I have a treat for you all today: the Payette River Vineyard now has a website allowing sermons to be streamed online! As such, you can find a full audio copy of today’s sermon here. The text version is posted below like normal. Blessings. 🙂
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Angels
Let us read todays passage: Acts 5:17-26
17 Then the high priest and all his associates, who were members of the party of the Sadducees, were filled with jealousy. 18 They arrested the apostles and put them in the public jail.
19 But during the night an angel of the Lord opened the doors of the jail and brought them out. 20 “Go, stand in the temple courts,” he said, “and tell the people all about this new life.”
21 At daybreak they entered the temple courts, as they had been told, and began to teach the people.When the high priest and his associates arrived, they called together the Sanhedrin—the full assembly of the elders of Israel—and sent to the jail for the apostles. 22 But on arriving at the jail, the officers did not find them there. So they went back and reported, 23 “We found the jail securely locked, with the guards standing at the doors; but when we opened them, we found no one inside.” 24 On hearing this report, the captain of the temple guard and the chief priests were at a loss, wondering what this might lead to.
25 Then someone came and said, “Look! The men you put in jail are standing in the temple courts teaching the people.” 26 At that, the captain went with his officers and brought the apostles. They did not use force, because they feared that the people would stone them.
The first thing that came to my mind when I read this passage was a testimony I read about Brother Yun of the Chinese church. In his book “The Heavenly Man,” Brother Yun describes an event almost identical to Acts 5 – only this event took place 2,000 years later on May 5, 1997.
On that day, Brother Yun was in a communist prison for preaching the Gospel throughout China. His legs had been broken in multiple places 6-wks earlier and left to heal unset. As such, Yun had to be carried to and from the bathroom by another prisoner.
Around 8 AM on May 5, Yun was wrestling with God and his emotions – he describes it as feeling like Jeremiah, the weeping prophet. Suddenly he sees a vision of his wife (who was also in prison) sitting next to him preparing some medicine for his wound. Watching her, Yun asked if she had been released from prison. She replied, “Why don’t you open the iron door?” – then she walked out of the room and the vision ended.
At that moment, Brother Yun knew that the vision was from God and that He was telling him to escape. Let us pick up Brother Yun’s story on page 254 of “The Heavenly Man.”
Wow
What an amazing story! And one that happened 13 years ago! God still works in mighty ways!
Nowhere in the Bible does it tell us that God recalled all the angels or that He stopped doing miracles. If angels were around back then – then they are around now!!!
And because of that reason, I feel that it is important to talk about them as there is a lot of misinformation in the world today about angels. Folks talk about ‘getting their wings’ when they get to heaven or being shot by Cupid. Some pastors and evangelists even talk about angels who hold the keys to revivals or control when the movement of the Spirit will be released upon a certain state.
Who are they?
The first thing we need to know is that angels are spiritual beings made by God and are not humans who go to heaven – despite popular belief. Humans are made in the image of God (Gen 1&2) and will someday judge the angels (well, Believers will) as stated by Paul in 1 Cor 6:3)
No – angels are spiritual beings made by God as ministering spirits to help further His purposes.
What do they do?
Angels have many different roles. There are the cherubim, seraphim and the living creatures surrounding the throne of God and giving praises to the Lord.
Then there are the messenger angels sent by God to pass on specific instructions to His people. Examples include Daniel and Mary, the mother of Jesus.
Of course, there are the warrior angels that can take out an entire army single handedly: 2 Kings 19:35
They are also called “ministering” spirits (Heb 1:14). In fact, Jesus received the ministry of angels twice:
- After the temptation in the desert (Matt 4:11)
- In Gethsemane before the Crucifixion (Lk 22:43)
Why does this matter?
All of this is important as we have an enemy who “masquerades as an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). We, as children of the Most High, must therefore not “believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God” (1 Jn 4:1)
How do we test them?
1 John 4 goes on to say:
2 This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.
Paul adds to this by saying the following in Galatians 1:8-10:
8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let them be under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let them be under God’s curse!
Here’s the deal:
If a supernatural being shows up and points to themselves or to anyone or any being other than God – or if they tell you something contrary to the Bible – then that being is NOT from God. Period.
Every single angel in the Bible sent from God pointed the glory, the praise, the attention to God. They did not take any attention what so ever. Remember that.