen world, including your will for us in Christ Jesus, and how we ought to think of all that you have done on behalf of your people.

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We pray that you would bless our time here as we study your word and our attempts at understanding it. We pray that you'd give us clarity of thought and keep us from going beyond what is written in Scripture concerning the angelic world.

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Help us to think clearly about these things so that we may have a right and proper theology that is grounded upon Scripture and Scripture alone, a theology that honors and glorifies the

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Lord Jesus Christ in a way that he is worthy of being honored and glorified. We ask your blessing in this time and to that end today in Christ's name.

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Amen. We are in Hebrews chapter 1, so we're going to read together verses 5 through the end of the chapter.

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I'm going to catch again the context of what we are looking at as we work our way through this passage. Verse 5, for to which of the angels did he ever say, you are my son, today

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I have begotten you. And again, I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me. And when he again brings the firstborn into the world, he says, and let all the angels of God worship him.

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And of the angels, he says, who makes his angels winds and his ministers a flame of fire.

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But of the sun, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. And the righteous scepter is the scepter of his kingdom.

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You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness. Therefore, God, your God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your companions.

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And you, Lord, in the beginning, laid the foundation of the earth and the heavens are the works of your hands.

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They will perish, but you remain, and they all will become old like a garment. And like a mantle, you will roll them up.

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Like a garment, they will also be changed, but you are the same and your years will not come to an end. But to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?

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Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to render service for the sake of those who inherit salvation?

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We're in this section of Hebrews that compares Jesus to the angels. And this section is most of chapter one and most of chapter two.

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And in this larger section, the author is arguing that Jesus is superior to the angels for a number of reasons.

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And it occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that in 21 years of preaching here with you, not that all of you have been here for 21 years, but in 21 years of preaching here,

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I have never once preached a message on the subject of angels. It's not that I haven't. We haven't talked about angels or haven't mentioned passages that deal with angels or talked about the nature of angels, but I've never really gone and given a comprehensive overview of the theology of angels and what angels are and their role and their purpose.

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And that's not intentional. It's just how it has been. So since we're dealing with verse seven, which is really just a short reference to angels,

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I thought this would be a good opportunity to do that very thing to kind of give an overview of the theology of angels.

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Since verse seven is so short, I could probably explain it in 10 minutes, which means that I could get up here, we could explain it. And then

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I could pray and we could all walk away from here with extra 30 minutes on our hands. Or I could take this opportunity to kind of dive into what the

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Bible says about angels and kind of give an overview, sort of a bird's eye view, as it were, of the doctrine of angels so that we can then have a benchmark by which we are comparing

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Jesus with the angelic hosts. The author to the Hebrews assumes that his readers will understand what the

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Bible, the Old Testament in their day, taught regarding angels. He would have assumed that common understanding so he could just mention angels and that the

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Old Testament talks about angels and what they understood about angels and what they knew about angels was somewhat assumed what scripture revealed.

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But we don't necessarily in our day have that advantage. In fact, there's a lot of weird and wacky ideas of what angels are and what angels do.

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And so this would be a good opportunity to kind of deal with some of those issues. So in chapter two, the author is making the point that Jesus is greater than angels.

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This is the first of a number of comparisons that he makes in the book of Hebrews. He does this in this series of quotations from the

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Old Testament by describing how it is that the Father speaks of the Son and then how it is that the

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Father speaks of angels and how it is that the Father speaks of the Son. And you'll notice that even though the contrast is with angels, he doesn't give equal time to discussing angels.

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Just one verse, verse seven, which describes the angels and what the Old Testament says about them, and he doesn't give a point by point comparison of Jesus and the angels.

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He doesn't say Jesus is this and the angels are that. Jesus is this and the angels are that. He doesn't go back and forth. Just in the context of describing the

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Son, he gives one statement about angels, almost as if that one statement is enough to show that Jesus is certainly no angelic being.

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He wants to show us the glories of Christ. It is almost as if the author is thinking this way. If I tell them everything that is true of the

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Son of the Lord Jesus Christ, it will be obvious and beyond question that he is not an angel and that he is superior to the angels.

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Once we understand who the Son is, then we say, well, obviously the things the Scripture affirms regarding Christ can never be said of an angel.

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So there's obviously a difference here. Contrary to, as we said, what Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons might teach about the beginning of the

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Son and him being the firstborn, and even Jehovah's Witnesses would say that Jesus is an angelic creature, that he was

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Michael the archangel in the Old Testament. That's their doctrine of Christ. Obviously that is not true because Scripture says things about the

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Son that could never be affirmed of any angel. So here's what we're going to do today. We're going to deal with verse 7, kind of in its context.

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We're going to go back to Psalm 104, which we read at the beginning, and we're going to work our way through that to show why the author takes that statement from Psalm 104 and uses it here in Hebrews chapter 1.

