Clough Hebrews Lesson 8

Nature of Angels –  Hebrews 1:7; Psalm 104

 

Before we being I’d like to answer a few of these feedback cards that have been handed, questions on Hebrews.  The first one is: in reference to our Hebrews study did Christ become human when He was conceived by Mary of did He always have as a characteristic this union of humanity and deity?  It would be a contradiction in terms if He always had humanity and deity together because humanity, by definition, is temporal.  So you can’t have an eternal humanity, one without [can’t understand word], so the hypostatic union means that there was a fundamental change that happened in the Second Person of the Trinity and this happened at the point of the incarnation.  That’s why the incarnation is looked upon as the central point of history.  Now it’s hard, sometimes to think of that because you wonder, well what has happened, you know, nothing much happened on the world scene.  But actually if you stop and think of it as far as the Godhead is concerned the incarnation is very, very critical because a change, a fundamental change occurred there.  It was the beginning of he hypostatic union, this has never happened before.

 

In reference to the doctrine of hypostatic union how can Jesus Christ be eternally human in eternity past?  I’ve already answered that, He wasn’t.  I think what’s confusing some of you is in the definition of the hypostatic union it says “true humanity and undiminished deity united without confusion in one person forever,” and when you hear the word “forever” what some of you are doing, you’re reading eternity into that.  That means forever after, forever after the point of the incarnation.  Anybody unclear on that now?  You think you know it you should see some of these exams that came back.  Some were pretty good, it was really encouraging, but the weakest point we have around here and I thought that’s where it was judging from what’s happened here on Wednesday night, the weakest point in those exams was that most of you don’t know your Bible.  When I ask you for four places in the New Testament where you could go to show that the writers of the New Testament believed a literal Genesis most of you left it blank and one or two struggled valiantly and came up with such exciting chapters as 2 Peter 5.  I challenge anybody here to find that chapter.  Then we had Jude 2 and so on.  Some of you look sometimes as though you’re reading a different Bible than I am but….

 

In our glorified bodies will the (quote) “thick darkness” mentioned in the Old Testament be removed?  Yes, the answer is yes and the answer to that is given in Revelation 22-22. 

 

How was Christ’s intercessory ministry carried on for all believers while He was limited on earth?  It wasn’t; it wasn’t carried on because it wasn’t instituted until He rose and was at the Father’s right hand; that’s the beginning of His functioning priesthood.  Some of  you ought to know a passage in the New Testament that gives His intercessory prayer for all believers that was given during His earthly ministry.  John 17, that’s the true Lord’s prayer, incidentally.

 

Tonight we’re going to go on in Hebrews 1.  In Hebrews 1:1-14 we have Christ’s superiority; in verses 1-4 we have the summary of Christ’s superiority.  In verses 5-14 we have the proof of that from the Old Testament.  The Old Testament is accepted as bona fide authority.  The author of Hebrews accepts it as his authority and he expects his readers to accept it as authority.  Last time we dealt with the first two verses where we said the King-priest is superior to angels with respect to authority.  So the King-priest, His superiority to angels can be characterized from the standpoint of authority.  It can also be characterized from the standpoint of power.  Authority and power!  Now what is the difference between these two words.  These words I’m using in the normal straightforward way, when you deal with things of government or something.  Authority means your legal right; power means the energy that you have massed to implement your legal right.

 

For example, an authorized government, a de jure government, is a government that has legal authority.  But in order to function a government needs more than just legal authority, it needs the military, it needs power and therefore both power and authority are needed.  They are needed in the local church.  You don’t really see, in our day, local congregations functioning with the power that Jesus Christ has given them.  It was interesting in the conference with Dr. Adams, he pointed out he has a solution to married couples who won’t solve their problems biblically and come to you for counseling, find out what the Bible says and then won’t implement them and sit there and have fights right in front of you and still won’t implement the Word.  His solution is very simple; he just says to the couple, now I want you meet before the Board and tell them why you will not run your marriage along Biblical lines, and we’ll throw you out of the church and you can come back when you straighten up your marriage.  And needless to say, that exercises a little power and influence.  This is not manipulation, this is using the New Testament given authority of the local church.  So these are various spheres that denote the overall function in government.

 

Now we start with Hebrews 1:7 and this deals with Christ’s superiority with respect to power.  Most of the verses after verse 7 are clear.  I don’t think any of you have any trouble with verses 8 and following.  So next week we’re going to deal with verses 8 and following and finish the chapter but tonight we’re going to spend all our time on verse 7, because you will not appreciate the argument until you really appreciate the whole worldview that went in behind verse 7.  Verse 7 has a lot to it; in fact, the concept of angels, which is what we’re going to discuss tonight, the concept of angels and their relation to physical creation is a very, very radically different concept than most people have ever even entertained.  There are all sorts of strange things about angels and physical phenomenon and we’re going to study those to give you a fix on the nature of angels because the author is then going to argue that the Messiah is greater than these angels in the area of physical phenomenon. 

