[00:00:01] Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching from God's words you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to Him. If you're ever in the Madison, Alabama area, we'd love for you to worship with us on Sundays at 8:30 or 10:30am if you have any other questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, find
[email protected] Be sure to also check out our Bible study podcast, Madison Church of Christ Bible Studies. Thanks again for stopping by this week. Brandon and I are starting a new series on angels. Now, I don't know what popped into your mind whenever you saw this, maybe on Facebook or you heard about it on maybe your Wednesday night class, but I'll go ahead and give you a little bit of a peek into my mind about what I've been thinking this past week as we are knowing we're going into this series. You know, one of the things Brandon and I always try to do, of course, is to have our eyes directly in scripture, but at the same time have a pulse on what's going on in the world. Thinking about, like around this time of year, like what people are thinking about, talking about, wondering about something that they see maybe on a daily basis or pretty often. And so one of the things that we had talked about is why don't we do a series on angels? And when we talked about that idea, I thought, yeah, that would be awesome. But if you've ever taught a class before, you probably can understand what I'm about to say. It's one thing to say, oh, that'll be awesome. And then you get into it and you're like, oh my. Like, I'm pretty sure I bit off more than I could chew on this. And one of the ways, just to kind of give you an example of that is the way I do my sermons is I try to type them out to where they're Calibri font 12 and the margins are 225. So it's as close to the edge as you can be. And with four pages it should be, and no comments, it should be 30 minutes long. Okay, this one, as I was going through the past week or two getting it ready, was 11 pages. So just want you to know you're getting the four page one this morning, so you can be a little bit relieved. But I'll go ahead and tell you because of all that I was learning about and that was just blowing my mind. I'll say that, like five or six years ago, if you would have asked me to speak on this, I probably would not have done it or walked away from it. And here's why.
[00:02:33] Because I can't fully comprehend it.
[00:02:36] I don't fully understand everything about it.
[00:02:39] I don't really like understand really even having a pulse on the information. So the thing that kind of scares me or makes me uncertain I would run from, the reason why I've stopped doing that is because I don't do that with other things, with God. I'll give you an example.
[00:03:00] Take this statement that we use a lot. God is eternal. Try to explain that to somebody. Or how about this, even if you're in scripture all the time, try to wrap your mind around that fact. Have you done it before?
[00:03:15] You go to a place in your mind where it's hard to even grasp how that's a possibility.
[00:03:22] And even if you believe in the Big bang theory, one of the things that is talked about, of course there when people say, well, these two particles, they came together and then you follow up that with, well, where did those two particles come from? No matter what you believe, we all struggle to think about that something, someone has always been. And that's difficult for us because we live in two dimensional time and space. You buy a washer and a dryer, it can be the best one on the market. It has a beginning, it has an end. And to try to wrap your mind around someone that has always been, Our minds can't truly go there. And there's a reason for that.
[00:04:00] It magnifies and it glorifies our God. Did you know, like our Bibles, for example, when the Hebrew writers and the Greek writers were putting it together, one of the things that happened is that they used adjectives to describe God and they give it a term, it's called anthropomorphism, which is giving human characteristics to a holy God. And the reason why they did this is they're basically saying you can't fully comprehend the whole nature of God. So we're going to do our best just to give you some human terms that you would understand.
[00:04:33] They understand going in, you can't comprehend everything. And so because we can't comprehend everything about an eternal God, guess who we still talk about the eternal God.
[00:04:45] And so I want to say this morning, because I can't fully comprehend everything about God, I absolutely love it because I don't want to serve a God. I Can fully wrap my mind around every single detail.
[00:05:01] I love that our God that we worship this morning is a God that does not live inside Andrew Itzen's box.
[00:05:09] I want to serve a God that's outside of that box. I don't want to serve a God that I can bring down on my level because I don't want a super sized version of me. Me, nor a supersized version of me could save me, could fix me. But a God that is much bigger than even my understanding is a God I want to serve.
[00:05:28] I'll give you another example. The Holy Spirit.
