Jesus, Infinitely Superior to the Angels

Scripture Texts:  Hebrews 1:4-14

We have spent the past four weeks of Advent considering the Gospel accounts announcing: the coming of the Messiah, the conception of the Messiah and the appearing of the Messiah at His birth.  The incarnation of Christ is surrounded by angels from heaven.

We have witnessed the visitation to earth of the archangel Gabriel bearing news of a coming event that is greater than anything the world has ever seen before.

I have stressed the significance and importance of this remarkable inbreaking of the heavenly with the earthly, the eternal with the temporal, the infinite with the finite, the invisible with the visible.

I have pushed against our secular, materialistic, pragmatic, windowless, closed, anti-supernatural world.  The abundance of proof is we are not alone, we live on a visited planet, created, sustained and redeemed by the real, living God, who has sent messengers from heaven.

I haven’t had the time to say much about angels so I want to make a number of quick bullet points to keep us from going into a ditch on this topic.

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Angels.  Angels are real and they are involved in the lives of human beings.

Angels are created creatures, created by God on one of the days of creation week.  They are not created in the image of God, and they are not eternal, but they are immortal, they never die.  They are powerful but not omnipotent.  They are spirits but not omnipresent, they can only be in one place at a time.  They are intelligent but not omniscient.

Among angels there appear to be several kinds of heavenly beings mentioned in Scripture: seraphim, cherubim, the four living creatures, angels, archangels, and the Angel of the Lord.  Gabriel and Michael are the only two named archangels in the Bible.

They can take on the form of human nature.  When they are seen by men the response is always one of fear, trembling, terror, scared out of their wits.  They are not cute cubby cherubs, nor are they aren’t like Clarence.

Angels are of two moral categories, holy/elect angels (I Timothy 5:2) and fallen/evil angels (Jude 6).  The fallen angels are irredeemable, there is no mention anywhere of an angel repenting, they have no Savior and therefore no salvation.  Once fallen, always fallen.  Their number is fixed, they neither reproduce nor die.  How many are there?  A lot.

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Angels are significant to the Christmas story because Jesus’ birth was like none other.  Something truly miraculous happened when Jesus took on human flesh as a baby.  The presence of angels confirm the miraculous nature of Jesus’ conception and birth.

The Christmas story requires us to accept by faith the supernatural, invisible, presence of spiritual beings from somewhere beyond our visible, physical universe.

Angels are important, but their greatest importance is what they point to, what they are a messenger of.  This brings us to the importance of our text this morning.  Hebrews 1 is the most concentrated, sustained treatment of angels in Scripture.

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