Angelic agents of God’s preservation

Sermon for St. Michael & All Angels

Revelation 12:7-12  +  Matthew 18:1-11

Our review of the Small Catechism coincides perfectly with today’s Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. We’re moving from the Ten Commandments to the Creed, beginning with the First Article of the Creed, which is entitled “Creation.” It’s printed on the back of your service folder. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth. What does this mean? I believe that God has made me, along with all created things; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still preserves them; He also richly and daily provides me with clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and yard, wife and children, land, animals, and all that I have—with all that I need to sustain this body and life; He shields me from all danger and guards and protects me from all evil; and all this He does out of pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me; for all this it is my duty to thank and praise, to serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true

The doctrine of Creation includes not only God’s creation of all things but also God’s wondrous act of preserving all the things He created. Creation and Preservation, and the holy angels are involved in both.

God has made me, along with all created things. We believe what the Bible says, that God made all things, visible and invisible, in six natural days. The “invisible things” include the holy angels. Spirit-creatures with a rational mind, with personality, with great power, but without flesh and bones. They appeared to people throughout the Scriptures in bodily form, sometimes with wings, sometimes as ordinary men. There are vast numbers of them, vast armies of them, all created sometime within the six days of creation to serve God within God’s creation in ways that we can’t even imagine.

But as rational beings, as creatures with a mind and with personality, they were given a choice whether to serve their Creator or not. And as you know, while most of them chose to serve Him gladly, a portion of them chose not to, a number of rebellious spirits led by one now known as the Devil or Satan, that “ancient serpent,” as Revelation refers to him, since he was the one speaking to Eve in the Garden of Eden in the form of a serpent. He lied to her then and so became, as Jesus calls him, the “father of lies” and “a murderer from the beginning,” since it was his set of lies that deceived the woman and brought death upon our race.

We think of demons as scary, ugly, menacing creatures that possess people and afflict them and harm them, and that is what they have sometimes done. But more than anything, they are liars. They attack the truth, sometimes with bold, outright lies, but more often with half-truths and twisted truth. They’re behind every false god, every false doctrine, and every falsehood that brings chaos and dysfunction to human society. They work invisibly, behind the scenes. How exactly they go about influencing people with their lies we aren’t told in Scripture. But we’re told that they do, and that the churches of the world and the governments and kingdoms of the world are two of their primary targets to promote and foster their lies—anything that distorts the truth about God and about God’s creation.

So you hear the lie about evolution, denying the Creator and His own account of the creation in Holy Scripture. You hear the lie about gender. The lie about homosexuality. The lie about abortion and sex outside of marriage being acceptable in God’s sight. You hear lies from politicians every day, you hear lies from the experts, lies from the media, and you hear lies from false prophets, too, to the point that it is almost impossible to believe anyone anymore. Behind those lies are the fallen angels, and you see just how severely the devil and his angels are ravaging our world and tearing it to pieces faster and faster.

But even as the world crumbles, God is there, faithfully preserving His creation for the sake of His children, until it’s time to usher in the new creation. Not only has God given me my eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, but He still preserves them. God is there, richly and daily providing me with clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and yard, wife and children, land, animals, and all that I have—with all that I need to sustain this body and life; He shields me from all danger and guards and protects me from all evil.

The holy angels are part of that preservation, agents of God’s preservation.

The angels are God’s perfect messengers, His perfectly devoted, sinless servants. Michael is called an archangel, one of the “chief princes,” of whom the apocryphal book of Tobit suggests there are seven. Gabriel is another angel we know well from Scripture, and Raphael is mentioned in that same book of Tobit, if that story is to be believed. The angels brought special messages to certain individuals in the Old and New Testaments, but their duty as messengers has largely passed away, being given now to the ministers of the Church who are the “angels” of the seven churches in Revelation.

But today, the spirit-beings called angels still defend God’s children from harm, as they did with Lot and his family, or the prophet Elisha, or the apostle Peter. And they still fight battles against the demons, battles that we will never see, battles fought in the spiritual realm on behalf of God’s human children, on behalf of God’s people, believers in Christ, as they did at the time of the prophet Daniel. As the Psalmist says, The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them…Because you have made the LORD, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, nor shall any plague come near your dwelling; for He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.

Jesus gives us a brief glimpse into the spiritual realm in the Gospel from Matthew 18, where He assures us that the angels in heaven, the angels of the little ones who believe in Jesus, always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. He says that as a frightening warning to any who would cause any of His little ones to stumble, and that’s not only talking about little believing children, but about all of God’s believing children, young and old. He calls them “our angels,” because they have been given to us, the people of God, as a powerful guardian host.

So while the influence of the demons may be more obvious to us, remember that the good angels are there, too, these spirit beings who are much more powerful than we are, who are fully equipped to battle against the forces of darkness in the spiritual realm, and who will continue to work quietly, behind the scenes, to shield us from harm and to protect us from all evil.

But don’t thank them. Don’t praise them. And certainly do not worship them, as Christians have foolishly been deceived into doing in the past! Instead, thank God and praise God that they are there as God’s tools for preserving His people. Worship God alone. Give thanks to Him for the faithful service of His beloved angels, who are our spiritual cousins in God’s family. And pray that He would continue to preserve us through the presence and protection of the holy angels. We are unworthy of the help of these sinless, perfect creatures, who must blush when they see us fall into sin. But as we confess in the First Article, God preserves us out of pure, fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. If God provided His only-begotten Son for us, to suffer for our sins on the cross and to give us the gift of eternal life, then He will surely also continue to send His angels to guard and protect us in this life, until they fulfill their final duty for us and carry our souls to Paradise, as they did for poor Lazarus, or harvest us from the four winds on the Last Day, to bring us into the new heavens and the new earth. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, to serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true. Amen.