The Bible talks about Angels, but how much do we really know about them?
Handout | PowerPoint | Transcript
Good morning, everybody. I have a confession to make. You’re not getting to lunch on time today. I started this when I wanted to talk about angels because angels were showing up in my feed and my ads just seemed like it was all around. I said, let’s do a sermon on angels. I said, we don’t know very much about angels. It’ll be easy to cover this in one week. And I started working on this and working on this. I’ve been working on this sermon for about four weeks now. By the time I got done, I had a thesis on angels. We could have done four, six, eight weeks about angels. And now I’m trying to squeeze it all into one week. And so I’m throwing out a bunch of stuff. But we’re still probably going to go a little long. So if you have to leave early, that’s okay. We won’t be too late. But we will be a little long today.
And like I said, I thought that we would cover everything we could cover about angels. But what we know about angels comes in bits and pieces through the Bible. A little bit here, a little bit there, a little bit there’s no like angel chapter you can turn to and learn all about angels. So as we go through this, it’s going to seem a little haphazard maybe. Because the stuff is spread everywhere in the Bible. Also, I couldn’t give you all the Bible text on your notes because Linda said it wasn’t a good idea to print a book to give you. So. No, she didn’t say that, but she would have if I had asked her. But what you will be able to do is we’ll have a transcript up later this week on our website. So if you want all these Bible verses, you can go get them off the transcript. They will all be there. I want you to double check my work. Okay? So look them up, double check, make sure I’m telling you the truth because I got an ad this week from a spiritual advisor. I don’t know what that means in the UK who’s written a book about angels and supposedly he’s an expert about angels. And one of the things this ad said was if you find a feather, especially indoors, it means your guardian angel has been there. So I’m inviting you all to my house because we find feathers all the time because we have birds and so, you know there’s a feather every day. So there’s lots of angel activity at my house. If you ever feel like your angel’s not close you can come over to our house and find a feather. I’m not so sure it works that way. I don’t know about you, but I’m not so sure that’s necessarily accurate. We see lots of that.
And so it’s important for us to understand what the Bible does say and what the Bible does teach us about angels. And it’s. It’s only a sliver of information. There’s more that we don’t know than we do know. But we’re going to try and cover that today and see where we get. And I’m going to try and stick to mostly what’s in the Bible. I think there’s two exceptions, and I’ll point those out. And when I say Bible, I mean the Protestant Bible, because the Catholic Bible has a few extra books and it’s got some stuff in it that’s not in ours. The Jewish Old Testament have some. Few things in it that’s not in ours. And they talk about angels, but that’s not in our Protestant Bible. So we’re sticking to what’s in the Protestant Bible today. Okay. All right, let’s go.
First thing I want you to do, and this is dangerous, close your eyes. Don’t fall asleep. Just close your eyes. We’re gonna use our imagination for just a second. So close your eyes and imagine you’re in heaven. It’s the first full day of being in heaven. Yesterday, Jesus came. We got to heaven in the middle of the day. Man, what a crazy day that was. Today you woke up, it’s your first day in heaven. And you’re gonna just take a walk and see what you can see. Explore a little bit. And you find this meadow, and you start walking through this meadow and it’s an amazing, amazing day. The grass is soft. The sky is a color blue you’ve never seen before. The temperature is perfect. And you come up to this fruit tree, and you’re looking at this fruit tree, and it has multiple kinds of fruit on it. You’ve never seen any of them. So you’re trying to decide which one to pick, which one to try. As you kind of walk around the tree, looking at, you bump into somebody and just back up and look, and it’s an angel. Stop right there. Look at that angel. What do they look like? They have long hair, short hair? Do they have wings. What do the wings look like? What are they covered in? What do their clothes look like? White? Some other color? Is it a tunic or a robe? Pants and Shirt? Is it long? Does the tunic or robe go to their knees and the floor? Do they have something on their feet? Are they wearing Nikes? Do they have on sandals? Are they barefoot? What does that angel look like? Open your eyes. How many of you saw an angel that’s dressed in white with a robe to the floor, with wings, with feathers on them? Only a couple of us. Only a few of us are brave enough to say you saw something else. Oh, yours didn’t have wings, okay? Because that’s what we see in our artwork. That’s what’s in our media, that’s what’s in the pictures, that’s what’s in the movies. That’s what’s in the books. If we had done this exercise during the Renaissance, we would have all pictured a little baby cherub with his cute little chubby baby cheeks flying around. And if you look at paintings from the Renaissance, these little cherubs are all over the top of the thing. They’re angels. That’s what they believed angels look like. I don’t know why it doesn’t say that anywhere in the Bible that I can find. But that’s what they believed. Okay? That’s kind of what we now call St. Valentine’s you know, you fall in love when he hits you with this little arrow. Because nobody wants to see a nine foot angel pulling back on a longbow and hitting you. That kills you, right? That doesn’t make you fall in love. So everybody’s got this little angel, but that’s not what the Bible says.