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And then we're going to use verse 7 as kind of a gateway by which I'm going to address the idea and the theology of angels and see just in a very general way what the

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Bible teaches about angels. So turn back to the book of the Psalms, to Psalm 104.

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Again, verse 4 is the passage that he quotes, Psalm 104.

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Now this Psalm, since it's 35 verses, is obviously longer than Psalm 2 and Psalm, what was the last one we dealt with,

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Psalm 97, which we were able to kind of work our way through those Psalms and give more attention to the context and what the

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Psalms teach. I'm not going to be able to do that with this Psalm, Psalm 104, because this would be several messages just by itself.

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But what I do want to do is highlight kind of what the author does here in this Psalm and what the Psalm is teaching. So Psalm 104, this

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Psalm gives an overview of the power of God in creation, the provision of God for his creation, and the providence of God as he rules his creation.

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Power, provision, and providence. And the author of this Psalm kind of goes back and forth between those ideas of God's power as demonstrated and what he created and how he created it, the provision of God for the creation which he has made, and the providence of God whereby he rules all of these various elements and creatures that are within his creation.

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So the psalmist is kind of dancing about amongst those ideas, weaving those three elements of praise to God into this one

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Psalm, and he begins with God describing God's creation. Verse 1, Bless the

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Lord, O my soul, and we're not going to read every verse, but I just want you to notice the highlights of these elements. Bless the

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Lord, O my soul, O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with splendor and majesty, covering yourself with light as with a cloak, stretching out heavens like a tent curtain.

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He lays the beams of his upper chambers in the waters. He makes the clouds his chariot. He walks upon the wings of the wind.

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He makes the winds his messengers, flaming fire his ministers. Verse 4 is the verse that is quoted in Hebrews chapter 1, and we'll return to that momentarily.

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Verse 5, He established the earth upon its foundations so that it will not totter forever and ever. You covered it with the deep as with a garment.

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The waters were standing above the mountains that you rebuked. They fled at the sound of your thunder. They hurried away. The mountains rose.

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The valleys sank down to the place which you established for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass over so that they will not return to cover the earth.

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And the elements of God's wisdom and his power in creation is what the psalmist is describing here. Very poetic language that God has created these things.

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He has made in verse 4 the winds his messengers and flaming fire his ministers. All these elements of creation, everything in creation,

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God has made, and that demonstrates his power, demonstrates his wisdom. It also demonstrates his provision.

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Provision of God is verse 10. He sends forth springs in the valleys. They flow between the mountains. They give drink to every beast of the field.

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The wild donkeys quench their thirst. Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell. They lift up their voices among the branches.

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He waters the mountains from his upper chambers. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of his works. He causes the grass to grow for the cattle and vegetation for the labor of man so that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine which makes man's heart glad so that he may make his face glisten with oil and food which sustains man's heart.

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God has not only created creation, but in his wisdom he has created creation so that that creation provides for itself.

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Isn't that amazing? That miracle of evolution, isn't it? That all this came into being and then it sustains.

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It almost looks as if it sustains itself and it almost looks as if it provides for itself. The waters go up and the waters come down.

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The cycle of life that we see, the plants sprout and they give forth seed and we eat some of the seed and we plant some of the seed.

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Magnificent how God has provided all of this. He has not only demonstrated his power in creating all of these various elements of his creation, but he has created in such a way that it's, you know what

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I mean when I say this, it sustains itself. I know it doesn't sustain itself, but from our vantage point, creation just provides for itself.

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Now ultimately God is the one who does that which he's going to describe later on in the psalm that God is the one who he takes away the breath and the creature dies up and returns to dust.

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It is God who does this through the means that he has created through this creation which he also provides for.

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Verse 18, the high mountains are for the wild goats. The cliffs are a refuge for the shepherd. He made the moon for the seasons.

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The sun knows the place of its setting. You appoint darkness and it becomes night in which all the beasts of the forest prowl about.

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He rules over all of his creation as well. The young lion roar after their prey. They seek their food from God. When the sun rises, they withdraw.

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They lie down in their dens. Man goes to forth to his work and to his labor until evening. Verse 24 is probably

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I think the key verse of the central verse of the psalm. Oh Lord, how many are your works? In wisdom you have made them all.

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Look at creation and see the wisdom of God. This is why an atheist is held accountable for eternity, for his denial that God exists, because he sees in creation and he knows in his mind and in his heart that there is a

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God. There's a God who has made this, there's a God who sustains this, and there's a God whose wisdom and power is demonstrated in the things that are made.

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So verse 24, oh Lord, how many are your works? In wisdom you've made them all. The earth is full of your possessions.

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He rules it all, he owns it all, he has created it all, and all of it is dependent upon him.

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Verse 27, they all wait for you to give them their food in due season. You give to them and they gather it up. You open your hand, they are satisfied with good.

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You hide your face, they are dismayed. You take away their spirit, they expire and return to the dust. You send forth your spirit, they're created, and you renew the face of the ground.

