I started to ask you the question, what psalm do you think Paul was thinking about as he found that snake on his arm that day that he was shipwrecked and bringing the wood over to the fire? I think it was this one. Turn with me, please, to Daniel, the 10th chapter, beginning in verse 10. Daniel, chapter 10, beginning in verse 10. Any of you who would like a Bible, please hold up your hands and the ushers will see that you get one. Daniel 10. Anyone else need a Bible? Daniel 10, beginning in verse 10. The subject this morning is angels, and this is a situation involving an angel. Daniel is writing about his own experience. Daniel 10, verse 10. A hand touched me, and set me trembling on my hands and knees. He said, Daniel, you who are highly esteemed, Consider carefully the words I am about to speak to you, and stand up, for I have now been sent to you." And when he said this to me, I stood up trembling. Then he continued, ìDo not be afraid, Daniel, since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them.î the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me 21 days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia." Now turn with me, please, to the reading from the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 20. Jesus is speaking here. Luke 20, beginning in verse 34. Jesus replied, The people of this age marry, and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age, and in the resurrection from the dead, will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die, for they are like the angels. They are God's children, since they are children of the resurrection." Now turn with me, please, to the reading from the epistles of Ephesians, the sixth chapter. Ephesians chapter 6, beginning in verse 10. Finally, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood. but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm, then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. In addition to all this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, and pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. With this in mind, be alert and to always keep on praying for all the saints. for our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places." Now that's what the Apostle Paul is saying. Our struggle is not just against flesh and blood. We get our hands on flesh and blood. You know how important it is for a person who's wrestling. I've done very little wrestling, but I know it's very important to be able to get your hands on your opponent before he can get his hands on you or get your hands where you need to get them. Paul is saying, we're in a wrestling match where we can't get our hands on him. If it were just a hands-on thing, that'd be fairly easy. We can't get our hands. We're wrestling against the rulers and the authorities and the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil, and we can't get our hands on those. Our struggle is not just against flesh and blood. And children, you know how you have drawn all kinds of pictures over the past several weeks about the Apostle Paul and his struggles, his wrestlings, struggling in the temple with those mobs in Jerusalem, they wanted to lynch him. And in the courtroom in Caesarea before the Roman governors, Felix and Festus, and with the Jewish king Agrippa, and Agrippa's sister, Bernice, and how Paul struggled and wrestled with that terrible storm at sea, and then with that snake that bit him, and with Nero, emperor of the Roman Empire, Paul was struggling and he was wrestling, but now here is the Apostle Paul who's saying that all that struggling is with flesh and blood, and that's really not the essence of the struggle. That's involved in our struggle with these spiritual wickedness and high places influences. That's involved, but the real struggle is with the spiritual influences and not just these things that we can get our flesh and blood to get our hands on. We're fighting against the rulers the authorities, the powers of this dark world, the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. And people very often say, well, and he's talking about the governors and the emperor, and he's talking about those people. Well, he's saying there's a lot more to them and to the struggle I'm having with them. than just what you see and even what you could feel. In every one of those four phrases, the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world, the spiritual forces of evil, in every one of those four descriptions, he's talking about angels and angel powers. We're going to see a little bit more later on about how that applies, how that turns out. Not only the evil angels, but also the good angels. like the angel that came to Paul and said to him, Paul, you've had a good witness here in Jerusalem today. The mob tried to lynch you and now you're rescued. You've had a good witness here in Jerusalem. I'm going to send you to Rome. Like the angel that appeared to him there when he was on the deck of that ship in a storm at sea. And the angel says, cheer up Paul, I'm going to make sure that nobody is lost, nobody is drowned. I'll get you on to Rome because you have to appear before Nero. The angel that took him out of prison, the angel that protected him from the mobs. You've seen how the angels protected Paul all through those years. Now here's Paul saying, there are also those evil angels And the point is that Paul seems to see himself as being between these evil angels and the good angels and the struggle that's going on between. He's just caught up in that. That's exactly what he's saying there, folks. That's exactly what he's saying. He is caught up in a struggle that's going on up here, and we've seen the evidences of it down here. And you've drawn some of the pictures of that. The evil angels and the good angels. and especially the archangels. Now, I don't know how you're going to draw pictures