Tag Archives: angels

The Ministry Of Angels

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THE MINISTRY OF ANGELS

It is not to angels that He subjected the world to come, about which we are speaking. But there is a place where someone has testified:

‘What is mankind that you are mindful of them, a son of man that you care for him? You made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honour and put everything under their feet.’

In putting everything under them, God left nothing that is not subject to them. Yet at present we do not see everything subject to them. (Heb. 2: 5-8)

Angels have their place in God’s order of things but, unlike mankind, they do not rule. They are spirit beings but they were not created in the image of God. They praise, worship and serve God; they rejoice over the works of God; they are instruments of God’s judgment; they carry out God’s will on earth; they protect God’s people and accompany those who have died. Although they are spirit beings, they are personalities who possess intelligence, emotions and will.

Whatever the Bible says about angels in the context of their most important function, to serve God, one thing is clear – they have a lower position and function in God’s order of things than human beings. They may be beautiful and powerful in their specific roles but they are lesser beings than mankind for three very good reasons:

1. They were not created in the image of God.

The glory they have is not the glory of God which He breathed into the first human pair at their beginning. God’s glory is manifested in His nature. Although the whole of mankind fell from that glory when Adam and Eve sinned, it was always God’s intention to restore Him image in redeemed humans so that they may be a reflection of Him to all of creation, and especially to the fallen angels who are against God.

As part of our inheritance, God has restored His nature to those who are reconciled and reconnected to Him by faith in His Son. Through His very great and precious promises we appropriate that nature and, by doing so, we escape the corruption that is in the world caused by evil desires (2 Peter 1: 4).

2. They were not created to be one with God.

In His great love, God opened the Trinity to the human race to become one with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to share the love and intimacy they enjoy with God and with one another, just as there is perfect unity and perfect harmony within the triune God.

Jesus’s prayer on the eve of His crucifixion reflects God’s highest intention for the human race.

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one even as we are one – I in them and you in me – so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me (John 17: 20-23).

3. They were not given the mandate to rule over the earth.

God created the human race to be managers of His world. They were not to control one another but to rule over the natural world and to manage it under Him and for Him. Although the first human pair fell for Satan’s deception and changed allegiance, God did not withdraw His intention for them to rule. Whatever we have done with God’s creation, He holds us accountable for the way we have managed the earth and used His resources.

His intention has not yet been fulfilled. Humankind has squandered God’s resources through our greed and desecrated His world but there is a promise or restoration and renewal yet to be fulfilled.

Watch this space!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

A Loving Family

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A LOVING FAMILY

We must pay more careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away. For since the message spoken through angels was binding, and every violation and disobedience received its just punishment, how shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard Him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will. (Heb. 2: 1-4)

Perhaps even more treacherous to the faith and faithfulness of the believer than outright temptation, is the tendency to drift. One of Satan’s most effective ploys is to suggest that it is important for us to ‘serve’ the Lord. O yes, he comes to us as an angel of light. ‘God will be pleased with you if you are busy ‘serving’ Jesus,’ he sneers. Unfortunately, we don’t hear the sneer in his voice.

What is the message we heard? Believe in Jesus and receive Him as your personal Saviour so that you can go to heaven when you die? Really? Is that the reason Jesus came? This is not the message of my Bible. Jesus called me to follow Him, to learn from Him and to imitate Him. For what purpose? So that I might have fellowship with the Father as His daughter, redeemed and reconciled to Him through the blood of His Son.

Being a son or daughter of God was His original intention, ruined by Adam’s disobedience, and restored through Jesus the Christ. God wanted a family of humans who would resemble Him and be one with Him so that, through them, He would govern His creation. Living in harmony with Him, with one another and with the world would be a witness to the fallen angels that He is a loving Father, and not a cruel tyrant who evicted them from heaven for their rebellion.

How does a family maintain its loving fellowship? Surely it is by obeying the Father and keeping in touch with Him and with one another! The Father’s greatest pleasure is to see His family being a family. The greatest heartache for any parent is to lose touch with his children and for them to lose touch with one another. Busyness causes them to drift apart and it happens slowly and subtly.

God is a perfect Father. His family is His greatest joy and delight. He gave His people His ‘Torah’, His instructions for living in harmony with Him and with one another so that they could show the world what the true God was really like. They missed it. They were more interested in the pagan gods around them who pandered to their fleshly lusts and selfish ways.

God sent His Son to be the model of a true son who would live every moment in a loving and intimate relationship with Him so that He could know and do the Father’s will. He called twelve men to follow Him. He both taught and showed them how to be sons of God and how to live under the authority of the heavenly Father. They discovered that His way really worked. When the Holy Spirit came on them as He had come on Jesus, they also had the power to imitate their Master.

They went everywhere, living and passing on the good news that Jesus was God’s Son and that He had come to set them free from the shackles of sin so they could return to the Father and to Father’s house. They taught those who received the message what Jesus had taught them. The way to maintain their fellowship with Him and with the Father through Him was to ‘remain in Him’ (John 15: 5).

