Do Angels Walk Among Us Today?
00:00:00.000 | Well, do angels walk among us today?
00:00:07.200 | It's a classic Bible question and one we haven't tackled yet on the podcast until today.
00:00:12.460 | A listener named Courtney writes in with the question, "Hello Pastor John, thank you for
00:00:15.720 | this podcast.
00:00:16.720 | My question is about Hebrews 13.2.
00:00:19.920 | Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."
00:00:28.080 | I've read this text often and wondered what it means.
00:00:31.860 | Does it mean angels are walking among us in human form right now and we are unaware of
00:00:37.800 | them?
00:00:38.800 | Pastor John, how would you answer Courtney?
00:00:41.480 | Let me give some background about angels in general, and then I will give my answer in
00:00:48.760 | the context of that wider picture.
00:00:51.440 | First, here's a glimpse of the activity of angels in the Old Testament.
00:00:58.200 | Judges 13.3, "The angel of the Lord appeared to Samson's mother to be, and said to her,
00:01:05.480 | 'Behold, you are barren and have not born children, but you shall conceive and bear
00:01:11.760 | a son.'"
00:01:12.760 | Psalm 34.7, "The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him and delivers them."
00:01:20.160 | Psalm 91.11, "He will command his angels concerning you and guard you in all your ways."
00:01:27.240 | Daniel 6.22, "My God sent his angel and shut the lion's mouth."
00:01:31.720 | Psalm 103.20, "Blessed the Lord, O you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying
00:01:38.920 | the voice of his word.
00:01:40.480 | Blessed the Lord, all his angelic hosts, his ministers who do his will."
00:01:46.920 | So it appears from the Old Testament that angels are messengers from God.
00:01:54.180 | They are protectors of God's people.
00:01:57.180 | They do countless obedient things in response to God's bidding.
00:02:04.320 | Now when you come to the New Testament, and it begins, there's a great flurry of angelic
00:02:10.120 | activity surrounding the birth of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, and then there's some activity
00:02:17.480 | of angels during the life of Jesus.
00:02:21.280 | And then in the book of Acts, angels rescue Christians from prison twice.
00:02:27.080 | They guide Philip to the Ethiopian eunuch.
00:02:30.280 | They guide Cornelius to Peter.
00:02:31.920 | They guide Peter to Cornelius.
00:02:34.360 | They kill Herod.
00:02:36.480 | They remind Paul on the ship that he's going to make it to Rome.
00:02:40.400 | And then you turn to the letters of Paul and James and John and Peter and Jude, and there's
00:02:47.520 | virtually no teaching about the function of angels in our present experience as messengers
00:02:55.640 | and protectors or guides.
00:02:57.840 | And I just stand back and say, "That's amazing.
00:03:01.480 | That's amazing."
00:03:02.480 | And the least it can mean, it seems to me, that all those letters have no teaching about
00:03:09.040 | the present experience of angels in our lives, the least it can mean is that the teaching
00:03:15.120 | about angels and how they serve Christians now was simply not essential for us to know.
00:03:25.080 | That's my conclusion.
00:03:26.720 | And my own guess about the reason for that is that the promise that the Lord Jesus himself
00:03:35.600 | would come to us, "I will not leave you as orphans.
00:03:39.360 | I will come to you," and would be with us to the end of the age, Matthew 28, 20, and
00:03:45.520 | that he would give gifts to his church and that he himself would build his church so
00:03:49.720 | that the gates of hell would not prevail against it.
00:03:52.240 | Jesus is doing that, not angels.
00:03:54.720 | He says all of this teaching about the immediacy of Christ himself in this age, along with
00:04:01.840 | the presence of the Holy Spirit, is so overwhelming, glorious, that it has preempted any prominent
00:04:10.600 | place that angelic activity in the lives of Christians might have.
00:04:16.440 | Now, careful, to say that there isn't a prominent place or that the knowledge about
00:04:23.080 | them isn't essential does not mean there's no place.
00:04:29.120 | And the book of Hebrews, from which this question is coming, is the place where the most pervasive
00:04:36.960 | answer to the question, "What are angels for?" is given.
00:04:41.520 | And it's Hebrews 1, verses 13 and 14, which goes like this, "To which of the angels
00:04:47.240 | has God ever said, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for
00:04:52.840 | my feet'?"
00:04:53.840 | In other words, there again, you have the preeminence of Christ over against angels
00:04:57.920 | being highlighted.
00:04:59.600 | But then he says, "Are they," namely angels, "Are they not all ministering spirits sent
00:05:07.400 | out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?"
00:05:13.280 | Now that too is an amazing statement.