All right, so we can’t put all this in your notes. We got some things in your notes. So get your notes out and let’s go. How do we get started on these angels? The word angel means messenger. That’s what this word means. It’s a messenger. And we often use this word to kind of reflect every single person or being that lives in heaven. And that’s probably incorrect.
For example, the Bible says in Revelation 4:6-8, it talks about the four living creatures around the throne. And they were covered with eyes front and back. And the first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had the face of a man, and the fourth was a flying eagle. And each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings, day and night. They never stopped saying, holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is to come. We sing that song here because it comes from the Bible. That’s what they sing around God’s throne. Okay, but these are creatures, they’re not angels. The Bible doesn’t call them angels. They’re living creatures. And so there’s this differentiation between angels and heavenly beings.
And then even within the angels, there’s some differentiation we could do. But we kind of use angel to be everything, all encompasses that lives in heaven. And I may slip up and do that. Please, Grace, I’m learning too. Okay, so we’re going to talk a little bit more about that.
Where’s the first time in the Bible we see an angel? That’s Genesis 3, right? In the garden. We’re familiar with this story, right? Eve comes across the serpent in the tree. Who’s the serpent? The devil. An angel, a fallen angel has taken the form of a serpent. He convinces Eve to do something she’s not supposed to do, and he convinces Adam to do without ever even talking to Adam. Adam was such a pushover, he just followed Eve. Okay, and so we have this, this case of this angel. And what do we learn from this? Angels are shape shifters, right? If you watch sci fi, you know what a shape shifter is. These are the creatures that can take different forms and shapes. And angels apparently can do this. Now, we don’t really know what extent they can do it, but we have an example of them being a snake. We have lots of examples of them showing up looking like humans. So we know there’s at least some ability for them to take on other forms. Could they show up as a piece of plywood? I don’t know. We don’t have any cases of that happening. But they can take different forms to some degree.
Okay, Hebrews 13, as you see up there in verse two, tells us, don’t forget to show hospitality to strangers. For by doing so, some have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Right? They’re angels and we don’t even know it. We see Abraham deals with angels that he doesn’t recognize immediately. Lot deals with angels he doesn’t recognize immediately. Joshua. A lot of people in the Bible have this happen to him. Jacob.
Okay, so we have this ability to change shape, and sometimes they can even be seen by some people and not other people. Remember the story of Balaam, when he’s going out, he’s been hired to curse Israel. He goes out and the angel blocks his way. Who can see the angel? The donkey can see the angel, Balaam can’t. Until Balaam’s eyes are open so they can make themselves be partially visible and partially invisible. It happens also with Elisha when they’re surrounded by the army. And his attendant is worried and says, we’re going to die. Elisha says, God, open his eyes, Let him see. Then he sees two armies, the enemy army and God’s army. Right? Elisha could see him. The attendants couldn’t. Okay, so that’s a pretty cool trick. It’s one thing to be invisible. It’s another thing to say, well, I’m going to be invisible to some people and visible to others. I mean, that’s like next level cool right there. Okay?
