Today we continue with our discussion on angels – remember that you can hear the whole thing online at the Payette River Vineyard website.

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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.

I Kings 13 give us a good example to those who ignore this warning.

In this passage a prophet of God goes to King Jeroboam in the Northern Kingdom and warns against sinning against God. After some signs and wonders, King Jeroboam gets the message and asks if the prophet wants to have a bite to eat before going home. Let us pick the story up in verse 8:

8 But the man of God answered the king, “Even if you were to give me half your possessions, I would not go with you, nor would I eat bread or drink water here. 9 For I was commanded by the word of the LORD: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water or return by the way you came.’” 10 So he took another road and did not return by the way he had come to Bethel.

11 Now there was a certain old prophet living in Bethel, whose sons came and told him all that the man of God had done there that day. They also told their father what he had said to the king. 12 Their father asked them, “Which way did he go?” And his sons showed him which road the man of God from Judah had taken. 13 So he said to his sons, “Saddle the donkey for me.” And when they had saddled the donkey for him, he mounted it 14 and rode after the man of God. He found him sitting under an oak tree and asked, “Are you the man of God who came from Judah?”“I am,” he replied.

15 So the prophet said to him, “Come home with me and eat.”

16 The man of God said, “I cannot turn back and go with you, nor can I eat bread or drink water with you in this place. 17 I have been told by the word of the LORD: ‘You must not eat bread or drink water there or return by the way you came.’”

18 The old prophet answered, “I too am a prophet, as you are. And an angel said to me by the word of the LORD: ‘Bring him back with you to your house so that he may eat bread and drink water.’” (But he was lying to him.) 19 So the man of God returned with him and ate and drank in his house.

20 While they were sitting at the table, the word of the LORD came to the old prophet who had brought him back. 21 He cried out to the man of God who had come from Judah, “This is what the LORD says: ‘You have defied the word of the LORD and have not kept the command the LORD your God gave you. 22 You came back and ate bread and drank water in the place where he told you not to eat or drink. Therefore your body will not be buried in the tomb of your ancestors.’”

23 When the man of God had finished eating and drinking, the prophet who had brought him back saddled his donkey for him. 24 As he went on his way, a lion met him on the road and killed him, and his body was left lying on the road, with both the donkey and the lion standing beside it. 25 Some people who passed by saw the body lying there, with the lion standing beside the body, and they went and reported it in the city where the old prophet lived.

26 When the prophet who had brought him back from his journey heard of it, he said, “It is the man of God who defied the word of the LORD. The LORD has given him over to the lion, which h8as mauled him and killed him, as the word of the LORD had warned him.”

If a prophet of God can be turned aside because of the word of an ‘angel’, should we not be all the more diligent in testing the spirits and holding on to the word of God?

Don’t get scared

Now it is easy to get scared or nervous at this point – which is what a lot of people have done. In an effort to keep from messing up, they have banished all thoughts of the supernatural from their minds and lives.

Yet, that is not what the Lord has told us to do.

Instead, the Lord has told us to seek spiritual things (1 Cor 14:1). We are not to be afraid for we have the Spirit of Christ within us who is bigger than anything the devil can throw at us (as we read in 1 John 4).

4 You, dear children, are from God and have overcome them, because the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world. 5 They are from the world and therefore speak from the viewpoint of the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God, and whoever knows God listens to us; but whoever is not from God does not listen to us. This is how we recognize the Spirit[a] of truth and the spirit of falsehood.

We just have to exercise our authority in Christ and test the spirit just like John told us.

I would even go as far as to say that some believers are called to see the spiritual world just like Elisha and his servant (2 Kings 6:16-18). Amazingly enough, not too long after I discovered that I was going to be speaking this weekend, I noticed a book on my book shelf given to me by my mother a year or two ago but I had never read. The book was written by Gary Oats and entitled, “Open My Eyes, Lord: A Practical Guide to Angelic Visitations and Heavenly Experiences.” It seems that God knew that I would need a crash course on angels and had my mother prepare the way in advance! 😉

In this book, Gary Oates talks about how God opened his eyes to see what God is doing in the spiritual realm. He would see angels standing next to people, pointing them out to him. Going over there, he would begin to pray for the folks only to have God show up in some powerful ways.

Other times he saw angels dancing down the aisles as the people of God worshiped and praised the Lord. Still other times, he saw them destroying black blobs of the evil one – releasing the power of God upon His people.

Open our eyes Lord! Let us see what you are doing!

As I was preparing for this sermon yesterday I received a phone call from my sister-in-law. In the course of the conversation, she told me a story about my niece a few years ago. When she was two years old (she is 6 now), she told her mother that she saw angels.

Thinking that she had a wild imagination, my sister-in-law decided to play along and asked her where she saw the angels. My niece said that there were two of them in the living room.  This led to a discussion about what they looked  like – medium size and very bright.

Medium size?! What two year =-d gives that kind of answer?

Over the next year or so, she would occasionally point out angels to her mother.  Sometimes she would even see dark shapes – which wasn’t so good…

As she got older, the fewer angels she saw… But I firmly believe that she saw what she said she did. In fact, here recently someone (an adult) wondered out loud if angels had wings or not. Her brother said to ask her as she has seen them. Ruth got really upset at this point – not because of her brother’s comment but because she could not remember!

If she was making it all up, she would have responded with an answer versus getting upset with her memory.

You see, angels are real. They are among us ministering to us and helping further the work of the Lord.

Conclusion:

• Don’t dismiss the supernatural just because you have not seen it. God is still at work today.
• Pray and ask God to open your eyes so you can see what he is doing
• Test the spirits – just because you see an angel of light does not mean that it is from God. Angels always point to God and never go against His word.
• Entertain strangers as they may be angels (Heb 13:2)