A sermon on Revelation 12:7-12 for the feast of St. Michael and All Angels. Delivered by Pastor Caleb Strutz.

“Angel” is a word that means “messenger.” And that makes sense, we see angels as messengers constantly throughout the Scriptures. But not all angels are messengers. It’s less a description of what these spiritual beings are and more one of their offices, one of the jobs that they’re given to do. Angels can have other jobs as well. We see in our Epistle that they are warriors doing battle. The popular conception of angels is maybe more along these lines, where we think of them protecting us and watching over us. But that raises the question: protecting us from what? In order to appreciate what the angels do for us, we also need to see what they’re up against. As we look at the spiritual warfare that we are engaged in, that is constantly going on around us, sometimes we fail to fully recognize that unseen struggle. However, we take comfort knowing that we have a sure victory and that these powerful beings are on our side.

I. An Unseen Struggle

Now one of the difficulties in talking about angels or about this spiritual warfare is that we can’t see it going on around us. At times, the Scriptures will pull back the veil, allow us to see glimpses of this spiritual realm, but most of the time, we’re oblivious to it.

We’ve become so steeped in our modern culture and ideology that we don’t even recognize how it’s affecting us. We’ve been led to believe that everything has a purely natural explanation. If something’s wrong, it can be explained away or medicated or solved by science. Everything in the human body is really just lights and wires, molecules and chemical reactions.

When push comes to shove, we end up backing ourselves into a corner. Because the Bible talks about angels and demons, so they gotta be real, they have to occupy some space in our worldview. So then we carve out a space that’s small and limited. “Well, sure, if someone’s levitating and their head is spinning, well, yeah, that’s a demon.” But we don’t want to see them anywhere else.

We know that we have to believe in spiritual stuff but that can become so compartmentalized where it doesn’t affect how we view anything else. “Yeah, I believe in spiritual stuff, but we live in the real world.” You see the chess moves the devil’s making? Trying to convince us that he doesn’t really exist or if he does then he’s not really a threat? Spiritual warfare is a lot harder, a lot more dangerous, when we don’t even recognize that we’re under attack.

We can’t separate the physical from the spiritual. The one is unseen but it’s just as real. We confess “I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.” We confess the existence of this spiritual realm. And everything we do in the visible world has spiritual significance and impact.

We said angels are messengers and so much of spiritual warfare has to do with the messages we receive. I’m not saying there’s a demon in your TV or your phone but if every time you watch the news you get mad, if you scroll and see things that provoke impure thoughts, hard to think of a better word than demonic.

Demons aren’t just active in The Exorcist level stuff, but in everyday life. I know a pastor who’s studied the demonic and he says demons aren’t just in ouija boards and tarot cards. But when you’re having an argument with your spouse, the devil’s sitting in the room with you. When you’re angry or upset or depressed that’s when you need to be on guard against demons the most. How much strife and division and conflict in home and family and church and society is influenced by demons?

We need to be sensitive to the spiritual struggle that’s going on around us and that we’re engaged in. Because if we’re not recognizing this dimension to our lives, we’re so much more vulnerable to it. Spiritual stuff can’t be contained to one hour a week on Sunday morning. We do that at our own peril.

Spiritual warfare is real, the devil is real, demons are real and active in our world. And a lot of things make a lot more sense when we recognize that. But see what we’re up against. See what you’re vulnerable to. We see how weak we are, how often we have failed as a result of our own obliviousness. Lord, have mercy.

II. A Sure Victory

But when Scripture does pull back the veil and allows us to see this struggle we are not led to despair, but to confidence and assurance in our victory.

“War broke out in heaven.” What are the angels fighting for? It’s not just the battle of good vs. evil, they’re fighting over you. And we see the outcome. The angels win. Michael casts down Satan.

