We are continuing our study of the spirit world as we focus on our biblical worldview. The fact is there are spirits that are demonic and want to inflict harm on people and want to blind them to the truth of the gospel. They want to tempt us into sin to cause us to be devoured and destroyed. All of these things are part of the demonic spirit world, and we must be aware of that. We are going to switch directions and look at the good angels and spirit beings that God has created to serve Him and to serve us. We will just get a little glimpse of who they are and what they are doing. In general, we know that God has created a host of angels. They are not a race of angels. They are not like people. They don’t reproduce and have other baby angels. They do not marry. There is a host, a set amount, of angels. There will not be any more or any less. So, this is His host that serves Him.
We find many of these angels worship the Lord in Scripture. We find for example the cherubim in Ezekiel 1. It is a very interesting chapter. There, these cherubim are defending the holiness of God. We look at cherubs, these pictures of these chubby little angels, and we think how cute they are, but in reality; these are fierce and powerful creations of God that if you saw one in real life, you would be petrified. They are not these little cute cherubs. We have changed that around in our portrayal of angels, but cherubim defend the holiness of God.
The seraphim we find in a couple places, especially Isaiah 6. You may recall that Isaiah is in the temple, and he sees the holiness of God and the seraphim flying about crying out, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” We find seraphim worshiping the Lord. Every time we see them in Scripture, we see them worshiping God. They may do other things, but they are worshipers of God for God is worthy to be worshipped.
We find there is a hierarchy of angels apparently. Michael, who is one of only two angels in Scripture that we know by name, the other being Gabriel, Michael is the archangel. Archangel implies he is the head of the angels. We find him on several occasions in Scripture. We find him in Daniel 12, for example, involved with the defending of Israel and the resurrection of the Old Testament saints. We find him in Revelation 12 battling the devil. He is the leader of the angelic host as far as we know. Gabriel himself, seems to be a messenger angel. He is sent in Scripture to herald the coming of Christ and the coming of John the Baptist. He is sent by God to bring messages to us. Other angels do other things, but they are not given a name . . .
