We'll get into the 32nd chapter
of Genesis, and I've got two verses that I want to give to
you and just try to work on them a little bit. The Lord encourages
Jacob, and He does so by enabling him to seek a multitude of angels
who are with him. Chapter 32 of Genesis. verse
1 in Jacob went on his way and the angels of God met him and When Jacob when he saw them
he said This is God's host This is God's army This is God's army
in full battle array. They were to host to the Jews,
they considered that to be 60,000 And so this would be 60,000 angels. But there's actually more than
that, because if you read the rest of it, and he called the
name of that place Mahanaim, which means, that has the idea
of two hosts. double hosts, which would be
120,000 angels, that the Lord opened
His eyes to behold. Now whether these angels were
to be seen by others in His group, by Rachel and Leah and the two
concubines and all the 11 sons and one daughter, and the servants
and so forth as to whether or not they saw them or not, we
don't know. But Jacob saw them. And that
which I want us to think about this evening is that our God
graciously has sent to each of us angels. And they do indeed gather around
us. And the Lord uses them to, one
writer said, to whisper encouragement into our minds by reminding us
of the Word of God, reminding us of His presence with us always,
and these angels in a mysterious way. And of course, we don't
know, we don't understand the full ministry of the angels of
God. There's no question about that.
We know from the book of Hebrews, the first chapter, that angels
are ministering spirits that are sent forth to those who shall
be the heirs of God's salvation. This is a salvation God has ordained
for us. This is our inheritance. This
is an everlasting salvation. This is forgiveness. This is
justification. This is sanctification. This
is glorification. God has ordained that for us
and we're heirs of that. And so the Lord, He sends these
messengers of good things, these angels, they gather around us
and they protect us in some way. And I say again that much of
the ministry of angels is indeed mysterious. But you've got to
remember that Jacob now is embarking and this is Edom. He's in Edom. That's the land of his brother. And as he enters into Edom, and
I'm sure he does so, and as we will see next week, he is somewhat
fearful. He's going to make a very generous
offer to Esau, extending, as it were, an olive branch. I don't
want you to be mad at me. We want to be at peace with each
other. But he is fearful. And the Lord
knows that which we stand in need of. There's no question
about that. And he knew what Jacob needed.
Jacob needed encouragement. Here as he goes into Edom. And Edom means red, just like
Esau's name. Because that was the color of
the pottage that he swapped out for his birthright. And so his
name is Edom. And Edom will always be the enemy
of God's people. In fact, as they go through the
wilderness, as we continue to study in the book of Exodus,
and then as we continue, we'll find that the Edomites wouldn't
let the Israelites through their land. They hated Israel. And as you get on into Judges
and later into the historical books, you'll find that the Edomites
were always the enemies of God's people. And it all started with
Esau. You see, Jacob, he is loved of
the Lord. He's loved of God. And Esau is
hated of God. These are the two men who came
out of the womb of Rebekah. And Esau came out first, he's
the elder, but the Scripture says the elder shall serve the
younger. And God preferred, God loved,
God favored, God graced Jacob, and He didn't do that for Esau.
And Esau is a hater of God. He is deserving of the wrath
of God that he is now experiencing. And he hated his own brother. And now Jacob, as he enters into
the land of Edom, he feels in his own mind and
heart the pressure. My brother is out here. And as
we're going to see next week, and I've already mentioned it,
he's going to make a peace offering to Esau. He wants to kind of
soothe things over. Esau, he's a man of the world. He's a man of warfare. And Jacob
is very much in need of encouragement from God. Our Lord does encourage you. And He sends all of these angels
and He enables Jacob to see them. And I would not be hesitant to
say to you this evening that I'm sure within this building
I have no doubt about this. If we have eyes of faith, we
can behold the angels of our Lord as they gather around us. You see, there's always a warfare
going on. There's always a warfare between
darkness and light. And our Lord Jesus is the Master. He's the Lord of the light. And Satan is the Prince of darkness. And while our Lord has defeated
him, and I'm going to show you that in just a few minutes, while
our Lord has defeated him, still that enemy, that one who is called
the Prince of darkness, he is still troublesome to the people
of God. as are His demonic hosts. And they're very much opposed
to us. They're opposed to the Gospel.
They're not opposed to religion. Satan's not opposed to religion,
a Christless religion, a graceless religion. Satan is not opposed
to that. He's not opposed to you carrying
your Bible around, because unless the Spirit of God enlightens
you, you're not going to understand the message of the Bible anyway.
You're not going to see who Christ is. You're not going to understand
this is the book of life. This is the book of salvation.
