Focal Point

Guest (Male): Have you ever wished you could grab a cup of coffee with your pastor and enjoy a more intimate one-on-one conversation? Today on Focal Point, Pastor Mike Fabarez invites us into his study for a casual chat about a topic you've asked about.

Dave Drewie: Welcome to Focal Point. I'm your host, Dave Drewie, and we're glad you've tuned in today. Each week we set aside time to answer listener questions that you send us. Today we've got one that I've wondered about myself.

We've all seen videos and heard the stories of guardian angels who miraculously swoop in and save people, but are they real? Do we actually have an angel assigned to watch over us? Let's join Focal Point's executive director, Jay Wirton, who's getting ready to ask Pastor Mike.

Jay Wirton: Thanks, Dave. All right, Pastor Mike, let's jump right into today's question. Do we have guardian angels?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Not in the way that most people would make a caricature of that. That you've got this angel that hangs with you all the time throughout your life. I can't say we don't, but the scripture doesn't say that we do.

The passage people often think of is Matthew chapter 18, which speaks of us as the little ones and it says that we have angels that are perceiving the face of God. The way it's constructed is it says "their angels."

So we obviously have angels that are sent to minister to us as Christians in the spiritual realm. Do they trade off? I would think your angel and mine probably want to get bumped to a new assignment at some point. I can't say. I don't know.

Jay Wirton: My angel never helped me in the outfield.

Pastor Mike Fabarez: All I'm telling you is the Bible is not clear other than there are angelic beings that do serve in the spiritual realm. You could say part of their job is guarding and protection. We see that in the book of Acts.

Is it the same? That's what you're really asking. Am I assigned some angel or angels that are always assigned to me? Perhaps. I don't know. The Bible is silent on the matter.

Jay Wirton: What about Hebrews 13 where it talks about people possibly entertaining angels when they're greeting strangers or showing hospitality to strangers? What are we dealing with there?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: It is certainly a remarkable passage that states things in a very provocative way. You may have entertained angels without knowing it. But you've got to take the context into consideration.

The whole point of those first three verses is we should be exercising hospitality. We ought to be reaching out to people outside of our immediate circle of our comfort zone and serve others with our homes and with our stuff. We ought to be expanding our circle of service.

I think it's a bit of a play on words because here he's saying you may be ministering to someone who really is sent to minister to you. That's how the first chapter of Hebrews sets this up in terms of what angels are there for. They're there to serve us.

Now it says be open to outsiders and strangers because you may be ministering to a minister. I say that because that word "angelos" that's transliterated "angel" is used of several people in the Bible. It's not just used of an angelic class of beings.

It's also used of people. It's used of pastors. It's used of ministers. It's used of John the Baptist. It's used of other people that are tangibly present in the physical world that are there to serve others.

The point is you may be ministered to by ministering to others. You may be helping people that minister to others by ministering to them. Because if you think about true angels, they don't need our hospitality. They don't need our service.

I know people can point back to Genesis where you have Abraham and Lot having a meal with these angels, but that's a very unique situation where they're setting up the nation of Israel. I don't think that's the norm today.

I know people out there listening may have stories or ideas, but when it comes down to it, Hebrews chapter 13 verses one through three are there to remind us to broaden our circle of care.

Look to the interests and the needs of people that we wouldn't normally look to the interests and needs of and serve them. In doing so, we may be serving people that are real servants, servants to us, servants to others.

Jay Wirton: Let's jump back to what is the job description of angels? You mentioned it briefly that they're messengers, but what are the other things that we can tangibly see in the Bible that tell us the description of the job of angels?

Pastor Mike Fabarez: Primarily they're there obviously for the glory of God. They serve God. The pictures of God's throne room are filled with angelic references. We see angels there bringing glory to God and worshipping God.

In the book of Revelation chapters four and five, we see angelic beings that are bringing glory to God, singing, all these things that point glory to God. Well, one of the things that they bring glory to God in doing, according to Hebrews chapter one, is ministering to us who are going to inherit salvation.

So they are dispatched to this earth to do some kind of spiritual ministering to us. Remember, as Paul said in Ephesians, it's not really flesh and blood that we struggle or wrestle with, but it's the spiritual forces of evil and darkness.

We've got a whole demonic class of fallen angels that are out to destroy us. So there's a battlefield that we can't see and we can trust that God has sent His good and elect angels, as the Bible puts it, to minister to us, to protect us and to defend us and to keep us from the kind of harm that demonic spirits would want to cause in our lives.

Now a lot of that goes on without us ever knowing about it, without ever seeing. We're never asked to pray to angels or talk to angels. We're obviously called to pray to God and to pray through Christ in the spirit for God's good in our lives.

