ANSWERS TO THE ANGEL QUIZ IN BLOG #1

ANSWERS TO THE ANGELS QUIZ – SO HOW DID YOU DO?

If you have been following this series of angel blogs, it was a LONG time ago that you took the quiz testing your knowledge of what the Bible has to say about angels.  Here are the answers.  How did you do?

FALSE                    All angels are good.

TRUE                     Angels are sent to minister primarily to believers in Christ.

FALSE                    People who die become angels who watch over their loved ones on earth.

FALSE                    Jesus is an angel.

TRUE                      Angels are unique, created beings.

TRUE                     Satan is a fallen angel.

TRUE                     Angels do not accept the worship of humans.

FALSE                    Angels hear and answer our prayers.

SOME DO              Not all angels have wings.

COULD BE             Every believer has a guardian angel.

FALSE                     Every time you hear a bell ring an angel gets his wings.  

TRUE                     Jesus, not angels, is the only mediator between us and God.

TRUE                     Angels will never understand the joy of salvation first hand.

WISHING YOU AND YOUR FAMILY A TRULY BLESSED CHRISTMAS AS YOU WORSHIP THE ONLY ONE WORTHY OF THE HONOR – THE LORD JESUS CHRIST!

LAST WORDS ON THE SUBJECT OF ANGELS 10

This has been a LONG series of blogs!  I hope you’ve been enjoying them and learning some things you didn’t know before. You can find out more about angels as they appear in the pages of the Bible in the books on the subject written by Billy Graham and David Jeremiah.

 I don’t want to close out the series however, before giving some principles to remember when studying the subject of angels.  

#1  BE CAREFUL NOT TO SHAPE ANGELS INTO BEINGS OF OUR OWN MAKING

·    The Bible is our authority on ALL things having to do with God – and that includes angels.  Hopefully, as you’ve read through these blogs, you learned that some of the things we and others have believed about angels are not consistent with what God says in His Word!  

·    Like this line from the classic Christmas movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life”: “every time you hear a bell an angel gets his wings”!  If the classes of archangel and angel do have wings, they were created that way.  They didn’t have to earn their wings!  Sorry Clarence!  

·    If we get our ideas about angels from anywhere else – books we buy, or movies we see, or family traditions that aren’t based on the Bible, then we’re moving from the arena of TRUTH, into error.  

#2  ANGELS MUST NEVER REPLACE GOD IN OUR LIVES

·    The study of angels is fascinating – but my prayer is that it will simply give us a greater hunger to know GOD – the One who created these wonderful creatures and the One whom ALL the angels themselves worship.  

·   The magazine, Christianity Today, warns:  

“Angels too easily provide a temptation for those who want a ‘fix’ of spirituality without bothering with God Himself.”  

·   The theologian AW TOZER said:

“Forever God stands apart, in light unapproachable.  He is as high above an archangel as above a caterpillar, for the gulf that separates the archangel from the caterpillar is but finite, while the gulf between God and the archangel is infinite.  Both belong to the category of, “that which is not God, and are separated from God by infinitude itself.”  

·    Preferring angels to God Himself is an insult to God who is ABOVE all of His creation.

#3  ANGELS MUST NEVER RECEIVE OUR WORSHIP

·    In Romans 1: 25 Paul says, that when man “worships and serves created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised – he has exchanged the truth of God for a lie.”   

·    As we look at Scripture passages in these blogs, we discover that angels NEVER allowed man to worship them.  Both angels AND man have been created by God for the purpose of worshiping and serving HIM.  

So, who has the greater place of honor in your thinking:  angels or God Himself?

THE LORD WHO HEALETH THEE

It has been nearly a decade now that I served the Lord as a leader with our church’s senior high group on a missions trip to the Bahamas.  We served at All Saints Camp, a place that many people with various disabilities and sicknesses called home.   

We went to build some homes and demolish others, to lay a long cement sidewalk, and to minister to the residents.  Being there in the summer when the weather was very hot and humid made the work more of a challenge.  But our kids did an awesome job of working hard, without complaining.  

There was one day when, out of deference for my age I think, I was assigned the task of scraping paint blobs from a newly finished porch. alongside a girl who had been injured while doing demo on a house.  I didn’t last long.  I rated the job right up there with watching grass grow – boring and tedious – and after not even an hour, I moved on to some other task.  (The teen never complained ONCE!)

As I think about that day now, I’m reminded of a contrast that put me to shame. While we slogged away at that boring job, we were serenaded by a resident who lived just across the sidewalk from where we worked.  