[00:05:32] The Holy Spirit, he is somebody that we refer to when we're studying with somebody. We turn to Acts 2 and we look at verse 38 and it says this as an adjective, is given to deity. It says that we have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. And then we look in other places in scripture that talk about that. If you and I know how to give good gifts, what do we know about our heavenly Father? Man? He gives amazing gifts.
[00:05:59] That word gift is not used lightly when it's given to deity.
[00:06:04] But yet I go through scripture and I read about how the Holy Spirit counsels, he convicts, he comforts, and how I can even grieve him in my sin. And if you were to pin me down and say, andrew, all right, explain that in detail, like how all that works, I'd be like, I don't fully understand it, but that's why I also love it.
[00:06:26] So I say all that to say that maybe this topic for me personally and Brandon might feel this way. A few years ago I probably would have run from.
[00:06:35] But I think it is time to talk about these things.
[00:06:39] But also mainly because, number one, scripture talks about them. But number two, my hope and our hope in this series is this. As we talk about the things that our eyes can't see and our hearts can't even fully comprehend at times, that's what makes God God.
[00:06:59] And so I hope that as we go through this series is that it will expand your view of God. But also my prayer is that it will deepen and expand your faith to know that God is fighting a battle that has already been won by on your behalf right now as we speak.
[00:07:21] So as we think about this, why don't we talk about angels maybe more? Or why should we have a series on angels? I think number one is because, well, we don't talk about it very much. In fact, one of the things that I noticed as I was in the foyer today with a lot of folks Saying, yeah, I grew up in the Church of Christ. I can't remember one, or maybe there was one and I just missed it. I can't remember many times where we talk specifically about angels. I think part of it is because of what I mentioned. We might categorize angels or, as we're going to do today, also group together what we will call spiritual beings or divine beings into that same content and lesson is because we put that in the category of the unseen or the supernatural. And we're going to get to this in just a second. We are very used to a very physical world, but yet we read in this text that what you and I see with our eyes is not all that there is. In fact, Ephesians 6 says this. We right now are not fighting with people. Now, what if we just stop there for a second? Wouldn't that deserve a big old amen?
[00:08:23] We don't fight with each other. It says, not flesh and blood, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world.
[00:08:32] I don't know if y'all grew up like me with what I love very much as a visual learner, and that is the felt board. You know what I'm talking about? We had a lady named Bannie Burt, that was my Bible class teacher growing up, and she used that thing, and I loved it so much. And I'll never forget when she did the Armor of God. You know, she would stick that Armor of God and every single piece on that, and we all got to take our turns.
[00:08:54] But what sometimes we don't talk about maybe enough is the context of that armor.
[00:09:01] You know, there's two things that I want us to know, is that when you see one soldier on that flannel board or one soldier on that cartoon drawing or whatever it is, that's not an accurate description. It should be several soldiers, because the context of what we see in Ephesians, he's writing to the church, he's like, you're not alone in your battles.
[00:09:21] But the other part, the whole reason why we have the Armor of God, is because he's saying there is a spiritual battle that your eye does not see that's going on right now.
[00:09:32] Satan is all out waging war on your children. He's waging war on your families. He's waging war on your marriages. That's why when I do premarital counseling, I tell couples all the time that the quicker you can understand that each other in the fight is not the enemy, but Satan is. You'll know where to direct your attention. You'll know where to direct your focus. Satan hates you. He hates your family. He hates when you took a step of faith today. He took when you made that decision to be more generous, to be more loving, to serve somebody. He hates every single one of those moments. And so that's why he said that you need to put on the armor of God. There is a real battle in the unseen that is happening.
[00:10:15] But yet we all know living in a physical world, doesn't it blind us to that truth?
[00:10:22] Because I'll go ahead and tell you, until getting ready for this lesson this week, I have not been in a while thinking about the unseen, the spiritual battle that we're a part of. And I think Satan absolutely loves it.