00:05:17.640 | Angels are ministering spirits sent out into the world by God, now in this age, to serve
00:05:26.480 | for the sake of Christians.
00:05:28.320 | In other words, everywhere that angels are active in the world, doing whatever God assigns
00:05:35.080 | them to do, it is for the sake of making everything work together for the good of Christians.
00:05:42.720 | But notice, the writer of Hebrews doesn't draw any explicit inferences from angelic
00:05:52.920 | ministry for our behavior, nor does he anywhere else in the book of Hebrews.
00:05:59.760 | The closest to it would be the text that Courtney refers to when she asked this question in
00:06:06.280 | Hebrews 13.2, which says, "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby
00:06:14.440 | some have entertained angels unawares."
00:06:17.880 | Now, most commentators think this is a reference to the time that Abraham entertained three
00:06:27.440 | angels in Genesis 18.
00:06:30.760 | But whether that's the case or not, the point of the verse is that since, in fact, angels
00:06:39.600 | have been shown hospitality without the host knowing it, therefore don't neglect this crucial
00:06:49.180 | ministry of showing hospitality to strangers, especially Christian strangers, people you
00:06:54.840 | don't know.
00:06:55.840 | And that is the point.
00:06:56.840 | You don't know them.
00:06:57.840 | If you knew them, you'd know that they weren't angels.
00:07:03.440 | These are strangers.
00:07:04.840 | So I think the answer to Courtney's question is, yes, there are angels among us.
00:07:13.500 | They might take the form of a stranger who needs your hospitality.
00:07:18.380 | The point of saying that is to raise very high the enormous importance of Christians
00:07:27.580 | being generous with our homes.
00:07:31.420 | But keep in mind two amazing things that should keep us back from an unhealthy speculation
00:07:39.220 | about angels coming to our homes.
00:07:42.380 | One is that Jesus already gave a much more amazing incentive for hospitality than this
00:07:50.940 | text does.
00:07:52.540 | He told the parable of the final judgment when the Lord said to those on his right hand
00:07:59.780 | that had shown him hospitality, "Lord, when did we see you a stranger and welcome you?"
00:08:07.740 | And the king will answer them, "Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least
00:08:13.940 | of these my brothers, you did it to me."
00:08:18.340 | Which is greater, to welcome a Christian pilgrim and find that it was an angel or to welcome
00:08:26.020 | a Christian pilgrim and find that it was Christ?
00:08:30.020 | And the second amazing thing to keep in mind is that three verses later in Hebrews 13,
00:08:37.260 | 5, when the writer encourages us not to worry about the money that we might spend on hospitality,
00:08:45.500 | he does not say, "Oh, the angel will take care of you."
00:08:50.140 | He says, "Keep your life free from the love of money.
00:08:54.300 | Be content with what you have, for he, for God in Christ, has said, 'I will never leave
00:09:01.060 | you.
00:09:02.300 | I will never forsake you.'"
00:09:04.220 | Not angels will never leave you.
00:09:07.000 | So we can confidently say, "The Lord," not angels, "The Lord is my helper.
00:09:13.100 | I will not fear what can man do to me."
00:09:16.340 | So the New Testament position seems to be this.
00:09:20.700 | Angels are real.
00:09:22.060 | They are sent into the world for the sake of Christians.
00:09:25.620 | You might entertain an angel without knowing it.
00:09:29.900 | But vastly more important is to grasp that Christ is among us.
00:09:35.540 | Christ has promised to take care of us.
00:09:38.140 | Christ will never leave us or forsake us.
00:09:41.020 | Christ may be entertained in the person of a believer, and therefore the Christian life
00:09:45.760 | should be 100 times more oriented on Christ than on angels.
00:09:53.120 | And for his sake, for his sake, our homes should be open.
00:10:00.320 | That is a fascinating Christ-centered take on this very common Bible question.
00:10:04.240 | Thank you, Pastor John and Courtney.
00:10:06.240 | That is a great Bible question.
00:10:07.520 | Thanks for sending it in to us.
00:10:09.080 | You can ask a Bible question of your own.
00:10:11.400 | Search our growing archive or subscribe to the podcast, all at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:10:19.440 | Well why are we so content to go prayerless?
00:10:23.080 | Or maybe to ask it another way, what is it that motivates our prayer lives?
00:10:27.740 | What can sustain us here?
00:10:29.120 | What breathes urgency and jumpstarts our intercession?
00:10:33.440 | This seems like such a relevant topic for every Christian to ponder, and we will.
00:10:38.820 | Next time, I'm your host Tony Rehnke.
00:10:40.120 | We'll see you back here on Wednesday.
00:10:42.180 | See you then.
00:10:42.520 | [END]
00:10:44.520 | You
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