 Some of our students were gathered around Anthony on his tiny shaded porch, singing along with him the hymns of our faith.  Of all the songs he sang, one was completely unfamiliar to me.  It was a chorus I have since discovered was written by Don Moen called, I Am The Lord That Healeth Thee:

I am the God that
Healeth thee
I am the Lord
Your healer
I sent My word
And I healed your disease
I am the Lord
Your healer

It is a wonderful, simple chorus, exalting one of the attributes of God – God, Our Healer – sung with passion by a man living in very humble circumstances.  What made that moment so memorable for me, and provided such a contrast, is that Anthony was blind.  Here I was, inwardly complaining about the tedium of the task I had to do, while Anthony was worshiping His Creator and Healer, and doing it with reverence and passion.  

This past week I have watched the Lord reveal this particular attribute of His – I am the God that healeth.

Way more than a decade ago now our family was in shambles.  Each of us was suffering in his and her own ways by events that went on for years. For me, especially, I remember those years as terrorizing.  I spent many nights awake and afraid, and many days as well.  I prayed as I had never prayed before, and while I am now able to say that the Lord was at work – I didn’t see it then – and He certainly wasn’t working the way I wanted Him to.  All these years later, just writing about it can still make me feel anxious.

After some years, things eventually eased up and a measure of distance from one another helped lower anxiety levels.  But relationships had not healed.  There were years when we couldn’t even talk about it with one another.  Relationships were strained and I, for one, had little hope they would ever be any different and I grieved over it. 

How small was my faith, for I seriously underestimated what my Sovereign, Omnipotent God, who is in the business of doing the impossible, would eventually do.  

Slowly, slowly, within the last few years I have begun to enjoy a sweetness of relationship with the one who was the cause of my fear and anxiety.  There is a new level of understanding, appreciation and love between us that I never thought we would ever see.  I thank the Lord for it every day.  He has proved Himself to be “the God that healeth”.  

What prompted this blog however, was what He has done in the last month or so.  I wish I could reveal all the details, but doing so might hurt someone, so I will keep them to myself.  What I can say is that He took two people who were mostly estranged and gave them a time together to remember forever.  He took a relationship previously shaped by anger and distance, and healed it completely. He didn’t just mend it, He transformed it to one of real love and appreciation for the very personality and behavioral differences that were the cause of division before.  

I’m blown away by God’s faithfulness to hear our prayers and answer them, in His time and in His way, and without any “helpful” interference from me!  

 Why do I doubt that He is able to do things like this?  I doubt Him because I focus on the seemingly, impossible to change, people involved and not on the God of whom it was said, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?”   I doubt Him because I have expectations that He will work in THIS way, and no other, and I miss what He IS doing though it could be staring me in the face.

I don’t think Anthony doubted the Lord as Healer, even though he was never healed of his blindness.  But then, who knows that maybe he had been healed in many other ways in his life so that prompted his reverent worship of the Lord, Who is Healer?

Does the Lord ALWAYS heal us physically or emotionally or relationally?  No, sometimes, for reasons we may never understand this side of heaven, it is for our best and His glory not to answer that prayer with a yes.  When the Lord does heal, it is a gift of His generous grace.

I am grateful for the healing He has brought to our family.  He is worthy of worship for He IS the One Who Healeth. 

WHAT YOU CAN KNOW THAT ANGELS NEVER CAN - ANGELS 9

Did you know that believers in Christ are the object of the attention of angels?

The Apostle Peter, in his letter to believers throughout the world of his day, said this: 

I Peter 1:10-12

“Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow.  It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven.  Even angels long to look into these things.”

What is it that makes us the object of angelic attention?  

What can we know that angels never can?  Keep reading!

One major difference between us and the good angels is that they still are what they were created to be – but you and I are not.  

Adam and Eve were beautiful beings, created by God to reflect His image and to live in a perfect environment where they lived in perfect harmony with Him – walking and talking together.

But then, sin entered the picture when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - and with sin came death – the death of the once intimate relationship Adam and Eve had with a holy God, and physical death – to a man and woman made to live forever.

Sin has been with us ever since – it’s in our genes, it’s part of our DNA.

It has infected all of us, enslaved all of us and cursed all of us with death and the fear of death.

Nobody escapes it.

BUT THEN GOD (three of my favorite words in the Bible!) provided a solution to the sin problem.

He sent His Son Jesus to be born as one of us – human.  

