Heb 1:4-14 (part 1)
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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 to him a father, and he shall be to me a 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 ministers a flame of fire.”
8 But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, the scepter of uprightness 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, “You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning, and the heavens are the work of your hands;
11 they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment,
12 like a robe you will roll them up, like a garment they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will have no end.”
13 And 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 they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?
So far in our study of Hebrews we have looked at each verse and dove-in the descriptions of the deity of Christ. This next section, v 4 to 14, the author of Hebrews compares Jesus to angels. In this comparison the author shows that Jesus is far greater than the angels.
Considering the previous verses it seems to be an unnecessary comparison since it has been shown already that Jesus is God and there are eight descriptions of Jesus’ deity: He is God’s Son, He is the heir of all things,He created the world, He is the radiance of the glory of God, He is the exact imprint, He upholds the universe, He made purification for sins and He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
So, why does the author now makes this comparison?
There are two main possible reasons: First it may be in response to Heb 2:2 which say that the OT message was declared by angels. He is talking about angels to show that the final message of God, through Jesus Christ is not inferior to the message of the OT. Gal 3:19 says “Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.” So now Hebrews is making it clear that the message of the NT through Jesus Christ is safeguarded by even more majestic sanctions than those of the Old Testament.
The other possibility is that the believers to whom this letter was addressed were in danger of being led by false doctrines, including the worship of angels. Heb 13:9 says “Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings,” Maybe these believers were facing a similar situation as the believers in Colossae, Col 2:18 says “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind”
In our context today we are probably unaware of anyone who worships angels or is tempted to do so. I think today we are actually more tempted to believe that the supernatural world does not exist. That said, I also think we lack Biblical knowledge about angels, so we will take a sidetrack from Heb 1 today so we can better understand this comparison in Heb. Today we will look at something that we talk about even less than angels: fallen angels or demons.
As you may imagine this has been a very difficult sermon to write. Not only I have no delight in talking about Satan. Also, Satan does not want you or even myself to be armed with knowledge of the truth about him and his ways. I’m sure you too won’t delight in hearing about Satan and fallen angels. However, God thought it important enough to include this in His Word and it is crucial that we know about God’s enemy, who by default is our enemy as well.
It is impossible to cover everything on this topic and we will only scrape the surface, by looking at three main questions: What are demons, What do fallen angels do? and how do we battle against them successfully.
What are Demons?
What are Demons?
In Gen 1:31 God said that “he saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”. It seems that at this point there was no fallen or evil angels, but in Gen 3 we see Satan in the form of a serpent tempting Eve to sin. Thus, it seems that between Gen 1 and 3 it was when some angels sinned and rebelled against God.
There are three main key Scripture passages that seem to describe the fall of angels: Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 and Rev 12. Even though for the last 2 thousand years many believers interpret these passages to refer to the fall of angels, there are some believers that will not agree with this interpretation.
But if some angel sinned and fell, we might wonder how many fell?, or how many demons exist? We don’t know exactly how many, but Rev 12 as it describes the fall of Satan said in v3-4a “3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.”
The book of Revelation is not easy to interpret and with much symbolic language, but these verses seem to indicate that 1/3 of the angels fell, or followed Satan in his rebellion. We don’t know how many angels were created, so at best we know that 1/3 of the angels fell. This perspective might be intimidating, however we cannot forget that 2/3 of the angels didn’t fall and that God is far greater than anything that was created. In fact- there are 2 to 1 still obeying God… perhaps why the fallen angels work so hard…
From these passages we saw we know that Satan is the one that led other angels to fall and follow him. We don’t know how 1/3 of angels were tempted, but we do know that in Gen 3 Satan also tempted Eve to sin, by using deceit and lies. This leads me to think that the devil tempted the other angels in a similar way with deceit and lies about God.
Rev 12 refers to Satan as great dragon, ancient serpent, the devil, the deceiver of the world. I find it quite intriguing that there are several religions and ideologies that use the crescent moon as their symbol. I say it is intriguing because another name use for the devil is Lucifer, which comes from Isaiah 14:12 which can be translated as day star or the crescent moon.
However, this should not be surprising because false gods are demons. You might have never notice these Scripture passages, but listen to what it says: Deut 32:17 says “they sacrificed to demons that were no gods” making this clear connection between false gods are demons. Other passages point to the same Lev 17:7 “they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to demons”; Psalm 106:37 “they sacrifice their sons and daughters to the demons” 1 Cor 10:20 “I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God.”