of this struggle that's going on between the evil angels and the good angels. And then the apostle Paul, I don't know how you're going to do that. I just know that you always find a way of drawing. And your drawings are so good. And I just want to encourage you to do that. And any of you who have not done it, just turn a bulletin over and go ahead and do it. But that's really what we're talking about. The outline for today are going to be angels, what they're like. I'm going to actually ask the question, what do they look like? And where they come from, and how they're organized, and especially these two kinds of angels, and a little bit of the history of angels. And then second, how you and I are related to these angels. Some things the bad angels try to do to us, and some things the good angels try to do for us, or do do for us. And then third, a very important provision that God has made for our protection from evil angels and for our blessing from the good angels. Then this evening, we'll talk about these things in some open discussion. Now, first of all, about the angels. Some people don't think there are any such things as angels. You know, some people think that angels are just what children imagine. It's just an imagination of children. And the artists have drawn all kinds of pictures about these gossamer winged things that fly across the stage in operettas with wings and halos and stuff like that. And it's not just amateur artists either. Some of the greatest artists of the world have done some painting. And you know, Satan loves it. He really loves it when people think that there isn't any such thing as angels. You know why he loves it? Because he's an angel. He can get away with murder, and does. As a matter of fact, he does. In a few weeks, my son is going to be here. And he's promised to bring us information. He's working very closely with the police enforcement authorities in Iowa now. And he was down at the police academy just last week again. And he was speaking to them about angels, evil angels, the occult. The police, government authorities are not supposed to be allowed to think about these influences. But they just see that these kids are doing things that they don't have the strength to do any other way. Two little boys who went out with their little friend and beat him to death. I mean, they killed him. Why? Well, they said there was just this inner compulsion. And so the police are having to take into account influences that they just can't explain any other way. They're missing evidence, signs that Bill will be teaching us about that do appear as graffiti around the city of Indianapolis today. I've seen some of them. He's talked with me a little bit about that. We need to be aware of that, the developing of the occult. Satan loves it. And people say, there isn't any such thing as angels. There are angels. There are angels. And the police, law enforcement agencies across the nation are beginning to study that. And the fact is that grown up men and women, mature men and women, have always thought about angels. That's one indication that there are angels, the fact that so many intelligent people have thought about them, good people. The scholastics of the first century used to debate about how many angels could dance on the point of a pin. And could an angel be in two places at the same time? Oh, we say that's medieval history. Oh, yeah. I had a friend who taught chemistry at Purdue University. And he said in my opening lecture for the freshman class, he taught graduate classes. But in my opening lecture at the university, he said, I would very often say to the students, well, now this particle of electricity in this band in the atom just changes from band A to band B or band B to band C. And the valence changes, of course, when it does that. And he says, I would just go on lecturing there. And I'd say, it just puts itself out of existence up there and puts itself into existence down here. So I paused for a minute, and there'd always be some students who just kept right on writing, but there'd always be some who would... puts itself out of existence up here, puts itself into existence down there. And he was telling me this because years and years ago when he was a student, I was explaining to him this subject to the doctrine of angels. We don't call them angels. He says it's the same principle today, at that technical level. And there was a big debate that raged back through all those early years about when the angels, the evil angels, fell from heaven. Dante said within 20 seconds of the time that God had created him. And a man by the name of Milton, who was a very mature man, said a long time before man was created. And Milton makes Satan to be a kind of hero in his paradise lost. And then there was a poet by the name of Tennyson and in a poem called Two Voices. Now listen to this because this is very important in terms of other things we're going to be saying. Tennyson said this, this truth within thy mind rehearse. that in a boundless universe, stars up there, is boundless better, boundless worse. Think you this world of hopes and fears could find no statelier than his peers in yonder hundred million spheres? You think we can't think in terms of others out there? Daniel, way back there in Babylon, certainly knew about angels. The good angel told him how he had tried to bring Daniel an answer to his prayers, but he was detained for 21 days by an evil angel, the Prince of Persia, and had to wait till Prince Michael came along to help him. And then he was able to take the message to Daniel. So men have known about angels for a long, long time. That's one of the indications that there really are angels. And it's reasonable to believe that there are angels. As man from the top of the pyramid of creation looks down beneath himself, he sees animals, animal life. He sees vegetables, vegetable