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Rebel Angels
By David Feddes

We've been thinking about the angels of God and the supernatural beings that God created as part of a realm that we don't always understand very well. It would be incomplete to talk about angels without also being aware of the rebel angels, some of the history of those rebel angels, and what they are involved in doing right now in our world. We're going to think a little bit about the rebel angels this morning. We're going to look, first of all, at two passages from Isaiah 14 and from Ezekiel 28.

Both of these passages are actually addressed to idol-worshiping kings. The Isaiah passage speaks to the king of Babylon, and the Ezekiel passage speaks to the king of Tyre. But in addressing these monarchs, these idol-worshiping monarchs, the Word of God goes beyond just talking to those men and addresses the great hidden powers that lie behind those men. Isaiah says, "How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn!" That translates a word that means “shining one” in Hebrew. When it was translated into Latin, a famous word was used: “Lucifer.” Lucifer has come to mean something very grim for obvious reasons, but Lucifer really means “shining one.” It's a beautiful word to describe a very splendid creature.

"How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit."

And then from Ezekiel: "You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering: sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground."

We've just read about the great rebellion and the beings who wanted to be like God and even above God Himself. That angel rebellion is only hinted at in the Bible; we don't get a lot of detailed descriptions of it. But we know that throughout history, the fallen angels have been active. So we're going to look at the history of those rebel angels and then we're going to look at how they try to affect our lives now and how Jesus reverses all of their attempts.

When we read about the rebel angels, first of all, we read about the rebellion itself: how in pride, Satan and those who fell with him tried to surpass God Most High. We see Adam and Eve in the garden being tempted by some sort of very enticing and shrewd and evil power. We read in the Bible of the sons of God coming down to the daughters of men in the time before the flood and mating with women. Before the flood, the Bible talks about these powers misruling the nations after God scattered the peoples at the Tower of Babel.

And then most importantly, we read about the defeat of these powers in the ministry and in the cross, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. In Jesus defeating these powers, we also read of Michael and his angels defeating those rebel angels. Another thing that the New Testament reminds us of constantly is that even though defeated and cast down, these malicious powers are still trying to harm humans as much as they can. The devil goes around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. Simply because we read of the defeat of those powers by Christ and by Michael does not mean that now we can take a nap because all is going to be easy from here on out.

Those are the things that I want to highlight in the Bible's development of the history of the rebel angels. First of all, there is simply the rebellion itself. Ezekiel describes it as, "You were full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God; you were an anointed guardian cherub." It seems that the evil powers were not only in heaven with God but at some point, they were even in the Garden of Eden. We need to understand that the Garden of Eden was designed not just to be a place of flowers and fruit and nice things that we associate with a garden. Certainly, that's true. But gardens were made for places of worship. That's what they always were in the ancient Near East. The Garden of Eden was meant to be the place of worship, the place where heaven and earth connected. Not only did God walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day, but it seems that even great cherubim and great angels had some sort of involvement there.

And then, of course, Isaiah has those terrible words: "How you are fallen from heaven, O shining one! You said, ‘I will make myself like the Most High.’"

Much of the angel rebellion lies shrouded in mystery. Sometimes we fill in a lot of the blanks with our great poets like Dante and Milton, but sometimes they go beyond the descriptions of the Bible itself. We should be a little cautious about filling in too many blanks and thinking we know too much. It does seem that the greatest of the rebel angels, who came to be called Satan later on, was an extraordinarily beautiful and brilliant and wise and wonderful being. After a while, at some point, if you didn't believe it, you just had to ask him because he was mighty entranced with his own beauty, wisdom, power, and greatness. He began to think that, "I ought to be the one running the universe. I ought to be supreme." When that thought came and when he enticed other angelic beings to go along with him, that constituted the rebellion against God.

