Sermon Tone Analysis

So far in our study of Hebrews we have looked at each verse and dove-in the descriptions of the deity of Christ.

This next section, v 4 to 14, the author of Hebrews compares Jesus to angels.

In this comparison the author shows that Jesus is far greater than the angels.

Considering the previous verses it seems to be an unnecessary comparison since it has been shown already that Jesus is God and there are eight descriptions of Jesus’ deity: He is God’s Son, He is the heir of all things,He created the world, He is the radiance of the glory of God, He is the exact imprint, He upholds the universe, He made purification for sins and He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.

So, why does the author now makes this comparison?

There are two main possible reasons: First it may be in response to Heb 2:2 which say that the OT message was declared by angels.

He is talking about angels to show that the final message of God, through Jesus Christ is not inferior to the message of the OT.

Gal 3:19 says “Why then the law?

It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made, and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary.”

So now Hebrews is making it clear that the message of the NT through Jesus Christ is safeguarded by even more majestic sanctions than those of the Old Testament.

The other possibility is that the believers to whom this letter was addressed were in danger of being led by false doctrines, including the worship of angels.

Heb 13:9 says “Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings,” Maybe these believers were facing a similar situation as the believers in Colossae, Col 2:18 says “Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind”

In our context today we are probably unaware of anyone who worships angels or is tempted to do so.

I think today we are actually more tempted to believe that the supernatural world does not exist.

That said, I also think we lack Biblical knowledge about angels, so we will take a sidetrack from Heb 1 today so we can better understand this comparison in Heb.

Today we will look at something that we talk about even less than angels: fallen angels or demons.

As you may imagine this has been a very difficult sermon to write.

Not only I have no delight in talking about Satan.

Also, Satan does not want you or even myself to be armed with knowledge of the truth about him and his ways.

I’m sure you too won’t delight in hearing about Satan and fallen angels.

However, God thought it important enough to include this in His Word and it is crucial that we know about God’s enemy, who by default is our enemy as well.

It is impossible to cover everything on this topic and we will only scrape the surface, by looking at three main questions: What are demons, What do fallen angels do? and how do we battle against them successfully.

What are Demons?

In Gen 1:31 God said that “he saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good”.

It seems that at this point there was no fallen or evil angels, but in Gen 3 we see Satan in the form of a serpent tempting Eve to sin.

Thus, it seems that between Gen 1 and 3 it was when some angels sinned and rebelled against God.

There are three main key Scripture passages that seem to describe the fall of angels: Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28 and Rev 12.

Even though for the last 2 thousand years many believers interpret these passages to refer to the fall of angels, there are some believers that will not agree with this interpretation.

But if some angel sinned and fell, we might wonder how many fell?, or how many demons exist?

We don’t know exactly how many, but Rev 12 as it describes the fall of Satan said in v3-4a “3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads seven diadems. 4 His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to the earth.”

The book of Revelation is not easy to interpret and with much symbolic language, but these verses seem to indicate that 1/3 of the angels fell, or followed Satan in his rebellion.

We don’t know how many angels were created, so at best we know that 1/3 of the angels fell.

This perspective might be intimidating, however we cannot forget that 2/3 of the angels didn’t fall and that God is far greater than anything that was created.

In fact- there are 2 to 1 still obeying God… perhaps why the fallen angels work so hard…

From these passages we saw we know that Satan is the one that led other angels to fall and follow him.

We don’t know how 1/3 of angels were tempted, but we do know that in Gen 3 Satan also tempted Eve to sin, by using deceit and lies.

This leads me to think that the devil tempted the other angels in a similar way with deceit and lies about God.

Rev 12 refers to Satan as great dragon, ancient serpent, the devil, the deceiver of the world.

I find it quite intriguing that there are several religions and ideologies that use the crescent moon as their symbol.

I say it is intriguing because another name use for the devil is Lucifer, which comes from Isaiah 14:12 which can be translated as day star or the crescent moon.

However, this should not be surprising because false gods are demons.

You might have never notice these Scripture passages, but listen to what it says: Deut 32:17 says “they sacrificed to demons that were no gods” making this clear connection between false gods are demons.

Other passages point to the same Lev 17:7 “they shall no more sacrifice their sacrifices to demons”; Psalm 106:37 “they sacrifice their sons and daughters to the demons” 1 Cor 10:20 “I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to demons and not to God.”

