Thursday, July 31, 2008
Acts 12:12 The Lord has sent His angel, and has delivered me.
ANGELS AS GOD'S MINISTERS (4)
Peter could not keep this good news to himself. The whole congregation would want to hear what God had done. Peter went to Mary's house and knocked at the door. The maid Rhoda answered the door and recognized Peter, but in her excitement she forgot to open the door. She went in and told the others she had seen Peter, but they did not believe her. They thought she was "beside herself" (Acts 12:15).
Finally they conceded that she might have seen Peter's angel. Apparently they held the view that angels that had guarded persons now dead sometimes assumed the bodily forms of the persons they had been guarding. But the Peter at their door was no spirit being. He kept on knocking. Finally they let him in and learned how God had delivered him from prison through the service of a mighty angel.
There is yet one more angel mentioned in Acts 12. "An angel of the Lord struck Herod, because he did not give glory to god. And he was eaten by worms and died" (Acts 12:23). Thus the Lord sends His angels on assignments of judgment as well as on errands of mercy. If God chooses to use angels to carry out His judgments on the rebellious, that is certainly something He can do.
After reading how God used angels as His ministers in Acts 12, we get the feeling that we know only very little of what is actually going on in our own world. Normally we cannot see God's angels at work. Even Peter "did not know" at first "that what was done by the angel was real" (Acts 12:9).
We know about God's angels only from God's Word. On the basis of God's Word we believe that they are watching over us yet today, destroying God's enemies and protecting God's people. For God's promise of Psalm 91:11-12 has never been repealed. "He shall give His angels charge over you, to keep you in all your ways. They shall bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone."
"But watchful is the angel band
That follows Christ on every hand
To guard His people where they go
And break the counsel of the Foe.
"For this, now and in days to be,
Our praise shall rise, O Lord, to Thee,
Whom all the angel hosts adore
With grateful songs forevermore"
(The Lutheran Hymnal, 254).