 

But you can’t appreciate the argument and the comparison until you appreciate verse 7, so Hebrews 1:7, “And of the angels He says, Who makes His angel spirits, and ministers a flame of fire.”  Now the angels, those of you who have the Greek text will notice something interesting.  Verse 7 is set off from verse 8; verse 7 has men, m-e-n in it, verse 8 had de, and when you have those two, when you’re in first year Greek they usually teach you translate “one the one hand, on the other hand.”  And that’s a good translation because when you see those linked together there’s a contrast there and you don’t have to read any further; you know immediately you’ve got a contrast.  So verse 7 is a deliberate contrast to verse 8 and following.  The problem is how far down in the chapter do we go.  We’ll take the contrast all; the way down to verse 12 because you see in verse 13 what happens; you pick up the angels again and it goes on to verse 14.  So we’re going to the contrast as extending from verses 7-12.  The first contrast is verses 5-6; then verses 7-12 is the second one.

 

Now the other thing about this before we get into the meat of it, “And of the angels he says,” he says; it could be “it” but the way this man uses lego, to speak, it means he, “he says.”  Who says?  God says.  The subject of this verb is God, but interestingly the quote is not a direct revelation from God in the sense of Mount Sinai or in the sense of a red letter edition of the New Testament.  It’s not that at all. Where it says “he says” it’s a quotation from Psalm 104:4 and that’s not a direct quotation from what God spoke.  So therefore, how can you explain the use of God as the subject of the verb “says,” “He says.”  What doctrine are we concerned with when this verb comes up like that.  Inerrant inspiration.  This shoots down the concept of the red letter edition of the Bible. The red letter edition of the Bible was grounded on an old-fashioned idea of inspiration which stated that the words of Jesus were somehow more inspired than the other parts of Scripture. That’s not true.  All Scripture is God-breathed; all of it is inspired on an equal plain.  So if that’s the case then “He says” what follows is just as authoritative as what God would have spoken from Mount Sinai.  Is that clear?  There’s no difference in authority here; just because David said it or somebody else doesn’t mean a thing.  If it’s in Scripture God is saying it.

 

Now what follows, “who makes his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire,” is Psalm 104.  So let’s turn back to Psalm 104:1-4.  We’ll take the first four verses of this psalm and this will be an opportunity to review something.  Some of you took the Psalm series; if you look at Psalm 104 what kind of a psalm does this strike you as being?  Does it strike you as a praise or a petition?  Praise.  Is it a praise directed toward specific historic events in the nation Israel or is it directed toward general works of God.  [someone answers, can’t hear]  All right, then its descriptive rather than declarative praise.  Psalm 104 is a descriptive praise Psalm.  And it begins, the first five verses are actually introduction though we’ll only cover the first four.

 

“Bless the LORD, O my soul.”  Notice he’s addressing his soul; in the Hebrew mentality your ego is above everything, here’s your ego, and your ego, so to speak, can look down upon your mind and your conscience and your body, it’s the center of self-consciousness.  And so therefore if you’ll notice on the charts I draw up here you’ll never see volition on my chart, simply because I attach it to ego which is above, above it all. The ego looks down and sees things.  The ego looks and says “O my soul” and carries on a conversation with it.  This occurs often in Scripture, what they call a soliloquy, someone carries on a conversation with themselves, it says “O my soul,” you’ll see this in the Psalms, Jesus use it in His parables.

 

“O my soul, Bless the LORD,” that’s an instruction, there’s the volition of the psalmist and he is choosing at this point to praise but in order to praise his mind has to be in it and his mind has to be subordinate to his conscience.  So it’s a directive to his mind and conscience to let’s get going, we’re going to praise God at this point.  “Bless the LORD, O my soul, O LORD my God, Thou art very great; Thou art clothed with honor and majesty.”  Now notice He uses LORD, capital LORD, which is the covenant name of the national God of Israel.  He’s not just using Elohim; he’s saying the covenant God of Israel is the cosmic God, “Bless the LORD, O my soul.  O LORD my God, Thou art very great, and You are clothed with honor and majesty.”  Now what human picture is he thinking of when he’s looking at God here in this praise psalm?  He’s looking at a king, this is a regal picture.  He’s looking at a king and this is going to color the next verses.  So he’s visualizing God seated upon His throne as the King.  And as he says, “You are very, very great,” meaning You are the exceedingly great King, and “You are clothed with honor and majesty,” that would be just a synonym for saying You are on Your throne, You are ruling.