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In other words, though we look at creation, we see it as it looks as if it sustains itself. He has created the cycles by which all of these things provide for creation, provides for itself.

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Ultimately, all of that goes back to God because in his providence, he is the one ultimately gives to all of his creatures everything that sustains them and makes their hearts glad.

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So we don't thank creation for providing these things for us. We thank God who has created in such a way that he has provided through his creation for all of his creatures.

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And so we give him praise and glory for that. And so what is the response of the believing heart, the regenerate one, towards seeing the providence, the power, and the provision of God in creation?

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Verse 31, let the glory of the Lord endure forever. Let the Lord be glad in his works. He looks at the earth and it trembles. He touches the mountains and they smoke.

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I will sing to the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Let my meditation be pleasing to him.

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As for me, I shall be glad in the Lord. Let sinners be consumed from the earth and let the wicked be no more. Bless the

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Lord on my soul. Praise the Lord. There is a desire in the heart of the believer that the wicked be consumed from the earth.

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Why? So that God may be glorified rightly and appropriately and infinitely for this, his wisdom demonstrated in creation.

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There's a desire in the heart of the upright that God be glorified by that, be glorified by creation. And there's a desire in the heart of the believer that our meditation may be pleasing to God and that he be honored.

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And so we bless the Lord and we sing to the Lord, verse 33. That's the response of the believing heart to this creation.

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Now back to verse four. At first glance, it appears that verse four is not describing angels at all, but natural elements of creation.

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Do you see that? In fact, if you have your little piece of paper that I told you you can't live without several weeks ago, you'll notice that there is a translation difference between what is quoted in verse seven of, yeah, verse seven of Hebrews chapter one and Psalm 104 verse four.

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Hebrews one says he makes his angels winds and his ministers a flame of fire. Psalm 104 verse four says he makes the winds, his messengers flaming fire, his ministers.

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Now that translation difference is a difference. It's not as serious as the difference we looked at last week, but it is a difference of translation.

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And so now the question becomes how is it that the author of Hebrews looks at Psalm 104 verse four and sees that talking about angels when apparently on the surface, it appears as if the verse is describing the natural elements of creation.

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Look at verse four. He makes the winds, his messengers flaming fire, his ministers. Now, if you just had to take that in isolation from Hebrews chapter one, what would you think that Psalm 104 verse four is describing?

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Would you think that it's describing angels or would you think that it's describing fire and wind, especially in light of verse three, which talks about the waters, the clouds, and the wings of the wind.

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Verse four describes the wind that God makes as his messengers, and he makes flaming fire, his ministers.

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So Psalm 104 verse four doesn't appear to be talking about angels. Instead, what

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Psalm 104 verse four is describing is the natural elements of creation. And the psalmist is saying,

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God makes wind and he makes fire and wind and fire. They do his bidding.

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They serve his purposes. They obey his commands so that the winds become servants of God in that every gust of wind is there by his decree.

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And this is something to remember that every gust of wind and every snowflake and every drop of rain and every drop in temperature is by the sovereign providential and caring hand of God.

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Now, when we bicker against that, what are we bickering against? The providential and sovereign and caring hand of God.

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Right? We need to remember that. We need to remember that there is not a renegade element in all of God's creation when the wind blows and destroys a city that is by the hand of God.

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He is not in heaven clenching his fists and wringing his hands, wishing he could stop it.

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He foresaw it. He knew it. He decreed it. In some cases, he sends it.

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Why? Because the wind, which serves to purify the air and spread the pollen and fertilize the trees and fertilize your garden and blow away the smoke and bring in the rain clouds, which nourish all of our plants.

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The same wind that does that is under his control. God uses the wind as his messenger to bless his creation.

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And God uses wind to judge his creation. He uses them both ways. Same thing with fire.

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Fire obeys his command. Keep that in mind this next summer when the wildfires are out of control in some area of our country.

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Seems like it happens more and more, right? Who controls the fire? The fire is God's minister. God could put out a fire like that if he wanted to.

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He can start a fire like that if he wants to. It serves his purpose. It does his bidding. It is underneath his command.

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It is all part of his sovereign providential rule of all of his creation. These things obey the command of God.

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They are under his hand. And God uses fire to bless his creation. We're warned by it. God uses fire to judge his creation.

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And he is free to do that because he is God. We are not. And so the wind obeys his command, and it does what

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God appoints it to do. The fire obeys his command, and it does what God appoints it to do. And when wind and fire are working together, it's very destructive, isn't it?

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So we need to remember that those things are under God's providential, sovereign control. They obey his command.

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So that's it seems what verse four is talking about. Now, how does the author of Hebrews look at that and say, well, this refers to angels?

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The answer to that is the same reason that there is a translation difference in the previous verse that we looked at last week and already laid a lot of the groundwork for this.

