Bible Text: Matthew 18:1-11 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: St. Michael and All Angels | The angels are the lovers of humanity just as the devil is the hater of humanity. Angels are pro-human, the devil is anti-human. The angels love us because God loves us. Jesus says, “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell you their angels are constantly gazing at the face of my Father who is in heaven.” They gaze at the Father’s face. And the Father’s face is turned toward us. You shouldn’t think simply of angels standing and twiddling the tips of their wings and staring at the Father’s face in heaven. The Father is everywhere. He is God. He is Spirit. He contains all things and He looks over all things. The angels looking at His face means the angels paying attention to His will, what He wants, and loving it, wanting to do it themselves. This is why we pray with the Psalmist, “Bless the Lord, you His angels, who excel in strength, who do His word, heeding the voice of His Word.” And again, “Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, You ministers of His, who do His pleasure.” The angels love to do God’s pleasure, His will. They look into His face and see it turned toward us, they look into His will and they see a great love for us, one that St. Peter says the angels desire to look into, because it astonishes them and thrills them and amazes them. Because that love saw the eternal Son of the Father become a man, join our ranks; it saw Him humble Himself to the point of death and suffer for us and die for us. This is what the angels have seen and see in the Father’s face, this is what they have seen the Son of God do.
So they are pro-human. The angels are fiercely devoted to us. They have seen what sin has done to us. They know their own joy. And they know the joy the devil has robbed of us. They have seen the depth of sin, the wicked pride of the human heart, the shame and filth men and women descend into when they forget God, they have seen the pain and the death and the ugliness and the deformity, the rejection of God, the lies about Him, the murders, the sexual perversions, the absurd chasing after useless things. And they have seen what God did to save us from it. They have seen God die as One of us to buy us back from this misery and reunite us to Himself. They have seen the Spirit descend on earth and have witnessed the Gospel preached to all the world, the tender voice of Jesus calling all men to repentance, to come back and taste the joy of being a child of God. What the angels have seen since the day they were created is our drama, our history acted out, and God as the main Actor; the entire time as they have gazed into the Father’s face they have seen it turned toward us intent on winning us back to Himself. They’ve seen tears in God’s eyes as Jesus wept. They saw the Son of God sweat drops of blood in the garden when they came to strengthen Him. They’ve seen the lashes and the mockery of their God and His cries of agony on the cross. And they know it is all for us. They know this now as they stand around us. And they love us, because they love God and they know God has so loved us.
Their fierce devotion to us is also a fearsome one. The Bible constantly describes the angels as fearsome creatures. When God exiled Adam and Eve from the Garden, He sent angels down to block the way back with a fiery sword. When the men Sodom tried to sodomize Lot, it was the angels who blinded them and called down God’s destruction on the city. When the Assyrian King Sennacherib boasted against the Lord and mocked Him to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, angels struck down 185,000 of his men. When Zechariah talked back to Gabriel, doubted the promised of a son in his old age, the angel got angry and struck him deaf and mute. We could keep going. The angels are fearsome creatures. This is why Jesus says what He says – “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels are constantly looking at the face of My Father who is in heaven.” As the sign, “Beware of Dog,” tells you not to trespass, so Jesus says, “Beware of Angels, don’t mess with these little ones, because their angels are fierce and protective and they will not spare.”
It is remarkable how often the angels attend to the little ones. They announce the birth of Isaac, of John, of Jesus. Jesus points to them as the great defenders and avengers of the little ones. And there can be no clearer witness to what you think of humanity than how you treat the little ones. The angels love humanity, and so they are there at the birth of children and are there to protect them from harm as they grow. The devil hates humanity, so he snuffs out the life of the little children and corrupts their souls as they grow.
You see the devil’s anti-human work in people and in institutions. This is what St. Paul tells us – “we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The slaughter of unborn children is anti-human. Nothing but hatred of humanity, hatred of the body and soul God created in His image and meant to live, could inspire the industry of abortion. The politicians who support it and the pastors who excuse it and the fathers who encourage it and the citizens who vote for it are doing the devil’s anti-human work. It is impossible to sing with the angels, “Glory to God in the highest” at the birth of the God-man in Bethlehem and then advocate for the slaughter of the babies God so honored by His birth as a little child.
