MINISTERING ANGELS

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation?

Hebrews 1:14

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God

If you wanted to sum up the first chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, you could say:

Jesus is superior and supreme to everything in all creation, including the angels. God the Father has made it so.

This is what we have learned across the first messages in this study but we have one more matter to look at before we move onto the second chapter, one of the appointed roles of angels. Look at this final verse from Hebrews 1:

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? v.14

People talk about angels all the time and not everyone that does is a Christian believer. You’ll hear a lot of talk about angels watching over people and protecting them in life, the concept of guardian angels. This title is even flippantly extended to human beings who may have done something caring for another.

The world can say a lot of things about angels as we find people leaning on their own understanding and intellect in making sense of them but what does the Bible tell us about the true nature and work of angels, the representatives of God who are subordinate to Jesus but still used for divine purposes?

We find the answer in our verse for today for angels and I want to break this down into two qualities we find and then associate scripture to validate them.

First, all angels are ministering spirits.

In other words, God sends angels to minister to those who have inherited salvation, aka those saved through belief in Christ Jesus.  Looking at the synonyms for “minister”, we find that angels attend to, look after, care for, and comfort Christian believers.

Consider how Jesus experienced this. In the fourth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, we read where He was tempted by the devil after spending forty days and nights in the wilderness.

Hungry, weary, and vulnerable, the devil attempts to entice Jesus to sin three times and in each instance, Jesus rejected and rebuked His enemy by declaring the truth found in the scriptures. After the third attempt, Satan left, and guess what happened to Jesus?

Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him. Matthew 4:11

In a time of need, Jesus was ministered to by the angels and we can be sure God has done likewise for countless Christ believers since.

The other thing that we find all angels doing is serving Christian believers. One way that we see them do that is through providing guidance and direction to Christians when needed.

Going back to the Bible, look at two instances where this occurred, first with the women who had gone to the tomb at first light on the third day after Jesus’ crucifixion and Jesus’ eleven disciples after He ascended to the heavens to sit at God’s right hand.

After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from Heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; He has risen, just as He said. Come and see the place where He lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see Him.’ Now I have told you.” Matthew 28:1-7

After He (Jesus) said this, He was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid Him from their sight.

They were looking intently up into the sky as He was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. “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.” Acts 1:9-11

In both these instances, God needed to move Christian believers to do something He desired.

The women who first discovered the empty tomb and Jesus’ resurrection needed to inform the disciples about what had happened. Without prompting, we don’t know if the women would have done this and so the angel made sure they fully understood what had happened before clearly telling them what they needed to do next.

And as we see, the women did exactly as they were told.

Ditto for the eleven disciples at the Mount of Olives as Jesus departs and rises up into the heavens after commanding them to go back to Jerusalem and wait to receive the Holy Spirit. Wide eyed and looking into the clouds, the disciples weren’t heading in the direction Jesus told them to move and so we find the angels coming to serve them, reminding them that their Master would return one day exactly in the place where He had left.

And with that, the eleven returned to Jerusalem for what would be a ten day wait until the Day of Pentecost came.

Today, we can be sure that God is still sending ministering angels to serve those who have inherited salvation. Let us all give thanks for this, just one other way that our Lord blesses His richly beloved.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.