 

Now comes the interesting part.  Every verse from this point down to the end of the introduction uses participles and participles here refer to character.  So what we have described is God’s character rather than His actions; His abiding never-ending character.  Every one of these is a participle.  Psalm 104:2, “Who covers Yourself with light as a garment,” now to catch the force of what I’m preparing you for I want you to watch very, very carefully at the word order because you’ve got to pay attention to the word order or you’re going to miss the point of verse 4.  Notice the word order, we’ll just write it this way; light as clothes, in other words, notice the word order.  He takes something known in the physical universe, light, empirically observable; light, a physical quality, light, a property of reality, and he says that property You clothe yourself with.  “You clothe yourself with light.”  Now this means He’s the king and he’s describing His robe.  God’s robe is a robe of pure light.  And indeed this is how God does appear in the visions of Isaiah 6 and the book of Revelation, pure light.  Remember in Revelation 22, the glory of God illuminates the whole earth, there’s no need for sun or stars. 

 

So he takes a physical…, to get the point we’d better put this in a column; on the left column we’ll put what we’ll call the real characteristic and then on the right side we’ll put what will be the metaphor or simile, in other words this will be the poetic picture, but it’s always the left side that is the key.  “Who covers with light as a garment; who stretches out the heavens as a tent curtain.”  The tent curtain… so here’s “the heavens,” there’s your real, “as a tent curtain,” again the tent curtain isn’t a literal thing, that’s the metaphor or simile, it should be a simile here because it’s “as.”  That’s the simile, the tent curtain, but on the left column you’ll see “the heaven,” those are the observable heavens. 

 

Now if you want to get the effect of what the psalmist has said, some night when you can look up and see clear sky, look at the depth; on a very, very clear night there’s a kind of phenomenon that happens to you if you’re acquainted with watching the stars or watching the sky.  And that is you start to look up and you’ll see the stars but the more you look, particularly if you can get away from these high intensive lights along the city, the dust and so on refracts and breaks you vision, but if you can go out enough beyond the city boundary to get rid of the haze from the street lights you’ll look up and the more you look, as your pupils adjust, all of a sudden you’ll see more and more stars. And actually if you had a telescope the more you look the more stars there are and it just seems to keep going, endless, on and on and on and on and there’s a tremendous effect psychologically this has upon you.  If you really stand there and look and think what you’re looking at. 

 

Now these people didn’t have high intensity street lights and the skies, when they were clear, were very great; were used a lot and they observed them, they knew them very well. And when they used this “the heavens are the tent curtain,” the picture was…normally they would lie down inside a tent at night and you’d look up and you’d see the tent.  Well the picture here is lying down in an open field and looking up and seeing the stars.  In other words, the roominess of the tent, vast tent.  So it’s the picture that here is the King who wears light for His garment, whose tent is the entire universe, we would say the cosmos, the tent is the cosmos.  So again we have on the left side the real feature, and on the right side the simile.

 

Then we go to the next verse; Psalms 104:3, “Who lays the beams of His chambers in the waters;” now “lays beams,” the idea of laying beams is for a roof chamber.  This is not the foundation of the house in the ocean, that’s not the interpretation of verse 3.  The idea is that upon the top of the house there’d be a place to sleep at night.  Remember we said during the Proverbs series it’s better to dwell up there in that little attic than it is in the house with a brawling woman.  Well, that little attic thing that was built up there to store junk and sleep if you had a guest or something, that is the thing that’s mentioned here.  So the idea is that God sets His attic up in the waters.  Now why the word “waters?”  How come “waters” are mentioned here?  Turn back to Genesis 1:6, on the second day, “And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.  [7] And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.”  And the picture is that you have the surface of the earth with water on it; there’s liquid water, and then as you go up you have just water in the air, and it just fades out.  Now for a while people laughed at it and said oh, the Bible’s behind the times and so on, there’s only water in the lower atmosphere.  Not so; space probes have shown there’s water all through space; infinitesimal but so what, so is all matter in interplanetary space.  So water, actually, there’s no point where it suddenly fades out, it just decreases along with all the rest of the gases, all the way out.  And so water here means outer space, it means the atmosphere and everything above it.  So it just doesn’t mean the ocean waters. 

 

“Who lays the beams of His chambers in the waters,” so we have a second element, light-heaven and here are the waters and actually they don’t become the beams but the beams are laid in them.  “Who makes the clouds His chariot,” now what would the king need?  He’d need a mode of transportation and so therefore the clouds become His chariot.  And the Jew looked upon clouds as the sign of the presence of God.  You say how strange; no, we’re going to now look at five passages of Scripture where God’s presence occurred and in every one of these passages I’m going to show you, God occurs in a cloud.