life. He sees inanimate creation, the world around. So it would seem reasonable that as he looked up above himself, he might see between himself and his creator levels of life. But this kind of reasoning is never safe. It's never safe. It's the Bible that causes us to know that there really are angels. There are over a hundred, I started to say hundreds, of references, places where the word angel comes up in Scripture. Over and over and over again, from the first chapters of Genesis straight on through into the last chapters of Revelation, God's book speaks about angels. But it was the Lord Jesus Christ who confirmed or authenticated our reasoning and thinking about angels. There in Luke 20, as I read it to you and as you read it there this morning, Jesus answering said to them, the children of this world marry and are given in marriage, but they which are accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they are equal unto the angels and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Christ teaches us four things about angels there, four very important things. First, they do have bodies. like our resurrection bodies. What's our resurrection body going to be like? Well, we've seen Jesus' resurrection body, but we don't know very much about our resurrection body. All he's saying there is that they do have bodies. Our resurrection bodies will be like the ones that they have. And second, they do not get those bodies by ordinary means of reproduction. Each one was created separately, outright by God. Angels don't marry and then have baby angels. That's not the way angels are created. God created each angel as a separate act of his creation. That becomes very, very important later on when we talk about whether or not angels can be redeemed because they have no relationships with other angels. There's not a daddy and a mother and a baby angel. Each one of those angels is separately created. Third, they do not have any family organization of relationships, no family reunions among the angels, no angel weddings or marriages. And fourth, they never die. They are like men who are already raised from the dead, or we are like them. No angel funerals, no angel cemeteries or graveyards. So, in review, there are angels. Men have always known about it. It is very reasonable. The Bible says so, and Jesus Christ explains it. They have an independent existence, in some sense above man. Third, without ancestors and without descendants. Each one the direct product of an actual act of God's creation, unrelated to each other, morally speaking. This becomes very important a little bit later on. When Satan decided to rebel against God, each one of those angels had to decide independently of all the others whether he was going to rebel or not. And this has to do with whether or not they can be saved later on. Now we go on to learn about the history. The history and existence. and a little bit of their moral history. God tells us in Psalm 148, He commanded and they were created. In Colossians 1.16, God says, In Christ were all things created, whether thrones, dominions, principalities, or powers. That's the organizational structure for angels. In Job 38 and 7, God describes angels in the galleries of heaven. rejoicing together and praising God the day He created the earth. So they must have been in existence prior to the time when He created the earth. But all was not peace and joy there in heaven. Their moral history is a very, very sad thing. In Revelation 12, 7, God said there was war in heaven. Michael and his good angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his bad angels. In Jude 6, God tells us how he won that war, how heaven was purified. The angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, he had reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, under the judgment of the great day. Every one of those angels, it wasn't just a case of Satan, of one of the angels having made the decision, and then all the others being related to him, each one of them had to make a deliberate decision to rebel. In 2 Peter 2.4, God described how He did not spare the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto the judgment. So we know that there are two kinds of angels, those who love God and who give their lives to Him and submit to Him and serve Him, and those who have rebelled against Him and have said, we are not going to do. For some reason or another, we are not going to do what we know God wants us to do, the good angels and the evil angels. What do angels look like? And here, children, if you're going to be drawing them, I suppose you need to know that. I hope I'm not too disappointing, but I'm coming across just as directly as I can. In Genesis 18, Abraham didn't even know that it was an angel he was talking to. It looked like a man. Whatever was there, he was just sure it was a man. And that's not the only place. In Ezekiel 9, an angel was mistaken as being a man. But then in Daniel 9 and in Revelation 14, God said they flew. And Isaiah said he saw them flying. And God said in another place, they flew quickly. How fast is an angel? I don't know, but it's an unusual statement there as far as the original grammar is concerned. They flew swiftly, very quick. And then Isaiah said, standing they flew. Sounds to me like a helicopter. So we don't really know very much. about what angels look like, except that they can change their appearance. I hope that's not disappointing, children, but I'm being just as honest as I can be in view of what the Scriptures are saying. But God does teach us about the numbers of angels and how they're organized. In Daniel 7.10, God describes how thousands of thousands ministered unto him, and 10,000 times 10,000 stood before him. I think you may find that that's getting towards 100 million. That's quite a few. That's quite a few. But then in Revelation 5.11 