The devil is anti-human, so he corrupts the little children. He’s outrageously active in our libraries, our public schools, our media, our politicians and our laws, always wanting to corrupt the little children with anti-human lies. The devil teaches the little children that we evolved from slime, that God did not create us male and female, that a man can mutilate himself and call himself a woman, and a woman can destroy her nature and call herself a boy. The devil burdens the minds of the little children with perversions illustrated in children’s books read by men dressed like women. The devil teaches the little children that all religions are the same and it doesn’t matter what you believe. The devil silences the Word of God in education and keeps it daily from the ears of God’s children. This is all anti-human, exactly the opposite of what God created us for. The devil manufactured it with the express purpose of leading us and our children away from God. This is what we see around us, in our government, in our media, on your children’s smart phones, in our libraries, in our public schools. And it is exactly the kind of thing Jesus warns against – “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, to fall from the faith, it would be better for him that a millstone be tied around his neck and he be drowned in the depths of the sea.” Hear your Lord’s fierce protection of His little ones. They are His. They belong to Him. Not to you. To you only insofar as God has entrusted them to you. So He says, “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It would be better for you to enter eternal life with one hand than with two to be cast into hell.” Cut off the devil’s work, the anti-human influences, do not let them into your lives and do not let them near the little children.
The angels are the lovers of humanity. They are pro-human. They want to see the little children who trust in Jesus live as humans, the loved and redeemed of God, they want them to know their worth as the ones who have been bought by the blood of God Himself. They want us all to act like little children, which means humbling ourselves under God, as Jesus says, “Whoever humbles himself as this little child is greatest in the kingdom of heaven” and “unless you become as little children you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven. The angels want what God wants. And what does God want? What do the angels love so much? God’s will is pro-human, it’s pro us. He loves us extremely. He wants us as His children. He wants us free from the soul-destroying sins that have separated us from Him. He wants us to peer into His face without any shame or dread and see in Him our Creator and our dear Father. He wants us to trust in His Son who lived for us and died for us. He wants us with Him forever. And He wants to protect us from everything that would tear us away from Him. Luther summarizes it in the Small Catechism beautifully, “God’s will is done when He breaks and hinders every evil plan and purpose of the devil, the world, and our sinful flesh, which do not want us to hallow God’s name or let His kingdom come; and when He strengthens and keeps us firm in His Word and faith until we die. This is His good and gracious will.”
When this is our goal, to be and live and die as Christians, and to raise the next generation as Christians, we have the fiercest protectors and allies. We have the angels. They never slumber nor sleep. They hate the devil with every ounce of their being. They love you and your children and want nothing more than to see you gazing with them eternally at the face of the Father in heaven. And so they fight for you. Call on your God and their God for their aid. They will strengthen you in the fight. They will protect you from temptation. Do not fear powerful men, don’t cave into popular culture to believe and do anti-human things. They will all fall. They are like vapor that fades away, like the fog that covered Casper this morning – it’s gone, isn’t it? People will die their hair neon blue only for a short while. Presidents will rage against the unborn only for a time. People will deny the obvious differences and roles of men and women only till it destroys their nations. The powerful will deny the name of Jesus only till their knees are made to bow. It is all temporary. The angels have the eternal perspective. You, have it too. Realize that your life is like that beautiful episode in 2 Kings, when Gehazi is terrified at all the Syrian army, thousands of fierce soldiers coming against him and the unprotected city, and Elisha prays that God would open his eyes, and when Gehazi is able to see reality, he sees thousands of fiercer angels on his side, sees the fact that he cannot lose, and that there are far more on our side than on the enemy’s.
That’s reality. When you live the Christian life, when you stand on the pro-human insistence of God and His angels, when you confess the name of the Son of God and make your goal to see His glorious face, you are always on the winning side, no matter what it looks like to your eyes. Listen to God’s Word. It is very beautifully obvious – God loves you, and His love is found in His Son, who has joined the human race and become the great Lover of humanity, of your body and soul, and crushed the devil and all His lies under the sufferings of His cross. It is finished, Jesus said, the devil is judged, his kingdom is a joke, a mere façade, a laughable anti-human circus. Jesus has established the Kingdom of God. And it is glorious. It stands on the resurrection of the God Man, announced by angels, and preached through all the earth. It is an everlasting Kingdom that will not fail. Its truths are what satisfy the human soul. His commandments are beautiful and bring happiness on earth. His Gospel is more beautiful and shows the love of God in the face of Jesus Christ. There we see what inspires the angels to fight for us and love us; there we see what the angels see as they constantly gaze at the face of the Father. So gaze with the angels now and look forward to the day when they usher you home to see the glorious face of your Savior and God, whom with the Father and the Spirit we will adore forever, world without end. Amen.