 

Turn to the first place, Exodus 19:16, Mount Sinai.  We read, “And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mountain,” that was the sign of the presence of God; God had come to the mountain because there was empirically observable a cloud that hung there.  Now the clouds that are pictures of God’s presence seem to have something abnormal about them.  I’ve studied clouds for many, many years and I’ve seen thousands of photographs of various clouds and just from the Scripture reading I don’t know what is unusual about these clouds but there’s something unusual because everybody who’s said, that has watched these kinds of clouds in which God’s presence occurs, there’s something peculiar about the cloud.  Now this cloud here at Mount Sinai was characterized by very darkness, very, very thick darkness, that was it’s feature here but notice it’s still called a cloud.  So the first time, one of the most famous occurrences of the presence of God in history is a cloud on Mount Sinai.

 

The second one is in Daniel 7:13, here you see the second, this is a prophetic vision that when Jesus comes again how will He appear?  In the clouds.  “I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven,”  notice He came, meaning He moved.  What does it say?  The clouds are His chariot.  When God moves He moves as a cloud.  And so this mysterious cloud occurred, and “the Ancient of days” is on the cloud.  This was the phrase that Jesus said that caused Caiaphas to rip his garment off when he said, remember he said are you the Christ, answer if you are, and He said you’re going to see the Son of man coming in the clouds of glory and Caiaphas immediately knew what Jesus was saying, it’s a claim to deity, only God rides the clouds.  God Himself is the rider of the clouds.

 

A third time when something strange happens and the clouds are there, the Mount of Transfiguration, Matthew 17:5.  He is on the Mount with Peter, James and John and when they’re there suddenly He is transformed, Moses and Elijah suddenly appear with Him and now instead of four people on the mountain there are six, two strange people appear on this mountain.  And while they’re talking in verse 4, verse 5, “While he yet spoke,” in other words the picture here in the Greek is that while Peter is yak, yakking about building a temple program, we’re going to make a big monument here God and all the rest of it, he doesn’t see something’s happening, and the picture is Peter is talk, talk, talk, talking like this but meanwhile this strange cloud comes, “While he yet spoke, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them; and, behold, a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased;” again how does God come?  He comes in a cloud. 

 

Another time, Acts 1:9, when Jesus Christ ascends from the earth and the angels are there to inform the disciples, “And when he had spoken these things, while they beheld,” in other words the people are still looking at Him, this is again, like in the Matthew 17 passage, the idea of motion and time, “And when they had spoken these things, while they looked, He was taken up,” the picture is movement, He’s taken up, “and a cloud received Him out of their sight.”  It’s not like a launch from Cape Canaveral where it just goes so small you can’t see Him, that’s not at all.  Christ lifted off from the ground, He started going up and immediately this strange cloud that just sort of received Him out of their sight and then He was gone.  The cloud, the sign of the presence of God.

 

One more, a very, very mysterious passage, 1 Thessalonians 4:17, if this is the generation in which the Church would be raptured we’re going to see a cloud. It speaks of the rapture of the Church, when the trumpet sounds, the dead in Christ rise, and “Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds,” and this is a singular, “in the cloud,” and the idea apparently, since wherever the body of Christ is they’re going to be lifted up, this must be a global cloud that occurs at the rapture.  In other words, the entire globe of the earth is encased in a cloud.  Now we don’t know why this cloud occurs, some have suggested it might be the cloud of the dust of the chaos of the age or something, of earthquake, volcanic activity, but there will be a global cloud and the Church is raptured into it and it disappears just as Jesus Christ disappeared; the same way, a repeat of Acts 1:9.

 

So that’s the cloud, let’s turn back to Psalm 104.  We see the importance of the cloud and why, when the Psalm says that He “makes the clouds His chariot” it means that God appears in a cloud.  What the cloud is we don’t know what that cloud is; we just know that it appears something like a regular cloud but yet there’s something else that’s quite strange about it and when it’s there God’s there; God locally is present in this cloud form and this is the way He picks people up, in this cloud. 

 

Now another thing, “who walks upon the wings of the wind.”  Now this one doesn’t really have a structure that we can compare with it.  But now we come to verse 4 but before we get to verse 4 notice the four similes we’ve had and the four realities.  Light are His clothes, heavens are His tent curtain, waters are His beams, clouds are His chariot.  Now you come to Psalm 104:4, “Who makes His angels spirits; His ministers a flaming fire.”  Now the way people down through history have tried to read verse 4 is, in line with these previous things, “He makes the wind,” the word “spirit” should be translated wind, “He makes the winds His messengers, and He makes the fire His servants.”  But that’s not the way the Hebrew reads.  The Hebrew in some ironic way reverses the order here.  And what you think are all these natural elements, our beautiful little thing that we had, the light, the heavens, the waters and the clouds suddenly falls apart  in the 4th verse.  The Hebrew doesn’t read that at all. The Hebrew reads it backwards.  The Hebrew reads it: “He makes His angels and His servants into wind and fire.”  Now, what are we going to do with this.  This is obviously the way Hebrews, the author of Hebrews is reading it; he’s reading it in the correct order, he’s taking it just as the Hebrew says. 