[00:10:38] You know, one of the reasons why I think that is imagine for just a second that if we spent all the time just focusing on the things we see physically, he knew that. He's like, man, I got them right where I want them, y'all. That's exactly what Satan did with Jesus. What did he present to him one after another? Physical things. I want your mind to always think, oh, Andrew, it's only true if you can explain it. That brings God down to my level. Andrew, you can only believe it if you can get your hands on it again. That brings God down to my level. I think Satan's like, that's what I'm talking about. Keep going in that way, Keep going in that direction. There's more than our eye can see. We're gonna get to more of that in just a second. I think we also need to talk about this, because maybe you're like me. I've had a lot of moments where I've thought, is that an angel or was that a coincidence?
[00:11:29] Brandon's gonna get more into this next week. But I read stuff like in Genesis 18 and 19 where Abram had no clue he was doing what Hebrews 13:2 talks about, which is entertaining angels.
[00:11:42] When these men show up and he can tell there's something different. Probably how Mary felt when she was struck with fear when Gabriel showed up and he's like, all right, we got some special visitors. You know, honey, pull out the Mason jar, get the starter, make your famous bread, because, you know, today's the day we've got special guests. Little did he know that these were angelic beings with a message for him. A message of hope, a message of the future. He had no clue that these were angels in his midst. And I've wondered, have I had those?
[00:12:11] Like, I hear what that says, but, like, does that Happen today.
[00:12:15] You know, one of the things that happened to us about two years ago was I was planning to go to Faulkner to speak in chapel on, like, a Tuesday morning. And the plan was for Laurieann and the kids to join me on that trip. And the reason why, anytime I go to Montgomery, I want them to come with me so they can see my mom and dad and spend time with them there. And so that was the plan. Well, we woke up that morning, and one of the kids was not feeling well, and my dad's immune system's low, so we were like, all right, we can't get them around him. So we decided just for me to go. So I then hopped in my RAV4, and I drove there, and I drove back. And some of you might remember that car. When I first got here, it was an old, old car.
[00:13:01] It was a very ugly red. It wasn't like it couldn't decide if it was orange or red kind of colors. But it was paid for, and I absolutely loved it, and I would still have it if this didn't happen. I was driving up i65, and, you know, when something happens, like, real quick, you hope your instincts are good. In that moment, mine weren't really what they needed to be. This semi truck starts getting over, and in my mind, I'm trying to, like, panic and do something to fix the situation, but bam, his wheels are up against me. I wish I would have thought to, like, honk more in that moment, but there was these ladies I found out later that were honking, and they said that, you know, when we started laying down our horn, right behind you, he started to get back over. Well, I can still visualize everything. I couldn't drive on the interstate for a while. A little bit of, like, ptsd, seriously, from driving in that he slams up against my car and little by little, starts crushing in.
[00:14:02] And I can still hear the sound of those wheels and the concrete barrier. In fact, I was told some folks this morning that if you drive up I65, just north of Birmingham, between here and Coleman, on the barrier, there's a red streak. That's me, okay?
[00:14:19] And so the lady that was behind me, she called the paramedics and the ambulance and said, hey, whoever's in this car may not be alive, so if they are, please send, you know, all the help that you can. And she said, then all of a sudden, you open that back door and get out. And we're like, what in the world? You know? But the reason why I give that example, like, when the car you know, doesn't keep going and smash me. Was that an angel? Was it an angel? Like, what was going. Like, my kids, if they were in that car, they would have been dead.
[00:14:53] I also think about, you know, the fact that they didn't go with me on that trip. You know, we had those moments. Was that a coincidence? Was that an angel?
[00:15:01] I think another reason why we need to talk about this is angels are very misunderstood and very misrepresented. In fact, as I was trying to think of different, maybe misunderstandings, we have one of those is this. That people will become angels when they die.
[00:15:18] That is nowhere in scripture. Now, what the Bible does mention, the Book of Revelation, is this, that when we die as Christians, it says we will be like the angels in the fact that we can live forever, okay? And we will live on.