That desire to be God and to surpass God was a terrible sin. It was, in essence, the sin of pride: thinking himself smarter than God, daring to dream that his way was more beautiful than God, and thinking that he might even be more powerful than God. No being, angel or human, fully knows God. There is nobody who understands just how wise, how beautiful, and how powerful God is. The demons, the angels, dared to rebel against and might indicate that even they did not know what they were up against until they tried it. When God deals with us tenderly from day to day, when He showers His favor on us, when we see displays of His power in creation—we think a thunderstorm is a big deal, we think galaxies are a big deal—nothing is a big deal compared to the power of God.

That's why pride is not only so wicked but also so insane. We have to take it on faith that the depths of the wisdom and the power of God are beyond everything that we've ever seen or imagined or experienced. Don't misunderstand me here, but even the Bible doesn't tell us everything there is to know about God. Even what God has shown us of His grace and mercy and beauty is not all there is to know. We will be with God for all eternity and there will be a lot that we don't know. Part of what we need to understand, just from thinking about the rebellion of some angels, is how much more there is to God than even an angel can experience or imagine.

At any rate, in his pride, the chief and most beautiful of the rebel angels thought he could replace God. He managed to persuade some angels to join him in that rebellion. Then, having led that rebellion, they were cast out and no longer allowed to be in heaven with God. Nonetheless, the snake took the form of a snake and slithered around to talk with Eve. There must have been something very persuasive and even attractive in the conversation that Eve had with the evil one in the garden. When he talked to Eve, the first thing he did was to question God's Word: "Did God really say...?" Even in raising the question, he already changes God's Word. We need to understand that that's always Satan's mode of operation, his way of acting. He's going to get you to question what God says. Even in getting you to question what God says, he'll distort just a little bit what God said. 

"Did God really say that you cannot eat of any fruit in the garden or touch it?"

Actually, God hadn't said anything about touching, but He just said, "Don't eat it." Anyway, he tries to make it sound a little bit more strict than it is, and then he questions it. The first step is to question:

"Did God really say...?"

Once he's gotten you to question God's Word, then he just flatly denies God's warning: "You shall not surely die." This is again how it always operates. You're going to see God's Word questioned. We've seen it in the history of the church in the recent last couple of centuries. One step is to question and keep raising more and more questions about the Word of God, which we now have written in the Bible. Then the next step is to deny the penaltiesof rejecting the Word of God: "No, you won't surely die. There is no consequence. God is too nice. He would never do anything so mean."

So there is the denial of God's warning, and then comes the direct attack on God's goodness: "God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. He's just a big killjoy. God is trying to keep you from reaching your full potential. He's trying to prevent you from enjoying complete happiness."

So even in the garden and in the Bible's description of how the serpent operated in the garden, we get a template of his schemes and how he continues to operate. He's going to get you to question God's Word, think that you're going to get away with it—there are no consequences, nothing really serious—all that talk about hell and judgment, no, no, no, that was just ancient primitive ideas. Besides, you're going to flourish. You're really going to flourish if you can just cast all of that aside. 

So you have the rebel against God. But then when his rebellion fails and God's power casts him down, the next thing he wants to do is wreck those who are made in God's image. That is why he came into Eden. That's why he tried to destroy Adam and Eve. Then the "sons of God," says the Bible, saw that the daughters of man were attractive. This is in centuries after the creation and fall. They took as their wives any they chose. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the giants or men of great power, says Genesis. So there's something going on where the phrase "sons of God" sometimes refers to the spirit beings or the angelic beings. Somehow or other, they take on a form in which they can reproduce with women. Whether that means that they actually took on some sort of form of their own or whether they took possession of human men, we can't be 100% sure. But the Bible does say that there is this terrible thing going on before the flood, and the Nephilim, these great fallen hybrid-type creatures, are on the earth in those days. They are one of the reasons why the great flood comes.