 

So this introduces a possibility, then of a strange, strange thing that should blow your mind when you think about it, but what this verse appears to be teaching is that angels can transmute themselves into natural elements.  And the angels can appear, sometimes as wind, what we would call the impersonal phenomena, wind.  Angels, at other times can appear as fire.  If that’s the case, we of the 20th century are very, very naïve when we think of the immaterial universe as impersonal.  Some of the elements that we look upon in physics and thermodynamics as impersonal elements may not be impersonal at all.  They may be very animate, in fact.  And if this is the case then maybe the ancient peoples, centuries ago, had a more correct view of nature in which they saw all nature as animate, even the rocks and everything.  It was an exaggeration but if this verse is teaching what it appears to teach it means the angels transmute themselves into what we think are natural phenomena.  If we look upon them all we see is the wind, but God doesn’t; that wind actually is an angelic force that manifests itself empirically to us as a wind.  And fire that appears to us as just simply gases heated to the point of illumination, are not really gases heated to the point of illumination at all; that is an angel.  Now we’re not arguing that all wind and all fire is angelic, that’s not the argument.  This verse simply appears to be teaching that in some cases what appeared as wind and fire are actually angels moving before our eyes.

 

Now this is so radically different from anything we’re used to seeing I think this is the best time to pause for a moment and review the doctrine of angels and we’ll spend the rest of the time on the doctrine of angels.  We’ll not deal with the moral qualities of angels tonight, we’ll take that next week.  Tonight we’re going to deal just with what angels are in their very being, what they do and I’m going to summarize the doctrine of angels under 8 points.  And these, I hope, will summarize the thought in Genesis to Revelation as quickly as I can summarize it for you on the content and makeup of angels, what are they.  Now when you discuss a question like this we certainly are at the mercy of God’s Word because no scientist can give us readouts on angels because his grid isn’t constructed to pick them up.  The Word of God alone can pronounce on what qualities angels have and what qualities they don’t.

 

The first thing about angels is when they were created.  If you’ve read the second framework pamphlet you know in Appendix C I tend to veer away from the concept of the gap in Genesis and therefore do not hold that angels were created in sometime way, way early past but were created, as a matter of fact, during the six days.  On what day, then, were the angels created.  The rabbis taught that the angels were created on the third or the fifth day.  Now why we don’t know but this is always the extra-Biblical tradition.  All we can say from the Scripture is that from Job 38:4-7, when the morning stars are singing while God is creating the earth it must mean that the angels were created early in the week, so that they were around to watch God’s fashioning the earth on the rest of the week.  Notice also with this view, as opposed to the gap view, angels and physical phenomenon become very closely tied together.  You don’t have them without physical phenomenon; they don’t preexist physical phenomenon; they’re actually somehow part and parcel of physical phenomenon. 

 

Second point; the first point was that angels were created sometime early in creation week, unless you hold to the gap theory and if you do, then you’re going to hold to the idea that the angels were created way before the week.  The second point is Psalm 8; man is less in power than angels but greater in authority.  Man is less in power but greater in authority; someday he’ll be greater in power too.  God has put all things under the feet of man, something He doesn’t say for angels; He hasn’t put all things under the feet of angels; He’s put all things under the feet of man which makes man have superior authority than angels.  Yet we must also say that angels are stronger than men because of the tremendous power they wield at this point.

 

The third thing, it’s significant that in Genesis 3 when Satan tempts Eve he shows up from underneath, not from above.  Satan comes up to Eve from the ground in the form of a serpent; he doesn’t come down from heaven to Eve, and I think that’s very significant that he starts underneath man and the only reason why Satan is above man is because he got man to sin.  Satan’s place is under the feet of man, and that by grace is where he is going to become, when in Romans 16:20 God shall put him under your feet.  But he originally was under the feet of man in the form of a serpent.  And I believe this is one reason why Satan appears in the literature, so often characterized as a serpent.  Why is Satan so much allied with the serpent?  Simply because I think in the original creation he was in the serpent and this has been forever that the serpent was sort of made to be a vehicle of Satan.

 

Now we come to the fourth point and this is the one that we’re going to spend some time on tonight.  Angels take natural forms.  Angels take natural forms!  Now we’re going to go through some sub points on this one, some proof of why angels take these natural forms. Where do they occur, what do they look like when this happens.