And I want to give you something to consider here real quick. If angels can take different forms, I want you to consider this. The Bible doesn’t say this, but consider that this might be a possibility. When you see something that seems to violate what you know about the world and the universe based on what God says, maybe that’s a bad actor trying to trip you up. When you hear somebody talk about a ghost or something, you say, well, there aren’t no ghosts. Dead people know not anything. Right? That’s what the Bible says. They say, well, I saw it. Maybe that’s a bad actor trying to convince somebody, trying to trip somebody up. People talk about little green and blue men in spaceships. If that doesn’t jive with your view of what God did in the universe and how people live, maybe that’s a bad actor. Right? So consider that. Right? It happened to Eve, it could happen to us. Okay?
Now, at the bottom of Genesis, chapter three. And Gustavo, we read this today in Sabbath school. After they sin, God kicks them out of the garden. And what does he put at the gate of the garden? [angel] No, he doesn’t. Open your bibles. Genesis, chapter 3. Genesis, chapter 3, verse 24. Genesis, chapter 3, verse 24. And I didn’t look this up in every single version, but I looked it up in quite a few, and they all use the same word. And it’s not angel. Cherubim. He put a cherubim at the gate with a flaming flashing sword, right? So there must be a difference between an angel and a cherubim, okay? It doesn’t say angel. It says cherubim. Okay? So we have our first kind of class of angels, these cherubims. We don’t know a lot about cherubims. We do know a little bit about them.
And by the way, this is where I can go off track on questions, because I have questions. This engineer brain doesn’t turn off, okay? And I don’t have questions of belief. I believe God put a cherubim with the flaming sword. There’s the questions I have is, where did he get a sword from? Are there angels in heaven mining ore and taking it to a steel mill and processing it and beating out swords and sharpening them and smoke billowing into the sky? That doesn’t seem right. So where does he get a sword from? Maybe God speaks it into existence. Maybe the angel can speak it into existence. Angels have great power. I don’t think they can create life, but maybe they can create swords. If they’re shape shifters, maybe they’re like the T3000 in the Terminator movies and the end of his arm just turns into a sword. One Terminator fan here with me. The rest of you haven’t seen the movies. A couple more. A couple more now are admitting it, right? That’s a possibility. We don’t know. But now that he’s got a sword, why does that look scary to Adam and Eve? They’ve never seen a sword. What do you do with a sword? How do I know that’s a dangerous thing? That could be just for making great cooked vegetables on. I don’t know. Okay, so lots of questions that we don’t have the answers to. And I could go on like that all day, but that just gives you an idea of why I don’t sleep at night sometimes.
Okay, so we have this cherubim at the gate. And we don’t know a lot about cherubims, but Ezekiel 10 and Revelation 4:6-8 talk about them a little bit. They’re depicted as guardians. They guard the gate to Eden. God doesn’t want Adam and Eve, after they sinned, to eat from the tree of life and live forever. Okay. So he puts a cherubim there to guard the way. They’re depicted as guarding God’s throne when they build the Ark of the Covenant later on. What do they put on the top? Two cherubims! I would have sworn the Bible said two angels. And I looked it up. It doesn’t. It’s two cherubims guarding the Ten Commandments and the things that are in there and guarding God’s presence. So these cherubim are associated with God’s presence and God’s holiness and guarding the way to it. There’s a lot of symbolism associated with that, of the glory and the power and the majesty of God. Okay. And we don’t know a lot about it, but that’s kind of what we do know.
A little bit later, we come across the story in Joshua. I think it’s Joshua 5. Joshua has just taken over for Moses. Moses Passed away. Joshua’s getting ready to lead the Israelites into the promised land. And what city is there first? Jericho. Right. Remember Jericho? They got a march around Jericho seven times. Remember that? An angel came and told him how to do that. Yeah. So in Joshua 5, Joshua’s out and about, and it says he sees a man with a drawn sword. And he walks up to the man, and I’m like, you’re crazy. Because if I see somebody with a drawn sword, I’ll stay back here and talk to you. Right? But he walks up to him and he says, are you for us or are you against us? And the man says, neither. I am the commander of the Lord’s army, and I am here now. And Joshua falls down in reverence. Not worship, but reverence. And he tells him how to be Jericho, right? What to do. But that’s interesting, because the commander of the Lord’s army shows up. He looks like a man. He doesn’t look like an amazing angel with wings. And he’s a guy. He’s a regular dude. Okay, if the commander of the army shows up, what does that mean? In heaven there’s an army? Right. There’s an army of angels in heaven. There’s warrior angels in heaven. I got questions. Who are they fighting? They’ve already kicked the devil out. Don’t you disband the army after that? There’s a lot of questions we don’t know. And the Bible never mentions the warrior angels, but we know they’re there because.