This is the book of God. This is how God informs us of
who He is, of His glorious attributes. This is how God tells us of our
awful dilemma, our awful situation. And it's in the Word of God that
the Spirit of grace, He sets before us a mighty Savior. and God's means of saving sinners
through that substitutionary death of our Lord Jesus. There's a warfare going on. And
while I say I don't hesitate to say that there's the angelic
presence here this evening, I'm sure there's a demonic presence
as well. There's the enemy. Because wherever
the truth of the gospel is preached, wherever God is glorified, you
may be certain the enemy is not very far away. Because that's
the message he hates. That's the message he doesn't
want you to hear, nor to grasp. And He will do everything within
His power, He and His demonicos, to get you sidetracked, get you
thinking about something else. Immediately after the service
is over, it's like the Lord talked about the good seed that fell
by the wayside. Well, I'm setting forth good
seed tonight. The grace of God. The redeeming
blood of the Lord Jesus. That imputed righteousness of
the Son of God. This is good seed. Salvation
by God alone. God's electing grace. Christ's
redeeming bloody sacrifice. The effectual work of the Spirit
of God. That's good seed. It's the seed
of life. But if your heart isn't prepared
to receive the seed, the black birds, that demonic host, they
just swoop down and take the seed away. And you see, that's further evidence
of our absolute neediness of the Spirit of Grace. Our Lord has to work within our
hearts. He has to stir up the heart. He has to prepare it for that
good seed. So there's opposition here, and
then there are the hosts of the Lord. We're the children of God. Those
who believe the Gospel, we are the children of God. The Scripture
says we're heirs of God and we're joint heirs with Christ Jesus.
We've always been the children of God. Adopted into His family. Even before we were converted,
we were His children. That passage in the book of Exodus. As the Lord gave instructions
to Moses to carry this word of warning to Pharaoh and word of
command, the Lord said to Moses, thus shalt thou say to Pharaoh,
Israel is my son. That's what he said. Israel is
my son. Even my firstborn. And the Lord
said, say to him, let my son go, that he may serve me, that
he may worship me. And if thou refuse to let him
go, behold, I'll kill your son, even your firstborn son. Now,
let me remind you, the Lord called Israel his son, his firstborn
son, when they were yet in bondage. when they were yet in slavery.
No redemption had taken place. This is before the death of the
Passover lamb. This is before God drowned Pharaoh
and the mighty Egyptian army in the Red Sea. There's been
no redemption by price and by power as of yet, but God said,
Israel's my son. They're already my son. That's
why I'm going to redeem them. That's why I'm going to save
them. And you see, that's the way it is with us. We've always
been the children of God. We've always been His sons and
daughters. We're loved with an everlasting
love. Adopted into His family. And
our Lord Jesus, He came and He redeemed us. That's the evidence
that we're sons. That's the evidence that we're
sons. It isn't the reason we're sons. The reason we're the sons
of God, the children of God, is to be found in the very hidden
purpose of God. His purpose of grace. He predestinated
us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself. Therefore, He redeemed us. Therefore, He bought us. Therefore,
He saved us by His own power. And all of true Israel, just
like national Israel, all of true Israel, we were already
His children. Christ came and paid our sin
debt. And the Lord sends these angels
to Jacob. And even so, He has continually
commissioned angels to watch over and guard to protect His
children even before we ever knew that we were the children
of God. Let me say this. You have no
idea how many times the angels of God have spared you from being
destroyed. God sent them. before you ever
knew you were His people. Before you ever knew anything
about the Gospel. Going all the way back to your
birth when you were in your mother's womb. It's the Lord who sends these
messengers who in some mysterious way protect and watch over and
provide according to the purpose of God for those who are His
children. and He has guarded over you.
Think of when you were in the foolishness of your youth and
the things that you did. Such carelessness. And that's
true of all of us. And yet there was around us these
unseen beings who though unseen were very, very real. And when
you hated God, when you hated the Gospel, when you had no interest
in God's salvation by free and sovereign grace, the Lord who
loved you had those messengers of peace looking after you. That's encouraging, isn't it? As the Lord sent these angels
to Jacob, so He has continually commissioned angels to watch
over and protect His children. Now let's avoid some errors about
angels. First of all, our Lord Jesus,
though He is referred to as the angel of the Lord, He is the
uncreated angel. Okay? He's the uncreated angel. Because the word angel means
messenger. Our Lord Jesus is the uncreated
messenger. He's the one who creates all
the other angels. He's the messenger of the covenant. But He was not nor did He ever
become a weaned creature as the angels of God. Hebrews 2.16 says,
For verily, truly, He took not on Him the nature of angels,
but He took on Him the seed of, not Adam, but who? Abraham. He took on Him the seed
of Abraham. You see, our Lord Jesus did not
become an angel because angels can't suffer, they can't bleed,
they can't die. Our Lord Jesus took on Him the
nature of Abraham because only then could He suffer and bleed
and die. Only then could He taste death
for His people. And then remember this, when
the children of God die, we don't become angels. No. We don't become angels. You know, a lot of people, in
fact, I read, we were walking through the cemetery yesterday,
well I was walking, she was sitting in the van, But I was walking
through reading, you know, words on the great markers and one
of them was concerned there was a little baby who had died and
said, our baby has now become an angel. That's not right. That's not
right. When adults die and when children
die, it's true of adults and children. You don't become angels. When little infants die, which
I believe, this is my belief now. I don't know how you believe
and whatever you believe about this is your business. But I'm
I'm pretty much persuaded that when infants die, when they die
in infancy, I believe that's how God's populating heaven.