 

The first thing, I want to turn to two passages to get this first sub point across, one is in the New Testament, one is in the Old Testament.  On one hand, turn to Acts 7:30, get Acts 7:30 in mind, and turn to Exodus 3:2, the burning bush incident.  Moses is going to turn aside to see something.  And verse 2 says, “And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush.”  Now often times you read that as though it’s saying: The Lord appeared to Moses in the bush and there was fire coming out of the bush.  That’s not what the text says; look at it again, the Lord isn’t the one in the bush, the Lord is in the flame that comes out of the bush.  So the angel of the Lord appears in the fire itself; it’s the fire that’s the angel of the Lord here.  Now if that interpretation is indeed valid, turn to Acts 7:30, Stephen says, “[And when forty years were expired, there appeared to him] in the wilderness of Mount Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush, [31] And when Moses saw it, he wondered at the sight; and as he drew near to behold it, the voice of the Lord came unto Him….”  Verse 35, “This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge,” and so on, [“the same did God send] to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him” this is “in the bush,” because the fire is left out.  But the angel is identified with the fire.  Now when you think of the fire and the wind in Psalm 104 there’s something on the mind of the psalmist here.  This is one of the things; when God spoke to Moses it was from fire.

 

Another passage, hold the place in Acts 7, turn to Exodus 19:16, Mount Sinai.  In Exodus 19:16 it says, “And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceedingly loud….”  Verse 18, “And Mount Sinai was altogether in a smoke,” smoke was all throughout the whole thing, “because the LORD descended upon it in fire,” now again, the presence of God is identified with physical fire, “and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.  [19] And the voice of the trumpet sounded long,” etc. etc. etc.  Turn to Acts 7:53 and what do you read, “Who have received the law by the disposition of angels,” that means through the intermediaries of angels. 

 

Now if you wanted to take further notes I could prove this same point by Galatians 3:19 [“Wherefore, then, serves the Law?  It was added because of transgressions, till the seed should come to whom the promise was made; and it was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator.”]  The New Testament interpretation of the Old Testament is that what Moses faced on Mount Sinai was the angel of the Lord, plus other angels.  That when Moses was looking at the physical fire he was actually looking at angels.  And that’s the way the New Testament inevitably interprets this phenomenon.  You look at it in the Old Testament and what do you see?  It reports physical phenomena, noise, darkness, fire, but then you come over to the New Testament, looking carefully to find out how the New Testament interprets the old and what do you get?  Angels, no mention of fire, no mention of smoke, no mention of darkness, just angels.  So what does that teach?  That the New Testament is interpreting that Old Testament phenomena as angelic in itself.  I told you this would be a new experience tonight. 

 

Now another point under this, we’re still under the fourth point, angels appear in natural form; we’ve covered the burning bush, we’ve covered Mount Sinai, now we come to another way the angels are associated with natural phenomenon and that is they are identified with the stars.  I could cite many verses on this; I’ll give you some and we’ll go to one, Psalm 148:2.  In Psalm 148:2 you have a praise hymn and here angels are associated with stars.  Some parallel references: Isaiah 14:12, Satan is identified with the planet Venus.  In Job 38:7 the morning stars sang for joy, the sons of God praised, angels are identified with stars.  Revelation 12:4, I saw the dragon and he took a third of the stars of heaven, referring to angels.  So we have then angels are somehow identified with the stars and the celestial extraterrestrial bodies around us in space. We don’t know the connection, all we say is angels are identified with extraterrestrial space. 

 

Now in Psalm 148:2, “Praise him, all His angels; praise him, all His hosts.  [3] Praise Him, sun and moon; praise Him, all ye stars of light.”  Now the way the 20th century American reads Psalm 148 is verse 1 he gets by okay, “Praise ye the LORD.  Praise ye the LORD from the heavens; praise him in the heights.”  All right, we get through that verse all right; we get though verse 3 all right, we say oh that’s nice, that’s just metaphorical, the whole physical creation praising Him.  But the way we usually read the Bible, we feel a tension in going from verse 1 into verse 2 and then coming back to verse 3.  You feel like you’re moving out of the normal everyday seen universe, then you go over into this kind of special universe, with angels, and then you come popping back in verse 3 into the regular physical universe again.  The psalmist doesn’t feel your tension; to him there is no difference. To him when he looks up, praise Him because the hosts are there, all the angels are there in heaven.  To him there is not a great dichotomy between the physical stars that he sees in the sky and the angels.  Now we can say we don’t understand all this but we have to be honest with the text.  In the text the psalmist does not feel there’s great tension between the stars and angels.  We can make all the speculations we want to but we just have to be honest with what the data tells us and the data says when they looked up they didn’t see any difference.