Now, this sounds very strange to us, and sometimes it won't be taught this way. Some of our ways of teaching the Bible are influenced by the time that we live in, and we say, "Ah, come on. It must mean just that the godly line tended to interact with the ungodly line, and that's what happened." Ever since the great church, we know it has a good pedigree. Augustine was a great Christian leader, and that was his idea. That was not the idea of the church before him. He lived around 400 years after Christ. The earliest church fathers and many of those who interpreted the Old Testament among the Jewish people did understand it to be fallen angelic beings that were interbreeding with women. This is another part of the great rebellion of the wicked angels against God. God dealt with that rebellion, and He sent the flood. That flood destroyed the Nephilim, destroyed everybody except for Noah and his family and the animals that they took into the ark.

After the flood, we read about the Tower of Babel. At the Tower of Babel, people wanted to build their own connection between earth and heaven. In that setting, again, a tower or a ziggurat is often a setting where you build it so that the gods come down and you control the interaction between earth and heaven. They wanted to be one people. They didn't want to scatter throughout the world as God had commanded. They were going to make a name for themselves. Does that sound kind of familiar? What is the original sin? It's pride. "I'm going to be the greatest." Once they have fallen into the trap of Satan, they start having those same notions that they're going to be like the Most High. They're going to ascend to heaven. They're going to make a name for themselves. The Bible says God said, "Let us go down." So He says to His counsel, "Let us go down. We'll confuse their languages." So they do, and they confuse not only the languages but then they scatter the nations. Deuteronomy 32 says, "When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He divided mankind, He fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But Yahweh's portion is His people."

After Babel, the nations are scattered, and in a sense, God disowns them—not permanently, but for a time. He disowns the nations. He scatters them, and He puts them under the control of lesser powers, of angelic powers. It seems some of those angelic powers whom those nations come under are rebel angelic powers. God chooses one people. He chooses Abraham and the offspring of Abraham to be a people that He's going to work with. Then in His plan, He's going to bless all nations through that one nation. He hasn't cast off the nations completely, but for a time, He puts them under lesser powers and deals particularly and personally with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and their offspring.

But even that nation goes the way of the other nations. God says again in Deuteronomy 32, "They stirred Him to jealousy with strange gods; they sacrificed to demons that were no gods." Psalm 106 says, "They served their idols, that is, the idols of the nations; they sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons. 

Again, to understand all of that talk in the Old Testament about idol worship and worshiping false gods, it's not just saying that while they made a stick or they made a statue and they were stupid enough to just bow down and worship it. They never thought the stick or the statue was the whole deal. They always thought it represented some kind of spirit power that they didn't see. They were right about that.

We sometimes tend to dismiss—we're Westerners, so we tend to think that, yeah, maybe there still is one great power out there, but we forget the whole supernatural realm. So we think that when we read about those old gods and goddesses, it was all just imaginary and myth-making. Well, I'm sure there was a lot of imagining and myth-making going on, but behind those gods and goddesses lie malevolent, nasty, wicked powers. That's why you have the sacrifice even of sons and daughters to those demons. So every once in a while, the Old Testament will just lift the veil a little bit and say, yeah, we're not just talking—you know, it's not just Chemosh as an idol that was made. When they are burning their sons and daughters to Chemosh or Molech, they are sacrificing to demonic powers. 

Not only the nations serve these gods, but even God's chosen nation serves those gods. That's why eventually they were judged and sent into exile. Psalm 82 says, "God has taken His place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods He holds judgment: ‘I said, “You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.”’"

So God is talking to those angelic powers whom He set over nations and who are supposed to do a better job of governing them than they did. He says that they are going to fall just like any prince. So when He talks, as He does in these passages, to the king of Babylon or to the king of Tyre, He is not just talking to their prince, to their ruler. He's talking to the ruler behind the ruler. It's important to understand that God intends to judge all those hidden powers that have affected the nations. In Daniel, He talks about the prince of Persia and the prince of Greece and of how Michael, the great archangel, had to contend with some of those princes.