Of course that would take discipline and perseverance. The other alternative was to drift and lose their closeness to Him. The problem with drifting is that their natural bent was towards selfish and self-centred living, following and satisfying their sinful desires. If they did that, they would drift back into the ways of death. Sin leads to death. If they did not maintain their life in Jesus, they would surely die.

This salvation was no human invention. The Old Covenant, given to God’s people from Mount Sinai was accompanied by awesome signs which terrified them, Violation of that covenant was serious enough to bring judgment – and it was mediated by angels and ratified by animal blood. What of the New Covenant, sealed by the blood of God’s perfect Son? Who will escape and how will they escape if they drifted away from obeying that covenant?

Obviously there is no answer. No one will escape. God is inescapable! Why should anyone escape? God cannot treat anyone leniently who ignores or despises the blood He Son shed to bring us back to Him. The answer? Don’t drift! Walk with Jesus one day at a time, remaining in Him and in His word.

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and me in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. (John 15: 5, 6)

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Appointed To Be The Son

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APPOINTED TO BE THE SON

He also said, ‘In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish but you remain; they will wear out like a garment. You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.’

To which of the angels did God ever say, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet’?

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? (Heb. 1: 10-14)

God spoke, yes! He spoke through the prophets and through His Son, but there is also no doubt that He spoke to the Son. Why was it so important that He speak to His Son? What did He say? The writer used seven quotes from the Psalms to authenticate His Son and to set Him apart as superior to the angelic beings.

1. He is superior to angels in His status as a son. He shares the nature and essence of the Father. He is an exact replica of the Father, revealing the Father to the human race in human form. He is also the Father’s heir – the right of a son to receive everything that belongs to the father. As God’s Son, it is His role to ‘continue the house’ through His own life and through those who would believe in Him (verse 5a).

2. He is connected to the Father by the intimate father/son relationship. As a son, Jesus is submitted and obedient to the Father. As His Father, God is the one who has strength and authority and supports and upholds His Son and delegates His authority to the Son (verse 5b).

3. As God’s Son, He is the object of the angels’ obeisance. They bow to Him as superior to them in both essence and function. At His birth they announced His arrival on earth, and called all mankind to worship Him. (Verse 6)

4. Angels have an inferior role and position in God’s unseen realm. They are spirit beings who serve God around the throne and across the universe (verse 7).

5. By contrast, the Son rules on the throne of God’s kingdom with justice and righteousness which are the hallmarks of His reign. God’s nature, among many other attributes, is joy, The Son manifested that joy in His human nature by being the most joyful person who ever lived. He was ‘anointed with the oil of joy,’ the Jewish way of expressing the exuberance of His joyful nature (verse 8, 9)

6. The Son is eternal. Unlike the universe which He created and which is running down like a clock and will soon be spent and discarded, He is ‘olam – to the horizon’ which never ends. The universe is temporal – it will come to an end, but not the Son (verse 10-12).

7. Jesus is at the Father’s right hand – symbolic of the seat of power and authority. To no angel did the Father ever give the mandate to rule, as He did to the Son. Angels have no greater role than to serve (verses 13, 14).

As the Son of Man, Jesus came to serve, but He came to serve as the Son. In His service He enhanced and furthered the work of the Father. As a twelve-year-old He declared that He was to be about the Father and, at the end of His earthly life, He affirmed that He had completed what He had come to do (John. 17: 4).

In spite of the evidence of Scripture, there are those who deny and reject the truth that Jesus is the Son of God. It is this fact upon which the whole of Christianity rests. If Jesus is not the Son of God, everything He said and did falls flat. The entire superstructure of our faith stands or falls on this. Is He indeed, the Son of God?

There can be no greater authority than God the Father Himself. It is He who spoke the words of affirmation and authority, both in the testimony of Scripture and from His own mouth at the moment of Jesus’ baptism and on the Mount of Transfiguration. What did He say?

As soon as Jesus was baptised, He went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on Him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased.’ (Matt. 3:16, 17)

After six days Jesus took with Him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There He was transfigured before them. . . While he (Peter) was still speaking, a bright cloud covered them, and a voice from the cloud said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him!’ (Matt. 17: 1, 2, 5)

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Superior To Angels

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SUPERIOR TO ANGELS

For to which angels did God ever say: ‘You are my Son; today I have become your Father’? Or again, ‘I will be His Father, and He will be my Son’? And again, when God brings His firstborn into the world, He says, ‘Let all God’s angels worship Him.’ In speaking of angels He says, ‘He makes His angels spirits and His servants flames of fire.’ But about the Son He says, ‘Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a sceptre of justice will be the sceptre of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy. (Heb. 1: 5-9)

What is this writer saying? All these quotations from the Psalms, which his Hebrew readers would know very well because they would recite and sing the Psalms regularly as part of their worship, we pointing to one person – Jesus, the Messiah. Why was he so bent on proving the Son’s superiority to angels?

