Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

The secular world has fallen in love with angels.

Angels have become so popular in our culture that any book or movie on angels becomes an instant success.

Two of the popular TV programs are about angels.

Touched By An Angel, features an Irish angel who goes about helping people out of life's trials, and always has a successful conclusion.

Every once in while she tells people she is an angel, and every so often she does something supernatural to prove it.

But she is very conservative with her miracles, and you find yourself impatient with her for not intervening faster.

The other series called, Heaven Help Us is no longer on, but it had a lot of things not even remotely related to Biblical revelation, but it was well done and satisfied the current hunger for spiritual reality.

The two angels are a young husband and wife who were killed in a plane crash.

They are assigned tasks each week to help people in sort of crisis.

It is made clear that their success in their good works will determine if they go to heaven or hell.

It is a works salvation theme all the way.

They are very nice angels and they always succeed.

These two programs are, or were, watched by millions, and have a positive message about angels.

But they convey the false impression that people become angels at death,and that good works are a means of salvation.

They do convey the truth that there is a spirit world that cares about this world and what happens to people.

People long for this to be true.

They do not want to trust Jesus as Savior, or submit to God's will, but they deeply desire to know that someone cares and is watching over them, and that death is not the end.

This hunger for assurance of another world has led to numerous books on angels, and many of them are not from a Christian perspective.

A number of modern artists are also into angels, and so the secular world is now competing with Christians in the exaltation of angels.

The revival of interest in angels is both good and bad.

It is bad because of all the myths and false information, and the substituting of angels for God.

This makes the angels into idols, and destroys the very essence of what real angels are all about--to increase the adoration of God, their Creator.

The good side is that it opens the door for Christians to talk about the Biblical reality of angels, and how they, like the Christmas angels, point men to the Lord Jesus.

Angels play a major role in the theology of the three major religions of the world-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

There are 109 references to angels in the Old Testament and 56 references to the Angel of the Lord.

In the New Testament there are 188 references to angels.

In the Koran there 101 references to angels.

Angelology is a branch of theology in the great religions of the world.

They also play a role in cults theology, and in the world of the occult.

The new age is into angels, and so are religious nuts and wackos.

In short, this is a subject that holds interest for most of mankind.

You could spend the rest of your life studying angels and never exhaust what is available.

So much of what angels do is personal and subjective.

You cannot capture angelic experiences on film, or get them to sign their autograph or pose for a picture.

Hard objective evidence is hard to come by.

But when you begin to add up the enormous number of witnesses who describe their encounters with angels, you are forced to recognize there is too much evidence to ignore their reality.

I believe in angels because the Bible reveals them and not because of any personal experience.

But Hope MacDonald has had many experiences with angels, and she wrote the book, When Angels Appear.

She is a pastor's wife, and her book was published by Zondervan, an evangelical publishing house.

She started her encounter with angels at age 4. Her sister Marilyn was struck by a car and thrown 20 feet into the air.

She was rolling full speed into a large open sewer when all of the sudden she stopped right on the edge.

No one could understand how that could happen, but the sister said, "But didn't you see that huge beautiful angel standing in the sewer holding up her hands to keep me from rolling in?"

She never forgot this incident, and as an adult she began to do research on angels.

She discovered hundreds of books on the devil and demons, but all she could find in print were 8 books on angels.

This was back in 1982.

It seems that men have a greater fascination for evil than for good.

But today the good angels are hot and are getting a lot more attention.

Billy Graham in his book on angels says, "Angels have a much more important place in the Bible than the devil and his demons."

The angels played a major role in the Christmas story.

They announced the birth of Christ to both Mary and Joseph, and helped them work out the complexities of the virgin birth.

Angels announced His birth to the shepherds and sang the first Christmas song--Glory to God in The Highest.

They protected the Christ child, and all His life Jesus was protected by the angels.

They would have even saved Him from the cross had He asked for that salvation.

We cannot not look at all the ways they were involved in the life of Jesus, but we see they also announced His second coming in Acts 1:10-11, "Men of Galilee they said, "Why do you stand here looking into the sky?

This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen Him go into heaven."

The angels will play a major role when Jesus returns, and for all eternity we will be partners in worship and service with the angels.

It makes sense why angels would play a major role in the life of Jesus, for He had to be protected until He went to the cross.

God was not going to allow any accident, or disease, or clever trick of Satan to destroy His plan before it was completed.

Angels are a vital part of the cast in the Christmas story, and in the whole story of the greatest life ever lived.

But question that men struggle with is, what is the role of angels in our lives?

The Christian world and the secular world have one concept of angels in common and that is the idea of the guardian angel.

These invisible beings are protecting us.

Who of us could not have been killed at some point in their life already?

I have not kept a list of near death experiences, but I know I had a couple as a teenager, one in college, and several since.

A second of difference in what happened could have led to my death in accidents.

Did my guardian angel give me protection, or was I just lucky, or did God in His providence spare me without angel involvement?

Such questions get us into the realm of the unseen and the unknown.

This is a realm where it is hard to be dogmatic.

But Christians have always believed that angels are assigned to be with us.

Charles Wesley wrote,

"Angels, where'er we go

Attend our steps what'er betide.

With watchful care there charge defend

And evil turn aside.

John Calvin, the great reformer wrote, "The angels are the dispensers and administrators of the Divine beneficence toward us: They regard our safety, undertake our defense, direct our ways, and exercise a constant solicitude that no evil befall us."

We could quote hundreds of other Christian leaders to confirm this is a Christian conviction.

Why then are we still so doubtful about the relevance of angels, and skeptical about their role in our lives?

It is because there seems to be an angel shortage.

They show up to protect in some dramatic instances, but in the majority of cases there does not seem to be enough angels to care for all of God's children, let alone, the whole human population.

Daniel had an angel show up to close the mouth of the lions, and he lived to tell about it.

But the hungry lions in the Roman Coliseums devoured Christians by the hundreds.

Where were their guardian angels?

For every angel story of marvelous intervention there are dozens of tragic stories where children are not spared, but die in accidents, fires, and with dreaded diseases.

This is open knowledge, and the result is, even Christians are somewhat skeptical of the whole idea of guardian angels.

What we need to see is that there are very few supernatural experiences that all God's people have in common.

Only Noah and his family survived the flood.

Many good people did not survive, including Methusalah.

Only the three friends of Daniel survived the fiery furnace.

All other believer's in history who have been subjected to intense fire have died.

Lazarus and a few others were raised from the dead, but hundreds of millions of dead Christians have never experienced such a resurrection.

Only three of the twelve disciples got to see the transfiguration of Jesus, and only Moses and Elijah got to see Jesus on that mountain.

Only John, out of the twelve, got to see a vision of the New Jerusalem.

We could go on and on showing that we have no basis for expecting to be in on everything God does in the realm of the supernatural.

If someone has an angel story do not be skeptical because you have never seen one.

I never have either, but I can easily except another Christians experience, for I know that is a part of God's plan.

Infinite variety with Christians having all sorts of experiences that other Christians do not have.

Some Christians are healed even though I may not be.

We need to avoid the false thinking that says because God does not always do something, He never does.

Thousands of Christians die of cancer every year.