[00:15:34] But nowhere does it say that we will have angel wings. Now, part of this is because we've developed a little bit of a culture that said, you know, when so and so died, what did they get? They got their wings, right? Or, you know, now, so and so's passed on. They're gonna be my guardian angel. And we use that idea. But think about it for just a second. Like, do we really. Like, I love my grandma, okay? Love both my grandmas. Awesome people. Love you, Grandma. But I don't know if, like, I want grandma all the time around. Right? Love that. Love Grandma. But the other one that I think about, too, is, you know, trying to not make light of a heavy situation, but to bring a little bit of perspective of a different way.
[00:16:16] For those of you that are married, have you ever had a conversation with your spouse about, if, you know, I die, would you get remarried?
[00:16:27] And we've had that conversation before. And I love Laurieann so, so much. And I've told her for a long time that if I die and she gets remarried, I'm gonna come back and haunt her spouse.
[00:16:45] But I told her it's not gonna be like, a bad haunting. Like, more of like a Casper friendly situation. Like, it's not gonna be awful. She said, you're gonna do some weird stuff. I was like, I will. But the thing is, it's not gonna be bad, but there will be evidence, I guess, is what I'm saying. So she was really relieved when I mentioned to her, hey, I'm not gonna become an angel. She's like, good. He'll stay up there. But anyway, the second thing is this, that angels are worthy of worship. The way they're talked about sometimes is, like, we almost elevate them to the same level of God. They're not. In fact, the book of Hebrews in chapter one mentions that Jesus is better than the angels. We also see in Colossians 2:18, that we're not to worship the angels. They are not worthy of worship. They were created by God, as we're going to look at in a second, to be messengers, to be warriors. And what we also know about them, and here's why they're not deity, they can rebel. And we'll get into that in just a second. Second. The other thought is this, that all angels have wings. Now, we are grouping together spiritual and divine beings with the angels. But I think because of the cherubim and the seraphim, as we're going to talk about this morning, we think that every angel has wings. Well, most of the angels that showed up to people in scripture, whether that was Gabriel or Michael, there is no description whatsoever of them having wings. Yet you and I, if you're like me, the picture I have in my mind is like a little chubby angel, you know, flying around with a bow and arrow, with little wings. In fact, even getting ready for this message, I was trying to find a picture that could depict Michael, you know, the warrior one. We're going to talk about that archangel that had a sword or Gabriel bringing a message with no wings. Even when I went to AI on Facebook and I even said so specifically, I gave two examples of no wings. I want a wingless angel with no wings.
[00:18:38] He still gave me wings. I was like, okay, an angel with no wings. Still wings. And the reason I give you that as an example is that's the picture the world's created, right? That we have a. Maybe a secular image of it. And here's what's happened. It's not necessarily wrong that we might picture it in that way, but we can't let secular images distract us from the fact that there is a real spiritual battle going on right now that our eyes cannot see.
[00:19:06] We cannot cartoonize the spiritual and the reality of what is going on right now that our eyes cannot see.
[00:19:18] Here's the next one is because the world right now is absolutely enamored with angels. We've seen a lot of movies. In fact, would you probably dare to say that the imagery you have of angels right now is directly connected to what you see growing up? Maybe for some of you, that you watch Touched by an angel, and so anytime you read of angels in scripture, you assume that they are all, you know, women that have British accents. Maybe for some of you, you watched Michael, and that is, while it's a biblical name, the movie's anything but that. He has a tendency to drink and wear white tank tops or maybe All Dogs Go to Heaven. This was one of those movies, by the way, that if you rewatch it, you're like, this is terrible. Like, not just the acting and the plot, but also what they're doing. And they're depicting heaven in this way. Or maybe It's a Wonderful Life. You know, there's the statement in there that anytime a bell rings, what happens? An angel gets there, Wings. But for me, the one growing up, that really always made me like, if you said, andrew, what does an angel look like? I would have told you. It looks like Christopher Lloyd, hands down. Like, anytime, like, you think about Gabriel showing up to Mary with that message. I always pictured that it was al. It was Christopher Lloyd showing up to Mary because that's the picture of an angel I had in my mind. And even when Brandon and Jason and I were getting