Touched by an Angel
Angels. What would Christmas be without angels? They are an integral part of Christmas, if we didn’t have angels what would we put on the top of our trees? And what would the little ones dress up as in the Christmas play; you only need so many shepherds. The Christmas story starts and ends with angels along with angels in the middle, and how could we expect anything less. It’s not everyday that God, the creator of the universe forsakes heaven and comes to earth born as a baby in a stable outside a crowded inn. For an event that was so incredible only angels could be the appropriate messengers.
Now for a little background. Although angels are mentioned over 300 times in the bible we really don’t know a lot about them, and most of what we know is tradition and myth pure speculation fuelled by what I call the Angel Cult. During recent years they have become the spiritual creature of choice. And why not, according to the angel cult angels are loving and caring, they’re cute and cuddly and make no demands on our spirituality or morality and are there for everyone.
It’s only speculation that angels have wings, wear halos and play harps. We no more know what an angel looks like then we know what an angel eats. Although Mark Twain said “When one has tasted Watermelon he knows what the angels eat.”
Nelsons Bible Dictionary ANGEL — a member of an order of heavenly beings who are superior to human beings in power and intelligence. By nature angels are spiritual beings (Heb. 1:14). Their nature is superior to human nature (Heb. 2:7), and they have superhuman power and knowledge (2 Sam. 14:17, 20; 2 Pet. 2:11). They are not, however, all-powerful and all-knowing
St. Gregory the Great sat down and tried to define different types of angels and in the end he said there were nine different orders of angels: angels, archangels, virtues, powers, principalities, dominations, thrones, cherubim, and seraphim. But in the end all we really know for sure is what the Bible tells us. And although this isn’t an exhaustive list it hits some of the highlights:
Angels carry out God’s judgment (2 Samuel 24:16–17)
Angels serve God (Psalm 103:21)
Angels praise God (Psalm 148:2)
Angels are messengers (Daniel 4:17)
Angels protect God’s people (Daniel 6:22)
Angels do not marry (Matthew 22:30)
Angels do not die (Luke 20:36)
Angels encourage Christians (Hebrews 1:14)
Angels should not be worshiped (Revelation 22:8–9)
This morning we aren’t looking at the angels who were present that first Christmas morning, instead we are going to take a look at the people those angels interacted with and their reaction.
The first response was a Response of Faith. The visit of the angel Gabriel was what began the entire story; we find it in Luke 1:26-28 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!” Now you know the rest of the story, the Angel tells Mary that she is going to have a child who will be the son of God, Mary tells the angel that isn’t going to happen because she isn’t married and besides that she’s still a virgin, even then the two didn’t necessarily go hand in hand. And then the angel tells her, no problem, the father will be the Holy Spirit. Now before we go on with the story I have a theory, which I’m sure you’re dying to hear. Although some of you have already heard it. I think that we mispronounce the angel’s name. I don’t think it was Gabriel I think it was Gabrielle. Think about it if you were God and you were sending an angel to talk to a teenaged virgin about reproduction would you send a male angel or a female angel. Now I know that you’re thinking that’s just dumb Denn, angels aren’t male or female they are asexual. I had that conversation with John Symonds who heads up the Pastoral Ministry at Bethany Bible College so I said “John close your eyes and picture an angel. Now is your asexual angel a boy or a girl?” But my theory really isn’t all that important because we aren’t all that interested in Gabriel or Gabrielle this morning we are interested in Mary and her response to the angel. So the angel comes tell this young virgin that she’s going to have a child and the father’s going to be the Holy Spirit. Listen to Mary’s response: Luke 1:38 Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant, and I am willing to accept whatever he wants. May everything you have said come true.” And then the angel left.
Mary’s was a Response of Faith. Even though Mary couldn’t understand everything, even though she didn’t have all the answers or even know where this was going to lead she was willing to trust God. That’s why they call it faith, remember how faith is defined in Hebrews 11:1 What is faith? It is the confident assurance that what we hope for is going to happen. It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.
NKJV Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Edward Teller gave this great definition of faith, When you get to the end of all the light you know and it’s time to step into the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen: either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly. Mary had now idea how she could conceive a child, had no idea what would happen after she conceived the child and no idea what would happen after the child was born, but she believed that Her God was in control and if He said this was what should happen then far be it for her to disagree. If we are walking with God then there will be times that he asks us to do the incredible and even though we won’t be able to see the end result we are going to have to step out in faith and say, “Ok God, you are in control.” It’s at that point that we are going to have to believe that he will give us something solid to stand on or teach us to fly.
We need faith to exercise our Christian life to the fullest and we need faith to be everything that God would have us be as a church. If we only ever try to do what we know we can do then we don’t need God. It’s by faith that miracles happen, it’s by faith that people come to know Christ personally, and it’s by faith that people are healed and the bible tells us in Hebrews 11:6 So, you see, it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that there is a God and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.