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So I don't have to go back and do all of that again. But it comes down to the fact that the author of Hebrews is quoting from the

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Septuagint. Remember that? The chloroform word that likes, wants to put you to sleep. Septuagint was the Greek translation of the

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Hebrew Old Testament. It was the Bible translation used by Jesus and the apostles. The author here is familiar with the

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Septuagint, and he is quoting from the Septuagint. And the Septuagint uses the Greek word, angelos, for angels, or its messenger.

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The Septuagint uses for the word wind, the Greek word pneuma, which means spirit, is sometimes translated, sometimes refers to human spirit, sometimes to the

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Holy Spirit, sometimes to wind, the natural element of wind, and sometimes to angels. So in the

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Septuagint, it says in verse 4 that he makes pneuma his angelos, it makes the wind his messenger, his angel, and the end of verse 4, flaming fire, his ministers.

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So the author of Hebrews looked at Psalm 104, and he says there is another meaning, another essence, sense in which this is true.

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So here's what's curious. Whether you're talking about the Hebrew Old Testament or the Greek Septuagint, Psalm 104 verse 4 can be equally read, legitimately read in either of two ways.

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It doesn't matter which language you're talking about, the essence of the verse can be understood two different ways. It can be understood as referring to the natural elements that God controls, that does his bidding, which

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God has created. And it can be understood to refer to angels themselves, which are created by God, and they do his bidding.

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So the author of Hebrews looked at the Psalm and said, it is true that the elements of creation, the wind and the fire, are created by God and do his bidding.

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They obey his every word. It is also true of angels in the exact same sense. So he takes two meanings there, and you could read it in Hebrew, you could read it in the

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Greek, and it has this, you could read it either way. It is a completely legitimate understanding of the text.

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So the question then becomes for us, did the author of Hebrews twist the

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Old Testament text to fit his understanding of angels? And the answer to that is no.

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What the author of Hebrews is doing is showing us that you can take this to refer to either winds or angels, it is equally true both ways, and the psalmist, and he can use it to apply to either winds or to angels validly both directions.

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That make sense? That kind of accounts for the different translation. That's a little bit easier than last week's problem that we had.

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So now that we understand that, I could close in prayer and we could all go home, but we instead decided, well you didn't decide, but I decided that we're going to go into an understanding of the theology of angels.

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So we'll use verse 7 as a kind of a gateway to talk about what does the Bible say in relationship to angels.

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There's a fascination in our world, in our day, and I would say this is probably true in every day, with angels and the angelic.

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Angels are popular in our culture. They're featured guests on the art bell program, in literature, in movies, and in television.

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There seems to be a fascination even with unbelievers with angels. And I think that that is understandable because angels offer even to pagans an opportunity to be in touch with the divine without actually dealing with the divine.

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In other words, they can have a connection with things spiritual and God on a deeper level that's just more than just superficial in this world, and yet they don't have to deal with difficult subjects like sin and the need for blood atonement and repentance and faith, the wrath of God, and all the things that make us uncomfortable.

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So a lot of unbelievers think that angels are there, and they would even say that they believe in angels, and that angels are there to comfort them and to guide them and to talk to them and encourage them and to strengthen them and to look over them while they sleep.

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And then when they die, sort of bring them to heaven and slip them in the back door while God's not looking, so to speak, and get them in.

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And many people view angels as sort of an intermediary, a mediator between men and God.

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I don't have to deal with Jesus and the Father, but I can deal with an angel, and the angel will be there.

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He'll recommend me when I get to heaven. There are a lot of bogus and almost sometimes blasphemous ideas of what angels are and what angels do.

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And I want to give you a couple of false views of angels before we get into what the Bible says about angels. The first false view is that angels should be worshiped.

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And I know I don't need to correct this in our context. Paul did in the Colossian context, in Colossians 2 verse 18, he mentions the worship of angels and how that defrauds us of our reward.

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And so there are people who do worship angels. And I would just say to you that all the worship of all the false gods on the face of the planet, every false religion, is nothing more than the worship of demons.

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Paul talks about unbelievers who worship demons. Allah is not a true God. Allah is a demon.

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And the worship of Allah is the worship of the demonic. That needs to be said, that there are people who then also try and worship good angels.

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And as I said, view them as mediators between men and God. Second, angels, this is a second false view, that angels are departed human spirits.

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And if you were to go and pull the unbelieving population, people who are spiritually minded, not atheists, obviously, but people who are spiritually minded, this is probably the most common view of angels that you would find in our culture, is that we, when we die, go to the spiritual realm and we become these disembodied spirits that then get our wings.

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That angels are departed human spirits. A lot of people believe that. That is not true. And also, since we're on that subject, angels don't come back into this realm and help out human beings to earn their wings.

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Like in a Clarence Oddbody AS2, it's a wonderful life type fashion.

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When teacher says that every time the bell rings, an angel gets its wings, that's cute from a little girl in a horrible theology.

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That's not what angels are. The third false view is that angels are employed by us to wage spiritual warfare.

