Kevin DeYoung (0:05)

Hello, I'm Kevin DeYoung, pastor at Christ Covenant Church in Matthews, North Carolina. And you are listening to Doctrine Matters. Each week on Doctrine Matters, we explore the rich doctrine of the Christian faith. We'll pull from the church's long history, complex debates, and over the course of the year, the hope is that we'll begin to frame out what is a clear, accessible, systematic theology, be looking at different Christian doctrines and their relationship to each other. And the hope, Lord willing, is we will grasp more and more the riches and the beauty of God's word. Thanks for listening. Let's turn to this week's Doctrine Matters. This week as we continue with theology proper, and we've been looking at now the doctrine of creation. We're almost done with this big section of the doctrine of God, which then covers the attributes of God, the Trinity, and then creation, and really today, just wrapping up a few other items, really important ones under this doctrine of God. So I want to talk about angels and demons. Angels and demons, or demons are like fallen angels, bad angels. These are two topics that maybe in some traditions of the church, give unwarranted attention to. There's certainly a way that Hollywood or dramatic fiction books can really miss the plot of the Bible and make it about angels and demons rather than about God and his people and salvation for sin. So there is a danger in giving these role players too much attention. And yet probably I would say it's been the case in the tradition, the Reformed tradition I'm a part of, and maybe for many of you listening to this, that we don't give a lot of thought to angels and demons. We acknowledge that there is a spiritual realm. We acknowledge that they exist. But we'd be hard pressed to say too much theologically about them. So let's start with angels. Angels are more important than we often realize. By one count, there are 17 books in the Old Testament that reference angels and 17 books in the New Testament, total of 273 references. So what do angels do? Let's start by saying a little bit about what they are, although it's maybe easier or the question of what they are actually leads us to what they do. So angels are created. Beings need to get that they are in that sense, more like us than like God. They're created beings. And the nature of an angel now here's where it's different than us is spirit. Angel is their office. Augustine said spirit is their nature, their personal spirits who sometimes appear in bodily forms. There can be good angels and there can be bad angels. Angels are Intelligent creatures. That means unlike animals, now, they have a kind of intelligence. But angels speak, they are rational beings. Although importantly, they are not made in the image of God. And in fact, Scripture tells us that believers will judge angels. So we don't want to think of angels the way they're sometimes portrayed as maybe superhumans or superhero versions or human beings with some special powers. It'd be better to say they are supra human, that is, beyond human beings, we see sometimes in the Bible, angels have personal names. Does every angel have a personal name? We don't know, but likely, if they're personal beings, they have some kind of personal name. But we don't know many of them. We know two, Gabriel and Michael. The Catholic Apocrypha mentions five others. Raphael, Sariel, Uriel, Raguel, and Remiel. If you're wondering about the. The suffix there at the end of all those words, el, because that's short for elohim, which is a Hebrew word for God. There's different kinds of angels. Michael is called an archangel in Jude 9. In Revelation 12, he is depicted in the spiritual realm as fighting against the devil. So you have Michael, sort of a chief angel who is fighting against the devil. He's an archangel. And then Gabriel is the other named angel. And traditionally considered an archangel. Cherubim and seraphim are you might think of as throne room angels. They're associated with guarding God's presence there in the tabernacle, in the temple. And angels are more glorious than human beings. In some ways, we're created a little lower than the angels Psalm 8 tells us, but their glory should not be exaggerated. So they're wise, they're powerful, they're not omniscient. Angels are not omnipotent. So what do they do? Graham Cole and his helpful book against The Darkness lists 12 tasks that angels do. Let me condense that a bit and just bring it down to six. So you can say number one, angels are guardians. They guard Eden, the Ark, God's people. Number two, angels are bridges. That is, they're a connection point between two worlds. Think of Jacob's ladder or Jesus word. He saw angels ascending and descending on the Son of Man. So they're a bridge between spiritual world, material world. Three, angels are intermediaries. So they were there in some way. Galatians tells us, at the giving of the Law. Four, angels are messengers. And that's a major component. That's in fact what the word means in Hebrew and in Greek simply means messengers. We see they bring messages to Joseph to Mary to Paul. They interpret divine messages. 