Also in Matthew 26:53, Jesus says, During his trial, do you think I cannot call on my Father? And he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels? Anybody remember how much a legion is? 6,000 men? 6,000 times 12. 72,000 warrior angels. I’m thinking, I don’t want to deal with 72,000. I don’t want to deal with one Warrior Angel. I certainly don’t want to deal with 72,000. More than 72,000. So we know that this commander has at least 72,000 Warrior Angels. Okay. It’s a big army. That’s a big army.
Let’s talk about exactly what are some of the types of angels we know.
The first one is the ophanim, and that word is not in your Bible. I told you I would tell you when we were hearing something that wasn’t in your Bible. That ophanim word is not in the Bible. It means wheels. And this word comes from Jewish writing. And most theologians will use this when referring to it. And Ezekiel and Revelation both talk about the ophanim and the wheels. And there it’s a wheel going this way and a wheel going this way. And they intersect and they’re covered in eyes and they can rotate but never turn. They’re not like your front tires of your car that change direction, but they can rotate. This wheel rotates. You go forward and back. This wheel rotates. You go side to side, and with that you can go anywhere. Right? You don’t need to turn to go directions. And they’re associated with God and around God. And when we talk about these, it comes out kind of creepy. There’s just no way to say it, right?
And Ezekiel 1:15-17 talks about it. It says, now, as I looked at the living creatures, behold, the wheel was on the earth beside them, which had four faces. The appearance of the wheels and their workings was that of the color beryl. And all four had the same likeness. The appearance of the workings was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel. And they moved. They went forward any one of the four directions, and they did not turn side to side when they went. Okay, and when you look at artwork of these, when people try and think what they look like, what do they do? They draw some wheels and they take a human eye and they photoshop it and they put it all over the wheel and it looks goofy. Because what makes you think these creatures have an eye that looks like yours and mine, right? It’s a wheel. It’s got a different kind of eye on it. Flies have thousands of eyes. They don’t look goofy. Spiders have multiple eyes. Some of you are like, okay, I don’t like spiders. But it’s not because they have multiple eyes, right? So they must have some kind eye that looks ok. I don’t think Jesus or God makes creepy looking creatures in heaven. They’re different. They’re wildly unique for us, but they’re not creepy.
Okay, so we have these wheels, and they’re associated with God’s presence and his throne. And they seem to move where God moves. We don’t know much about them other than they’re there.
Next we have the seraphim. And the seraphim declare God’s glory. Isaiah 6:2 says, above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings, and with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. We’re familiar with these seraphim. And they fly around. They. They are around God’s glory. Wherever the wheels go, the seraphim goes. And they stay around God and they declare his. His glory. And his majesty and his power. We don’t know much about them either.
We get back to the cherubim, the cherubim or guardians. We talked about them a little bit, and they actually seem to be kind of hybrids of animals and humans. They’ve got a face like a lion and a man. And we get a little bit different descriptions of them in the Bible. In one place it describes them as having four faces. In another place it describes four beings. In one place they have four wings. At one place they have six wings. So there’s some variation there. It’s not clear that those are the same creatures. Maybe they are, maybe they’re not. It’s not really clear. But there’s these cherubim going around, but they always have a human face, a lion face, an ox face, and an eagle face. It’s not clear. Is that one head with four faces on it? Is that four heads? I don’t know. But if this thing showed up to you face to face, we’d probably pass out, right? Hence they can show up looking like humans and not just scare us to death. Right.