How He does that through angelic beings or through people in this world is not my concern when I pray to God. I pray to God for protection. I pray to God for guidance. I pray to God for provision, and God uses several means to get that done including angels. Their purpose is to glorify God, but one of the ways they do that is by serving us.

Jay Wirton: Well, that's a great conversation, Pastor Mike. Thank you for that. And we're going to continue this topic with a message you gave from one of your study series called "The Ministry of Angels and God's People."

Pastor Mike Fabarez: There's a lot that takes place in redemptive history from Genesis to Revelation where God is breaking the rules that He made. God breaks the rules that He makes for some very salvific and revelatory reasons throughout the Bible.

They come in rashes throughout the text with Moses and Joshua, Elijah and Elisha, and Christ and the apostles. Normative functioning within the Bible does not see God intruding on the laws that He made or suspending the laws that He's made.

What we have throughout the scripture normally is things working within the sphere that they should. But let's look at the most emphatic promise of the Bible from Psalm 91. Psalm 91:11-13: "For he will command his angels concerning you."

This, by the way, is a response to if we've made the Most High our refuge, if we trust in Him. Then His response is to care for us and His response is through the agency in physical care, the agency of angelic beings.

"For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all of your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone," which by the way is a passage that Satan quoted to Christ, you might remember in the temptation.

"And you will tread on the lion and the adder, the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot." If you are one who puts his trust in God, then the situations of danger that may present themselves, if God wants you to thrive and move forward without that danger, His agency in this text is angelic beings to make that happen.

He doesn't have to use them obviously. He's not dependent on them. As Job says, He puts no trust in angelic beings. It's not as though He has to have them, but the pattern in the scripture is that's what He does. Well, let's look at some ways that He does that.

There's the text, there's the promise. What do we find in the Bible? Daniel chapter six, verse 22. You know the context. Jealous Babylonians want to put Daniel out of business, get him off the team. God's not done with him yet, a lot more to go in his ministry and life.

In verse number 19, after he gets thrown into the lion's den, the king comes back at the break of day. He arose and went in haste to the den of lions. Of course, he was bound by the laws that he had made about throwing him in the den because of his prayer.

And then it says in verse 20 as he came near the den where Daniel was, he cries out in a tone of anguish and the king declared to Daniel, "Oh, Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?"

And Daniel said to the king, "Oh, king, live forever! My God," underline this, "sent his angel and shut the lions' mouths, and they have not harmed me because I was found blameless before him." He wouldn't sin, that's not why he was in the lions' den.

"And also before you, oh king, you know that, I've done you no harm." And the king was exceedingly glad and he commanded that Daniel be taken out of the den. So Daniel was taken up out of the den and no kind of harm was found on him because he had trusted in God.

Now I want to put this with a question mark behind it, but I am saying this: it doesn't appear that Daniel's in the lions' den seeing angelic beings clasping the mouths of the lions. It is what he assumes to be happening in an unseen reality because it is a very unexpected outcome for lions not to eat the Jewish man in the lions' den.

It is undeniable deliverance that doesn't make sense. It's not what you'd put the odds on, Daniel living through the night. And Daniel's statement, which I'm assuming is something he did not see, it's something he concluded because of the unexpected odds of him surviving in the lions' den.

He has an undeniable deliverance of God. He assumes the agency of angels. That's a pattern we're going to find throughout the Bible. And that is that, with obviously exceptions to that, when something that is unlikely for our physical protection takes place, the assumption of the godly man is God dispatched His host to protect me from the harm.

And I know some of us have gotten so far away from thinking that way. It almost seems mystical for us to think that way. But here's Daniel saying hungry lions didn't eat me, what happened? God sent His angel to shut the lions' mouths.

Acts five. This one's a little weirder, but also I would believe something that from the perspective of those around, it was also an unseen kind of reality. Now look at this from a couple of different angles. But there is certainly an ironic twist.

Verse number 17: "But the high priest rose up, and all who were with him, that is the party of the Sadducees, and they were filled with jealousy and they arrested the apostles and put them in public prison."

Now the Sadducees, remember how I taught you to remember this, right? They don't believe in the resurrection, that's why they're "sad you see." Right? Okay. The other thing they didn't believe in, they didn't believe in the afterlife.

That's why they were always nagging on Christ about the whole, how do these marriages work out if a guy's got all these wives that die? Remember the story? The wife has all the husbands die.

The other thing they didn't believe in, and they were very clear on this and it says it later in the book of Acts, it underscores they don't believe in angels. They didn't believe in those things. If I can't see it, I don't believe it.