 

Now there’s even more interesting things.  Not only are angels associated with stars, but in the Tribulation the angels are associated with nature judgments.  Let’s look at some of these.  Revelation 8.  I want you to notice as we go on in these nature… I want you to look at the phenomena involved.  Now suppose we take the point of view of an observer on the earth during the Tribulation.  If you were an observer on the face of this earth during the Tribulation, during these judgments, you wouldn’t see angels in the sense you wouldn’t see these ghost-like creatures flying through the air. What you would see would be the phenomena described here.  But now watch the connection. 

 

Revelation 8:7, “The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth; and the third part of the trees were burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.  [8] And the second angel sounded, and, as it were, a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea,” probably some sort of an extraterrestrial comet or a meteor, a gigantic meteor type thing, “and the third part of the sea became blood,” the same as in Egypt there, perhaps the iron oxide.  [9] “And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.”  A massive oceanic adjustment to this thing.  [10] And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as though it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters.”  Something to do with the pollution of the earth’s water supply.  [11] “And the name of the star is called Wormwood; and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter. [12] And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars, so that the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.” 

 

This is a decrease in light intensity that occurs, suddenly the light, in space, is being absorbed, it’s like you have a light sink, or an energy sink suddenly present in outer space that absorbs energy.  Now why.  The Bible identifies it, the medium is angels.  Now you can make up all the physical equations you want to to try to control it but the Bible’s explanation is there’s an angel that interfered with the physical processes, and that in effect, even changed them.

 

Then in Revelation 16:1, a similar thing.  I’m trying to show you these passages so you get a feel for the angels and see their power because you won’t appreciate how Christ is greater than these until you first see that the angels themselves are very, very powerful indeed.  Now it’s fashionable in the material of 20th century to laugh at this, but I challenge anybody to show me evidence why it’s wrong.  Revelation 16:1, “And I heard a great voice out of the temple saying to the seven angels,” now notice here you have a deployment of angels again, a voice comes out, an order goes out, “Go you ways, pour out the vials of wrath of God upon the earth.” 

And what immediately happens when the angels go into action?  [2] “And the first went and poured out his vial upon the earth, and there fell a foul and painful sore upon the men who had the mark of the beast, and upon them who worshiped his image. [3] And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became like the blood of a dead man…. [4] And the third angel poured out his vial upon the rivers and fountains of waters, and they became blood.”  Now do you see what the angels are doing?  They’re destroying… they’re destroying the physical universe, piece by piece, God destroys it in front of His creatures during the Tribulation.  He systematically dismantles it to show His power.  By what means?  Angels!  The angels are again identified with this.

 

Now a while ago I asked you turn to Daniel 7, we’re going to go back to Daniel 7, this time to verse 10 and I’m going to show you an old Jewish interpretation of this portion of Daniel, not that this interpretation is any infallible truth but my next argument on my next two points is going to take this line.  Up to now I’ve showed you some Scripture, angels are identified at length with natural phenomena.  Now my logic for the next two points is a little different.  I’m not trying to show that directly from Scripture, it’s going to be an indirect argument, and the indirect argument takes this form: that at the time of Jesus and the author of Hebrews there was a peculiar sort of interpretation in the Jewish world about angels.  Since Jesus, and the author of Hebrews did not refute this interpretation we can assume they believed it and accepted it.  Now what is the Jewish interpretation at the first century of angels, and the nature of angels.  If we could know this we would know what the Jewish readers of the epistle to the Hebrews had in their heads when they heard this man deliver it from the synagogue. 

 

What was the Jewish interpretation in the first century, of angels?  The first one is in Daniel 7:10, see the text of the Word of God says, it’s a picture of God, “A fiery stream issued and came forth from before Him,” notice, it’s colon, “a thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him; the judgment was set, and the books were opened.”  Now the people who are standing before Him and the ones who are ministering in verse 10 aren’t the ones that are being judged, the books are going to be opened for a judgment, but those are the ones that are standing before and ministering to Him.  Now what precedes in that verse the mention of the ministers?  What comes forth from the throne?  The “fiery stream.”

 

Now in the Babylonian Talmud there is this comment on this verse.  (Quote) “Every day, ministering angels are created from the fiery stream; they utter [not sure of word, may be: song] and then they cease to be.”  And in another portion of the Talmud, one of the angels supposedly talks to the author and he says, “God changes us hour by hour, sometimes He makes us fire, sometimes He makes us wind,” (end quote).  Now we’re not saying that the Talmud is correct directly; we’re simply saying this is what was read regularly by your well informed Jewish people in the first century.  Into that kind of a context the author of Hebrews taught Hebrews 1:7; how would people have taken verse 7 in the light of this kind of interpretation that was going on?  That’s one point.