together to plan the graphics for this, trying to be careful and biblically accurate, Jason had this idea. He said, what if we called the series Angels in the Pulpit? And so he did a quick Photoshop of me and Brandon. But if you look in the really small part heap, you can peep Nick and Cam down there in the bottom as well. But anyway, the world is enamored with angels. And part of the reason is because of this, there is a spirit of hopelessness in our world. People want hope, but the problem is we're looking for hope in all the wrong places. Hope is attached to a person and that's Jesus Christ. But it's angels that I think at times maybe make people think about the spiritual. There's a spirit of selfishness and even if the images are secular that we have in our mind about angels, angels, even in the secular worldview, are beings that serve. And that's the way God designed them to be servants, to serve, to go in and to make war on evil. Also because of the end times. If you look at the most watched movies and downloaded movies of all time, in that list of the top 10 are movies that have to do with the end of the world. People love to think about those things. But I also think it's also just a spirit of curiosity. We wonder, was that an angel? Was that a coincidence? Is something going on? More than my eye can see. So what does the Bible say about it? Well, just with angels alone, not including the spiritual beings, over 400 times in scripture do we hear about angels. In the Old Testament, we have this word malek, which can also be with a ch, depending on your translation, which is an angel or a messenger of God. In the New Testament, it's angelos, which is angel, messenger, or one whom is sent. Occurs 176 times in the New Testament. But other terms that you'll hear, some of these are ones that will group in with the spiritual beings or divine beings. One of those is sons of God. There's a difference in Son of God and sons of God.
[00:22:51] Sons of God have been portrayed in good ways. Sons of God have also been portrayed, and maybe not so good ways. I wish I could get into this, don't have time. But there is a very heavy theological belief that the nephilim, those massive creatures, were actually created as angels, came down and had, in their own free will, chose and rebelled against God maybe, and had relations with humans. And that's why when we do archeological digs today, we see these massive human beings that are bigger than anybody else in the world. That was that because of the angels. Again, we don't know. There's just a lot of thoughts on that. Dignitaries, glorious ones. But then there's this one. Thrones, dominions, principalities and powers. If you remember, the church in Colossae really believed a lot in what we'll call mysticism, which is the idea that there's something going on. I can't really see it, I can't sense it. But here's what they were doing. They were kind of worshiping that mystic idea, but not directing it towards God. And so Paul, what he decided to do was, hey, I'm gonna capitalize on the fact that they are really interested in that. And so what he does is he says, you know, there is, there are these thrones, these dominions, these powers, but he lets them know it's Jesus that's the one that's holding all the things together, that he's that concrete in that realm. And so if you look what most writers interpretation of what they're saying is, hey, there is something going on that your eye cannot see in the spiritual realm, that Jesus is holding together to keep this all held together. Okay? But then there's the seraphim and the cherubim that fall into the spiritual beings category. And we're going to look at their symbolism in just a second. So if you boil all this down, and we're going to talk about this next week, Brandon is in the following week. Angels are worshipers.
[00:24:42] They're warriors and they're messengers. And in A few weeks, we're gonna look at how we can emulate their warrior like spirit and to fight for people. We're gonna look at how we can emulate their worship and to not lose our passion, but to gain more passion in our worship as we look at the worship of the people that fell down at God's throne.
[00:25:04] See, these are messenger servants. God created not to be worshiped, but for him and his glory.
[00:25:12] As we get into this application here in just a second, you know, why did God even have to use them? Well, Daniel makes it clear that angels have the capacity to cover more ground. They're way more mobile. They can be over here in one moment, in the next moment they can be over here. They have way more knowledge than we do. They are more powerful than man. They also are spirit beings. So they're not flesh and blood. And they can appear to people in different ways. That's what Hebrews 13:2 says, hey, you might be entertaining an angel and you have no clue about it. And so you see these kind of verses. And so I want to look at the main ones that we see in scripture. And there is some powerful symbolism for our walk today with this. Let's first start with cherubim.
