[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 18:10. Delivered 14 September 1980, Montreal.]
We continue in Matthew chapter 18, and today we look at verse 10: "See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven their angels always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven." Last week we saw that the Lord Jesus was saying to his disciples: God loves each one of you so much that anyone who causes one of you to stumble and fall away from him will face a judgment so terrible that drowning with a millstone around the neck would be nothing by comparison. And today, in this single verse, the Lord expresses his love for his disciples in another way. He tells us something about the angels who are assigned to serve those who are his.
The average Christian today knows almost nothing about angels — and this is not surprising, since most Christians know almost nothing about anything that is spiritual. I want to show from scripture what angels are, what they do, and what the Lord Jesus is saying here. First, let me address a common and widely-held mistake. Watchman Nee, commenting on Matthew, says that because the Holy Spirit now indwells us, the ministry of angels "has already been greatly curtailed." This statement is very far from the truth, and I quote it not to discredit Watchman Nee, but to show how typical even respected Christian leaders can be in their ignorance of this important subject. The notion that because the Holy Spirit indwells us, the ministry of angels has become largely unnecessary, is mistaken on several grounds. Firstly, it is scripturally false. Secondly, there is no logical conflict between the indwelling of the Spirit and the ministry of angels: God's working through the Spirit in no way makes angels redundant. God always works through his servants — whether those servants be angels or human beings. The fact that God is omnipotent does not mean he chooses to do everything himself, without any agents at all. That would make us all redundant too. God works through his servants, and angels are among his servants.
A simple check of the concordance confirms this. The word "angels" appears 170 times in the New Testament. Hardly a statistically insignificant matter. In the book of Acts alone, after Pentecost and after the coming of the Holy Spirit, angels are referred to 21 times — and always as actively doing something: delivering messages, releasing apostles from prison, directing Philip, guiding Paul. The church in Acts was utterly dependent on the ministry of angels. It is extraordinary that so many Christians are uninstructed about such an active and important reality.
Now the scripture tells us that there are different kinds and ranks of angels. There are, first, the cherubim — mentioned 90 times in the Old Testament. The word cherub probably comes from a Hebrew root meaning to be great or mighty, and the cherubim are always associated with the closest proximity to the throne of God. In the tabernacle, the two great golden cherubim faced each other above the mercy seat in the holy of holies; God's presence appeared above the cherubim. Their figures were woven into the veil and curtains of the temple. They are, in every instance, the angels closest to God's immediate presence. Then there are the seraphim — the burning ones — seen by Isaiah in his vision of God's throne in Isaiah 6, standing in the divine presence and worshipping without ceasing. There is also the archangel — the chief angel — whose name we know to be Michael. His very name, from the Hebrew mi-ka-El, means "Who is like God?" — a name of adoration and worship. Even his name reflects the character of the angels: they direct all glory toward God, never to themselves; they cover their faces with their wings even in the presence of the divine glory.
The Jewish rabbis recognized that ordinary angels did not normally have unrestricted access to the divine presence. Only the highest order — the cherubim, the seraphim, angels like Gabriel — could always stand in God's presence. In Luke 1:19, when Gabriel appears to Zechariah, he identifies himself: "I am Gabriel, who stand in the presence of God." He is one of the group with unrestricted, constant access to the throne. Now this is crucial for understanding Matthew 18:10. The Lord says that the angels of the disciples "always" behold the face of the Father in heaven. That means the angels assigned to attend upon disciples are of this highest order — the order that has constant, unrestricted access to God's presence. God so loves his humble disciples that he does not assign lower-ranking angels to them. He assigns the highest.
Another thing we need to understand about angels is that they, like us, have genuine moral freedom. They are not computerised automations that do whatever God programs them to do. They are persons with intelligence — the Bible speaks in one place of the wisdom of angels — and they are able to make moral choices. This is why 2 Peter 2:4 tells us that God did not spare the angels when they sinned: those angels who chose evil, who disobeyed God and turned away, faced a final, irrevocable judgment from which there was no recovery. Jude 6 confirms this: the angels who did not keep their proper position are held in judgment. God is a God of holiness; he does not pretend that evil does not exist. And yet — and here Peter draws the contrast — God has given us, who are so much less than the angels in present rank, a chance to repent. Even the angels longed to look into these things, as 1 Peter 1:12 says, but it was not given to them. We have what the angels themselves longed for. That is why Peter says: do not miss this chance. Those mighty beings who are of higher rank than us at present — even they, when they sinned, were given no second chance. Do not presume upon what God in his mercy has given you.
Those angels who chose evil are described in Matthew 25:41 as "Satan and his angels" — a whole company that chose to turn away from God, just as so many human beings have done. The eternal fire was prepared for Satan and his angels; it was not made for human beings. But if we choose to identify ourselves with evil, with sin, with Satan, then we choose to go where Satan goes. God has provided the angels — these mighty, highest-order beings — to attend upon his disciples. Let us understand what that means, and what their tasks are.
# "Their Angels Always Behold the Face of My Father" — Matthew 18:10 (Part B) — Seven Tasks of Angels; God's Practical Care; the Indonesian Revival
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 18:10, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 14 September 1980, Montreal.]
