The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
Today is the Feast of the Archangel Michael and All the Angels. This Christian feast always falls on September 29th; it’s fixed to that day. And since this year September 29th falls on Sunday, today we celebrate the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels. This morning, through the readings and now in the sermon, we are given a rare glimpse of something that happened in the heavenly realm. To us it might sound a little bit fantastical. We are, after all, people of the post-Enlightenment; we pride ourselves on being reasonable — at least we used to, in the life of the church. But this is as real history as any other history in the Old or New Testaments. And the assigned reading this morning describes a war, a full-scale war in heaven. It follows immediately after a scene in which the woman, who is Israel, namely the church, the red dragon, who is Satan, and the child, who is Christ — the child is Jesus — are depicted in the first six verses of this chapter, chapter 12. Add to that our reading, and then what we learn in chapters 12 and 13 in the Book of Revelation, and we have one of the most extensive presentations of Satan and his role in human and heavenly history in all of Scripture.
These few but significant Bible passages reveal Satan for who he truly is and what he truly does, which is first seen in Satan’s presence in the Garden of Eden as the tempter of Adam and Eve, and then in the wilderness, at the temptation of Jesus, as He was tempted 40 days in the wilderness. It is the work of Jesus in overcoming Satan and the forces of evil that come to a climax in Revelation 12. There we read about what Michael and the angelic company did in bringing to an end the activity of Satan as our accuser, who accuses sinners before God. That’s how the Book of Revelation portrays the devil, Satan: he is a prosecuting attorney who argues before God against sinners, namely against Christians. He accuses the Lord’s redeemed of being unworthy of fellowship with God, both now here on earth and there in eternity. Just think of that example of Satan, Job, and God, and the wager that the devil can get Job to denounce his faith in the Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, if only he were made to suffer a bit.
The good news in this text is that the accuser of all mankind, Satan, is no longer in heaven bringing accusations against you and me and all Christians. What we have here is the good news that the victory won for us by Christ, by the Archangel Michael and the angels in heaven, brings us hope here on earth. Satan’s rebellion and removal from heaven is one of those mysteries about which God tells us very little. We know that Satan led a substantial rebellion of other angels after creation and before the Fall in the Garden. Revelation 12:4 indicates that up to one-third of the angels in existence at the time fell, rebelled alongside Satan. It was the same temptation that he used to fell Adam and Eve: “You will be like God — just disobey Him.” That’s all. The Book of Job and Revelation 12 teach that after Satan’s fall he still had access to the presence of God. His primary activity was to bring accusations before God against sinners. Verse 10: “The accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.” He kept coming before God to accuse sinners of being unworthy of God’s favor and love and forgiveness. The text says he was doing it day and night. That is, the devil is a pretty persistent creature. He doesn’t give it a rest — kind of like a two-year-old, just keeps pounding until they get what they want. The text says he was doing it night and day. The one who deceived Adam and Eve continued to remind God of the ongoing pattern of falling into sin of Adam’s descendants.
Very few prophets or apostles ever got a glimpse, but Zechariah was one who was given a glimpse of Satan’s role in the heavenly realm. Zechariah 3:1–4: “Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the LORD” — that’s before Christ — “and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And the LORD said to Satan, ‘The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem'” — that is, He has chosen His church — “‘rebuke you!'” “Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, ‘Remove the filthy garments from him.’ And to him he said, ‘Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.'” Satan reeled in the power that he had before God to stand as the prosecuting attorney, accusing and condemning mortal men. In Joshua’s case, the angel of the LORD, who is the pre-incarnate Christ, defends Joshua the priest against the accusations and, to eliminate any questions, has him clothed in pure, holy garments. The accusation of Satan is no longer effective before the Lord God in heaven. That’s one of the many lessons we learn in this encounter.
12:7: “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.” Satan no longer has his day in court. Satan no longer testifies against you in the heavenly realm.
As for the victors, the Bible teaches us something about good angels as well. Angels, whether they fell or not — angels were created by God. They began good, and one-third fell sometime during the six days of creation. The Lord created the angels, created the unseen world, and gave them the task of, quote, “ministering spirits.” The Bible calls them God’s secret agents, so to speak — secret in the sense that human beings rarely are allowed to see the activity or to hear the activity of the unseen world, the heavenly realm. They are agents in that they have been given directions by God Himself and bear His authority to accomplish His will in the matter assigned to them. Angels are messengers, first and foremost. In fact, the word “angel” means messenger. The Greek word angelos means a messenger. That’s the word used to identify these unseen spiritual beings in the Bible, for they are sent time and again with messages. God sends angels to deliver messages to man, particularly at crucial moments in God’s work of salvation in the world. The angel Gabriel, you might remember, was sent to Zechariah to announce the coming birth of John the Baptist, then to the Virgin Mary to announce that she would conceive and bear a son, and He would be called Emmanuel, God is with us. The angel appeared to the shepherds at the birth of the Christ child to proclaim the birth of their Savior, the Savior of the world. At the resurrection and ascension, our Lord sent angels there to deliver the message: “He is not here, He is risen, just as He said.” And forty days later, at Jesus’ ascension, angels said to the disciples, “Why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus will come again in the same way you saw Him go into heaven.” So they’re messengers first.
