Sermon on Angels 29-09-2013
Story: Marie Monsen was born 1878 in Sandviken, Norway and died in 1962.
She was a Norwegian missionary active in North and Central China between 1901 and 1932.
One night, bandits surrounded the mission compound in the city where she was staying. There were hundreds of women and children in the compound.
Miss Monsen had gone down with malaria the night before and she was being plagued by such questions as:
What will you do when the looters come here? When the firing begins on the compound what about those promises you have been trusting in?
She replied: “Lord I have been teaching these young people all these years that your promises are true and if they fail now my mouth will be closed forever. I must then go home.”
She was up all through the night ministering to the frightened refugees and encouraging them to pray and trust in God to deliver them.
Though horrible things happened outside the compound, the bandits left the mission compound alone
In the morning three different families from the neighbourhood asked
“Who were those four people three sitting and one standing who watched from the top of your house all night long”
When she told them that no one had been on the house top, they didn’t believe her. “We saw them with our own eyes”
She then told them that God still sends his angels to guard his children in their hour of danger.
In Matthew 18:10 Jesus speaks of guardian angels when he says,
“See that you never despise any of these little ones, for I tell you that their angels in heaven are continually in the presence of my Father in heaven.”
Jesus certainly believed in Angels as he mentioned them in his teaching. See Luke 20:36, Mt 22:30, Lk 15:10 to name a few and of course our Gospel reading
I wonder what image the word angel conjures up for you?
Do you think of:
1. Some make believe figure in the same league as Father Christmas – a figure hung up on a tree at Christmas to make it pretty.
2. Or do you think of the angels who announced Jesus’ birth to the Shepherds, or
3. Or if you know your Bible more deeply you might think on the angel sent by God to warn Joseph to flee with the Holy Family to Egypt.
But I guess whatever you think about angels, you are unlikely to think of angels having any effect on you personally.
Did you know that angels are mentioned over 300 times in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation
So what or who are angels
Billy Graham in his book simply entitled Angels says this:
“…angels are created spirit beings who can become visible when necessary” (p.36)
Dr Graham tells us that their role is to
“serve God and Regenerate Man” (p.31)
The book of Hebrews tells us that
5-9 God didn’t put angels in charge of this business of salvation that we’re dealing with here. It says in Scripture,
What is man and woman that you bother with them;
why take a second look their way?
You made them not quite as high as angels,
bright with Eden’s dawn light;
Then you put them in charge
of your entire handcrafted world.
When God put them in charge of everything, nothing was excluded. But we don’t see it yet, don’t see everything under human jurisdiction. What we do see is Jesus, made “not quite as high as angels,” and then, through the experience of death, crowned so much higher than any angel, with a glory “bright with Eden’s dawn light.” In that death, by God’s grace, he fully experienced death in every person’s place. (Hebrews 2:5-9)
The Bible tells us that there are good and evil angels
We are told of the names of just three angels in the Bible
Two of God’s angels in the Bible are:
1. The Archangel Michael, mentioned in our reading from the book of Daniel this morning and
2. Gabriel God’s messenger angel who was sent to announce things such as Jesus’ birth
Interestingly the word “El” is the Hebrew word for God, as we find for example in El Shaddai
And we find this name of God “El” in the two Holy Angels mentioned in the Bible
GabriEL means “God is my strength”
MichaEL means “Who is like God”
Even the English word Angel has El the Hebrew word for God in the word.
However there is a third angel mentioned in the Bible – with no -el in his name.
Lucifer – also known as the Morning Star in the Bible the archangel who rebelled against God. We know him better as satan.
From Jude we gather Lucifer was an Archangel but because of his pride he fell from grace.
Lucifer is described in Ezekiel 28 as follows:
12 “………….“‘You were the seal of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
15 You were blameless in your ways
from the day you were created
till wickedness was found in you.
16 Through your widespread trade
you were filled with violence,
and you sinned.
So I drove you in disgrace from the mount of God,
and I expelled you, guardian cherub,
from among the fiery stones.
17 Your heart became proud
on account of your beauty,
and you corrupted your wisdom
because of your splendour.
This is what God has revealed to us through Isaiah about Lucifer, the fallen angel
12 How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
13 You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly,
on the utmost heights of Mount Zaphon.
14 I will ascend above the tops of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.”
15 But you are brought down to the realm of the dead,
to the depths of the pit. (Isaiah 14:12-15)
It was pride that brought Lucifer down and it is a stark reminder to us to be wary of pride in ourselves.
Many a Christian has fallen from grace through pride.
Lucifer wanted Supreme authority
We read how God revealed Lucifer’s heart when Lucifer said
“I will ascend into heaven” and
“I will exalt my throne above the stars of God” (Isaiah 14: 13)
Lucifer tried it on with Jesus in the temptations in Lk 4.
5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendour; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.”
8 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
The danger for us as Christians is that we can get so engrossed in “doing God’s work” that we lose the focus that we are servants of God.
We can slip into thinking it is “our church” not in the sense that we belong to the Church under God but that we will rule over it.
Perhaps Jesus’ own words are a good focus for us when we work for God
7 “Suppose one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? 8 Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? 9 Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? 10 So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’” (Lk 17:7)
If we are careful to remember that God is on the throne of our lives and in his Church, then we will be taking the Feast of St Michael and all Angels seriously.
The Holy Angels – Michael and Gabriel served and still serve our God.
The other Biblically revealed orders of angels the Cherubim and the Seraphim are there to promote the glory of God.
We too as Christians are called to serve God too and not ourselves
It is easy to think of the Church as our Church especially when we have done a lot towards the maintenance and upkeep of the building.
It is easy to seek the Glory just as Lucifer – satan did and fell.
The challenge of the Feast of St Michael and All Angels is to remain humble in the service of God remembering Christ as our role model
St Paul wrote in Philippians 2
“Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!” Philippians 2:5-8
Jesus stepped down from heaven. But when He did so, He stripped Himself of His immortality and put on mortality. He set aside His Godhood and took on manhood. And He did all this so that He could die on the cross to forgive us of our sins.
For the day the church becomes OUR Church - in the sense that we rule over what happens - is the day it ceases to be God’s Church.
For Pride was the fall of the third Angel – Lucifer.