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And this was kind of the idea that came out in the books, Piercing the Darkness and This Present Darkness in the late 1980s and early 1990s by Frank Peretti.

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How many of you have read those books? Okay, they were wildly popular when

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I went to Bible college. And they were so wildly popular when I went to Bible college that a lot of people that I went to Bible college with viewed those books as sort of a how -to manual in waging spiritual warfare rather than the fiction that they actually are.

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And unfortunately, those books went a long way toward influencing entire generations view of angels and what angels do.

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If you think that angels are spiritual beings that we pray into action to beat back the forces of darkness and gain spiritual territory from the enemy, that's your view of spiritual warfare.

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Then I have a book I would like to recommend to you, and you can see me afterwards, and I'll give you a copy. So what does the

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Bible teach about angels? The Bible mentions the word angel in the Old Testament 213 times. The word translated angel in the

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New Testament is used 176 times. So that is a lot of material for your study. And I would recommend another resource to you, and this one

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I'll name by name, Biblical Theology by John MacArthur. It's edited by John MacArthur. It's a big, thick theology text.

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If you have one theology textbook on your shelf, this one should be it. I think that the outline is the best I've seen, and it treats subjects in a very comprehensive manner, a very thorough manner.

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His section on angels is about 75 pages in that book. It's very thick, but he does a good job of going through all of the different theology regarding angels and what the

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Bible says about angels. And that would give you another reference that I would suggest for you if you want to look into this deeper.

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Let's begin with the beginning. Angels are created beings. They're created by God. They're created during the creation week, when we don't know because Scripture doesn't tell us exactly when angels were created.

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Though it does say in Genesis chapter 2 verse 1 that by the seventh day of creation, God had created everything that exists, all the world, the earth and the heavens, and everything that is in them.

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So sometime in that creation week, when God created all things, he created angels.

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After the creation week, there was no more creation of any more angels. Creation was done after six days.

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So at some point in those first six days, angels were created. There's a verse in Job which talks about the sons of God rejoicing or singing when

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God laid the foundations of the earth. It seems to suggest that angels were there almost toward the very beginning of the creation week.

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Maybe that they were one of the first things that were created before he laid the foundations of the earth, or they were created in day one or two, very early on, and they witnessed the entire creation week as God unfolded creation before the angels.

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I would also suggest to you that Satan fell probably very soon after the creation week.

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I don't think that there was a large gap of time between the end of God creating and the fall of Satan, and thus the temptation of Adam and Eve.

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These things in Genesis seem to happen very quickly. So I think that probably very soon after the creation week, that is when

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Satan fell. And according to scripture, he took a third of the angelic hosts with him in his rebellion. The scriptures do not give a number of angels, though the words that they use to describe the angelic hosts are words like innumerable and myriad and 10 ,000 times 10 ,000.

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That's the idea. Deuteronomy 33 verse 2 says of God that he came from the midst of 10 ,000 holy ones and at his right hand there was flashing lightning for them.

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Psalm 68 verse 17, the chariots of God are myriads, thousands upon thousands, the Lord is among them at Sinai in holiness.

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Hebrews 12 verse 2 says, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to myriads of angels.

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The word myriad there literally meaning innumerable angels. So even amongst God's holy angels, it is an innumerable company.

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It is 10 ,000 times 10 ,000 and it is a numberless mass of angelic hosts that God has created.

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When Satan rebelled and when the angels rebelled, they are no longer holy angels, they are deceiving spirits and evil spirits.

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And the numbers that I gave you earlier, 213 times in the Old Testament, 176 times in the New Testament, that is not counting references to Satan or to his angelic hosts that rebelled against God.

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That's just a reference to the word angel. So there is a whole another field of study if we wanted to talk about the demonic and what demons are able to do and the influence the demons have.

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Angels are not physical beings, they are spiritual beings, they're not corporeal, meaning they don't have a body, they weren't created with a body, though when they appear in human form, they always appear as men, never as women, never as women, always as men.

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Though angels are not sexual in that they have a sexual nature or a gender in that sense, but when they appear in scripture, they appear in bodily form as men, as if they were men.

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They have the appearance of men, never the appearance of women. They can appear and disappear and do that rather quickly.

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They move quickly, they have the ability to be present and be invisible, and they have the ability to be present and be visible.

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When they're visible again, they're visible as men. We see this with Balaam. Do you remember Balaam and his donkey?

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The donkey saw the angel, but Balaam did not. He was present there. Balaam didn't see him, but the angel was present.

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We also see that with Elisha in 2 Kings chapter 6, when Elisha prays that his servant may have his eyes opened and see the chariots of the angels that were all around him at the time.

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They were there, present, and Elisha saw them and knew they were present, but the servant of Elisha did not see them.

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Angels are also personal beings, and this is kind of curious to me, and I wish I had more time to think about this and to talk about this.

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Angels have attributes of personhood that are attributed to them in Scripture. For instance, they have a will. They have an intellect.

