Luke 2: 8-14:1

8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

 This verse should be particularly familiar to us. As Christians, we are reminded every advent season of the angelic host and their message of peace, as we gaze at nativity scenes with the baby Lord Jesus surrounded by his parents, shepherds, animals, the magi, and the angels.  But what is this message of peace all about, and why must it have been delivered by angels? Why is this message of peace so critical to the Christmas story?

 Though it is not my intention here to present a study on angels, I do think it would be helpful to get a better understanding of the messengers themselves, according to the Word of God. Who are the angels? What are they like? What is their purpose? To get a better understanding of who the angels are, according to the Bible, let us first look at who the angels most certainly are not.

 Unfortunately, due to the influence of popular culture in art, film, and literature, many of us are given in our minds a picture of angels that is, at best, biblically inaccurate, and at worst, completely ridiculous. Despite what popular culture would have us believe, angels are not effeminate, they are not female as far as we can tell (since we are given no mention in the Bible of any female angels), and they most certainly are not chubby little babies with wings. Also, contrary to some popular belief, angels are not dead people. Angels are created beings who were never human.

Nehemiah 9: 6 says:

“You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you..”

So what ARE angels? Angels are strong and terrifying male warriors; they are super-natural beings created by God with one purpose: To carry out the mission of God. They do this through super-natural means, and are constantly at war in the heavenly places battling Satan and his armies of darkness. To back up this claim, what does the Bible have to say about the nature of Angels?

First, the Bible says angels are part of God’s Army and He is their Commander:

Joshua 5: 13-14:

13 When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand. And Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you for us, or for our adversaries?” 14 And he said, “No; but I am the commander of the army of the Lord. Now I have come.”

 The word army is used here but is also interchangeable with the word host. Some other translations would use “host of the LORD” instead of the “army of the LORD”. Therefore, the word host in “a multitude of the heavenly host”, in Luke 2 is not necessarily a heavenly choir singing like we might picture, rather it is an angel army. And if you think it might be unusual that a military group would be singing, then you’ve never heard the thunderous roar of a bunch of Marines singing at the top of their lungs the Marine Corps hymn at a Marine Corps birthday ball. If the Marines can get so worked up about the birth of their beloved Corps, how much more would the army of the Lord sing and shout to the glory of His birth!

 With that said, what does an angel army do, other than sing of course? Well, they do what any army of any kingdom does: they fight battles, destroy, and conquer, all at the will of the King. The difference here is the King is God, and the sole purpose of the His army is to establish His everlasting kingdom. For this reason, angels must be powerful and terrifying, and are capable of tremendous violence and destruction. Here are a few examples:

Psalm 78: 49:

He let loose on them his burning anger,

wrath, indignation, and distress,

a company of destroying angels.

Matthew 28: 2-4:

2 And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.

  In 2 Kings, God sends an angel to strike a devastating blow on the Assyrian army, killing 185,000 men (2 Kings 19:35). We see also see in 2 Kings how Elisha prayed, and was protected by a fierce army of angels (2 Kings 6: 15-17). Angels are protectors and deliverers of God’s people. “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them (Psalm 34: 7)”, and “For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways (Psalm 91: 11). Did you know that as a believer who fears God, you have angels encamped around you, guarding you? We see examples of this throughout the Old and New Testament. An angel shut the mouths of lions for the prophet Daniel (Daniel 6: 22), and in the book of Acts, the apostles were freed from prison by an angel (Acts 5: 19-20).

  It would be important to note here, however, angels never act on their own. They are always commanded by God. Remembering this truth will help us keep in mind who is doing the actual delivering, and guard us from the danger of overly venerating the angels, or even worse, worshipping them. Make no mistake, angels are simply the agents of the deliverance, but God is the one who delivers.

 Not all functions of angels are violent in nature, however. Angels can also be ministering spirits. We see this as the angels even minister to the Lord Himself in his times of distress. After the temptation of Jesus by Satan was one of these times (Matthew 4: 11). Also, in the garden of Gethsemane the night the Lord was about to be delivered up to be crucified, an angel ministered to Jesus in His great agony (Luke 22: 41-33).

 Finally, angels are messengers. We know very well from the Bible that in many instances, when God desires to deliver divine revelation to man, He sends His angel as a messenger. These messengers usually appeared by vision, dream, or directly in person. So, now that we have a better understanding of the messengers, what about the message itself?

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

  Why is this message so important that God sent His angels in all their terrifying might to deliver it to mankind? The answer is because this message is the most important message in human history.

