Sermon by Noel K. Anderson First Presbyterian Church of Upland July 24, 2022
Opening: Welcome to our Church
I know that’s a strange place to do a “welcome to our church” video, and we’ve shown that before, but there is something so right about it—the idea that in welcoming people to church, we’re not looking for righteous people; in fact, we kind of ought to prefer sinners. Like us.
What keeps new folks out of the church is not that they feel high and mighty—above it all—but rather that they feel unworthy. Like people who have been walking with God for many years will embarrass them. I pray it isn’t so.
The great problem—the greatest evil of the church—is false righteousness—shallow, skin-deep righteousness—which is visible, showy, and always tends toward hypocrisy and Pharisaism. Shallow righteousness is the enemy of true faith.
Jesus had a lot of trouble with the Holy Ones, the righteous ones who spent all their time in fault-finding. And let’s face it: fault-finding other human beings is an easy task: people are easy targets because all sin and fall short of righteousness. We do best to know ourselves as broken, incomplete sinners who hunger for the grace of God and pray for forgiveness at every opportunity.
The big problem is that you can’t do anything for righteous people. They are difficult-to-impossible to help. But sinners? Broken people? Honest strugglers seeking the power and presence of God to get them through? They are a joy to serve, and God grows them into grace, abundance, and greater joy.
Let’s be that church of flawed people who can love one another through the flaws. Let love be our righteousness, and leave the judgment of others to God.
Our text today is about angels in part. The greater lesson is that God loves us more than we can possible imagine.
TEXT: Hebrews 1: 1-14
1 Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, 2 but in these last days, he has spoken to us by a Son whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. 3 He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, 4 having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.
5 For to which of the angels did God ever say,
“You are my Son; today I have begotten you”?
Or again,
“I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”?
6 And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says,
“Let all God’s angels worship him.”
7 Of the angels he says,
“He makes his angels winds,
and his servants flames of fire.”
8 But of the Son he says,
“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,
and the righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom.
9 You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”
10 And,
“In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands;
11 they will perish, but you remain;
they will all wear out like clothing;
12 like a cloak you will roll them up,
and like clothing they will be changed.
But you are the same,
and your years will never end.”
13 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”?
14 Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation? †
About the Text
The Book of Hebrews proclaims the superiority of Christ in all things. For whatever it is people call “religion,” it all falls short beside the revelation of God in Christ. Jesus is the superior revelation of God. Verse 3 tells us that Jesus is the “exact imprint of God’s very being.” Even the angels worship Him, knowing Him to be God.
Our text from Hebrews is both poetry and a legal argument for the superiority of Christ. These verses also proclaim the greatness of the angels—above men as men are above animals—only to say that Christ is way above the angels. Though the angels flourish in the presence of God, seeing his face, Jesus is higher than them all.
Angels (popular)
In general, when we think of angels I think we all think about the same thing [picture of baseball team].
Scripture gives us a different idea about angels. Quoting from Psalm 104:4: “He makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire.”
This is a different picture than what we might have in our heads when we think of angels. Popular ideas about angels have included the cherubs as fat, floating, little babies [Domenichino painting1]—including some armed with bows and arrows[Cherubim pic], but the biblical angels are more difficult to picture [angel/bird pic]. Good luck imagining the Orphanim[Orphanim 1]—the strange wheel-within-a-wheel angels from Ezekiel [pic Orphanim 2]. Again: “He makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire” which is to say in strangeness—not as we would picture them.
The popular ideas about angels are only a problem when they contradict the biblical ones. There are plenty of new age books and websites devoted to guardian angels. I would kindly encourage you to avoid them.
There are also lots of ideas about angels that come to us from religious tradition, but are not from the Bible. So let’s look at the Bible’s angels.
Angels (biblical)
The word “angel” is the same as the word messenger, which says much about their purpose. They appear to Earth basically in one of three ways:
1. In Human Form.
We get this in the story of Abraham. He is visited by three men, whom he welcomes, only to hear that he and Sarah will produce a baby, though they are in their 90s. Angels have human form when they go to Sodom and Gomorrah, where they are seen as men and welcomed by Lot, but wickedly attacked by the rest of the community.
In the New Testament, here in Hebrews chapter 13:2 we are reminded:
2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for in doing so some have entertained angels without knowing it.
Maybe you have angel stories of your own—events where the right person just showed up at the right time to help you in the exact the way you needed. I’ve heard some of your stories of being in trouble, or in a foreign country, and being blessed by a benevolent stranger—someone who came out of nowhere and without whom your troubles would have been far greater. As I’ve heard some of you tell those stories, you have said, almost apologetically, that it was as though that man or woman was an angel sent from God to help us. I think it’s fine to think that, especially because those people restored your faith in God’s care.
We, too, have the chance to play angel now and then, and we should seize the opportunity when it comes our way. Don’t we all—in our heart of hearts—long and pray for a chance to serve the Lord in a meaningful way? Of course we do—we empty ourselves out before God in prayer, and we ask Him to use us for His glory. The problem is when we end it right there—when we leave it at asking to serve but do not bother to seek out opportunities to be someone else’s angel. Find someone who is in need in a way you are equipped to help—seek out those opportunities—be someone’s angel—serve as a messenger of God’s good news.