[00:25:54] Cherubim shows up 92 times in 13 different books in the Bible. Our first introduction to the cherubim is of course, in the Garden of Eden. You might remember when God was trying to have that relationship with Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve chose against God. God banished them from the garden. And guarding the entrance east of Eden, he put a cherubim there so Adam and Eve could not go back. You know, we oftentimes might wonder, you know, why didn't God just create a world without sin? To which we can answer, he did. He did create one. He gave Adam and Eve free will. But in that free will, they chose something different.
[00:26:38] And so what God did is he banished them and he put that cherubim there. And you're like, well, maybe it's just because it's scary looking, that's why he put it there. What he's letting them know is the eyes that are watching you in the faces that are involved in your life. See the cherubim as it's guarding something, as it does throughout Scripture, Cherubim usually guards or protects something or a place that's holy.
[00:27:04] And so if you'll notice, in this picture, the cherubim had four faces. The face of a man, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, and the face of an eagle. And Although there are four different faces, they're one being. And here's why. The man represents humanity. It represents intelligence and a divine attribute of wisdom.
[00:27:30] A lion is a symbol of strength and power, representing the untameable aspects of God. We talked about this earlier. The lion was a picture. You can't tame God and you don't want to. The other one is that he's the eagle, a creature of the skies. The Book of Chronicles talks about, you know, the eyes of God are going back and forth all across the earth trying to find people, to strengthen. The picture of the eagle is that that God is going over this earth and he's trying to strengthen people, help them on this side of Eden. And then the ox. The ox is a picture of Jesus Christ, that suffering servant. How you know, the ox was the one that would lead the way in tilling the soil, breaking out. It had to do the. The dirty work. It's a picture of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. How he got down on his hands and knees and washed feet. He's letting us know that on this side of Eden, this is the faces that are watching you.
[00:28:31] But here's what's neat. If you remember any of your drawings from when you were growing up of, like, the temple and the tabernacle, in the tabernacle above the Ark of the Covenant, you see those two cherubim, and you also see them on the curtains, and you also see them along the walls of that. And the reason is, is because this is the holy of holies. And as the holy of holies, what the cherubim is doing is guarding that sacred space. Because what is sacred is set apart. And what is set apart should also impact the way we live and the way we treat people. And that's what leads us into the seraphim.
[00:29:09] There's only one example of the seraphim, and that's in Isaiah 6. And I want you to turn there in your Bibles with me. And if you kind of remember the context, it says in the year that King Uzziah died.
[00:29:23] That's an important detail because Uzziah was one of the very rare good kings. So Israel was at a time where they were looking for hope. They were looking for something of good news. And their good God died. And so God's like, all right, the good guy died, but we're not, you know, without hope. I need somebody to go.
[00:29:42] And this is also a mirror image to when God called Moses, because you might remember when God goes to Moses in that burning bush, that his holiness Is there God said, hey, I need you to go. And he says, here I am, Lord. Send somebody else. But yet you have Isaiah. That's like, here I am, Lord. Hey, send me. What's different about the two of them? Well, you think about. For just a second, Moses stood in front of a burning bush, and the bush was burning up, was burning, but it wasn't burning up. It's a picture God saying, listen, I can do two things at once. I can start a fire, but it can also not burn something. That's how multifaceted I am. What I'm saying is I can do this and I can do that. I can start stuff, I can stop stuff. That's who I am. And so Moses, what did he do when he saw that burning bush? He looked away. And then he had to take his shoes off because he was standing on what? On holy ground. Hold that in your minds. Isaiah, chapter six.
[00:30:42] It says that I saw the Lord high and exalted, seated on the throne. The train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim. Each of them had six wings. I'm going to describe those wings in just a second.
[00:30:56] Two were covering the face, two were covering the feet. I'll cover the other two in a second.
[00:31:01] The reason why the face was covered is just kind of like with Moses. You couldn't look on the holiness of God. He was so set apart, I can't even look at him. But the other reason the feet are covered, it's kind of like that situation, take off your sandals because where you're standing, that he didn't want where he was standing to be even on the same footing of God.
[00:31:21] And so what happens here is when Isaiah sees the holiness of God, guess what? He also sees his sinfulness.