5. Angels are patrol officers. Think about it. In a way, we've already said they're guardians, the patrol officers. This. So they're like police officers in the Bible. Now, that's not all you want to say about them, but that's. That's one way to think about them. They walk the earth, Zechariah 1. They serve as agents of divine justice in several places. We've already seen that they guard holy places and holy things. And then six. Angels are servants. So they guide God's people, they care for God's people, they minister to Christ. It's easy to read over that quickly when we're reading the Gospels. But angels attended Jesus. God shows in the Bible a preference for accomplishing his work through intermediaries. He doesn't have to do that, can work miraculously. He can provide manna from heaven. He could provide supernatural comfort. But we see that normally, and this is even in the life of Christ. He prefers to minister through created things and through created beings. So he ministers to Christ by angels. You might think, well, if anyone could just have this communion with the Father or have the Spirit come. And there's a lot about the Spirit's work in Christ and on Christ, but the angels also attend him. Think about it. Every key moment of his life in ministry, they were there. Angels at his conception, angels at his birth, angels in his temptation in the wilderness, his trial in the garden and at the empty tomb. I mean, every key moment in the life of Christ is accompanied by angels. So we don't want to make angels who are role players in the Bible into the stars of the show. But there's also a danger we ignore them altogether. And we ignore what Hebrews says in enjoining Christians to be hospitable. Because some of you have entertained angels unawares, which is a reference to the story with Abraham and Sarah and the three visitors in Genesis 18. So there are angels in the world. Don't think the Bible teaches that everyone has their own personal, individual angel. If you've watched It's a Wonderful Life, and I love watching that at Christmas. Jimmy Stewart's character. I don't think we all have a Clarence who is going to watch over us and is trying to get his wings. So we got to be careful. We don't read in our own contemporary myths or many ancient or medieval myths. And yet angels exist. It's quite possible that many of us have encountered angels and we're totally unaware of it. We're not told to pray to Angels, or even really praying for angels. And yet they're there and they work and they are God's important servants in the world. Now, what about demons? If we're going to take the Bible seriously, we have to conclude there is real evil in the world. There's a devil, there are demonic beings. The book of Ephesians uses several different words or phrases. In Ephesians 6, besides a personal devil. Paul calls these demonic intelligences rulers, authorities, cosmic powers over this present darkness, spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And those terms may not be identical, but they all hit upon the same idea. That is to say, these demonic beings are powerful spiritual beings that rule over a realm of evil. There is actually evil in the world. We need to remember this. And not just. It's not just someone's biology, though we know that biology matters and we understand chemical reactions in people. It's not just people acting upon you that then cause you to act a certain way. There is a real personal devil in the world. Behind the manifestation of evil in our day lies a devil and demons. Whenever we turn from light, the light of the gospel, the light of the glory of God, whenever we suppress the conscience, whenever we prefer darkness over light, we are putting our way in the influence and under the sway of, of the devil. Now, where did the devil come from? The devil's a created being. We need to remember that. We never want to think that, well, there were these two almost equal and ultimate spiritual beings. There was God and there was a devil. And they've been in an eternal conflict. They have not been in an eternal conflict. Only God is eternal. The devil is a created being. The devil has great power. We see that in Scripture. But he doesn't possess the attributes of God. He's not omniscient spirit. So not limited by the same things that limit material beings. And yet not omnipotent, not omniscient, not omnipresent. He fell. We're just given hints about this. So sometimes Christians think they know things about how the devil fell. And what they really know is somewhere in our cultural memory is John Milton's Paradise Lost. But just from the Bible, we have a few texts that suggest there was an angelic rebellion prior to man's sin in the garden, and that this rebellion was motivated by pride. For example, 1 Timothy 3, 6 hints that the devil was condemned for being puffed up with conceit. Jude six says, quote, angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling. He