So angels—actual angels—can appear in human disguise.
2. In Mysterious, Human-ish Form
Aside from the bizarre, inexplicable forms, as we hear from Ezekiel, there are the somewhat-human appearances. The angel Gabriel—mentioned only in Daniel 8 and Luke 1—is purely a messenger. Angels that appear visually tend to be less than comforting. In most cases, people hit the ground in fear. They may bring God’s message of hope and comfort, but the angels themselves are disturbing to human beings.
3. Angels work Invisibly
In Matthew 18: 10, Jesus says:
“Take care that you do not despise one of these little ones; for, I tell you, in heaven their angels continually see the face of my Father in heaven.”
Angels can be far off or just working invisibly—around us even now—but that should be a comfort to us.
Nature and Supernaturalism
I should take a moment here to acknowledge that the idea of the supernatural—and all that it suggests—makes some people very uncomfortable. They take it as a threat to the normal, scientific worldview. But let’s be clear, when we talk about the supernatural, we’re not talking about something outside of this universe—rather, we talk about how God works within the universe we see.
Nature is not closed, but open. Nature is not a set of rules through which God is not allowed to work. God can and does work through nature, within nature, and between nature’s different moving parts however He wills.
Nature is not a solid wall through which God cannot reach, but nature is more like a beaded curtain—through which God may reach and act as He will.
When we pray for someone to be healed and that person is healed, it usually looks as though the natural processes have worked it out. It looks like a coincidence, but God works through coincidences.
For those who do not believe, coincidence is everything—the entire universe exists by coincidence and came into being by coincidence. It is by coincidence that DNA molecules formed and the earth’s been held in perfect orbit for a billion years or more. Coincidence.
There is a story they tell at Princeton Seminary: in the mid-70s, at the Princeton Junction train station, a man—a teacher at the university and confirmed atheist—was waiting with others for his train. He wasn’t watching his step and he managed to fall onto the tracks. As he stood up, his foot got caught beneath the rail and yes, a train was coming.
The man shouted for help—there were dozens of people watching helplessly. “Oh God! God! God!—help me! Help me! Help me!” he cried. A seminary student jumped down and wrestled his foot out and they got out just seconds before the train ground to a halt at the station. The man was enormously grateful to the student who saved him. The student said, “What about God? You cried out and he saved you!”
“Oh, that was just emotional,”said the man, “I was scared to death.” “But I,” said the seminarian, “believe I was put there by God to answer your prayer—I never take this train.” “Coincidence,” said the man, “It’s just coincidence.”
For those without faith—there is only coincidence and a cosmos of coincidence—for those with faith, there is no such thing as coincidence. God rules, God reigns, and God answers prayer.
There is an old saying: “The more you pray, the more those coincidences seem to occur.”
A thing can be miraculous and coincidental at the same time. The eye of faith sees God answer to prayer; the materialist can only see the coincidence.
This is why Christians can and ought to pray for rain. “But really, Pastor—we understand meteorological patterns—we measure moisture, air-pressure, prevailing winds—we can predict with a fairly reliable algorithm when it will and will not rain, so what’s the point of pulling God into it? Why pray for rain?”
We pray for rain, for healings, for safety, for finances, for pandemics, wars, and famines—all because we know God can reach through that curtain at the edge of our reality and act at any time. It doesn’t matter to us that the rest of the world will only see a happy coincidence, but we will see God at work—showing His love and revealing His purposes for us.
God’s Love via Angels
The final verse of our text tells us something wonderful we definitely mustn’t miss today. Verse 14:
14 Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?
God puts his angels into place as ministers to you and me. Think of it: in the realms we cannot see, we have God’s advocates quietly guiding us. Their goal: to see each of us grow into the image of Christ.
“For those who are to inherit salvation,” as the text puts it, have ministering angels.
Reality is more than we can see— we know that—just as the spectrum of light only contains a small band of visible light (most electromagnetic radiation is invisible to us), so the supernatural world is.
The real world is like a layer cake—we live in three or four dimensions we can see, but there are many layers we do not see, but which are proclaimed and promised by God’s Word.
The text tells us we are cared for. God loves us enormously, values us more than we value ourselves, and oversees and superintends us with his love.
We live in a balancing act between seeing and believing, between a cosmos of coincidence and God’s thorough Providence. Hamlet says it well:
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Brothers and sisters, we need to be the Believers, trusting in God’s perfect providence and living by law of His love. †
Some Questions
- How is the supernatural related to the natural world?
- Can something be both coincidental and miraculous?
- Can a healing be both natural and supernatural at the same time?
- Why should we pray for rain even though we know all about meteorological events?
- What are the two kinds of visible angels?
- What is the purpose of angels according to Hebrews 1?
- In 1 Corinthians 6: 2-3, Paul says we will judge the angels. What does this mean? Do angels need to be judged?
- What comforts do we take in knowing that God appoints angels to help us grow into Christ?