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They are smart. They're called wise creatures. They have aspects of personality. They can converse.

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They can study the doctrines of salvation. They can learn certain things. 1 Peter describes angels longing to look into our salvation because it is a curiosity to them that God would create an order of beings lower than they, that he would then send down his son to redeem, and that God would choose, and that he would love.

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And so angels look at our salvation, and it is a curiosity to them. They're intrigued by it, and they long to look into it.

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They can worship God, sing praise, and recite God's works. Jesus speaks of the experience the angels have of joy at the thought of salvation, at the sight of one sinner coming to faith in Christ, so they experience joy.

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In other words, angels have personality. It doesn't mean that they're persons in the sense that they're human persons because God has personhood, but it means that they have an angelic personhood, and the elements and attributes of personality.

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They're not automatomic android -type robots without any personality that are just sort of cookie cutter, and every last one of them is the same.

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Angels have a unique personality. They're not spatial in that they do not have a body. They're not bound by physical space.

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They can travel very quickly. They're not omnipresent. Neither is Satan. He's not everywhere present.

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I don't know if he's here. I think he's somewhere else, probably Congress right now, but he's not here with us, and he's not omnipresent in the sense that he can be everywhere at the same time.

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Angels are glorious beings. They tend to, when you see them in Scripture, strike fear into the heart of those who see them.

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John was so overwhelmed by the angels' glory in Revelation 22 that he bowed down to worship the angel. There was something in the presence of the angel and in the soul of John that wanted to worship such a glorious being, so there is a sense in which these angels are so glorious that they want to inspire worship in us because they're so otherworldly glorious that it's almost like it sparks a desire to worship them.

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They are powerful beings. They're quick. They're strong. They possess strength on orders of magnitude above human strength.

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One angel in 2 Kings 19 destroyed an entire Assyrian army of 185 ,000 soldiers.

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One angel did that work. It gives you some idea of how strong they are. They are not to be toyed with.

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Holy angels or fallen angels are not to be toyed with. We should be stupid enough to think that we can control them by words that we say or by mantras and incantations or prayers that we pray.

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We're talking about creatures that are powerful and wise and quick and smart beyond anything we have ever experienced in this world.

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The kinds of angels in Scripture, there are four different kinds of angels mentioned. First, there's angels mentioned. Michael's called an angel.

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In fact, Michael's called an archangel, and there seems to be some sort of hierarchy amongst the angelic hosts. The Scripture hints at when it talks about different powers and authorities in the heavenly realm or in the angelic realm.

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Other than being able to say that there may be some sort of hierarchy amongst the angelic hosts, both good holy angels and fallen angels,

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I don't think that we can go beyond that. This is where people tend to go beyond Scripture and try and put together a whole hierarchy where you got angels and archangels.

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You got cherubim over here and you have chief cherubim and chief potentate cherubim and the grand poobah of all the cherubim.

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You can't get into all of these notions of having a structured hierarchy amongst the angelic realm. Is there a hierarchy?

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Yeah, probably, but we can't go beyond that with any kind of certainty. Michael is the only one who is called an archangel, and Gabriel is the only other angel that is named, though he's not called an archangel.

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Gabriel is the one who brings certain messengers. He is apparently some form of a messenger angel. Beyond those two, there are cherubim.

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The cherubim were given the task of guarding the entrance to the Garden of Eden. The cherubim are the ones who seem to be in some way connected to the throne of God, since Scripture speaks of God being enthroned on the cherubim.

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And the cherubim are the ones whose figure stands over the Ark of the Covenant. Those are the cherubim.

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Then there are seraphim. Seraphim are mentioned in Isaiah chapter 6, where they sing, holy, holy, holy is the

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Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. So we have angels, archangels, we have cherubim, we have seraphim, and then there's what are called living creatures.

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And these are mentioned twice in Scripture. Ezekiel chapter 1, there's living creatures, which look like a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle.

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And in Revelation 4 verse 8, the living creatures sing, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come.

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So those four, angels, cherubim, seraphim, and living creatures. Now, are there more than those kinds of angels?

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Are there other classifications of angels maybe that we're not told about? I kind of wonder that. Look at the variety of creatures in this realm that God has created, in this realm.

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Is it possible, this is just sanctified speculation, is it possible that the variety of heavenly creatures equals or exceeds the variety of earthly creatures that God has created?

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And that we're told about four of them. I should be curious. When we get to heaven, I think that's going to be fun to find out.

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I think it's also going to be fun to find out the different personalities that different angels have.

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And there's no verse in Scripture that says this. So again, this is my sanctified speculation. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the personality and characteristics of angels is just as varied as the personality and characteristics of the people in this room.

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There's no two people in this room that are alike. Why would I think that every angel would be exactly alike?

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Why would I not think that in heaven, there are multitudes of orders of different kinds of angels, with multitudes and orders of different kinds of personalities and character traits, all which give glory and honor to God.