In all of this, we need to remember that God reigns supreme. But we also need to remember that in the supernatural realm, there is more than just God. Of course, God is supreme above all. But in the supernatural realm, there are the good angels, and there are those rebel angels. The most important thing to know about the rebel angels is that they've been defeated already. Jesus said during His ministry, and when He had sent out some of His followers on a mission and they came back, Jesus said, "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven." The Apostle Paul writes that Jesus "disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them at the cross." There was something that goes on at the cross where God makes us right with Himself by the sacrifice of Jesus. But He also destroys the one who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, who has held people all their lives in slavery to their fear of death, as the book of Hebrews puts it. So there's this great victory of Jesus over Satan, and it says He disarms them. He puts them to open shame at the cross. He takes Satan's two worst weapons, sin and death, and turns them against Satan. He takes the worst sin ever committed, the crucifixion of the Son of God. He takes the worst death anyone ever died. He takes sin and death and turns them right against Satan and blasts him to smithereens with his own weapons. That's what the Bible says in describing the victory of Jesus at the cross.

In losing to Jesus, we also need to remember that Satan and his rebel angels lose to the great archangel Michael. We looked at Archangel Michael in an earlier message. Just to remind you again: "There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. The great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan."

Now, when you read that, some people think that that's the event that's described already in Isaiah and Ezekiel, where there is this great angel rebellion, and then God casts the rebel down. But this passage is not talking about that time. It could be, in a sense, but it's not. Because in the context of Revelation, it comes right after the dragon has been wanting to swallow up the woman's child but the child ascends to heaven into the throne of God. Because that child has come and ascended to the throne of God, now Michael and his angels can have the power to cast down and have a tremendous victory over the fallen angels. So that passage some people used to read it as describing the original war between the good angels and the bad ones, but it's not. It's about the war between the good angels and the bad ones after the victory of Jesus, not back early before the time of the Tower of Babel.

We need to know that Satan and his demons have lost to Jesus. They have lost to the good angels. The Bible says, "Woe to the earth because the devil has gone down to you and he is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short." Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. So the upshot of it all is that we have a defeated but very nasty enemy.

Just the other day we were watching an old movie about World War II. Once the victory had been achieved at Normandy and the Allies began advancing beyond that, it was a certainty that the Nazi regime was done. They were beaten, except they threw everything they had into one last offensive, which came to be called the Battle of the Bulge. Things were nastier in that battle than they had been even in the decisive battle that kind of settled who was going to win the war. But they still fought back with everything they had, and it was a terrible time. So it is after the victory of Jesus. It does not mean that everything gets easy on earth after the victory of Jesus. His followers were hunted and hounded, and false teachers sneaked into the churches. There was all kinds of bad stuff going on after the victory of Jesus. But even so, the Bible says that Satan could no longer deceive the nations after that victory of Jesus. You see the gospel spreading into the nations that were previously without the light of God, and the gospel continued to advance, but Satan continued to attack and to lie and to harm and to do all that he could.

We need to understand what's going on with all that. That's the overview. Satan and the fallen angels tried to surpass God Himself and failed miserably. They tempted Adam and Eve in Eden and succeeded in leading them into sin and into death. They mated with women before the flood and helped to bring humanity under a terrible judgment. They misruled the nations after the Tower of Babel. They were defeated by Jesus and by Michael. Now they harm humans as much as they can until the time comes when Jesus banishes them to the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

So I want to think with you about just some of the ways that the fallen angels, now called the demons, the rebels, attack us. This is a sample list; there is much more to be said, but I'll just say a little bit.

First thing is that they detest. They hate. Satan and his angels hate God, and they hate humans made in God's image. They just hate. Because they hate, it motivates them to do all the other damage that they try to do. They detest God, and they defame God. You see that already in the temptation in Eden, where they say, "Well, yeah, God acts like He's so good, but you want to know what? He's really trying to hold you back. He's really trying to block you from your potential and hinder your happiness." That's the kind of being God is. He doesn't care about you being happy. He doesn't care about you flourishing and flowering. He is not what He claims to be. So Satan defames God Himself.