The second response we have is a Response of Trust. You see Mary wasn’t the only person visited by an Angel. You may remember that although Mary was a virgin, she was engaged to be married, to a man named Joseph. And she was about to have some heavy duty explaining to do. What would she have said, “Joseph you know how much I love you and I know that you are the most understanding and trusting man in all of Nazareth and I have something to tell you.” The story is told in the book of Matthew. It’s in Matthew 1:18-20 Now this is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her fiancé, being a just man, decided to break the engagement quietly, so as not to disgrace her publicly.
As he considered this, he fell asleep, and an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to go ahead with your marriage to Mary. For the child within her has been conceived by the Holy Spirit.
Mary gets a lot of Credit for the Christmas thing and well she should but let’s not forget about Joe, after all Mary knew what she did and didn’t do, Joseph didn’t have the luxury, he could only take her word for it. “You’re what? Pregnant? How could that happen, I mean I know how it happens but how did it happen without me? I thought you loved me, I thought we were waiting until we were married, and now this. Oh an angel, right, an angel and the father is the Holy Spirit. Sure, so now you think I’m stupid as well, no don’t touch me, don’t talk to me, I need time to think.”
If your daughter came home with that story you wouldn’t believe them, so why should her fiancée believe what she said? It shows us the type of man that Joseph was that even though he could have publicly denounced Mary for having been unfaithful to him he chose to quietly end the engagement without any fuss. But that night an Angel appeared and basically told Joseph that he would need to trust Mary on this one. Joseph’s response is found in Matthew 1:24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord commanded. He brought Mary home to be his wife.
Now people weren’t dumb then, they knew how long it took for babies to be born. Joseph would be viewed as the guilty party in this case and yet he must have just smiled and nodded and protected the virtue and reputation of his fiancé. Maybe he had adopted the philosophy of Elsa Einstein Albert Einstein’s wife who said “No, I don’t understand my husband’s theory of relativity, but I know my husband, and I know he can be trusted.”
As we go through life we will either make a conscious decision to trust the people we meet or trust no one and while it might be safer to trust no one it’s not a great way to live. Author Frank Crane said “You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you don’t trust enough.”
And so after his encounter with the Angel Joseph believed Mary and gave her his trust. And with that decision he became the earthly father of the son of God.
Then there was a Response of Praise. It’s obvious that the Angels weren’t unionized because they even worked on Christmas day. Jesus had been born in the stable and the heavens were rejoicing, and the angels think, “Hey this is too good to keep to ourselves; we need to share it with others.” And this is what the scriptures say Luke 2:8-11 That night some shepherds were in the fields outside the village, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terribly frightened, but the angel reassured them. “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news of great joy for everyone! The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born tonight in Bethlehem, the city of David!
So there you are out in the field, minding your own business and minding your sheep when suddenly the entire field lights up and there stands this dude in a shining white robes with great big wings, I know what I said earlier about wings, this is artistic licence. I don’t know what your reaction would be but mine would probably be the same as the shepherds, sheer terror. But quickly the angels reassure them and tell them, we bring great news, the messiah has been born.
Now if you were to make a list of who the first should be to hear the news of the messiah the shepherds probably wouldn’t be in the top ten. First of all they really weren’t all that important, they were just hired hands, and they had no place in the society and certainly weren’t listed in “Who’s Who of Israel”. They weren’t even all that religious, because of the demands of the flock they weren’t able to follow all of the prescribed ritual for hand washings and so they weren’t permitted in the temple because of this the shepherds were often looked down on by religious people.
Speculation by some tells us that these weren’t ordinary shepherds. In that time every day, morning and night an unblemished lamb would be sacrificed in the temple for the sins of the people. In order to assure that they would have a supply of lambs for this purpose we are told that the temple authorities kept a flock of special sheep in the hills surrounding Bethlehem. And so it would be fitting that the news of the one who would be a sacrifice for all would be announced to those who tended the sacrificial lambs of that day.
You know the story, the shepherds went and saw the baby in the manger and after meeting the messiah went away telling everyone they met about the child. The scripture tell us that this went on even as they returned to their flocks. Luke 2:20 The shepherds went back to their fields and flocks, glorifying and praising God for what the angels had told them, and because they had seen the child, just as the angel had said.
What is your reaction to meeting Jesus? He has given you eternal life, or at the very least he has offered it to you, it’s really up to you to accept it. Because of what God has done for you do you praise him? Do you thank him? Probably, you may not skip and dance and tell the world but I’m sure that you tell God. You probably don’t regret becoming a Christian, and you probably aren’t bitter with the person who told you about Christ.
As we go into Christmas 2001 I would like you to do two things, first I want you to be thankful for having had the opportunity to meet the messiah and secondly this is important I want you to think of someone who would benefit from being introduced to Jesus Christ in 2002. When you have the persons name in your mind I want you to commit to God to pray for that person and to find an opportunity to introduce them to Christ or at the very least to invite them to church. Remember what the angel said, Luke 2:10 “I bring you good news of great joy for everyone!” And that is what you have to offer those who don’t know Jesus, Good news of great joy.
PowerPoint may be available for this message, contact me at denn@bccnet.ca
If you could build a church for a dollar . . .
Would you?
www.helpbuildachurch.com
If you found this sermon helpful please check out our website.