we read this. He tells how, I heard the voice of many angels and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands. over a hundred million, but here's the important part in that. The word thousand for the person who was writing this Greek meant infinity. There's just too many to count. I can't count them. It just goes on and on. It's infinity. There's just no limit. Millions and millions and millions and millions. Matter of fact, the old Hebrew Pharisees had a little thing going. Every time they'd throw a stone or something over their shoulder, they'd turn around and apologize to the angels that they had hit. angels, by the millions. That's what Scripture says. And so there needed to be an organization. I mean, you just don't have that many running around everywhere, flying around everywhere. And God describes that organization in order that there would be the orderliness. He describes it in the four categories, thrones, dominions, principalities, and powers. The powers are at the very bottom of the pyramid, the little messengers. The ones who do much work. The prince of palaties? Well, he is a prince of a palatie. I don't know how else to say it. But that's the one that liked the prince of Persia. I had a friend who was a very excellent Greek scholar, Oskar Kuhlman, who's done a tremendous amount of research. He's dead now, but he grew up under Hitler, and he's one of the best Greek scholars in the world that the world has ever seen. And he came to a very clear conclusion that every nation of the world has a particular angel. that is the prince of that nation. Now, you can't accuse Oscar Kuhlman of being emotional. That's one thing he never was. But he was literally driven by his study of scripture to the conclusion that there had to be angels and that every nation had a particular angel. If that came from anybody else, I probably wouldn't even tell you. But as it is, I can't withhold it from you. Powers, principalities, dominions. That's the next one up the scale. Powers, principalities, dominions. They're the brigade general. They collected various theaters of the world under their oversight. Dominions and then thrones at the very top of the pyramid. The three archangels, admirals, chief of staff. the three, the five star men, angels in this case. And God names those three archangels. First comes Michael. You know what Michael's name means? What does it mean? That's right. Who is like unto God? That's Michael's name and that's what it means. And he lives with one thought in mind, his own humility and God's perfection. And Michael is the angel with the sword. He's in God's service, and his whole purpose is to overthrow whoever and whatever opposes God he will overthrow. In the Old Testament, he appears as the protector of Israel, the champion of monotheism, the conqueror of Satan, the one who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. He killed 185,000 soldiers one night when they were besieging Jerusalem. One night they were besieging Jerusalem. He showed the world how Christ will one day judge the world. The second archangel was Gabriel, the announcer, the angel of the bugle. He always announces God's plan for the saving of men. While Michael overthrew Satan, Gabriel built up God's plan. He appeared to Daniel to announce the return, the captivity, and the coming of the Messiah. He announced to Mary the fact that she was going to have a baby born. Every time I think about Michael and Gabriel, I think about the scene the day that Princess Elizabeth was proclaimed to be Queen of all Britain, a Britannia. We were in Edinburgh that day and they came out to the Marriott Cross there in Edinburgh, which is the capital of Old Scotland. And the yeoman came out first, the bodyguard, the queen's bodyguard. And they were there with their swords and their long bows. They were the ones who protected the queen. They would give their lives for her. And they surrounded that place there in the middle of Edinburgh, the marketplace, the Mercat Cross area. And then the Lion King of Arms climbed the ladder to that place where they made all these national and international announcements from. And he was dressed in his wig and in his finery. And the bugler was there, and he bugled. And everyone came to attention, quiet. Then he read the scroll about how this princess was now the queen. The king had just died. Well, this is a little bit the way it was. Michael was the one who protected and he cut away the opposition. Then Gabriel announced what was actually going to be. The third archangel is who? Lucifer. First, Michael, then Gabriel, and then Lucifer, the devil. And Satan is an archangel. Don't ever forget that. Terrific powers. And at one time, he had the authority to use those powers at one time. He alone dared to measure himself in hand-to-hand combat with Jesus the Christ. He said to Christ there on the Mount of Temptation, he said, look out there at the kingdoms of the world, all those people all over the world, you know they belong to me and I'll give them to you if you just get down and worship me. And Jesus didn't contradict him. There must have been some sense in which they belonged to him. God began it all by creating angels, each angel a separate act of God's creation. Christ described him as being the prince of this world. You see, it could be that after God had created the earth, he put it into the hands of this angel that we're talking about, before he fell, before he rebelled. But be that as it may, the fact is that Satan lives in a realm that is far above you and me, with a power. He still has a power that is above us. This was what the Apostle Paul was talking about when he said, we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Get our hands on that. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. We wrestle against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in high places. But let's go on and think for a little bit now about how all this is related to us. How are we related to the angels and them to us? Let's reconstruct a little bit of this moral history of the angels and put it together in a kind of a continuing running narrative. God began it by creating the angels, and each one was a separate act of God's creation sometime before the earth was created. The archangel, who later became Satan, was made to be prince of this world. But pride, or lust, or selfish love came in, and so he tried to un-God God. That was the war. So God was faced with a dilemma. He could have crushed Satan. What he had created, he could un-create. He could have crushed Satan. But there was a better way, a better one, far better, to prove the wrongness of wrong and the rightness of right. That would be more important than just annihilating an angel. And so God created man, the first Adam, to be Satan's rival, to take the place, to take Satan's kingdom from him. Man was to conquer Satan, not by superior wisdom or superior strength, but by his obedience, by demonstrating the rightness of right and the wrongness, thereby the wrongness of wrong. But Satan saw what was coming. He saw that this would all be taken from him, and so he set himself to win man over to his side, shooting to and fro throughout the earth, roaming about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he could devour. And Satan did. Satan won that first man. Adam fell just as Satan and his angels had fallen. Satan was winning God's army over to his side. And again, it had been God's dilemma to crush man and Satan and all what God had created, God could uncreate. But again, God's decision was better, not just to prove himself stronger than Satan, not just to annihilate Satan, but to defeat the very motive of Satan, to prove the wrongness of wrong and the rightness of right. I'll give you a little illustration. Now, sometimes you can punish a boy for stealing or lying, but if he doesn't see that his action is wrong and wrong in God's eyes, he'll do it again when he can get away with it. God saw that it was important. that the wrongness of wrong and the rightness of right would be demonstrated. And he determines to prove Satan morally wrong. So instead of annihilating him, God himself came down to earth. This is the second Adam now in the form of man, the babe in the manger of Jerusalem to defeat the prince of this world and to dethrone him. Satan had sought to make himself God. Now God makes himself man. And as a man, Christ carries out that perfect obedience with both Satan and the first Adam, and the others who followed him had not done. That explains, then, why Satan was so intensely, desperately anxious to keep Jesus from even being born. The wild ride on a donkey over that road down to Bethlehem, and then, as soon as He was born, to get Him killed, all those babies killed, and then exiled into Egypt, and tempting Him at every point in His life on the Mount of Temptation, and still there on the cross, if Thou be the Son of God, come down off the cross. And the second Adam did not fall. And Satan was the one who went down in flames. And Christ now is crowned. And Satan is dethroned. All of Satan's authority, his right, is taken from him. Christ said it. Now is the prince of this world cast out. Satan still has power, yet today, and he keeps on fighting, and his evil angels keep on fighting today. They have all kinds of power and all kinds of means. The Apostle Paul was demonstrating that in the struggles that he went through. Those angels have all kinds of power, but they don't have the right to use that power today. That's why the Apostle Paul was so angry. That's why Satan was so angry when the Apostle Paul kept telling people about Jesus and about his power and his kingdom and his authority today. Satan hated that. He did not want that. He was determined to kill Paul. So the battle's not finished, but we need to know the victory's been won. When we find ourselves caught up in this battle, the victory has been won. And we need to know that and operate on that basis. I'm not going to be able to cover a lot of the things that I wanted to cover this morning about how the good angels help and bless. Those good angels are rejoicing there in heaven when a baby is born. And the good angels rejoice in heaven when that soul is saved. And the good angels took out for that boy or that girl or that man or that woman. They're the ministering servants to the heirs of salvation. We'll talk about that. And this evening I want to show you a large number of other references in which you'll see how the angels have done these things, not only for Paul and Peter and the others, but through Old Testament times as well as New Testament times. And then how the evil angels, on the other hand, keep attacking and tearing down and wearing away and working against, not only God, but the people who belong to God. Right now, all I can tell you about is of one very important means that Christ has provided for protecting us against Satan in the spiritual battle. In Ephesians the 6th chapter, and I want us to read that again for just a moment. If you want to turn your Bibles to it, I think you'll see it through the eye gate as well as hear it through the ear gate. Ephesians the 6th chapter, the same one we read before, beginning in verse 10. Because this is where Paul comes down to the close of his message to those in Ephesus. And you remember he was in that battle in Ephesus, the mob there wanted to lynch him. They almost did. He's speaking back to them, and the temple of Diana, the Ephesians, was right there, and it was a cesspool of moral iniquity, moral sin. And Paul is speaking to them in Ephesians 6, beginning in 10. Finally, you Ephesians, you Christians down there, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore, put on the full armor