Satan deceives. Jesus said, "When he lies, he speaks his native language because he is a liar and the father of lies." In defaming God, obviously, he's lying, but he's always busy lying. He lies in various ways. Sometimes he gets you to believe false teachings that just aren't so. Sometimes he gets you to believe that your urges are the most important thing and the dominant thing that you always ought to follow. Sometimes he fools you into having an artificially inflated opinion of yourself, leading you into pride the way he led the king of Babylon into pride, the way he led the king of Tyre into pride, the way that he leads many of us into an inflated opinion of how smart and great and perfect we are. Sometimes he'll deceive in that way. When he deceives, he can sometimes take on his old garb. We need to remember that the Bible says Satan can masquerade as an angel of light.

That has literally happened. When the prophet Muhammad claimed to have a revelation from God, he said that an angel spoke to him and gave him all the words that are now written in the Quran. The Quran was written 600 years after the time of Christ. The Quran is at odds with much of the teaching of the New Testament. It denies that Jesus is God's unique Son. It denies the reality of the Trinity. It denies that we're saved by Jesus' death because it says Jesus didn't die at all. It says all these things, and allegedly it all came from the mouth of an angel. The Apostle Paul said in Galatians 1, "If we or even an angel of God preaches a gospel other than the one we preached, let him be damned." Literally, he heard from what he said was an angel. We might say, yeah, he just made it up because he wanted to get a lot of power among the Arab tribes and take over. Maybe. Maybe he heard from an angel. Just the wrong kind.

We might take the same approach with Joseph Smith, the founder of the Latter-Day Saints or the Mormon religion. Joseph Smith said that an angel Moroni appeared to him and told him where some golden plates were buried, and those golden plates, when translated, became the Book of Mormon. Now, was Joseph Smith just making it up to get himself a religious following? I suppose that's possible. It's also possible that an angel calling himself Moroni and looking mighty fine came to Joseph Smith. If Satan appears as an angel of light, why not? Two of the powerful religious movements are found directly on what claims to be a revelation through an angel, which deviates very far from Biblical Christianity. We need to understand that sometimes what claims to be from an angel is not, or if it's from an angel, it's from the wrong kind.

Some of you may have read recently in the meditations and in our Bible reading plan about the old prophet who said, "An angel told me," and the person he was talking to had already received a message directly from God about what not to do. But the old prophet, you know, with his silver hair and his silver tongue, he says, "Ah, an angel told me, change of plans." Here's a little clue: If somebody else got a message from an angel for you, you know, if God wants you to know something, He'll make it known to you without an angel telling somebody else to talk to you about it. If he gives a message that is at odds with what God's Word says, then you know that it's trouble.

That is not the last time some genteel old man with silver hair and a very persuasive voice was heeded by somebody to his own ruin. That particular person was killed by a lion. That's kind of a picture of Satan going around like a roaring lion: "An angel told me," and then a lion devoured. Well, there are these various forms of deception. Sometimes it's not somebody just telling you this or that teaching or what you ought to do. Sometimes it is your own ability to fool ourselves. We are really good at fooling ourselves without any help from the rebel angels. The fallen heart is very deceitful, and we can get ourselves in a lot of trouble without any help from the rebel angels at all. Unfortunately, they are there to provide a lot of help in fooling ourselves as well.

Another practice of the rebel angels is to defile. Sometimes you see that in a religious movement. I mentioned a moment ago Islam. One thing that Islam loves to do is to take a place, one of the most prominent places of worship of God, and then claim it for the other power, for the other religion. Where was the temple of God built? It was built on Mount Zion in Jerusalem. When the Muslims conquered Jerusalem, what did they do? They built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, not just anywhere but on the Temple Mount itself. That characterizes what happens sometimes in the Old Testament. They would bring the idols right into the temple of God because Satan likes to take what was holy, what was set apart to the worship of God, and then defile it. When the great Church of Holy Wisdom, the Hagia Sophia, in Constantinople was finally conquered by the Turks, what did they do? They changed it into a mosque. They couldn't build a mosque just anywhere. They needed that church, which had stood there for 1500 years, to be a place that they would use now as a place of worship. There is this desire to defile.