Let’s turn our attention now to the two main passages that likely refer to Satan.

If you would like you can turn with me to Isaiah chapter 14

Isaiah 14 is a prophecy against the King of Babylon, but its description and language seems to go beyond any human being, especially in v 12-14:

I think it is reasonable to consider that these verses might be referring to the devil and his fall and if it is, it also indicates his sin, his rebellion: “I will make myself like the Most High”

This passage alone doesn’t seem to give us a lot of information, but there is another passage that seems to give us a little more in Ezekiel, you can turn to Ezekiel 28.

Again this prophecy is addressed to a human king, the king of Tyre, but the language goes much further than describing any human being it says in v12-17:

Not only is there a lot to learn from these passages, each raises a ton more questions that could be studied further.

But here are some of the key points.

First, before his fall, Satan was perfect and full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

Secondly, even though he was created without sin, he became proud of his beauty, and he corrupted his wisdom for his own sake, his splendor.

Even to this day Satan is seeking to promote himself through his corrupted wisdom.

Satan was in the garden, that means he is being around since the beginning, he has in his favor experience plus his corrupted wisdom, and he uses both to attack us.

He wants us to use our wisdom for our sake.

He is the best helper to come up with plans and excuses for why you should sin.

Are we tempted to use our wisdom for our sake?

Did you ever notice that if you want to do something so bad that sooner or later you will find a way?

In this process we become like the devil, using our wisdom for our sake, we need to be aware and careful that we don’t use what God has given us as means to sin against Jesus.

Now, back to our original outline

What Do Fallen Angels Do?

The Bible tell us from the beginning in Gen 3 that Satan was the originator of sin and that he tempt others to sin.

In my study of Scripture I found that there are at least 4 main things that Satan and demons do: 1) Speaks out of his own character; 2) Opposes God; 3)Accuser and 4) Blinds minds

1)He speaks out of his own character

Jesus said the following in John 8:44

From this verse we learn that Satan is a murderer, he does not stand in the truth, there is no truth in him, he lies, he is a liar and father of lies.

When he speaks out he speaks out of his own character.

The devil is described as the deceiver, it goes alongside the description that Jesus gave him, the father of lies, liar.

and then Paul

and its described as the deceiver of the whole world

The devil does all of this lying, deceiving and murdering because it is out of his own character.

We know the character of God is completely opposite of Satan’s character.

But, what is your character? is it aligned more with God’s character or Satan’s character?

What does come out of your mouth?

Remember what Jesus said in Luke 6

What does come out of your mouth? is it glorifying God or is it opposing God?

2)He opposes God

The name Satan means adversary, opponent to God.

He was created to worship and serve God, yet we saw he instead became corrupted by his wisdom and speaks out of his character.

Therefore he is now opposing God.

He knows this is ultimately pointless, yet he also knows there is a window to get to God.

That is to attack those that were created in God’s image.

All men and women have been created in God’s image, but it is those who are actively becoming more and more like Christ that offer the greatest potential to try to hurt God to oppose God.

The devil opposed God in the garden, by tempting Adam and Eve, but he didn’t stop there, we see his works with Cain and Abel and throughout history he is trying to stop God’s plan to rescue mankind, from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob to the Israelites, to David, to Jesus, to the apostles, to Jesus’ disciples, to his church, and us today.

Therefore, it becomes more relevant to take Peter’s words more seriously.

The thought that someone is out to devour us, should cause us to pause and reflect on our lives.

He is doing this by prowling, he is not blatantly revealing himself.

We’ve all seen a cat ready to pounce, but this is not a cat… this is a roaring lion!

Therefore, be mindful of the areas he will attack.

Also, be in prayer for our church and our leaders.

A time of transition and some uncertainty is an ideal time for Satan to attack, to cause division, resentment and to lead you stray.

If for a moment you thought that the Christian life was an easy ride, this should remind us that the Christian life is a battle, a wrestle against the rulers and authorities that remain unseen… those for God and those opposing God.

So far we have seen that the devil and demons speak out of their own character with lies and deceit, and that they oppose God.

Scripture also describes the devil as the accuser.

3) Accuser

We see this in the OT in a description of Satan accusing the high priest Joshua

Also in the OT in Job 1:9 we see Satan accusing Job of fearing God only because of the blessings Job received from God.

This description of being the accuser is also found in Rev 12 where it says

This is not a pleasant thought that the devil accuses us, day and night before our God.