 

Now my last point is very, very similar and to do this we have to go to an apocrypha book called 2 Esdras.  If you want some exciting reading, you can buy the apocrypha, it’s a little slim volume, and you can read 1 Maccabees, it’s keep you enraptured, it’s the story of the freedom fighters of Israel before Christ came, how they beat up all the Greeks, it makes exciting reading.  That’s the one where the high priest, the famous story of Julius Maccabees, the Maccabean family, which to this day is considered to be the George Washington’s of Israel.  These were the people who fought for freedom in Israel’s darkest hour; they’ve been recorded but not in inspired Scripture.  It was a man who had two or three sons and the Greeks walked in and they said you are going to worship our sacrifices.  This was the abomination of desolation in the fore view, under Antiochus Epiphanies, and they said we are not going to worship your sacrifices, so then they lined all the Jewish people up and they were going to kill them, just systematically cut them down.  Until one of the Jewish priests finally recanted at this point and he ran out and he started to burn the sacrifice and with this one of Maccabees sons reaches up with a knife and stabs him and kills him and sets off a civil war.  And the Maccabean family fight the civil war and they finally drive the Greeks out; it’s a very famous story and sort of exciting reading besides of the fact it gives you some background in the Bible.

 

2 Esdras is in this collection of the apocrypha and here’s a praise of God. Again this was well read in this time.  Now listen, (quote) “Whose throne,” talking about God’s throne, “Whose throne is beyond measure, whose glory is beyond comprehension, before whom the hosts of heaven stand trembling,” and listen to this, “at whose command they are changed into wind and fire.”  Same thing, wind and fire, that we saw before.  So this is a standard first century interpretation of angels that was going around the whole world at this time.

 

To prove it even further we have now the Dead Sea Scrolls and I’m reading from a translation of a portion of Scriptures in the Dead Sea Scrolls.  This portion is called The Hymn Scroll, found in cave number one at Qumran and I’ll read you, this is an English translation you can get on the newsstand, it’s The Dead Sea Scriptures by T. H. Gaster, and it’s good if you want to get some background of some of God’s Word.  The passage that I’m about to read comes from the first part of this hymn, and they’re praising God’s wisdom but look at how they praise it, strange way.  Remember, this was written while Jesus was teaching.  See, the Qumran community was going on while the apostles and Jesus lived, so this literature is being written out of the very day in which our Lord ministered.  So it’s not inspired Scripture but it is a reflection how the people thought in that day.   And that’s why it’s valuable to us. 

 

Watch how they praised God.  “In Thy wisdom You created all the spirits immortal, but before You even created them You foreknew their work from all time.  Thou it is formed every spirit and You did and do rule and [can’t understand word] for all their works.”  Now what are the works of all the spirits?  Here’s what follows: “When Thou did stretch out the heavens for Thy glory, and command all the hosts to do Thy will, Thou didst also make powerful spirits to keep the heavens in bounds.  Or ever spirits immortal took on the form of holy angels, Thou didst assign them to bear rule over various domains, over the sun and the moon, to govern their hidden powers, over the stars to hold them to their courses, over rain and snow to make them fulfill their functions, over meteors and lightnings to make them discharge their task,” etc. etc. etc. and it goes on and on. It just simply describes physical phenomenon after physical phenomenon and attaches them to angels. 

 

Now come back to Hebrews 1:7 and read it in the light of a Jew that would have been immersed in this literature.  “And of the angels He says, Who makes His angels winds, and His servants” literally “flames of fire.”  Now if you had been exposed to literature that I just read you, how would you as a first century Jew have taken verse 7?  Wouldn’t you have taken it as though this is teaching that the angels are transmuting into physical phenomenon themselves?  Surely you would have, this was just the normal view of the time.  So this now becomes very interesting. We have the angels being able to take on physical form.  Now there are just three more points on the doctrine of angels and I’ll cover these because we’ve covered these before around here.

 

Point five, angels are linked in some way to political boundaries.  Their rulership follows human rulership.  Passages to prove it: Deuteronomy 4:19; Daniel 11:3 and 20.

 

Point six, angels interfere politically, now don’t go around wandering which angel started Watergate, but the angels interfere politically, 1 King 22:19-22, that’s a very key passage, that one, that’s a report by one of the prophets on an angelic conference that was held with Jesus Christ and they had a conference in the council to decide how are they going to fake out history, and it discusses their plans and so on, and how they put them in effect.  2 Kings 6:17 is another passage, same point.

 

Finally point seven, angels are God’s servants for His plan, not their own.  Now that’s going to be one of the points of comparison with Jesus Christ, the angels serve God’s plans, not their own.  That’s Psalm 103:20-21; Hebrews 1:14. 

 

And the eighth point is that angels work for believers.  Hebrews 1:14; Revelation 19:10.  Angels work for believers. 

 

Now maybe tonight you’ve had your eyes opened to some of the potential power and force, magnitude, of angels.  Next week when we finish chapter 1 and you compare Christ to this you’re going to get a loftier view of who Christ is.