Let’s turn our attention now to the two main passages that likely refer to Satan. If you would like you can turn with me to Isaiah chapter 14
Isaiah 14 is a prophecy against the King of Babylon, but its description and language seems to go beyond any human being, especially in v 12-14:
12 “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low!
13 You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north;
14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’
I think it is reasonable to consider that these verses might be referring to the devil and his fall and if it is, it also indicates his sin, his rebellion: “I will make myself like the Most High”
This passage alone doesn’t seem to give us a lot of information, but there is another passage that seems to give us a little more in Ezekiel, you can turn to Ezekiel 28. Again this prophecy is addressed to a human king, the king of Tyre, but the language goes much further than describing any human being it says in v12-17:
12 “Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God: “You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared.
14 You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.
15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you.
16 In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you.
Not only is there a lot to learn from these passages, each raises a ton more questions that could be studied further. But here are some of the key points. First, before his fall, Satan was perfect and full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Secondly, even though he was created without sin, he became proud of his beauty, and he corrupted his wisdom for his own sake, his splendor. Even to this day Satan is seeking to promote himself through his corrupted wisdom.
Satan was in the garden, that means he is being around since the beginning, he has in his favor experience plus his corrupted wisdom, and he uses both to attack us. He wants us to use our wisdom for our sake. He is the best helper to come up with plans and excuses for why you should sin. Are we tempted to use our wisdom for our sake? Did you ever notice that if you want to do something so bad that sooner or later you will find a way? In this process we become like the devil, using our wisdom for our sake, we need to be aware and careful that we don’t use what God has given us as means to sin against Jesus.
Now, back to our original outline
What Do Fallen Angels Do?
What Do Fallen Angels Do?
The Bible tell us from the beginning in Gen 3 that Satan was the originator of sin and that he tempt others to sin. In my study of Scripture I found that there are at least 4 main things that Satan and demons do: 1) Speaks out of his own character; 2) Opposes God; 3)Accuser and 4) Blinds minds
1)He speaks out of his own character
1)He speaks out of his own character
Jesus said the following in John 8:44
44 You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
From this verse we learn that Satan is a murderer, he does not stand in the truth, there is no truth in him, he lies, he is a liar and father of lies. When he speaks out he speaks out of his own character.
The devil is described as the deceiver, it goes alongside the description that Jesus gave him, the father of lies, liar.
7 For many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist.
and then Paul
3 But I am afraid that as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
and its described as the deceiver of the whole world
9 And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
The devil does all of this lying, deceiving and murdering because it is out of his own character. We know the character of God is completely opposite of Satan’s character.
But, what is your character? is it aligned more with God’s character or Satan’s character? What does come out of your mouth? Remember what Jesus said in Luke 6
45 The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.
What does come out of your mouth? is it glorifying God or is it opposing God?
2)He opposes God
2)He opposes God
The name Satan means adversary, opponent to God. He was created to worship and serve God, yet we saw he instead became corrupted by his wisdom and speaks out of his character. Therefore he is now opposing God. He knows this is ultimately pointless, yet he also knows there is a window to get to God. That is to attack those that were created in God’s image. All men and women have been created in God’s image, but it is those who are actively becoming more and more like Christ that offer the greatest potential to try to hurt God to oppose God.
The devil opposed God in the garden, by tempting Adam and Eve, but he didn’t stop there, we see his works with Cain and Abel and throughout history he is trying to stop God’s plan to rescue mankind, from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob to the Israelites, to David, to Jesus, to the apostles, to Jesus’ disciples, to his church, and us today.
Therefore, it becomes more relevant to take Peter’s words more seriously.
8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.
The thought that someone is out to devour us, should cause us to pause and reflect on our lives. He is doing this by prowling, he is not blatantly revealing himself. We’ve all seen a cat ready to pounce, but this is not a cat… this is a roaring lion! Therefore, be mindful of the areas he will attack. Also, be in prayer for our church and our leaders. A time of transition and some uncertainty is an ideal time for Satan to attack, to cause division, resentment and to lead you stray.
If for a moment you thought that the Christian life was an easy ride, this should remind us that the Christian life is a battle, a wrestle against the rulers and authorities that remain unseen… those for God and those opposing God.
So far we have seen that the devil and demons speak out of their own character with lies and deceit, and that they oppose God. Scripture also describes the devil as the accuser.