Then we have angels, the messengers. And this word is Malakh, and that’s the original word. And it means what we derive our word angel from. And it means messenger. And we see the messengers show up a lot. There’s so many in the Bible. Gabriel shows up to Mary and Joseph and John the Baptist. The messengers show up to tell the shepherds that the baby’s been born. The mess shows up to help Peter get out of prison. So many times in the Old Testament, these angels show up and they’re messengers.
The best description we have is from Daniel, Daniel chapter 10:5-6. And Daniel says, I lifted up my eyes and I looked and behold a man. So he’s. He’s taken the form of a man clothed in linen with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz, was about his waist. His body was like beryl. Remember, the wheels were like beryl. His body was like beryl. His face had the appearance of lightning. His eyes were flaming torches. His arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze. And the sound of his words was like a multitude. This is an impressive man, right? This isn’t enough to make you stand up and notice. And I got to wonder, what does this beryl look like? And beryl it’s a precious stone. And in its perfect form, it’s translucent. But it’s rarely ever found that way. Usually has impurities in it that would make it blue or green or yellow, sometimes kind of mostly bluish. And greens kind of mixed together. So he has a body that’s kind of this bluish green. And his arms and his legs are like burnished bronze. Lightning and torches. His voice sounds like a multitude. Can you imagine seeing that? No wonder Daniel says I was weak, right? I didn’t know what to do.
Okay, so these messengers, there’s a great story that we sometimes forget about in Judges 13. And this is when the angel comes to tell Samson’s parents that Samson is going to be born. Remember, Samson is a judge who rules before the kings. Strong man, long hair, right? Remember the story of Samson. And an angel comes and tells the wife, you’re going to have this special kid and he’s going to be a Nazarene. You’re going to treat him specially. And she goes home and tells her husband and her husband says, we need the angel to come back and tell us how to do this. He doesn’t doubt. He believes, but he has questions, right? He doesn’t doubt, but he has questions. And the angel does come back and he talks to him and they say, what’s your name? And he says, it’s beyond understanding. As they’re done, they say, let us make a burnt offering for God. And they make a burnt offering for God and the angel disappears in the flames and the smoke and goes up to heaven. That’s pretty cool. And you know what the husband says? We’re going to die. We are in so much trouble. We are going to die. We’ve seen the glory of God. And I just imagine his wife going, you idiot, we’re not going to die. Why would he come and tell us we’re going to have a kid and kill us. We’re not going to die. And the Bible doesn’t say this, but it had to happen this way. As they turn and walk for home, him going, we’re in so much trouble. Would you just stop it, ya big goober? We’re not going to die. And I’ll go home and I’ll make you something to eat. We’re in trouble. Just stop it. And they walk it home, right? It had to happen that way. It just had to.
And so we have these messengers, we have the warrior angels. We know absolutely nothing about the warrior angels except they exist. Jesus says I can call them. That’s what we know about them.
Lastly, we have the archangel. And this appears to be a high ranking angel. And this again is a place where our Bible is different than the Catholic Bible and the Jewish writings. Because in those Bibles there’s other beings that they talk about, I think the Jewish talk about seven archangels. I think the Catholics talk about 12. Our Bible talks about one, Michael. And Michael has so much power and so much authority that there’s theologians that believe this is Jesus, okay, before Jesus is born, this is Jesus pre incarnate. And that he has such power, I tend not to believe that because there’s one line that says one of the archangels. And Jesus is not one of the archangels. Jesus is so unique. He is God and that’s it. And so that’s what I believe. Other people, if you go out and Google this, believe differently. But Michael does have some amazing powers. He’s the one that comes down and frees up Gabriel when he’s held up in a spiritual battle by the Prince of Persia, whoever that is [Daniel 10]. And he can’t get through to Daniel because Gabriel is a messenger angel. If the Prince of Persia is a warrior angel, the messenger can’t get past the warrior, right? So God says enough is enough, and he sends Michael and Michael takes care of business. In Daniel 12, Michael protects the entire Israel nation from spiritual attack. One angel protects the entire nation. He has great power. He also shows up in Jude chapter one, verse nine, where he is contending with Lucifer for Moses’s body after Moses dies. And we don’t have a lot of information here, but we kind of suppose that Lucifer. [thunder booms] Wow, real weather. We don’t have a lot of information here, but we suppose that Lucifer is trying to make Moses grave known, right? Moses was buried by angels in the hills, so nobody would know where he was going. So it wouldn’t be a place to trip people up. People wouldn’t go there to pay homage to Moses and worship, right? So they wanted that to be secret. We surmise that maybe Lucifer didn’t want that. He wanted the body to make it well known. And God sends Michael to deal with him. Lucifer tries to trick Michael into blasphemy. And all Michael says is God will deal with you and he must win the battle because we know Moses is in heaven because Moses shows up on the transfiguration with Jesus. So Moses is granted life after death because Michael won that battle. So we don’t know a lot there either. But these archangels exist.