And all these abortions, the wrath of men will praise the
Lord. Millions of abortions every year. God's just populating heaven.
That's not to say that they deserve to go. They go the same way we
go, by the sovereign, free, electing grace of God because Christ paid
their sin debt, that Adamic nature that they inherit from Dad. Somebody
got paid for it. Christ paid for it. It isn't
that they're innocent. They haven't actually committed
any sin. But they're sinners. That's the
reason babies, when they get a little older, they commit sin.
But I believe that's how God's populating heaven. And though
abortion, it's an awful thing. My message is the gospel of Christ. But I'm very much, I cannot tell
you how very much opposed to abortion I am. And I see such
little regard for human life, but great regard for animal life. Yeah, who was it, mentioned something
about the oil spill in the animals and everybody's all up in the
air about the oil spill in the animals. Well, you know, it's
not a good thing. I agree with that, but they think
nothing of the thousands of abortions that happen every year. That's
crazy. This is a crazy time. People
are all confused. There's no respect for human
life. But, In all of this, God's purpose
is being fulfilled. And that's why I believe, and
you're free to disagree with me on this if you want, though
you'll be wrong if you do. I believe there'll be more people
in heaven than there's going to be in hell. There are more the children of
God than the children of the evil one. And I believe that's
the reason. You see, there's a people out
of every nation, kindred, tribe, and tongue. How can that be when
many of them have never heard the Gospel? I'll leave you to think about
that. God takes them to glory just
like He takes you to glory through the substitutionary sacrifice
of Christ Jesus. But I'll go back to my point
that I was making. When little babies die, they
don't become angels. And I'll tell you something else,
angels aren't to be worshipped. At the end of the book of Revelation,
Revelation 22, John heard all of these things. He said this
angel showed him or manifested to him all of these marvelous
things. He said, I fell down to worship
Him. And the angel said, don't do
that! I'm just your fellow servant,
just like the prophets of God, just like all the other servants
of the Lord. Don't worship me. The angel said,
worship God. That's what he said. Worship
God. You know, if you want to know
how blind and foolish people are, they will worship an angelic
creature that they've never seen. And really that they've never
had any evidence really that they exist. Because they're not
physical. But the heavens declare the glory
of God and what does man in his infinite wisdom say? There is
no God. But I sure believe in angels.
People are crazy. People are foolish. They're depraved. Lost in sin. Don't worship angels. Angels, just like mankind, are
divided into two groups. Elect and non-elect. The elect
angels, they were kept from falling. God preserved them from entering
into the rebellion of Lucifer. You see, when the angels fell,
they didn't fall like we did through a representative. Lucifer
was not the representative of all the rest of the angels, so
that whatever he did had an effect upon them. No. Only in salvation
do we have a savior who represented us, and in Adam, a representative
who fell for us. Satan wasn't representative of
all of the other angels. Many of them, those whom God
was pleased not to keep, not to preserve, many of them fell. And they followed Lucifer. Elect and non-elect. But thank God, our Lord Jesus,
as a result of His successful death, He has all power over
principalities, over all demons, over all the angels, elect and
non-elect. You know, when the Savior came
into the world, He entered into the battlefield. Think of it this way. He was
the champion of light and the devil, he was the champion
of darkness. These two champions, they've
got to face off. They did in Matthew chapter 4
when Satan tempted our Lord. Remember that the Spirit of God
drove the Savior out. This was the effectual will of
God for our Lord to go out into the wilderness, be tempted 40
days and 40 nights by the evil one. There's one champion squaring
off against another champion. Like David against Goliath. Here's the man in Christ Jesus.
