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‘Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?’
Heb_1:14
I. What the angels are doing in heaven.—They are offering to God a service of prayer and praise and thanksgiving, not for themselves, but for us, though they share with us in it.
(a) When God’s creation was finished, when He pronounced everything to be very good, then ‘all the sons of God shouted for joy.’ Those sons of God were the angels.
(b) When God would bring in the New Creation by the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, ‘a multitude of the heavenly host’ were seen and heard.
(c) At the last grand triumph, when ‘the kingdoms of this world shall have become the kingdoms of God and of His Christ,’ ‘all the angels stood round about the throne.’
(d) Elsewhere we read of angels with golden harps and vials or censers full of incense which they are offering, and this incense is the prayer of saints.
(e) And so in our Communion Office, words which are, I suppose, in every service, or liturgy as it is called, in all times and places we sing or say: ‘Therefore with angels and archangels,’ etc.
II. What they are doing on earth.—What have they done! Jacob saw them ascending and descending on the ladder which reached to heaven, and what that ladder is St. John tells.
Time would fail me to tell of the ministrations of the angels as they are set down in the Bible. ‘The angel of the Lord encampeth round them that fear Him.’ ‘He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways.’
(a) They ministered to our Lard in His agony in the garden as they had done before in the wilderness after the devil left Him.
(b) They brought St. Peter out of prison.
(c) God sent an angel to St. Paul to assure him of the safety of himself and all who were with him in the ship during his perilous journey to Rome.
(d) Further, we are assured that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.
(e) The angels of little children always behold the face of our Father in heaven.
(f) The angels carry the souls of the faithful into Paradise.
(g) They will finally sever the just from the unjust.
III. There is an order of heavenly beings in the more immediate presence of God who are ever doing Him a ceaseless service of prayers and praises and thanksgivings, and in obedience to His will they are ready to succour and defend us on earth.
(a) They are great in power, for they are the mighty angels who excel in strength.
(b) They are vast in number, for the chariots of God are thousands of angels. There are multitudes of the heavenly hosts. There is an innumerable company of angels.
(c) They are holy, for they do always behold the face of our Father in heaven.
(d) They are divided into ranks and degrees, for there are angels, archangels, thrones, authorities, dominions, mights, powers, seraphim, and cherubim.
(e) They have their rulers all with names, having reference to God—Ithiel, Uriel, Gabriel, and Michael.
(f) They have passed, as we are passing, through a moral trial, for some are the elect and some the fallen angels, the angels which kept not their first estate.
(g) They take part in the great struggle between good and evil; for there was war in heaven, in other words, in the spiritual and moral world.
Illustration
‘Go where he may, the servant of God ever finds the angel of the Lord round about them that fear Him. More than two hundred times angels are mentioned in Holy Scripture; and though no poor widow devoutly reading God’s Word in her cottage, no nation crying to God in famine or distress, sees their visible forms haunting our paths and homes now; yet faith—which appropriates God’s promise—faith, the evidence of things unseen, whispers to the humble believer, these ministering spirits have not ceased to exist, neither are they shut up in enforced idleness.’
THE ANGELS AS A MEANS OF GRACE
I. The ministry of angels.—I would ask you to think whether the angels are not designed to have great power over us. There is always somebody who thinks well of us, and hopes well for us, and if we do not care much about ourselves (not well enough to do or be our best for very long together) that fact may always serve to consecrate us afresh. Now if we can once get it into our minds and imaginations that the angels think well of us, always see the best of us, always grieve for anything that is less than the best for us, that the angels are always thinking the best for us, and working the best for us, there is a whole world of consecration in the realisation of this thought. They, at any rate, are good! They, at any rate, are beautiful! They, at any rate, are gifted beyond anything of which human gifts enable us to dream. They, at any rate, are loyal to God and near to God; always beholding His face and always working on our behalf. Even a lonely soul on earth is unable to say, ‘No man careth for my soul.’
II. God’s messengers.—How wonderful to think of the angels always observing the Father’s face with such understanding of every shade of expression of it; always able to catch the Father’s will for the salvation of some poor wayward child of His on earth. It makes all life different if we try to learn about, and to put into practical use, our belief in such things as these. They are worth thinking about; they are based upon what is revealed!
III. Treasures of God’s love.—The Bible will help us to work out more and more the problems which God has brought within our reach, and within the sphere of our experience if we choose to read and pray and to work and believe about them. On the other hand, if we shut our eyes to all these mysterious truths what is life for? Do not let it go on until it is too late! Why should we miss, and go on missing, these treasures of God’s love? From to-day let us just register the fact that God is reminding us that this is irreparably lost for those who have no eye open to the glory of the angels, and no ear open to the wisdom of the angels, and no willing response to the loyalty of the angels, and no co-operation with the ministry of the angels. God grant us power to awake to the full sense of the worth of this great means of grace.
Rev. E. S. Hilliard.
Illustration‘The attitude of the average Christian towards the angels is usually that of indifference. They do not much care whether they exist or not! They do not take their Bibles to find out the facts God has told them about the angels. They take little or no pains to establish relations with them, they are careless about the blessings which God intends to send us through them. So the Church, trying to rescue us from our persistent blindness, has established this festival of St. Michael and All Angels’ Day, and it should act as a reminder of their ministry to us.’