11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 

The message is that Jesus Christ is Lord. And not just Lord, but Lord of all. To understand why this message is so important, we must understand this message in the context of what the message entails: this context is a war. “War?”, you might say. “What do you mean war?”“The message of the angels was not war but peace?” Allow me to explain. Remember when we learned that angels are the Lord’s army, and He is their Commander in Chief? Well, why would God need an army if there was not a war to be fought? And if there is a war to be fought, what kind of war is it? And who is it against? Paul tells us there is constantly a spiritual battle going on in the heavenly places:

Ephesians 6: 12 tells us:

12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

 The angel’s message is part of that cosmic war; and before a war begins, there is an official declaration of war, and when one side is victorious, a declaration of victory. This message of peace delivered by the angels, is a declaration of victory. But what about the initial declaration of war, and who was it against? To find the answer, we need to go all the way back to the beginning. This war is almost as old as time itself. This war goes back to the garden of Eden.

 In Genesis 3:15 , after the Fall, God promises a seed that would come to crush the head of the serpent, meaning the devil, who deceived all mankind:

15 I will put enmity between you and the woman,

and between your offspring[e] and her offspring;

he shall bruise your head,

 and you shall bruise his heel.”

 In this statement, God is declaring war on Satan himself and all his offspring, and also declared that the seed of the woman (Eve) would crush the serpent’s head. Jesus Christ is that promised seed. He came to wage war against the devil, to defeat him once and for all, and to redeem His people from the devil’s grasp. He came as a great conqueror, a mighty warrior King. He came to have nothing less than complete and total victory over His enemies:

Revelation 19: 11-16 says this:

11 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. 12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. 13 He is clothed in a robe dipped in[b] blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. 14 And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. 15 From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule[c] them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. 16 On his robe and on his thigh, he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.

  However, before He could conquer anything, this great King first needed to be born as a little baby on earth. Though fully retaining his Deity as God the Son, Jesus Christ the Savior needed to be born as a human man in order to stand in our place, and take the punishment of sin for mankind. He did this by living a perfect and sinless life, He was crucified on a cross, and was raised from the dead, taking victory over the devil and sin, and ascended to sit at the right hand of the Father. Jesus was born to die, yes, but to also rise again, and reign victorious. The angels knew this on the night of His birth. The Great and promised King had come. The Messiah; the King of kings. They knew that this Jesus was He who was spoken of by the prophets of old. This was that eternal moment in history they had been waiting for!

The Psalmist says:

110 The Lord says to my Lord:

“Sit at my right hand,

until I make your enemies your footstool.”

2 The Lord sends forth from Zion

your mighty scepter.

Rule in the midst of your enemies!...

4 The Lord has sworn

and will not change his mind,

“You are a priest forever

after the order of Melchizedek.”

5 The Lord is at your right hand;

he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.

6 He will execute judgment among the nations,

filling them with corpses; he will shatter chiefs[d]

over the wide earth.…

   (Psalm 110)

Understandably, this declaration of war against the enemies of God and proclamation of victory over them was not without its political consequences, and the kings of the earth did not take this threat lightly. This little baby Jesus, born in a stable surrounded by animals, to a young poor Jewish couple, was about to make His enemies His footstool. The angels knew this. The shepherds knew this. The Magi knew this. Joseph and Mary knew this. And most certainly, the kings of the earth knew this. They knew that if this Jesus was Lord, then they were not. Therefore, they tried everything in their power to destroy Him before He could grow up and destroy them. In fact, they are still trying, even to this day.

Here’s an example from Matthew 2: 16:

16 Then Herod, when he saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, became furious, and he sent and killed all the male children in Bethlehem and in all that region who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had ascertained from the wise men.

  And so it was, even from the start, the mission of the conquering Lord was not peaceful at all, but stained in blood, and there would be even more bloodshed to follow. So how is it that the angels could claim peace among so much death, and when so much more would follow that? It is because this young King was like no other ruler of the past. This ruler was God Himself manifest in the flesh. And His government would be without end.

    Isaiah 9: 6-7 says:

6 For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon[d] his shoulder,

and his name shall be called[e]

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

7 Of the increase of his government and of peace

there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

  And so in conclusion, in his Christmas devotional “God Rest Ye Merry” Douglas Wilson writes:

“Christmas is the opening move in God’s salvation of His people” (p.136)

This is most certainly true. Christmas was the opening move in God’s battle plan and little did Satan know, the battle was won before it ever began. The Message is clear: salvation had come, the long-awaited Prince of Peace had arrived. The prophets foretold it, the angels proclaimed it, shepherds rejoiced in it, wise men believed it, and kings feared it. Jesus then bought it, with His blood He paid for it, and men are saved because of it. That is why dear believer, this Advent we can sing joyfully together with the angels:

“Glory to God in the highest, and on earth PEACE among those with whom he is pleased!”