[00:31:29] That's why we have to talk about the holiness of God. The more we talk about it and we think about it, it helps us to understand. Like Isaiah, that's a repentant heart. Like, woe is me. He said, I'm a man of unclean lips. And then here's what the seraphim does.
[00:31:46] He takes this hot coal with some tongs and grabs the hot coal and puts it on Isaiah's unclean lips and starts to clean him and cleanse him. Because remember what he said? I want to go. He's like, yeah, I want to use you, but yet you're not clean. Y'all know who that hot coal is, right?
[00:32:06] That's Jesus Christ.
[00:32:08] Jesus Christ is that hot coal? That's why he can't even touch him, he's like. He's so set apart, too. But here, he's the one that can cleanse you. He's giving us a picture of what it looks like to be sent.
[00:32:19] But that leads us to the next one, the living creatures. These are talked about in the book of Revelation, and I'm going to cover more of them in two weeks as we try to learn how to emulate their worship. Just like we see here with the cherubim. They have six wings. And we see that in the book of Revelation. And I told you I would explain the other two wings.
[00:32:38] The six wings were for these reasons. Two to cover the feet because they didn't want to stand on the same ground as a holy God. Two to cover the face because they couldn't even look at him. But the other two wings, their purpose was to keep the angel in the air so the angel could keep worshiping.
[00:32:58] Think about that for just a second.
[00:33:00] That even though he was so holy, so set apart, and even though Isaiah and others have seen how sinful they are, they know the worship must go on.
[00:33:12] Then there's the archangels. And I want to be clear, in the Bible, archangels aren't actually including Gabriel, but most older Hebrew material includes Gabriel. So we're going to include him just for the sake of organization.
[00:33:28] Michael is the warrior. He's the one that makes war. He's the one that has the sword. His name means who is like God. But then Gabriel means strength of God. He was a messenger. Gabriel was the one, of course, that showed up to Mary and John the Baptist family and said, hey, I've got some news for you.
[00:33:47] The thing we know, when Mary saw that angel said she was struck by fear. So there's something different about the way the angel looked, but it still had a representation that she was talking to someone who looked like a human being. We see in the Book of Daniel how when Daniel gets a message from Gabriel, Gabriel gives him the message of how to understand it. And then Michael goes and wages war after Gabriel gives the message. So you got one giving a message. You got one waging war. It's a picture two of God, how God is both a messenger and God makes war and stuff. He gives us a message, but he's also fighting a spiritual battle. You see how he's trying to cover all the different aspects of who he is. And so here's some ways we can apply this today.
[00:34:31] Number one, as I was studying this and going through it, one of the things that kind of stuck out to me is that even though angels are set apart in the fact that they are different than us, we still have very similar characteristics.
[00:34:50] Both of us are designed by God to be image bearers.
[00:34:55] And God we know today can and will use anything to bring him glory and bring people to Him. He'll use anything.
[00:35:05] But the primary one that he would like to use right now is you.
[00:35:10] Then there's the other flip side, is that while we are his image bearers, we also know, just like the angels, we have free will so we can rebel.
[00:35:20] And you think about how Satan even got here. Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28. Talk about, hey, he was actually so good. He was doing good things, he was impacting things. But then he made a choice.
[00:35:33] And because he made that choice, he had to be cast down. Why? Because just like that cherubim, God wants to restore Eden. He wants to bring heaven to earth. And anything that will impact that, he won't stand against. The other thing that I was thinking about in regards to this is as we read Ephesians 6.
[00:35:54] Let me reread this.
[00:35:56] We don't fight against people.
[00:36:00] We don't fight against people made of flesh and blood, but against the evil rulers and the authorities of the unseen world. I'm telling y'all, Satan wants us to fight with each other. Imagine if it was like a football team. Imagine all week if they fought in practice. Guess what they weren't doing? They weren't preparing for who their opponent. If we spend all of our time fighting, it'll lead to two results. It'll lead to a result where Satan will be able to, you know, get ahold of a situation.
[00:36:34] Because I think he's like, man, keep. Please, keep. Please keep thinking the other person's the enemy. Keep. Please keep fighting with them. But I'll go ahead and tell you, I think that if we think each other is the enemy, it's also a sign that we're not really having our mind in the spiritual realm, that there is something far beyond what our eyes see.