The other thing you should know, in the Bible, angels are always referred to as males. There are no female angels described in our Bible. Now if you go Google images of angels, you’ll see a whole bunch of female angels, but I can’t find that in the Bible. Now I also know that Old English used he and him could mean either guys or girls, right? But there’s no description of female angels. Theologians have said in Genesis 3 again it says Eve was the mother of all living things. Angels didn’t come from Eve. They’re created by God. Angels are not created in God’s image. We are! That’s why they’re wheels and animals and all kinds of other things. Because they’re not necessarily created in God’s image, we are. Okay, so there may be female angels, but it’s not in the Bible.
Okay, now there’s one left. Really hard one man, I’m trying to hurry, I really am. There’s one left that’s really hard and that’s the angel of the Lord. How many times in the Bible do you see, the angel of the Lord came into this. The angel of the Lord came into. Seems like hundreds of times. And I always thought that the angel of the Lord was like some random angel. Hey Steve, go do that. Hey Bob, go do that. Hey Joe, why don’t you go take care of, you know. And it was just some random angel, an angel of the Lord. But sometimes it doesn’t appear to be that. It appears to be much more than that. Two great examples are the burning bush. And the other one is the story of Gideon.
In the burning bush, remember this? [Exodus 3:1-6], Moses sees a burning bush and doesn’t get consumed. And he says, let’s go see it. Well, the Bible says an angel of the Lord went into the bush. Moses sees it and goes over. When he comes over, it says the Lord said to him, wait, is it an angel or is it the Lord? And later, you know, in the burning bush, he says, I am God. Now wait a minute, is it an angel? Is it the Lord? or is it God? It’s very unclear what’s going on here.
Same thing happens in Gideon when he’s hiding from the army. An angel comes and sits under the oak tree and he starts interacting with him [Judges 6:11-23]. And then it says the Lord said to him, and the Lord answered him. And you’re like, was it an angel or is it the Lord? We don’t know. It doesn’t say. Does God have such a great connection with the angels that he can speak directly through them? Maybe. Is the angel of the Lord more than an angel? Is it really the Lord pre-incarnate showing up? There’s a lot of people that believe that’s probably true. So sometimes when you see an angel of the Lord, it is an angel. And sometimes when you see an angel of the Lord, it’s more than that. So you’ve got to read very carefully and determine what’s going on there. It can be kind of confusing and tricky. Personally, I think sometimes it is the Lord or Jesus showing up.
One last thing. How many of you believe that you have a personal guardian angel? Let me see your hands. Your homework is to go home and find me that verse in the Bible. I can’t find it. How many of you were taught that not only do you have a personal guardian angel, but if you go somewhere, you know, bad, the angel won’t go with you, Right? They stay on the sidewalk outside. And if something happens to you while you’re in this bad place, just too bad for you, buddy. Anybody have that besides me? Nobody’s brave. Oh, I see a few hands. Okay. A few of you. I can’t find this anywhere in the Bible. Nowhere. Now, the Bible does say that he’s given his angels charge over us to care for us [Psalm 91:11-12]. It does say that the ones who guard us see God’s face [Matthew 18:10], which makes me believe I don’t have a personal angel. Because if he goes to see God’s face, who’s guarding me, right? It’s probably, if you’re a sports fan, kind of like basketball or football, they’re playing zone defense, right? And there’s one angel for an area or a group or a family or something. We see Michael guards the entire nation. Okay. And so I don’t know that we have each a unique personal angel. I can’t find that in the Bible. If you can find it, I’d love to see it.
