(Text and Audio)
Title: Four Questions, Part Two
In the summer of 1998 I went to work as a Christian Camp Counselor in Southern Missouri. It was an interesting summer, as this particular camp worked with inner city youth, mostly African American, from cities all over the South and Midwest like Atlanta, St. Louis, Memphis, etc.
Most of these kids were tagging along with their youth groups from their local churches. Despite that, most of these kids were not saved, at best, they were living a cultural form of Christianity that was based on not doing things that were “really bad.”
And their knowledge of Scripture was almost non-existent.
I remember one particularly sobering conversation that occurred during my time there where there was a young man, about 13, who had responded very favorably to the Gospel message presentation from the night before and he was walking and talking with his counselor, a friend of mine named Jeremy, and this young man was explaining to him that the “light had gone on” he now saw God in everything.
This, of course, was a very encouraging sign for Jeremy as a counsellor, so he pressed this young man a bit on his new found perspective, explaining that God was sovereign, and that meant he created and controls all that we see.
The young man stopped with a confused look on his face, looked up at the trees in this great forest they were hiking though and replied, “No, Mr. Jeremy, I didn’t literally mean ‘everything’…I mean, the trees and nature and stuff, that’s all from Mother Nature, right?”
Why do I share that story?
I do so to illustrate two points, both of which will come up today. First, we must take the training of our children seriously, expecting much of them, challenging them, and never presuming God’s Truth is too much for them to handle.
Secondly, we must be so very, very aware of the dangers of anecdotal Christianity.
Satan loves anecdotal Christianity.
- It’s simple, so we don’t think much about it.
- It sounds good, so we don’t investigate it’s claims further.
- It keeps us out of Scripture. Instead of going to scripture, we just lean on a few sayings and key verses (often taken out of context) to form the whole of our belief system.
As I stated last week, in order to more fully grasp the fullness of the passage that we are studying, we will seek to answer four question. The first two we dealt with last week, and today we will cover the last two.
The Questions:
- Who (precisely) are these “little ones”?
- Why are we not to despise them?
- Are these angels personal, or corporate?
- What is the application for this teaching?
Let’s begin.
(read/pray)
Are these angels personal, or corporate?
Over the years an area of fascination that has grown, both inside and outside the church is the concept of angels. But the truth is, there is very little we do know about angels. They don’t appear very often, and scripture doesn’t offer us a lot of information about them. Briefly, here are a few highlights of things we can and do know about angels.
- They were created by God. (Gen. 2:1, Col. 1:16)
- They are eternal. (Like 20:36, Rev. 4:8)
- They do not marry (Matthew 22:30)
- They are wise and intelligent. (2 Sam. 14:17, Dan. 9:21-22)
- They have knowledge of, and interest in, the affairs of men. (Dan. 10:14, Luke 15:10)
- Christians will judge angels, showing our elevated position above them. (1 Cor. 6)
And yet, despite these few wonderful and amazing things we can and do know, the passage that we are studying today is often used to defend the idea of a “personal guardian angel” that is assigned to watch over each one of us.
It’s a neat idea, I can understand why people want to believe it. I can even understand that someone might assume that Jesus’s words “I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven” (verse 10) could suggest this concept…
So why do I reject the idea of personal guardian angels?
There simply isn’t enough scriptural evidence to support such a concept.
J.I. Packer: Though this verse is sometimes interpreted to mean that each believer has a personal angelic guardian, this popular belief goes beyond the Biblical evidence.
Here is my contextual evidence that these angels are corporate (working for the will of God as a team) and not personal (assigned to an individual).
Jesus has brought this child into the circle as an example of all children who believe in him. Jesus doesn’t say, “Unless you become like Jimmy, you will not see the Kingdom…” He doesn’t say, “Whoever causes Jimmy to sin it would better for him…”
This child is a representation of all children who believe in Jesus.
Therefore, the “their angels” in verse 10 is a reference to the “team” of heavenly host that minister to ALL believers on behalf of the Almighty.
What is the application of this teaching?
In other words, what is the point of Jesus laying out the importance to the apostles of not “despising one of these little ones”?
The answer is found in the transitional nature of verse 11.
There, Jesus reminds us that his mission is to “save that which was lost.”
That statement serves two purposes:
- It reminds us of the redemptive plan of Jesus. (A redemption that the apostles wouldn’t fully understand until the crucifixion and resurrection.)
- It transitions into the parable of the lost sheep, which demonstrates just how precious each individual child is to Christ, and the lengths he is willing to go to save it from harm.
I think you could break what Jesus is saying in these two verse down to three main points of emphasis:
- Don’t despise these little ones. (They are so very capable in MY hands.)
- The angels see the face of MY Father in them. (They BELONG to GOD.)
- I have come to retrieve them from the world, and take them HOME.
Close:
To return to our opening warning against anecdotal Christianity; that’s quite a lot to ween from two fairly simple, straight-forward verses, and I hope I’ve illustrated the necessity, the power, and the reward of truly digging in to passages like this, in a attempt to squeeze every last bit of wisdom and application out of them.
We cannot be anecdotal, because our God did not give us a book full of anecdotes. He gave us a book full of wisdom, power, and hope…but we must be diligent to search that truth out, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, if we are to truly grow closer to the Father.