We've just completed Pride Month. Why was June chosen? Because June is the time when the most marriages occur. That's why it was chosen. You take the month that is most devoted to marriage, and you give it the redefined idea of marriage. What is the symbol? The rainbow. In the visions of the Bible, a rainbow encircles God's throne. A rainbow is the sign of God's faithfulness. Even though He would be right to destroy humanity because of our sin, He holds Himself back because of His promise, symbolized by the rainbow. So you take the sign that encircles God's throne, the sign of His promise that He upholds the universe, and you make it into the symbol of a different movement. There are many other ways that Satan will just take what is holy and really focus on taking what is holiest and wanting to dirty it in some way or another. Then he'll move on to a different technique because he's not limited to one thing. He will degrade. He will especially like to tell you that, well, if you ever did anything that defiled anybody or if you ever did anything that was wrong, then you are worthless, no good, rotten. He has no use for you. You're a dog. You might as well kill yourself. Oh man, you are bad. One of his names, the Satan, means the accuser, and he will accuse you and attack you. He'll say there's no forgiveness for that. There is no acceptance from God for you. You are a loser. You're gone. So he will degrade and make you want to give up.

Another strategy is to divide. He will divide Christians against each other in the church. He will divide nations against each other in conflict and in war and in hatred and murder and animosity. He will divide families against each other, divide children against parents, children against each other, husband and wife against each other. We need to understand that oftentimes the power of the rebel angels is involved in our conflicts. Again, we're good enough at having conflicts without any help. Fallen, sinful people are selfish enough to be fighting with each other a lot, but very often it goes beyond that. Some of the terrible things that nations have done and some of the ways that wars have spun out of control, that wasn't just human. When you read about Adolf Hitler, he and his henchmen were involved in the occult. When you read about Karl Marx, at one point he says, "See this sword? The spirit of darkness gave it to me." We say he's being poetic. Maybe. Maybe he was speaking truly. But you have these terrible wars and conflicts, and that can happen in a marriage as well. A husband gets suspicious of his wife and thinks the worst of her motives. She thinks the worst of his motives. Instead of looking at each other in a better light, we think of each other in an accusing and degrading light, and he divides us from each other. That's all part of his strategies. Church people, you know, sometimes you've had people who've been friends for years and years. All of a sudden, they can't stand each other anymore. Something little spun out of control, and what used to be friendship and bonds of love can turn into division. So that idea of him wanting to divide is one of his main strategies.