3) Accuser
3) Accuser
We see this in the OT in a description of Satan accusing the high priest Joshua
1 Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him.
Also in the OT in Job 1:9 we see Satan accusing Job of fearing God only because of the blessings Job received from God.
This description of being the accuser is also found in Rev 12 where it says
10 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.
This is not a pleasant thought that the devil accuses us, day and night before our God. And the devil will accuse you with mix truths and lies so that you will feel unworthy and unable to come to the throne of Grace and ask for forgiveness. Don’t be deceived no matter what you have done Jesus will receive you with open arms.
4) Blinds minds
4) Blinds minds
Besides speaking out of his own character, opposing God and accusing Scripture also says that the devil blinded the minds of unbelievers.
4 In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
When we share the gospel with unbelievers we should not be surprise that they cannot comprehend and what seems very logical. For their minds have been blinded by Satan, the truth is illogical to them. We need to remember that we must pray that God will open their eyes and hearts to the gospel.
Satan can be defined as a liar, murderer, deceiver, accuser, tempter and adversary trying to destroy every work of God. If we allow our minds to stay here, and then compound this with supernatural manifestations of the devil it can cause an overwhelming fear. It is not helpful to go on in details about these things because when we do we will begin to focus on the character of Satan and loose focus of the character of Christ and his power.
The complete and holy, safe and loving. The one worthy of our fear, worship and meditation. Jesus is God’s Son, Jesus is the heir of all things,Jesus created the world, He is the radiance of the glory of God, He is the exact imprint, He upholds the universe, Jesus made purification for sins and He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
How do we battle?
How do we battle?
We could end here just thinking about Jesus and who He is. However, we need to study our last question: how do we battle?
Many Christians in America will say that while Satan and demons are real, they are not active or at least not that active in america. They might believe that these supernatural things are more common in places like Africa. Then there are other extremes believed, that Satan is made up like Santa or that he is behind every bush. Satan is happy for us to believe any of these extremes because you are believing lies rather than the truth shared by God.
The truth is we are told to put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rules, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of the evil in the heavenly places.
How can we discern or recognize demonic influences? First we see in the Bible cases of violent actions especially in opposition to the preaching of the gospel. For example in Mark 5 with the case of the Gerasene demoniac, who no one was able to bind and he would be bruising himself with stones. Demonic activities often tend towards destruction though they rarely start out this way. John 10 describes Satan as “the thief [who] comes only to steal, kill and destroy” If you have never seen any spiritual demonic activity and you don’t know what is like you need to praise Jesus, for it is nothing we wish to experience. His grace abounds in your life. We see examples in scripture as I noted, but we can also see examples in solid Christian films, such as the Chosen season 1 episode 1.
Second, we see in Scripture that demonic influences are found as a case of a disease. We see this in Luke 13:16 where Jesus said after healing a woman, [she was]“a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen years”. While other times the demonic influence lead to false doctrinal statements such as refusal to confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh or cursing Jesus (1 John 4:2-3 and 1 Cor 12:3).
Besides these outward appearances there is a subjective sense of recognizing evil spiritual influences. 1 Cor 12 mentions the gifts of the Holy Spirit, one of them is the ability to distinguish between spirits, that is an ability to sense or discern the difference in the working of the Holy Spirit and the working of evil spirits in a person’s life. We might think this will be easy to distinguish, especially in leaders, but Paul tell us:
13 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ.
14 And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
15 So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
We need God’s help… to be familiar with His Truth, His Word that God reveals these lies. We have the gift of the Holy Spirit to discern between spirits. Many of you have experienced, when meeting someone for the first time and you have a subjective sense that he/she is a Christian without knowing much about that person. This subjective sense, or perception, could also be for the opposite. You might sense the presence of the demonic influence before there are more objective indications of that.
This is very subjective and often hard to distinguish. Even now, as I have been working on this message, I have never been so often under attack spiritually. Often during these past few weeks, even though I am studying about it, it was hard to realize that I was under attack. I was more apt to blame my flesh or the world. So even in the moments when I wasn’t sure if it was demonic attack or not, I was verbally praying and calling on Jesus’ authority. Satan cannot read our thoughts, we must vocalize the truths no matter the volume or tone. It is not a matter of your authority or the authority of your voice, it is the authority of Jesus and what He accomplish on the cross.