[00:36:52] Here's the other thing. Because what we see is not all there is. That means we're not alone in our battles. Y'all might remember when in 2 Kings how Elisha had his servant with him. And his servant made this comment. He said, man, there's more of them talking about the enemy than of us. And then Elisha's like, oh, no, there's not. He said, lord, can you open his eyes to see that there's people fighting on his behalf? And so when the Lord opened his eyes, he's like, Now I can see it. And maybe we need to pray for the same thing. Lord, open my eyes to understand there is something going on more than my eyes can see. I can't fully explain it. And you know what, that's great. I love that. I can't fully put my thumbprint on why that is the way it is. But I love the fact that you're doing something. God, open our eyes to see the reality that we right now are in a spiritual battle. And here's the other thing is right now, when we wage war and we talk about, you know, waging war against the enemy, we have to remember we don't wage war to gain victory. We are fighting right now from it. And there's a big difference between the two.
[00:37:56] We don't go out and try to win victory. Victory has already been won on the cross and we're standing on the side of victory.
[00:38:05] When I was growing up, I kept getting on Coach Cole's baseball team and he picked me. Not because I was good at baseball, I wasn't. In fact, I rode the pond most of the season on the three years I played with him. But he wanted my dad to be on the team because he was like the ultimate team dad. You know, he would get the cheers going in the stands. And even though, like, I did not much to contribute to our victory, and even when we won the little World Series, we were a part of, you know, I was the one yelling from the stands, you know, rattling the fence at the very end of the game. Even though I didn't get a hit, I got hit by the ball, but I didn't do much to contribute at the very end, I was able to hold that trophy with everybody else. Why? Because of where I was standing.
[00:38:49] If you go to Ephesians 6, you'll notice five times it says stand.
[00:38:55] It doesn't say fight for victory, it says stand. Talking about stand in your victory. If you know victory's already won, doesn't that impact your confidence in how you stand and think about the armor of God itself. Notice how it's all forward facing armor.
[00:39:11] It's saying you don't have to retreat from stuff. You can run into situations, you can run into battles knowing that you are equipped to handle it. We fight from victory, not for it. But also it helps us to understand that our prayers are more powerful than we think. If there is the unseen and we know that, then we know God's going to give us something that is unseen to deal with the unseen. In Daniel, chapter 10, Daniel, it says, humbled himself.
[00:39:42] And God brought in Michael and he brought in Gabriel. I want us to think of prayers as ways to bring things from Satan's comfort zone, which is down here, and lifting them up and putting them on God's.
[00:39:55] I wanna ask you a question as we close out the lesson today. And the first one is this.
[00:40:01] Are you clothed for battle? Knowing right now that we are in a spiritual battle, you have to ask yourself that. Maybe you've been trying to wage war on your own, y'all. It's exhausting. I mean, Satan will give you a few successes to make you think you can keep that pace. You can't. And so maybe you've never made that decision and put on Christ.
[00:40:21] And when you do, he gives you the gift of the Holy Spirit to counsel you, to convict you, to comfort you. You can't fight a battle alone. Or maybe you're here today and you feel alone.
[00:40:36] Well, you can look around here and see a church family. But I also want you to notice it's, yes, what we see, but there's also a God that is fighting on your behalf that you don't see a way that he works that you can't fully comprehend. One of our brothers mentioned to me, he said, andrew, you know, as I've studied angels over the years, the one thing I know is they are real. But sometimes I forget to believe it.
[00:41:01] But I think on the other side of the coin, you know, we talk about Satan and even maybe we cartoonize him a little bit. And we need to believe that he is real. But God gives us unseen spiritual weapons to deal with the.
[00:41:15] The unspiritual, the very sinful, unseen, which is Satan. So maybe you're here today and you've been dealing with some type of temptation and you're trying to fight it on your own. You can't. Maybe you're here today and you've never made that decision to put on Christ in baptism. We encourage you to do so. While we stand, we sing this song together.
