Sermon Tone Analysis

Hebrews 1:4–14 (ESV)

having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

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”?

And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says,

“Let all God’s angels worship him.”

Of the angels he says,

“He makes his angels winds,

and his ministers a flame of fire.”

But of the Son he says,

“Your throne, O God, is forever and ever,

the scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.

You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;

therefore God, your God, has anointed you

with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

And,

“You, Lord, laid the foundation of the earth in the beginning,

and the heavens are the work of your hands;

they will perish, but you remain;

they will all wear out like a garment,

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.”

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”?

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 taken a deep dive into the descriptions of the deity of Christ.

In this next section, v 4 to 14, the author of Hebrews compares Jesus to angels.

In this comparison, the author is showing us that Jesus is far greater than the angels.

To help us better understand this comparison we have paused and studied fallen angels, a couple of weeks ago (If you didn’t hear this sermon, I encourage you to listen on our church website.)

Today we will continue to this preparation before getting into the verses in Hebrews by studying the topic of angels.

It is hard to believe that this year is already coming to an end and we are very near Christmas.

It is only 13 days away.

During this time there are typical things that we see, the Christmas trees, the decorations, the music, the lights, the snow, and pictures of angels.

But another thing that is very popular during this time of the year is Christmas movies.

Interestingly a lot of these Christmas movies especially Hallmark type movies present different ideas about angels, often the angels are portrayed helping a couple on the brink of divorce or restoring a relationship between a child and parents, or more commonly an angel might help someone find the love of their lives, another common idea is that the angels will restore the Christmas spirit in someone’s life.

Our goal today is to see what the Bible tells us about angels and what they do?

As you can imagine we will not cover everything on the topic of angels, just as we did with fallen angels we will be just scratching the surface.

It is interesting that even though we often don’t study about angels, we all have beliefs about angels that often have no biblical support.

I think the reason is that instead of a careful systematic study of Scripture, we replaced it with the bombarding information the world sends us about angels.

I think we have two tendencies as we receive worldly information about angels, one is to just disregard everything, or we very slowly throughout the years accept the ideas and beliefs about angels as they are presented to us without considering what the Bible teaches.

To help correct our understanding we will only look at two questions: What are angels?

and What do angels do?

What Are Angels?

So what are angels?

the first thing that everyone thinks or associates angels with are wings.

We all in one way or another assume that angels have wings.

But do they all have wings?

Now I’ll need you to interact with me, when you think of angels, what scripture passages do you think of?

There are almost 300 verses that mention angels in Scripture.

The next slide shows the references to angels by books of the Bible.

From this graph, we can see the most reference to angels is in the book of Revelation with almost 80 references.

Looking at the books by order we can see some that stand out: Genesis, Judges, Zechariah, Luke, Acts, Hebrews, and Revelation.

Let’s take only 6 books in order and look at some of these references.

Genesis: Angel appearing to Hagar, Sarah’s servant Gen 16, then angels went to Sodom where Lot invite them to his house in Gen 19, we see also Jacob dreaming of angels ascending and descending on a ladder in Gen 28, later before Jacob meets his brother Esau he is met by angels in Gen 32.

Judges: We see an angel appearing to Gideon in Judges 6, and an angel appearing to Samson’s parents in Judges 13

Zechariah: The prophet Zechariah had different visions and in them often angels are referred to.

Zechariah 6 describes angels patrolling the earth and reporting it to God.

Luke: It is the one we are more familiar with during this time of the year: angel appearing to Zechariah, to Mary and Joseph, to the shepherds in Luke 1 and 2.

The book of Acts: Acts 5 we see an angel opening the prison door for the apostles, then in Acts 8 we see an angel directing Philip so he would meet the Ethiopian eunuch, Acts 10 an angel appeared to Cornelius instructing him to call for Peter, Acts 12 an angel appeared to Peter in prison and led him out of prison.

Then lastly the book of Revelation, there are almost 80 references to angels in this letter alone.

Clearly, I’m not going to mention all of them here.

Similarly to the prophet Zechariah, here John sees different visions of heaven and prophetic visions of the future, where we see the angels pouring God’s wrath on earth in Rev 16, and Rev 7 we see angels worshipping God.

As you can see we didn’t mention all the passages that refer to angels, such as Numbers 22 Balaam’s Donkey and the angel or Isaiah 6 and the vision of Isaiah and the angels worshipping God day and night or in Daniel as an angel shut the mouths of the lions.

What Are Angels?

But what we might observe from these references is that what is recurrent between all of them is not the description of wings, most of the references don’t mention wings.

What is common is the fact that when people recognize that what they saw were angels, it caused them great fear and they worship God and God’s plans were carried out.

The idea that angels have wings is not completely untrue, because as we will see some types of angels are described with wings.

But this association of angels and wings is so common that many unbelievers also make this association.

Christmas’ classic It’s a wonderful life: every time you hear a bell ringing an angel gets his wings.

Sadly, the topic of angels is an easy “spiritualized” way to dismiss the question of eternal judgment and the fact that there are only two destinations after death: heaven or hell.

Scripture gives plenty of confidence that human beings cannot “become” or transform into angels.

Actually, we see in Scripture that human beings are lower than the angels.

Psalm 8:4-5 “ what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?

Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honor.”

And then Paul says in 1 Cor 6:3 “3 Do you not know that we are to judge angels?”

Every time I read this passage in Scripture I want to respond to Paul, no I had no idea Paul that we are to judge angels.

But this indicates that even though now we are lower than angels after the resurrection redeemed human beings are going to be placed in higher authority than angels.

The close association we have of angels and wings surprises me because this is not the most common way angels are described in Scripture as we have seen from the verses we look at previously.

The bible also indicates that there are different types of heavenly beings or angels: Cherubim, Seraphim, Living Creatures and messengers

Cherubim when we hear the word Cherubim we think it is a singular, one angel, but this word is the plural for Cherub.

Gen 3:24 says that God placed cherubim to guard the entrance to the Garden of Eden.

In the OT on top of the ark of the covenant, there were two figures of cherubim with their wings stretched above the ark.

Also, God’s throne is said to be above the cherubim, Ezekiel 10 and Psalm 18.

The other type of angel is Seraphim, which is also a plural word.

The Seraphim are mentioned only in Isaiah 6: 2-7.

The Seraphim are in God’s presence continually worshipping God saying: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory.

There is another type of angel Scripture describes, The Living Creatures: these are around God’s throne and they are referred to as “living creatures” and they like the Seraphim worship God day and night.

These are described in Ezekiel 1 and Rev 4.

If we look at the descriptions of these three types of angels you will see that each of them has a different kind of wing.

However, there is another type of angel described in Scripture, which I’m naming messengers, that is what the name angel means: messenger.

These are described by most of the occurrences in Scripture when God opens people’s eyes to see angels, it seems that they take a bodily form to appear, sometimes they are seen just like strangers.

Like in Gen 19 as Lot invited the two angels to his house, it seems that Lot and all the men of the town saw them just like strangers.

Other times like in Judges 13 as an angel appeared to Samson’s parents it cause them great fear.