Now here is my plea for you. Please contact me or one of the elders if you sense that you are under attack spiritually. If you do face something like this, you will be tempted to not share and ask for prayer. Satan wants you to believe the lie that you should be ashamed or to hide.
Why? because this is what God said about the body of Christ, the church. Eph 4:15-16 speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.
Satan does not want us to grow like Christ, he does not want us to show vulnerability and depend on one another; the devil does not wants the body of Christ grow in love.
So again, feel free to talk to me or one the elders if you sense that you are under attack.
These attacks should not be confused with Satan’s most common strategy or schemes against God’s people — that is temptation. Few of us will experience this spiritual attacks, but All of us face temptations. It is through temptations that the devil attacks us all the time and often we don’t recognize his attacks. We could have a whole series just on temptations, because until we die or Christ returns we will be tempted. My intent here is to draw the connection between Satan and demons and our struggles with our flesh. Jesus was tempted and I am certain beyond what is recorded in Scripture. Again Satan speaks from his own character which is all to often closer to our flesh.
In Tempted and Tried by Russell Moore, he points out that there are three main areas that Satan tempt us: our Identity, desires and short cutting God’s ways. For the sake of time I’ll expand on the two that I think are more common for us, but I encourage you to red this for yourselves.
Our identity. We are tempted to think of ourselves very differently than how God views us. We are tempted to think of ourselves based on what we do, what people think of us, our nationality, or let our identity be defined by our experiences or upbringing. We too often forget that above all, we are children of God, undeserving sinners that are redeemed by His blood. Our identity should rests solely in what God tells us and not what we think or feel.
Secondly, we are tempted in our desires. I think this is the most common way, often when we sin we have misplaced desires. We were created with desires, good desires in themselves are not sinful, but any desire can become an idol. If we don’t submit all desires to be under the lordship of Jesus they become idols in our hearts. We often don’t recognize that some desires are our idols because the desire is a good thing. That be of a desire for an extra piece of pie or buying something we didn’t need, both of which you might regret later. But this applies also for big decisions or long term desires.
About 10 years ago God called me to full time ministry, from that point on my desire has been to serve where the Lord will have my skill set match the needs of his people. Throughout this time there have been several opportunities some that seemed very logical in the human sense, however God’s answer was no. Often I don’t know the why. But we have chosen to submit and trust in God. Believing that He cares more for us than we care for ourselves.
I do believe as well that God cares more for you and for this church than you care for yourself. He has a plan for this church. Therefore, it is crucial for the elders and the search committee to take this transition time to seek God’s direction and guidance. Because this is God’s church, Jesus is the ultimate shepherd and leader, so we all want to follow Him. It might be that He will have us leading, but it might not. Whatever it might be, not our will, not our desire, but what He has in store, what He has planned, may His will be done. He is the only one who knows the future.
We must submit every desire, want or need to the lordship of Jesus and trust Him even when we don’t get what we want, what we desire. If our desires are not under the lordship of Jesus, we will ultimately sin in order to obtain what we want. We will be living out the phrase “the ends justifies the means”, but worse is the truth that we will not be trusting God. Not trusting that He cares more for us than we care for ourselves.
The importance of desires in temptations can be seen as well in 1 John 2:16: “For all that is in the world- the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life- is not from the Father but is from the world.” Therefore, we need to watch out. Paying attention to our desires, not only that they are good or bad, but if we are trusting God and having Jesus as our lord and not let any fleshly desire take the throne in our hearts. You can identify a misplaced desire by asking the question: what do I want more than anything? Ask this often during the day and if there is something that is coming up often in your heart, you might have to submit that desire to God and not let this desire rule your heart. Rather only let Jesus rule your heart and its desires.
Clearly, there is a vast amount more we could study on this topic of temptations. I want to end with Russell Moore’s summary:
“You will be tempted with consumption, security, and status. You will be tempted to provide for yourself, protect yourself, and to exalt yourself. And at the core of these three is a common impulse - to cast off the fatherhood of God.”
The core of all temptations is that we would trust in ourselves, instead of trusting in God. We might say that we trust God. But the rubber meets the road when we lose the security and or status. We thought we had (fill in the blank) bank account, job, health, safety etc. In those moments do we choose to trust God and the character of our Father or do we fall into trusting the character of Satan?
Either way, we too, are like the original readers of the Hebrews letter, who are all too often dangerously close to being led by false doctrines while knowing and believing the deity of Christ.