of God. This is one of the things he's saying. This is how you protect. So that when the evil day comes, you may be able to stand your ground. And after you have done everything, stand. Stand firm then with the belt of truth. Buckle around your waist. You know what the belt of truth means. And it's so important that this would hold up that belt of truth, everything else. With the breastplate of righteousness, that's the thing that covers your heart. And with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace, this means moving forward, not backing up. Moving into the world with the gospel, witnessing. In addition to this, take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming errors of the evil one. And it's not just a case of keeping them from hitting you. It's a case of actually extinguishing them. Take the helmet of salvation, that protects the mind, and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and pray. For many years, I thought there were six pieces of armor. And there are six things that you put on. But there's then a seventh thing that you do, and that's called praying in the Spirit. On all occasions, with all kinds of prayers and requests, with this in mind, be alert, always keep on praying. Over and over again, he's emphasizing that. Prayer, prayer, prayer. And the prayer is very important, that you would know that you not try to rebuke Satan yourself. He's been around a lot longer than you have been. He's had a lot of experience with generations of people all over the world. You match yourself with him, and it's a bad match. But he said there is a way. In Jude, the ninth chapter, we read this. Even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, the Lord rebuke you. Even Michael does not try to rebuke Satan. He calls upon the Lord to do that. And so the little prayer that could well be the application for everything we've been talking about here this morning, we'll get into more this evening. But the little prayer that I want every one of you to know about, and that needs to be in your armory as a protection, is one that goes something like this. Father in heaven, in the name of Jesus Christ, and by the blood of the cross, I ask that you bind Satan, that you bind Satan, rebuke him, and cast him out, and all his angels, banish them, that they would never be able to return. Christ, when he sent the demons, the evil spirits out of the Gadarene demoniac, put them into the swine and they ran down the herd down the hill into the sea. Banish them that they would not be able to return. And then build your hedge of protection around us, around yourself, whoever it is you're praying for. Compass us about with your favor as a shield. As you did Job, Satan complained so bitterly about that. That's not the building hedge about him and about his house, about all that he hath on every side. I can't get to him. God, you built that hedge. God said, yeah, I know that. That's the kind of a hedge that I'll build. I will compass you about with my favor as a shield. And then I'd encourage you to say it's not just a case of defensive action. But then God built us up within that hedge and that compass of affection, that shield of affection. Build us up to be your testimony to your world. We're not just wanting to be protected from the world, we're wanting to be made strong as we move out into the world. That in a sense is the bottom line of what we've been talking about. But the Apostle Paul knew very plainly about that battle that he was standing between the good angels and the evil angels. And he himself was sort of on that no man's land in between. But he knew where his strength came from. And he appealed to God for that. We'll talk this evening not only about what it is the good angels and the bad angels do, but also about why it is that Christ was not able to communicate his salvation to the angels. He could communicate it to people. His righteousness was imputed to us. But he could not communicate that to the evil angels. and they are reserved in hell for eternity. Father in heaven, thank you for allowing us to get into the very life of the Apostle Paul and to see him standing there in Jerusalem being attacked from all sides and to see him standing in Caesarea in the courtroom there Felix and Justice Agrippa and Bernice to see him standing there in Rome before Nero and to see him in the ship at sea struggling, struggling, wrestling. God thank you then for how it is that he clears the air and points out that this is really not the most serious part of the struggle. We wrestle not against flesh and blood. but against principalities, against powers, against spiritual wickedness in high places. God help us to see ourselves in the midst of that struggle today. God forbid that anyone here would think that he could take on that struggle without the armor that you have provided. God bless us each one, as this would drive us to our knees in humility, knowing that we must depend upon you And thank you for allowing us to come to you in prayer. A prayer for protection, a prayer for provision. Now we thank you also for telling us the greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. And for proving to us that you've already conquered Satan. And for allowing us to see you do that as you conquered him. And then told us now is the prince of this world judged. Now is the prince cast out. In Jesus' name, amen. In closing, let's turn to Psalm 148. One of the things I want to talk with you about a little bit this evening, too, is the fact that there will be a beautiful relationship between angels and people in heaven. as they sing together around the throne, and as they become one in Christ, those good angels who are in heaven, and the people who will be there. And here you're calling on the angels to sing. We don't very often think about that, but the Qumran community really believed that any time