They were empiricists, they were rationalists, though they were religionists, they didn't believe in angelic beings. It's stated as such. That was their theology. So it's ironic that the Sadducees throw the apostles in prison, and look what happens in verse 19.

"During the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the prison and brought them out and said, 'Go stand in the temple and speak to the people the words of this Life.'" Interesting phrase there, capital L in the ESV and I think rightly so.

There's an interesting grammatical statement here that Christianity is life, which would be a great sermon theme to talk about. Verse 21: "And when they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and they began to teach."

Now he put them in prison so that they wouldn't teach. They were jealous about the crowds that were following him and God sends them right back out, puts them in the middle of the most populous place in Jerusalem, the Temple Mount there, and they're preaching and everybody's there listening.

Now the high priest came and those who were with him, the Sadducees who didn't believe in angels, and they called together the council and all the senate of the people of Israel and they sent to the prison to have them brought. They don't know what's happened yet.

And when the officers came, verse 22, and did not find them in the prison, so they returned and they reported, "We found the prison securely locked and the guards standing at the door, but when we opened them, we found no one inside."

Now when the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these words, they were greatly perplexed because from their observation, this was an undetectable escape. They didn't see it. It was locked, the guards were there.

They were perplexed and wondering what would this come to, how's this going to turn out? Verse 25: "And someone came and told them, 'Look! The men you put in prison are standing in the temple and teaching the people.'"

Here's a deliverance that was totally undetected by the people that know how to keep prisoners in prison with guards, and God uses an angelic being to do something, here's how I described it, that was an inexplicable escape.

Don't know how it happened, don't understand how they didn't see you. You should have seen these guys escape and yet it was an undeniable deliverance. You don't get out of this jail. This is not a likely thing.

Clearly God intervened. How did He intervene? Through the agency of angelic beings to do some things in the physical world that shouldn't work. Opening locked doors, getting past guards that should see you.

You get past guards that should see you, the doors that should be locked are somehow unlocked, you get out, inexplicable escape beyond the norm and the people didn't see anything. There was no flash of lights, there was no winged cherubs coming down.

This was just you got out, shouldn't have got out, God's angelic messengers got it done. That I think is a pattern that's worth noting because there are things that we can connect with in our lives that seem out of the realm of what would be normal or expected or predictable.

And yet God clearly did something providentially to do what was unlikely. And we can see, I think rightly so, the pattern driving us to perhaps conclude God has invoked and engaged and enlisted angelic beings to help get it done.

Number three: amid war. In the middle of war, we see angelic protection in the Bible on a couple of occasions. The most classic, which we have looked at but it would be worth looking at again, 2 Kings chapter six verse 16. This is Elisha now, not Elijah.

Let's start way up at verse eight. 2 Kings chapter six verse eight: "Once when the king of Syria, which was Ben-Hadad at that point, was warring against Israel, he took counsel with his servants, saying, 'At such and such a place shall be my camp.'"

"But the man of God sent word to the king of Israel," who was Joram at that point, "Hey beware that you do not pass this place for the Syrians are going down there." And the king of Israel sent to that place about which the man of God told him.

Thus he used to warn him, so that he saved himself there more than once or twice. Kept happening. And the mind of the king of Syria, Ben-Hadad, was greatly troubled because of this thing. I don't get it, what's going on? He calls his servants together and he says, "Will you not show me who of us is for the king of Israel? Where's the traitor? Where's the mole, the snitch?"

Somebody's got to be telling these people this. They keep outsmarting us. And one of his servants said, "None, my lord, O king, but it's Elisha the prophet who is in Israel. He tells the king of Israel the words that you speak in your bedroom," which no one hears and no one bugs your bedroom.

And he said, "Go and see where he is that I may send and seize him." And it was told, "Behold, he is in Dothan." Well, let's get him then. Verse 14: "So he went there with horses and chariots and a great army and they came by night."

Total overkill, big army, didn't need it to get one guy and his servant, right? And they surrounded the city. And when the servant of the man of God rose early in the morning, he went out and behold an army with horses and chariots was all around the city.

And the servant said, "Alas, my master! What shall we do?" And he said, "Do not be afraid, for those who are with us are more than those who are with them." God knew and Elisha knew that God wasn't done with Elisha yet.

And Elisha prayed and said, "O Lord, please open his eyes that he may see." So the Lord opened his eyes, opened the eyes of the young man, his servant, and he saw and behold the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.