We know angels are here. Angels do minister and protect us. But a personal. Each of us have one that’s harder to prove in the bible. Okay, Matthew 9. Sorry, Psalms 91:11-12 talks about that. And Matthew 18:10 talks about the angels of believers in heaven see the face of God. Okay. All right.
Why does all this matter? Why do we do all this? It’s important to know what angels do because there’s a lot of people out there trying to trick you up and sell books to you about finding feathers means you’re guarding angels around, and that’s not what the Bible says. Okay. And so I want to end this real quick with some of the things angels do. We can’t talk about this. We’re not going to be able to cover all of these verses. I’m putting them up here. You can get them off the PowerPoint on our website later or out of this other thing, out of the transcript. You’ll be able to see them but let’s go through these pretty quick.
They praise God (Psalm 148:1-2; Isaiah 6:3).
They worship God (Hebrews 1:6; Revelation 5:8-13).
They rejoice in what God does (Job 38:6-7).
They serve God (Psalm 103:20; Revelation 22:9).
They appear before God (Job 1:6; 2:1).
They are instruments of God’s judgments (Revelation 7:1; 8:2).
They bring answers to prayer (Acts 12:5-10).
They aid in winning people to Christ (Acts 8:26; 10:3).
They observe Christian order, work, and suffering (1 Corinthians 4:9; 11:10; Ephesians 3:10; 1 Peter 1:12).
They encourage in times of danger (Acts 27:23-24).
They comfort and minister (Matthew 4:11, Luke 22:43).
And this is just some of the things that angels do. Now, I want you to go get either the PowerPoint slides or go get this transcript. Check my work. Make sure I’m telling you the truth, okay? Because it’s important that we know the truth and know what the Bible says. Okay?
Reflection. Does your view and understanding of angels reflect what the Bible says or what you see in culture?
And your challenge. Besides the guardian angel thing, spend some time studying the roles of angels in the Bible. Their instant, unquestioning obedience to God is a powerful model for us.
Angels are different than us. At no time will we ever become angels. We are not going to go to heaven and be angels. Angels are created by God. We are not created by God. Now, we may have some of the same characteristics of angels. And I hope I get a set of wings. And if I do get a set of wings, don’t even look for me for like the first thousand years in heaven, because I’m just testing those wings to the max. How fast can we go? How low can we go? How fast can we turn? Can we do backflips? Can we do front flips? I mean, Every once in a while you’re just going to see a streak go by and “there he goes again. He’ll calm down eventually.” Okay, that’s me. Okay? And I hope that that [I’ll have wings.]
We look forward to some of those things and we’ll have some of these characteristics, but we won’t be angels. Just like we’re not the living creatures and angels aren’t the living creatures that are different. And it’s important that we know that because society tells you you’re going to die and become an angel. No, you’re not. It’s not what the Bible teaches us. All right? So check my work. Let me know if you find something different. Because man, I’m still learning. And we may visit this topic again somewhere in the future because we didn’t get through it all even though we went way long. I’m sorry.
All right, let’s bow our heads. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for what we learn about angels, Lord, even though it’s such just a sliver and there’s so much we don’t know and don’t understand, we appreciate the glimpse behind the curtain that we get, Lord, because it encourages us, it helps us to understand. And even though there still can be questions and we still can wonder about things, Lord, it gives us hope and faith and helps us keep going, Lord. Thank you so much for that, Lord. Help us to have that same immediate, unquestioning faith and obedience to your will be with us this upcoming week, Lord. Make us aware to the spiritual battles going on around us so we may see that you are still active in the world and in our lives. Be with us now in Jesus name. Amen.