Angels participated in the announcement of His birth –

Gabriel appeared to the priest Zacharias telling him that he would have a son who would be the one to prepare the way for the coming of the Messiah – that son was John the Baptist.

Gabriel appeared to Mary and told her should would have a child by the Holy Spirit and she was to name Him Jesus because He would save His people from their sins.

Then he appeared to Joseph, who was wavering about whether to marry Mary because she was pregnant with a child which was not his.  He told Joseph to go ahead and marry Mary because she would have a child of the Holy Spirit – He would be the long awaited Messiah.

When Jesus was born, a host of angels appeared to the shepherds announcing the birth of the child.

Jesus grew up to become a man, tempted as we are, yet without sin, and so able to become the perfect sacrifice, and to take upon HIMSELF the curse of sin, and die the death that was OURS.  He was the perfect sacrifice, the Only sacrifice which could once and for all forgive sin.  

In power Jesus rose again – proving Himself victorious over sin and death and the Only One able to save us.

When you and I grasp that truth BY FAITH (cause it’s only way we can grasp it), we are finally FREE – free from the penalty of death because Jesus took it for us, free from the power sin used to have over us, free to love God wholehearted and obey Him.  

Without Jesus, we found it impossible NOT to sin, but through faith in Jesus, we are finally free NOT TO SIN.

God’s provision for our salvation from sin is amazing, joy producing and wonderful – because it’s completely undeserved!

SO WHAT DO THE ANGELS THINK OF IT?

 I Peter 1:12 “Even angels long to look into these things.”  What things?

The things pertaining to OUR salvation.

Do they long to look into them because they lack knowledge about God’s great plan of salvation?  NO.  

Being citizens of heaven itself, being present when the Lord Jesus descended and became one of us – they would have known all about God’s plan to save man from sin.

No, they long to look into the things pertaining to our salvation not because they lack the intellectual knowledge– but because they have never FELT salvation, never experienced it for themselves.  Our salvation, which they can never experience, makes them curious observers of US.

In I Peter 1, the Apostle mentions some things that are outside the range of what angels personally experience.

·         In verse 2, Peter addresses his letter to the “elect”, believers in Jesus scattered throughout the world of his day, who have been sanctified – set apart for God – through the sprinkling of Christ’s blood.

Because the holy angels don’t sin - they have never known, and never needed to know, the cleansing available to us constantly through the blood of Christ.  

·         In verse 3, he says:  “In His great mercy He has given us the new birth”.  When we trust in Christ, we are born again spiritually into a new life. Angels have remained the same since they were created, while God has changed us completely, from the inside, out.

Our new birth comes thru God’s great mercy – MERCY is an attribute God expresses toward us when He withholds from us the just punishment for sin that we deserve.  Since the angels have not sinned, they have never needed God’s mercy.

In verse 4, Peter says: “We have an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade – kept in heaven for us”.   Angels already have what is theirs.  The treasures being stored in heaven now are for OUR benefit.

In verses 3 and 7: We read that we have a “living hope”,  - that our faith “will result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”  This is not a cross your fingers, pie in the sky hope, rather it is a CONFIDENT ASSURANCE!

The angels have no need of hope - because Christ’s glory is something they already see first hand.

In verse 8 Peter says:  “Even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him”.  

We believe – we have to walk by faith in a God we cannot SEE with our eyes.  The angels have no need of belief.  They know the Lord by sight, not by faith.

When Peter says angels long to look into these things – the Greek word meaning “look into”  doesn’t mean a casual peek.  It’s an intense term – it means not a quick glimpse, but a close up, detailed analysis.

Our salvation makes the angels intensely curious!

They wish they could see and feel and especially experience, the blessings of our salvation firsthand.

 But what they can only LONG to experience, we CAN experience through faith in Christ.

The chorus of the hymn:  “Holy, Holy, Is What the Angels Sing”, expresses this well.  It says:

• o   Holy, Holy, is what the angels sing.
• o   And I expect to help them make the courts of heaven ring.
• o   But when I sing redemption’s story, they will fold their wings,
• o   For angels never felt the joy that our salvation brings.

Even though angels can never experience the joy of our salvation – they rejoice over it.   Jesus said, “There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Angels can participate in the announcement of salvation. They can testify to God’s provision of salvation for sinners.   They can have joy over the repentance and salvation of sinners, but they can never experience it themselves.

Are you looking at believers in Christ and wondering what it is they have that you don’t? 

 Put your faith in Jesus and wonder no more.  Your salvation will set the angels of heaven to rejoicing!