Another is to distract. One way he distracts is to get you looking at other people's sins, and that can be a hazard for us. It can be a hazard in any sermon. If I mention people who have same-sex attractions, then you say, "Boy, glad I'm not a sinner. I may have slept with somebody else that week. I looked at porn this week. I've been through a lot of different bad things, but boy, I'm glad to be pure and clean." Well, you know, that's the problem. Or, "I'm glad I never had an abortion. I at least didn't sacrifice any of my children to the demons." The problem with all of that is the Bible says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. We are not in a position to say, "Well, because that particular sin isn't my thing, therefore I'm in the clear." We all sin and fall short of the glory of God, and Satan would distract us from that. He'll also distract us from just paying attention to God. Sometimes a distraction can be an innocent thing. It might be your smartphone occupies your attention so much that you just didn't get to the Bible today, and maybe not yesterday, and maybe not three days ago either. There was nothing wrong with looking at your smartphone. It's just that that's all you did. So after a while, you get distracted by noise and by all that goes on. Sometimes you get distracted by politics. We have a tendency to do that, where we look at political leaders and before we know it, we're identifying the cause of a particular politician with the cause of God, even when the politician is patently and obviously ungodly. He's representing God's cause because he's got a couple of political ideas that I'm in favor of. Well, you can be in favor of those ideas if you want, but the man does not represent God. This happens throughout history, where people hitch their wagon to this or that politician. Sometimes they hitch their wagon to a country. It's the July 4th weekend. July 4th is coming up. We celebrate our country in many opportunities. We thank God for many of those things, but don't ever think that God's people is the United States of America and that we have a greater standing in God's plan than any other, and that God really wouldn't be able to get along very well without this nation. He can. He will. There are nations that come and go throughout history, and so you can love your nation and support it, but don't be distracted by thinking that your nation is the be-all and the end-all. There are many nations in the world that God cares about and that God has His people in. God's holy nation, according to the New Testament, is the Church of Jesus Christ, whom He's chosen from every tribe and language and people and nation. So go ahead, be patriotic within proper bounds, and love your country and be thankful for what's good about it and be repentant for what's bad about it, but don't confuse it or any of its political leaders with God's program, with God's kingdom.

In all of these things, what is the devil really up to? He's out to destroy. When he degrades you and tempts you to suicide, he wants to destroy you. When he makes somebody hateful, so hateful they want to wreck somebody else, he's wanting them to murder and destroy. When he gets you into self-destructive behavior, well, he wants you to ruin yourself and wreck your life. He wants to wreck nations. He wants to wreck churches. He wants to wreck families. He just wants to wreck. "The thief comes only to steal and to kill and destroy," but, says Jesus, "I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly." When you think about the work of Jesus, we need to understand how He counters the work of the fallen angels. Where they detest God and detest humanity, Jesus loves His Father and He loves you and me. He loves humanity. Where Satan and the fallen angels defame God, Jesus honors His Father and seeks to bring glory to Him. Where the fallen rebel angels want to deceive, Jesus reveals. He helps you to understand truth. He says, "I came into the world to bear witness to the truth. I am the truth." Jesus wants to reveal truth, not to deceive. Where the fallen angels want to defile what is holy, Jesus cleanses and purifies what is unholy and makes it holy. Where the devil wants to tell you that you're nobody and nothing and worthless and God has no use and no possibility of accepting you and degrades you, Jesus uplifts. Look how Jesus dealt with people. He dealt with the prostitutes who were despised by all and He lifted them up and made them His followers. He took the demon-possessed, those who were dominated by evil powers who were crazy, and He put them in their right mind and made them whole again. He took tax collectors who were despised and hated as traitors and made them His own followers. It didn't matter who you read in the New Testament. He took gossips and made them into honest truth-tellers. He took homosexual people and turned them into followers of Jesus. He took people of every kind. He took the fornicators and lifted them up and purified them and made them faithful in their marriages. You read again and again, 1 Corinthians gives a list of bad things, and then it says, "That's what some of you were, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were made holy." So He took us where we were at and He raised us again to be sons of God. The parable of the prodigal son says it all. We stumble home with filth all over us and He puts on the new robe and puts the signet ring on our hands and promotes us to being His children. He unites. Instead of the division, He takes people who are at odds with each other and makes them one. Instead of distracting and getting you running off in all different directions, He attracts. In attracting you and your thoughts and your being to Him, you find yourself coming not so many pieces anymore and becoming united, both integrated as an individual but also united with other believers in Him. He renews. Satan destroys. Jesus came to give life. He came to give new birth. He came so that anybody could belong to Him. So no matter where you're at, no matter how desperate your predicament, no matter how far you may have fallen, no matter how much in the grip of a rebel angel you might be, the Bible simply says that Jesus has put them to open shame. He went to the cross to take all the garbage, all the garbage, and deal with it. In dealing with that garbage, He sets us free. We don't have to pretend anymore. We don't have to pretend that bad things are good. We don't need to lie to ourselves. We just have to confess our sins, our weaknesses, our failings to Him and find in Him forgiveness and cleansing. The Bible gives us a lot more bad news than we're likely to read in the headlines. When the Bible talks about us, it's very unflattering. "There is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that seeks God. They've become altogether worthless. They're dead." There's nothing the devil can say about you that the Bible hasn't already said worse. But the Bible says that in order to help you be honest and then move on and move into the glorious freedom of the children of God. The Bible also says, you know, in our modern world, whatever problems we have, we don't want to think that there's all these really nasty unseen beings that are out to get us. But the Bible says there are. So rather than pretend they're not there and be ruined by them without even knowing it, we know they're there. Don't let the lion eat you. Don't let the snake fool you any longer. Don't let them intimidate you, accuse you, or anything else. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Come to Jesus Christ, and you will have life and have it abundantly.

