I know a family in St. Joseph, Missouri that was burned out of their rural home. It happened in the middle of a cold winter night. The family found itself outside in the chilly air wearing whatever each one had grabbed on the way out. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a pickup truck pulled up, and a young man jumped out and handed the shivering husband a pair of insulated overalls. As fast as he had gotten out, he hopped back into his truck and drove off.

Not a word was spoken, and he was never seen again. Many months later in a grocery store a young man approached the wife and mother of this family. He said, "You probably don't remember me, but on the night your house burned down, I gave your husband a pair of overalls." He was undoubtedly taken back when the woman clenched her fists, thrust them in a downward motion, and said, "I never wanted to meet you!" I'm sure this wasn't the grateful response he had anticipated. When he asked why she had never wanted to meet him, she explained: "Because all this time, I wanted to believe it was an angel that had delivered those overalls!"

Perhaps that's the way it is with us. We want to believe in angels. After all, both the old and new testaments speak of angels. Jesus Himself spoke of angels. But it would sure help if we could meet one.

Angelology is an important subject to our Christian faith. Karl Barth, who has written extensively on every matter of Biblical doctrine, once called the subject of angels "the most remarkable and difficult of all." Perhaps that was part of the reason I was tempted to skip over it. But more importantly is the fact that truths about God are not dependent upon whether angels exist. Too much can be made of angels. Angels play a frequent role in scripture, but God is not changed by them, nor is His plan of salvation dependent upon angels. On the other hand, they are agents of God's activity, so to neglect them would not seem quite right either. Even the history of the Christian church reflects this vacillation and sometimes alternating overemphasis and neglect.

Currently, our culture has quite an interest in angels. I see them in gift stores -- often sold as a kind of divine good luck charm. I see them in greeting cards and on bumpers stickers with phrases like: "Don't drive faster than your angel can fly." There are books on angels and websites, too. This is all well and good, except that the fascination with something so vaguely treated in scripture can easily result in misconceptions. More than misconceptions, it can result in unbiblical and, therefore, misleading beliefs. These can damage one's spiritual life and Christian development.

One of the easiest Halloween costumes to conjure up at the last minute is an angel, right? All you do is slap a set of wings on the back of your preschooler and "presto!" you have an angel. Unless of course they're multi-colored wings and then maybe you have a butterfly. But, popular mythology not withstanding, the bible does not teach that angels have wings. That assumption is based on two things. One is the description of Seraphim and Cherubim -- two special classes of heavenly beings who are described as having wings. The other basis for the winged assumption is two passages in scripture that refer to angels flying (Daniel 9:21; Revelation 14:16), but these could easily be understood as metaphorical references, just like we might say we flew to the hospital after someone got hurt. But winged or not, I want to cover in this sermon what seems to me to be the most important things scripture teaches about angels.