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That's just my sanctified speculation. I would never suggest that we go beyond what is written, but I would be curious to find out the answer to that question.

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What are the purpose of angels? Ultimately, angels exist to carry out the will of God, both to serve his creatures, and sometimes as instruments of judgment upon his creatures.

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The angel who destroyed the Assyrian army in 2 Kings, the angels who pour out the bulls of God's wrath in the book of Revelation.

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They exist to worship and serve God, which is, by the way, the highest duty that any created creature can aspire to, is to worship and serve

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God. If God created these holy angels to worship Him, and the holy angels who worship Him fulfill the highest calling that could be given to any creature, is to glorify

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God. It's the highest calling. Now the angels, the group of angels who thought they could go beyond that and aspire to something higher, ended up ruining themselves eternally.

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Those are the fallen angels. And it is just like us, as human beings, the highest thing that we can aspire to is to worship and glorify our creator.

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That's the highest calling that is given to a human being. It's the highest calling that is given to an angel. And so, though God does not need angels to accomplish

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His will, He could do everything that He does, and has ever done, without the assistance of a single angel.

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But it is a glory to angels that God condescends to use angels in these various ways. Just as it is a glory to us that God, though He could do everything without us, condescends to use us in some way, to glorify

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His great name. It is glorifying to God, and it is an honor and a glory to the creature to be used in the creator's service.

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And ultimately, angels are creatures who are used in the creator's service, though God does not need them. It is His glory, and it is the glory of the angels that God should use them for those different various purposes.

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What is the activity of angels? Number one, they worship, and number two, they are active in ministering to the saints of God.

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There seems to be a lot of mention of angels in connection with two things in New Testament era. Number one, the ministry of the

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Lord Jesus Christ and everything that pertains to Him. And second, to the church of God's redeemed in the New Testament.

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Let me give you first a lot of the stuff that is mentioned about angels in regards to the Lord Jesus Christ and His ministry.

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Obviously, the birth of Christ was announced by angels. Remember the shepherds out in the field keeping watch over their flocks by night? Remember that?

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We sing about that every Christmas time. They announced the birth of Christ. They also ministered to and served

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Christ during His ministry here on earth, in His temptation, in the wilderness, various times.

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At the resurrection, angels were present. They were present also for the ascension when the apostles were there and they were looking up into the sky after Jesus had ascended up into heaven.

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The angels said to them, why do you stand gazing up into heaven? The same Jesus who's been taken up to you will return again in like manner. Remember?

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Go back into Jerusalem and go about the business that He sent you to go about. So they were there at the ascension of Jesus. And when

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He returns, as we saw last week, when He again brings the firstborn into the world, He will command all the angels of God to worship

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Him. So the angels will be there at the return of Christ. Second Thessalonians chapter one mentions Christ returning in flaming fire with His glorious angels.

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So they're going to come back to this earth and we shall see them. And they worship the Lord Jesus Christ. At that time, when

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Christ returns, they will gather together believers into the kingdom. They will execute God's judgment upon unbelievers and deliver them over to judgment.

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They will bind Satan and cast him into the abyss for a thousand years, Revelation 20 says. And then they will worship the

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Son at His coronation as He receives that kingdom. So when Christ assumes that throne and sets up His kingdom in Jerusalem, the angels will be present as part of that coronation service to worship

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Jesus Christ, the divine Son. In their current activities, Hebrews chapter one, verse 14 says of angels, are they not all ministering spirits sent out to render service for the sake of those who inherit salvation?

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So angels in some way minister to and serve us. And here

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I think is where people kind of get off. I can get off of the rails by going far beyond what is written.

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Let me give you some examples of what scripture says. There's caution that should be followed here.

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Remember, because Satan can appear as an angel of light. In other words, Satan can manipulate our experiences to make us think things about angels are true, when in fact they are not true.

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He can appear as an angel of light. We have to keep that in mind as people talk about experiences that they have had.

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And this is where it comes to, we have to restrict ourselves to what is revealed in scripture concerning angels' ministry to us.

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Here is what scripture describes as angelic ministries to us. And I think we'll get into this more when we get to Hebrews one, verse 14, because I'll need an excuse to make a whole sermon out of that one verse, just by the way it's looking as we're going through this.

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There are references to angels and the church of God. And here are a few of them. And I don't have scripture references for this, but I can give you the books that these are in.

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Scripture references angels in connection with the role of women and submission of women within the church and the recognition of gender distinctions within the church.

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That's first Corinthians chapter 11. Scripture references angels in connection with the leadership of the local church.

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Scripture references angels in connection with the purity of pastors. This you find in the pastoral epistles, first Timothy and second

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Timothy. Angels are in some way present and in some way connected to the corporate ministry of the saints of God, even as we worship here in this world on this side of eternity.

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And angels are observing our salvation and our sanctification and watching and rejoicing as God saves sinners.