And there's the evil one. Lucifer himself. To the natural eye, it looks
like another David and Goliath story. But this isn't anywhere close. And our Lord defeated Satan right
then. and there was just a harbinger
of what was to come at the cross. But after our Lord had entered
into that battle against the enemy, and Satan was defeated,
and he left kind of licking his wounds, you know what the scripture
says? Angels came and ministered to
him. Now how did they minister to
the Son of God? Well, I would suggest this. He
had fasted 40 days and 40 nights. I bet they brought him food,
just like they brought to Elijah. And I think in some way, God
used him to strengthen his son. I don't know. I'm just scratching
the surface here, and I don't want to get into I don't want
to say something that I have no biblical basis for saying,
but the Scripture says they ministered to Him. And then there came that battle
at the cross. There the two champions again. And our Savior said in John 12,
speaking of that upcoming battle. Now, now is the prince of this
world. Cast out. Cast out. We'll find out who's the Lord. King Jesus. And in the eyes of the world,
it looked like that cross of Calvary was his defeat. He dies. Even His disciples said,
like those two disciples on the road to mess, we thought He was
the one who would redeem Israel. That's what we thought. Oh, but He came back because
He conquered every enemy of His people. And it wasn't even, I'm
going to put it this way, it wasn't even a fair fight. He
just crushed his head. Crushed the head of the serpent.
Cast him out. And God used the elect angels in ministering to our Savior. I say again, we have no idea
of the extent of the ministry of the angels to our Lord Jesus
or to us either. There's a verse, if you want
to look at it with me, you can. Matthew chapter 18. which is a marvelous, this entire
chapter is a marvelous message of our Savior. It should be understood,
all of Matthew chapter 18 should be understood as one message,
one sermon from the lips of our Lord Jesus. One of His greatest
sermons, in fact, because the subject is the safety of His
children. The purpose of God in Matthew
18 is to encourage all of the saints of God, though we're imperfect
and though we're weak and though we're sinful, it is to encourage
us. This is one of the Savior's favorite
subjects, the security of His children. And He often spoke
of that. But I'll show you this. Look
at Matthew 18.10. He said, take heed that you despise
not. Don't look down on. Don't consider another child
of God to be inferior to you. Take heed that you despise not
one of these little ones. For I say unto you that in heaven
there are angels. Their angels do always behold
the face of my Father which is in heaven. And commentators, they have several
things to say about these angels beholding the face of the Father
which is in heaven. And one of them says they can
tell by the very facial expression of the Lord what He would have
these angels to do. And somehow or another, they
minister to us. It's just the will of God to
send angels like it was to Jacob. And the angels read the face
of God. Two hosts of you, go down. Make an appearance unto Jacob
to let him know, I'm with him. I'm protecting him. Oh, he is
in a dangerous country. And those of us here tonight,
and those who are watching, who are the people of God, we're
in a dangerous land. There's no question about that.
The enemies are real. The enemies are harmful. And they would do us in if they
could. But behold, with eyes of faith,
the arm is of God around us. Like Jacob did. Two hosts in
battle array. That ought to encourage him. The Lord's soldiers. He sends
soldiers around us to protect us. And I'll tell you, it says in
verse 11, For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save
that which was Lost. You see, He not only loves us
to such an extent that He'll send angels to take care of us,
on way beyond that, He sends His Son to seek us and to save
us. To save us. No wonder there in Psalm 34,
David said, the angel of the Lord encampeth round about them
that fear Him. He delivers them. He saves them. Oh, you're going to have some
battles. There's no question about that.
You're going to have some troubles as you go through life. We know
that. But we're not going to be destroyed. No evil can really do us in. That's why David could say, Thou
preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
I'm sure there are enemies around us tonight. But do you know what
the Lord does? He prepares a gospel table feast
for us. Right in the presence of the
enemy. And we feed on the gospel. We
feed on the manna from heaven. We drink of the living water. Are the enemies real? Yeah. It's
like, was Elijah there in 2 Kings chapter 6? When King Ben-Hadad
was after them, after Israel, and he was ready to attack, and
Elisha would tell the king of Israel, hey, King Ben-Hadad,
he's going to attack you over there, you just move your army
over yonder. And he'd move them, and King
Ben-Hadad couldn't figure out why is this happening? King of
Syria, why is this happening? One of his messengers, one of
his spies said, you know, there's a man in Israel, a prophet, Elisha. He knows everything you say,
even what you say in your bedroom. He's privy to everything. And
the king said, you tell me where he's at and I'll get him. And so he goes after him. And
early in the morning, Elisha's servant gets up and he looks
out and he sees all the Syrian army. And he was fearful like you and
I would be fearful. And he said to Elisha, Alas! Alas, Master! Look at them! And Elisha said, with a wonderful
calmness. There are very many of them,
aren't there? And he said, Lord, open his eyes. And he looked, and all around
the chariots of God, all the hosts of God, all of these armies
of God in full battle array, all of these angelic hosts, I'm telling you, it'll be alright. Everything's alright. That's
why the Lord tells us so many times, don't be afraid. Don't
fear. Jacob, yeah, you're going through
Edom. I know. Esau's on the war path. I know. But look at here. Look at here how you're certain.
Look at the evidence of my love. You're protected. No harm is
going to come to you. And I'm telling you, we're protected.
And no real harm can come to you. It may harm your body. It can't harm your soul. Because
we're safe in Christ. Lord, thank you