Prayer

Dear Father, we pray that You will help us always to live by faith in Jesus, to trust and obey Him. Help us, Lord, when we have failed to turn again to You, not to despair, not to just give up, but to know that we are beloved of You, that we are Your children. Lord, we pray that You will help many who may still be in the grip of Satan's deception and all of his other strategies to ruin them. We pray that You will set them free. Help each of us, Lord, to live in love, not to despise any other sinners as worse than us, but instead to look in the mirror, to face our own sin and need of a Savior, and then to find in Jesus that we can be a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that we may declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into Your wonderful light. May we live as children of the true light, for Jesus' sake. Amen.


Rebel Angels
Slide Contents
David Feddes 

12 How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star [Lucifer] son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low! 13 You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches of the north; 14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ 15 But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit. (Isaiah 14:12-15)

12 “You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle;  and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. 14 You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. 16 In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned. So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. 17 Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground. (Ezekiel 28:12-17)


Rebel angels

  • Tried in pride to surpass Most High
  • Tempted Adam and Eve in Eden
  • Mated with women before the Flood
  • Misruled nations after Tower of Babel
  • Defeated by Jesus (and by Michael)
  • Harm humans as much as they can


Pride

You were full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God. You were an anointed guardian cherub. (Ezekiel 28:12-14)

How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer. You said, “I will make myself like the Most High.” (Isaiah 14)


In Eden

Did God really say…? You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. (Genesis 3:1-5)


Before Flood

The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose… The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. (Genesis 6:2-4)


After Babel

When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God. But Yahweh’s portion is his people. (Deuteronomy 32:8-9)


Demon gods

They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods... They sacrificed to demons that were no gods. (Deuteronomy 32:16-17)

They served their idols… They sacrificed their sons and their daughters to the demons. (Psalm 106:36-37)


God over gods

God (elohim) has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods (elohim) he holds judgment… 
I said, “You are gods, sons of the Most High… You shall fall like any prince. (Psalm 82:1, 6)


Lost to Jesus

Jesus said, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18)

He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them by the cross. (Colossians 1:13-14; 2:15)


Lost to Michael

There was war in heaven; Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back…. And the great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan. (Revelation 12:7-9)


Harm humans

Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. (1 Peter 5:8)

The devil has gone down to you. He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short! (Revelation 12:12)


Rebel angels

  • Tried in pride to surpass Most High
  • Tempted Adam and Eve in Eden
  • Mated with women before the Flood
  • Misruled nations after Tower of Babel
  • Defeated by Jesus (and by Michael)
  • Harm humans as much as they can


Demons

  • Detest
  • Defame
  • Deceive
  • Defile
  • Degrade
  • Divide
  • Distract
  • Destroy


Jesus

  • Loves detest
  • Honors defame
  • Reveals deceive
  • Cleanses defile
  • Uplifts degrade
  • Unites divide
  • Attracts distract
  • Renews destroy


Last modified: Tuesday, December 17, 2024, 5:46 PM