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So those are all the ways that scripture references the work of angels some way connected with the church of God's elect is us.

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So as we gather together, somehow angels are ministering or somehow angels are connected with the leadership of the church, the worship of the church, the sanctification of the church, the evangelism of the church, and the purity of the church.

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Now do angels worship with us on a Sunday morning? I don't know that. Is it possible that there are angels present here in our body right now while I'm speaking and you're sitting here and we can't see them?

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I don't know that. It's possible. I do know the scripture connects the work and activity of angels with the role of women, the leadership of the church, the purity of the church, the evangelism of the church, the holiness of the church, and the worship of the church.

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What is that connection? What is their involvement? I don't know. Hebrews 1 says that they're ministering spirits sent out to render service for the sake of those, it's us, who will inherit salvation.

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In some way, angels serve us. And that is where we have to stop.

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Not that I'm stopping speaking, but that is where we have to stop in terms of where we go with what angels do, right?

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We can't go beyond that. All we can do is say that we know this much for sure, and anything beyond this is speculation.

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Somebody will inevitably say, well, hold on a second, Jim. I had an experience. My tire went flat when

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I'm driving down the freeway, and some guy pulled over in a white Lamborghini, and he jumped up, and he was wearing all white.

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He helped me change my tire, and he drove off, and I never saw him again. I tried to pay him, and he said something like, well, where I come from, we don't take money, and so he drove away.

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Now, was that an angel? I don't know. Maybe. Do you know that for certain?

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No, you don't know that for certain. What I do know for certain is that my experience and the things that happen to me are no certain test of truth.

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They're no certain ground for truth. My experience, my emotions, and my perception of reality is the most easily manipulated thing on the face of the planet, so I cannot build any kind of doctrine upon an experience, or a missionary story, or an anecdote, or the tale of somebody who saw an angel, or was ministered to in some way by an angel.

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We tend to take these things which seem like extraordinary providences of God, and we want to say, well, that's the work of an angel, and I think it's very possible that when we get to heaven, we're going to look back upon the things that we thought were angelic encounters, and no, it wasn't an angelic encounter.

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That was Joe. He lived in Des Moines, and we're going to look upon things that we had no idea was the supernatural providence of God, and we're going to say, wow, that was an angel doing that, orchestrating all of that?

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That was an angel serving me at that time? That God used the angel to do that? And until we get to heaven, and we actually can see and discern those things, we are best left to just say, we don't know.

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Other than what Scripture says, we know what the role of angels is. Here's what we know about angels. They are examples to us that we should worship and faithfully serve our creator.

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That's what angels do. Their reality and their ministry is exposed to us, revealed to us, so that we might follow their example in those two things, and that we might appreciate

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God for using angelic creatures in some way to serve and minister to the church of His elect.

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And then we give God praise for that. But we cannot fashion a doctrine of angels on something other than Scripture.

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John Owen says this, and this was poignant, and I think he's true here. Listen. John Owen, and he's a

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Puritan, which is why it's going to sound like it's about to sound. John Owen says, while men indulge to their own imaginations and fancies, as too many in this matter have been apt to do, it is sad to consider how they have wandered up and down, and with what fond conceits they have deceived themselves and others.

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The world has been filled with monstrous opinions and doctrines about angels, their nature, offices, and employments.

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Some have worshiped them. Others pretend I know not what kind of communion and intercourse with them, in all which conceits there has been little of truth and nothing at all of certainty."

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Now what is he saying? Men have all kinds of fanciful notions about angels. They pretend to have had conversations with angels.

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They pretend to have had experiences with angels, and they build doctrines upon those experiences and those conversations.

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They build their theology upon those things, and in those teachings there is little of truth and a whole lot of error.

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And the same is true in our day. 400 years after Owen wrote that, the same is true in our day. What do we know about angels?

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They're angelic beings. They're created to serve us, to worship and glorify

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God, and we can follow their example in faithfully worshiping and serving our creator, just as the angels do.

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That is what we should learn from angels. Faithfully serve and worship our creators, just as the angels do.

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Jesus Christ is not an angel. He is the one whom the angels worship. He is the one whom the angels serve.

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And so in worshiping and serving the Lord Jesus Christ, we join with God's company of angelic and heavenly hosts and faithfully worship and serve him.

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Let's bow our heads. Our Father, we are so thankful that you have revealed these things to us in your word, and we pray that you would keep us and guard us from making more of doctrines of angels and things in the unseen world than we have reason to from your word.

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We pray that we would ground all of our thinking about these things upon the truth of scripture and let that be our guide, and to be very cautious about going beyond that, to never go beyond that.

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We want to honor and serve the Lord Jesus Christ, and to worship him with full and adoring hearts, that he might be honored by his people and receive the reward for all that he has done for his church.

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We're thankful that we have been included in that number. We pray that you'd glorify your name amongst us, your people, just as you do amongst the angelic hosts.