And when the Syrians came down against him, Elisha prayed to the Lord, "Please strike this people with blindness," so he struck them with blindness in accordance with the prayer of Elisha. Now I understand Elisha and Elijah, their ministries are peppered, much like Joshua and Moses, with miraculous events.

Out of the less than 100 miraculous events that take place in the Bible, somewhere around 90, most of them occur between Joshua and Moses, Elijah and Elisha, and Christ and the apostles. And here's a rash of miraculous things.

So here is what you wouldn't normally get, and that is a look behind the scenes given to his servant to see what's going on, which they wouldn't normally see but it's happening all the time.

And that is: the underdog wins and the underdog wins sometimes in ways that everybody says it's not possible. Now there are miraculous wins that the army of Israel has, but oftentimes it's four Philistines against one Israelite. That's the ratio and they end up winning. Why?

Because we say God providentially helped them win and helped their sword go in the right place, helped their slingshots hit the right target. Well, how does that work? According to this text, there is the agency of angelic beings that are involved.

There is unseen protection. And in this case, it was miraculously and temporarily made visible, which just happens to be what we'd expect if you're hanging out with Elijah or Elisha, but doesn't happen if you're hanging out with me, right?

So do you get it? What's the point? This is not something that's unique that God sends protection. That's the promise of the Bible. The point is you don't get to see it and I'm not the miracle worker to show it to you.

But we should just assume it to be so. And like everything that we don't see that is eternal, Paul said, we just ought to expect this is going on all the time, at least sent out to minister to those who will inherit salvation.

If you're not a Christian, it doesn't apply. But if you are a Christian, you should expect this. Whenever there's visible deliverance, do you see the pattern? Visible deliverance, I'm assuming God's pattern is to use the agency of angelic beings to get the deliverance done. In warfare, in trial, in persecution, right?

Let's end with a warning: don't become obsessed with angels. They're present, they're sent out to help me, there's help in my life that I see. I want to connect the dots, I want to see them, I want to meet them, I want to talk to an angel. Let's get into angels. Don't become obsessed with angels.

Here's one reason why: infatuation with angels is a symptom of heresy in the Bible. I'll just read it for you. Colossians 2:18-19: "It says there are those who insist on asceticism," that's one group of people.

"And there are people that worship angels." And then this is connected to that: "They go into detail about visions, they're puffed up without reason by a sensuous mind, not holding fast to the head," who is Christ, "nourished and knit together the joints and ligaments who grow into the growth that is from God."

The point is our focus is on Christ, our obsession is not on angels. That should be our focus. Our focus is on Christ, our obsession is not with angels, and it shouldn't be about trying to figure out visions and to go into details about what I think I dreamed last night, maybe even a vision, maybe there was an angel trying to guide me into an evangelistic opportunity. Stop.

Serve Christ, read His word, focus on Him. Don't get infatuated with angels. When you do, at least in Colossae, it was a symptom of heretical teaching and heretical thinking. Don't go there. Remember this whenever we do have them discuss their position with Christians in the Bible.

We've quoted this one already. You don't need to turn to this one either. They're really quick to say, "Hey, I'm a fellow servant." Right? Revelation 22:8-9: John sees the angel, he falls down at his feet.

The angel says, "You must not do that. I'm a fellow servant with you. I'm like you, I serve Him. I'm a fellow servant and your brothers, I'm just like your brothers the prophets. I'm in with in the fraternity of those who keep the words of the book. Worship God."

So they don't want us getting infatuated with them. They don't want us doing that. It's a sign of heresy. And then lastly, interestingly enough, according to 1 Corinthians chapter six, we are going to have some kind of leadership over their lives.

And that's a tough passage. But apparently in the chiding of the church at Corinth why they couldn't solve their own disputes and they were litigating their civil matters with the secular courts, he says, "Don't you know we're going to judge the world?"

And then he says in verse three, "Don't you know we're going to judge angels one day?" Now whatever that means, perhaps in light of Ephesians which says we are seated with Christ in heavenly places, we have a position, it's very unthinkable in our minds, but we are really positionally superior to angels.

So don't get infatuated with them. In one sense, you need to get yourself in perspective as sons of the King, as redeemed human beings. We're in a privileged place that will outshine angelic beings in the next life.

And I'm not saying to diss them. You ought to admire their work, respect them, they're certainly more powerful than we are. They got a lot of advantages to us, but in God's economy we're going to lead them, we're not going to be bowing down to worship them. So don't get obsessed with angels.

Dave Drewie: You're listening to Pastor Mike Fabarez here on Focal Point. Today's message was from a portion of a sermon titled "The Ministry of Angels and God's People." Hear the full version anytime you'd like at focalpointradio.org.

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