Now this isn’t talking about the original rebellion of Satan. When that happened, God Himself cast those rebellious angels down to hell (2 Pet 2:4). This is talking about something different. All the visions of Revelation happen in the New Testament era. What comes right before our text is the dragon pursuing the Child. So this is talking about the defeat of Satan because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

As we take stock of the powers that stand against us, they’ve been beaten twice already and the fate of the final battle is sealed. This victory is certain because it’s the victory of Christ. “The accuser of our brethren… has been cast down.” The angels fought against Satan for you, to cast down the one who accused you. And they were victorious because Christ has taken away that accusation, He has forgiven your sin.

Christ endured every temptation of the devil but remained without sin so that His perfection would count for you. He suffered the punishment that our sins deserved so that Satan’s accusation is now empty and baseless. He rose from the dead to prove His victory, to show that Satan is powerless. And He sent His angels to clean up the mess and to strip our enemies of any spiritual standing, to kick them out of the heavens, out of the spiritual realm, so that now they only have power on this earth.

Our victory is secure because of Christ. He has salvation and strength and the kingdom and power. The powers of evil are defeated and are merely waiting for their fate to be sealed. But our victory is sure and certain. The angels won because of Christ.

Satan is already defeated, but he still fights against us. Even after he has been cast down to the earth, the first thing he does is go after the church. Here’s where the angels play a role in our day-to-day lives. We’ve seen in our text how they were involved in casting out Satan and we can extrapolate from that and look at other places in Scripture to see how they are still involved in our ongoing spiritual warfare.

We fight alongside the angels. It’s not that the angels are just taking care of stuff and we’re entirely obvious, no, by faith our eyes are opened to see this spiritual realm, to be aware of what’s going on around us. So we work together. The angels are “ministering spirits sent forth to minister for those who will inherit salvation” (Heb 1:14). These mighty spiritual warriors serve us, fight for us and with us. Earlier in Revelation, there’s this vision of an angel offering incense with the prayers of the saints (Rev 8:3-4). The angels bring our prayers to God and offer with them their own prayers—we work together, cooperate in this spiritual warfare.

Let’s look at how the angels were able to overcome. The loud voice says that the brethren—that’s us—overcame “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” These are our tools, these are our weapons. We are armed with the blood of the Lamb. We receive the strength that we need, the forgiveness that defends us from the accuser, as we receive the Lord’s Supper, as we drink the blood of the Lamb. We battle with the word of our testimony. We hear God’s Word and respond with our own word, boldly confessing our faith in the face of adversity.

Now, I can hype it up, but spiritual warfare really is pretty ordinary stuff. It’s praying, reading the Scriptures, coming to church, receiving the Sacrament. But just like we needed to see the spiritual realm in our ordinary lives to see what we’re up against, so, too, spiritual warfare means recognizing these seemingly ordinary, mundane things for the truly powerful spiritual things they are.

We need to view our entire life with this spiritual lens. When we look at our sinful desires and at the fallen world around us, we see this battle. When we look at who we have on our side, the angels, when we see the weapons that God has given us, when we look at the cross and see the victory that has been won, we are not paralyzed, but emboldened. We do not love our lives to the death because we know something better awaits.

As cool as angels are, I realize we didn’t end up talking about them all that much. But they’d be content with that. Because the angels think that you’re really cool. What has been preached to us, St. Peter says, are “things which angels desire to look into” (1 Pet 1:12). The angels are ministering spirits which serve you. We have the privileged place in creation, not the angels. Jesus didn’t leave the glory of heaven to become an angel but to become a man, as we confess in the Creed, “for us men and for our salvation.” The Scriptures weren’t written to proclaim good news to the angels, but to humans. I think especially of the Lord’s Supper with this verse, we recognize in the Preface that we worship “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven.” The angels pack our worship, they fill every empty seat, hover above every pew, because here heaven comes down to earth. They long to see what has been given to us. The angels can’t eat Christ’s body and drink His blood, you can. What a blessing to see all that Christ has done for our salvation, including sending His angels to watch over us and fight for us. Our victory is secure in Christ. Amen.