What exactly do the angels do in relation to us? When we survey both the Old and New Testaments, we can identify seven functions. The first and most familiar is protection — this is the origin of the term "guardian angels." Elisha the prophet illustrated this perfectly. The Syrians had discovered that whenever they devised a war strategy against Israel, Elisha somehow knew about it, and Israel was always prepared. They sent their army to capture him, and one morning Elisha's servant woke up and found the entire Syrian force surrounding the town. He was terrified. And Elisha was utterly calm. He said: "Don't you know that those who are for us are far greater in number than those who are against us?" And then he prayed: "Lord, open his eyes." And the servant looked out and saw — fiery chariots, the hosts of God, surrounding Elisha on every side. What could the Syrian army do? Nothing without God's permission. This is the beauty of it: when you are a disciple of the Lord Jesus, nothing can happen to you without God's permission. Satan had to ask God's permission before he could touch Job. He cannot touch you without that permission.
I have experienced this protection again and again. Within recent months alone: coming down Highway 20, the car beside me suddenly skidded and spun directly toward us at speed. Somehow I evaded him. Another time, at the Peel Court crossing — a four-way stop — I came up to the stop sign and was about to press the accelerator when, for a reason I could not explain, I stopped. I simply could not go. And then a bus flew through the stop sign at full speed, realising mid-crossing that he had missed it and slamming on his brakes, wheels smoking. Had I gone forward I would have been hit by the full weight of a speeding bus. I had no explanation except God's protecting hand. Psalm 91:11: "He will give his angels charge over you, to guard you in all your ways." That verse is no less precious because Satan tried to quote it out of context to Christ. Perhaps it was exactly Satan's intention to make us feel that we should never quote it again.
The second task of angels is to battle against evil. We are not alone in the spiritual warfare. Daniel 10:13 and 10:21 show an angelic being fighting against the spiritual powers opposing the revelation of God's word. And Revelation 12:7 describes Michael, the chief angel, leading the hosts of heaven against Satan and his angels and casting them out. The battle against evil has both a human dimension and an angelic one, and we can thank God that we have allies whose power is beyond anything human. This connects to the third task: executing God's judgment. In 2 Samuel 24:16, a single angel went through Israel and thousands fell. If one angel could bring such devastation, what would twelve legions of angels do? The power of these beings is incalculable. I frankly cannot understand Christians who are frightened of ghosts and evil spirits. As long as you walk in righteousness, who is there to be afraid of? The psalmist says: of whom shall I be afraid? God is my rock and my salvation.
The fourth task: at the end of the age, angels have the responsibility of reaping — gathering in the harvest and separating the wheat from the weeds. The Lord Jesus describes this in Matthew 13:27, 30, and 39. The angels will come in and separate, and one can only hope to be gathered among the wheat. Matthew 24:31 also describes the angels gathering the elect from the four winds at the coming of the Son of Man. The fifth task is leading and guiding. Angels led Lot and his family out of Sodom before its destruction (Genesis 19:17). A great angel was assigned to lead the Israelites through the wilderness (Exodus 23:23). In Acts 12:8–9, Peter was in prison awaiting execution, and an angel came, woke him up, led him step by step out of the prison — for those ancient prisons were complex places of dungeons, and without guidance even a released prisoner might have wandered into another cell.
The sixth task is delivering messages. This is among the most frequently mentioned functions in both testaments: the angel Gabriel delivered God's word to Zechariah (Luke 1:19) and to Mary; angels brought messages to Joseph in dreams; in Revelation, an angel explained things to John when he could not understand what he was seeing (Revelation 17:7); and in Acts 27:23, an angel delivered a message to Paul in the midst of the storm at sea. Finally, the seventh task is practical ministry in the most down-to-earth sense. After the Lord Jesus had fasted forty days and resisted Satan's temptations, the angels came and ministered to him — and what he most needed at that point was food, which they provided. There is a remarkable account of this kind of ministry in the Indonesian revival, recorded by the sceptical German scholar Kurt Koch in his book on the revival. A team of Christian workers arrived in a small town where there was nothing to eat. The local believers prayed about the food situation, and when they had prayed, a table covered with food of every kind appeared, with hands serving food from the table to all those present. Koch — a sceptic by nature — goes on to record that this happened not once but eight times, and that there were fifty witnesses present on each occasion. Fifty people, eight times. The food was real; they chewed it and swallowed it. God is the living God, and when he provides for his servants he does not give them one banana each. The table was loaded with good things.
Now, having looked at all that scripture teaches about angels — their different ranks and orders, their moral freedom, their seven tasks — can you now see how beautiful is the Lord's word in Matthew 18:10? He says: see that you do not despise one of these little ones, because their angels always behold the face of my Father in heaven. These beings of the highest order, who have constant and unrestricted access to the divine presence, are assigned to attend to the welfare of his disciples. In 1 Timothy 5:21, Paul charges Timothy "in the presence of God, and of Christ Jesus, and of the elect angels" — the angels are witnesses to the work of the church. The Lord Jesus lived always in this confidence: do you not think, he said to Peter, that I could ask my Father and he would send more than twelve legions of angels? Peter, put your sword away. And that same confidence belongs to every disciple. How dear you are, if you are his, to God's heart.