has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day. So some group of angels, led by Satan, the devil, Lucifer, were not content with their position as servants of God and. And rebelled. And one of the massive differences between human beings and angels is now the state of angels after their fall is fixed. So there's no redemption for fallen angels. This is why we read in First Peter that the Gospel contains things into which angels long to look. Angels with all their power, all their privilege, yet they don't. They know the Gospel, what it is, and they attend to it, but they cannot experience the Gospel. So those angels who did not rebel, we get no sense in Scripture that there's a continuing angelic fall. And we never hear of those fallen angels being redeemed or redeemable. They are kept under gloomy darkness until the day of judgment. And one key text in particular, and scholars debate this, but Ezekiel 28, which talks about the King of Tyre, but it talks about it in such exalted ways and about him being there in the garden, that many people take it as an allusion to the devil, an anointed guardian cherub. And that would give us further evidence that the devil sinned because his heart was proud and vain. And the devil assaults his people in two main ways. He's a deceiver and an accuser. That's who he is, and that's what he does. Deceiver and accuser. Or you could say the devil lies and he slanders. He's called in Revelation 12, the deceiver of the whole world and the accuser of our brothers. So you think about, you know, is the devil trying to haunt our house? Is he trying to just scare us with. With grotesque images? Now, the. The devil surely may operate differently at different times and cultures. And is it possible that in earlier times or other parts of the world more given to spiritual realities or animistic traditions, that he may do one set of things and say in the west, which has been disenchanted in some ways, that he might deceive people through other means of cultural lies and deception? Of course. So the point is that he's not interested so much in spooking you and scaring you, but he does want to lie to you. He wants to masquerade as something else, Deceive. You could do this through a thousand different ways, that the devil is somehow behind the lies that are in books and in media and our digital age and the stories that are told in a culture to believe lies. And then he slanders, he accuses, he says that there's no hope for you. He says that you can't be forgiven in Christ. He wants you not so much to have bad theology, though he probably does want that. But, you know, he's content if you have correct intellectual things. As long as you don't worship Christ, as long as you don't find satisfaction and forgiveness in Christ. We don't know lots of things, and so we must always be careful about speculation. But we know enough that we should be leery of any, you know, elaborate constructions of demonic hierarchies. We aren't told those things about territorial spirits and naming demons. Remember when, when Jesus asked for the name of a demon, he didn't get a name, he got a number. He said, I'm legion, so I'm a many. So although we don't know much and we should be careful about all sorts of speculation and that's probably for our good, it's probably something, you know, the Lord knows what he's doing and be dangerous to know too much more or to want us to go deep into the demonic realm in understanding so that the, the, the, the relative sparsity of information is for our good. And yet we, we must remember we are at war. Surely it's significant. The recurring theme in Ephesians chapter six is not cast out demons. That's not spiritual warfare language that Paul gives to the church. That's what Jesus does. I do think that demons still exist, demons can still possess people and maybe occasions where that sort of language, satan, be gone, is appropriate. But surely it's telling that when Paul talks to the Ephesians about here's what I want you to know about spiritual warfare, he doesn't give him a crash course on here's how you name demons. Here's how you cast out demons. Demons. What he sees rather is not conquering strongholds, but stand. That's the recurring theme. Stand. The work has been done by Christ. Now your work is to stand. Not to vanquish hell Jesus did on the cross, but to fight, to resist, to stand, and to do so with the weapons of the gospel and the truth of God's word. Thanks again for joining us on Doctrine Matters. I'm your host, Kevin DeYoung. If you'd like to study more of the issues we discussed today, you can check out my book, Daily Doctrine, available in print or audio from Crossway, or ask a pastor or a trusted friend for a good resource. And if doctor Matters has been encouraging for you, please consider subscribing hi Apple Music. Wherever you listen Matters podcast is produced by Crossway, a not for profit ministry that exists for the purpose of proclaiming the truth of God's Word through publishing gospel centered content. To learn more, visit Crossway.org.