Although there is no evidence that the Jews ever worshipped angels, during the intertestamental period, i.e. the 400 years between the last book of the Old Testament and Matthew, it seems that they did invoke angels,

Who were the angels and what part did they play in God’s scheme of things?

Although the angels are mentioned throughout Scripture, ‘every reference is incidental to some other topic. They are not treated in themselves. God’s revelation never aims at informing us regarding the nature of angels. When they are mentioned, it is always in order to inform us further about God, what He does and how He does it. Since details about angels are not significant for that purpose, they tend to be omitted.’ (https://bible.org/article-god%E2%80%99s-ministering-spirits)

What we do learn, however, is that angels are created beings, they are spirit beings, and they are mere creatures. There are holy angels who do God’s bidding and there are fallen angels who are allied to the devil, the chief of the fallen angels and who will perish with him when Jesus comes as Judge.

Why did this writer then, take pains to explain to his readers that Jesus is superior to angels?

The purpose of the author, in stringing seven quotes from the Old Testament together was to overwhelm his readers with the evidence that Jesus is superior to the angels by virtue of His relationship to the Father. He is the Son of God as opposed to angels who are only servants, ministering spirits who do His bidding.

Jesus is God’s chosen Son, in the Davidic line, with authority to rule in righteousness over the kingdom of God. He is also the object of angelic worship which makes Him superior to angels. His reign is eternal over this world and the entire universe.

His readers must take heed, therefore, that they recognise Jesus for who He is. From the prophetic utterances of God through the prophets and the confirmation of prophecy through the revelation of Jesus in history, there can be no doubt that He is the Son of God and therefore has a supreme position in God’s scheme of things.

What are the implications for us?

1. Since Jesus occupies the place of supremacy over all creation, He must, of necessity occupy a supreme place in our lives as well. He takes precedence over every person and every circumstance that touches our lives.

2. Jesus has all authority and holds all power in the universe. We must submit, therefore, to His authority in all things and trust Him to order our circumstances to fulfil His will in our lives, both good and bad.

3. He alone is to be worshipped, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit as the triune God. He has been given the name above all names and the place of highest authority by the Father. We are to honour and live for Him and through Him alone.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

Agony To Ecstasy!

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AGONY TO ECSTASY!

“Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the feet. They asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying?’ ‘They have taken my Lord away,’ she said, ‘and I don’t know where they have put Him.’ At this she turned around and saw Jesus there, but she did not realise that it was Jesus.” John 20:11-14 NIV.

Poor Mary! Her eyes were so swollen with weeping and her mind so dulled with grief that she seemed almost to have lost her senses. Two angels were sitting in the tomb where the body of Jesus had lain but they didn’t even startle her. She did not react in fear or wonder. They asked her a question and she replied as though she were talking to her next-door neighbour.

She did not appear to be surprised at the sight of unearthly beings or wonder who they were or what they were doing there. To her at that moment it might have been an everyday occurrence to see angels sitting in a tomb guarding empty burial cloths!

Her reply was exactly what she was thinking. Someone had stolen her Lord’s body and she was distraught because she no longer had free access to the place where she could go to mourn and remember. She had nothing left of Him but memories, and now those memories were stained by more loss, not only the loss of His presence but now also the loss of His earthly remains.

What could she do now but go away and nurse her terrible grief? The pain in her gut was unbearable. She felt as though she would die of sorrow and disappointment. Great sobs wracked her body as she turned to walk away, dismissing the unusual event as though it were of no consequence.

Through the blur of tears she saw someone standing outside the tomb, but she did not recognise Him because tears and grief had blinded her.

“He asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’ Thinking He was the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have carried Him away, tell me where you have put Him and I will get Him.”’  John 20:15 NIV.

Really, Mary! Did you think that you, a frail woman, could carry away a heavy, dead weight corpse? And where would you put Him? In your house, in the front room? She was not only blinded but irrational at that moment. She did not even recognise her beloved Master’s voice. She expected nothing but to mourn at the tomb of the one she loved more than life.

I try to imagine how Jesus felt at that moment. Mary was broken with grief. She had watched Him die. She had seen where He had been buried and had come to mourn for Him…He was ecstatic with joy. He had endured the cross, conquered death and was on the point of revealing Himself to the first person who would ever see Him alive in His resurrection body.

“Jesus said to her, ‘Mary!’ She turned towards Him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means “Teacher”).” John 20:16 NIV.

What a moment! Disclosure! Revelation! Understanding! Unparalleled delight! Mary exploded with joy! In an instant, her sorrow vanished and was replaced with ecstasy. Jesus was alive and that was all that mattered. Her name, uttered by her Lord, changed everything. All the tender love of the Son of God for a daughter He had rescued and given new life, was packed into that one word.

He had done it! He had taken the devil on and won. Mary represented the whole human race and especially those who would, like her, now be able to embrace Jesus as the Son of God and their Lord, entrust their lives to Him and submit to His loving authority over them for the rest of their lives. She had seen Him, heard Him and she was content.

Have you seen Him with the eyes of faith? Have you heard Him call your name? Do you know that He is alive? Forever? And so are you?