They’re worshipers, second. Go back to the Christmas night: after the one angel delivered the message, what happened? A host, an angelic host, saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” That’s a song of praise, in worship of the promised Messiah. And in the throne room of heaven, where the Lamb is seated on the throne, angels are leading praises of God, like they did back in the scene in Isaiah chapter 6: “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth; heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.” In the historic liturgy, the main canticle of each half of the service — that is, the first half you now know is called the Service of the Word, the second half is the Divine Service, the service of Holy Communion, of the Sacrament — and each one of them contains a hymn given to us by the angels. In the historic liturgy, the main canticle of the first half, the Gloria in Excelsis, and the Sanctus — they signal something about each part of the Divine Service. Angels are worshipers, and the church follows their lead and joins in their worship. That’s one of the things we failed to teach Lutheran congregations for the last hundred years. We don’t create the worship service; the Word of God does, and the angelic host does. We simply conform to their pattern. That’s what we do. We put the words of God into liturgical form. There’s nothing man-made about it.
Angels are messengers. Angels are worshipers. And angels are warriors. Angels are fearsome warriors. They do battle for God. They are His troops that He sends out for battle on our behalf, against any foes that would harm us, whether seen or unseen. God’s angels are our guardians and protectors, guarding the church universal as a whole, guarding particular congregations, churches in particular places, against particular threats, and watching over Christians. He sends His angels. Now, we don’t know for sure whether every Christian has his or her own guardian angel, but we can say that God does send angels to watch over us from day to day. And remember the daily prayer of Luther in the Small Catechism: “Let Thy holy angel be with me, that the wicked foe may have no power over me.”
As for Michael, he’s a rather mysterious figure in the Bible. He’s only mentioned a few times — you have most of these mentions in the readings from today, Daniel and Revelation. The name Michael, Mika’el in the Hebrew, means “Who is like God?” And who is like God? No one commands the Lord God in His power and His majesty. But Michael the Archangel, as God’s appointed agent, acting with His authority, is one who is like God. He has the power God has given to him to exercise according to God’s good and gracious will. He is the one whom God uses to take Satan and his power over humanity away.
The source of this victory is not found primarily in Michael or the other good angels by virtue of, quote, “their own goodness.” Our text tells us even Christian martyrs overcame Satan, and they did it in a particular way. Verse 11: “And they” — martyr Christians — “have conquered him,” Satan, “by the blood of the Lamb” — by the sacrifice of Christ — “and by the word of their testimony.” There you are: by the Word and Sacrament ministry, Christian martyrs overcame Satan. For they, the martyr Christians, “loved not their lives even unto death.” It was by the blood of the Lamb and the preaching of the Word that martyr Christians overcame sin, death, and the power of the devil. The blood of the Lamb is an obvious reference to Christ as the unblemished, perfect sacrifice, whose blood, payment for all sins of mankind, freed us from the power of the evil one. The foundation for Satan’s removal as accuser before God is the blood of the Lamb. Christians are people who have been washed clean by the blood of the Lamb, and there isn’t anything that the devil can do about that — only if we reject it, ultimately. If we are Christians and fall away from the faith, fail to attend services, to make use of the Word and Sacrament ministry, fail to wash our garments in the heavenly garment of Jesus Christ — St. John wrote this: “If anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.” Paul wrote regarding Christ’s role defending us against accusations before God the Father the following: “Christ Jesus is the one who died — more than that, who was raised — who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”
The source of victory in heaven was not Michael and his angels acting as an independent militia. Rather, they are the army of the Lamb, enforcing the victory that has already been won by the blood of the Lamb, by casting out Satan and the evil angels from the heavenly realm. Verse 12: “Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!” This verse, on first hearing, doesn’t sound very comforting now, does it? I mean, after all, they kicked him out of heaven and threw him down to the earth, where he wreaks his havoc. Yet in spite of Satan’s wrath coming down on we Christians, Satan no longer stands before God our heavenly Father accusing us and reminding Him of our sins. When your sins are drowned in the water of Baptism, or forgiven in Absolution, or pardoned through the eating of the body and the drinking of the blood in the Holy Sacrament, you stand forgiven, pure white vestments, before the eyes of your heavenly Father. Satan cannot accuse you, for Christ is your Advocate. Think of it this way: Satan got fired and expelled from the courtroom of the heavenly Father and from heaven itself, and Jesus was hired in his place. The accuser is gone. The Advocate, Intercessor, and Savior has arrived and has declared you to be wholly innocent.
In the midst of all the evil that Satan brings, Revelation 20:10 tells us of Satan’s ultimate fate: “And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet were, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” Christ has won the victory over the devil and his demons in heaven by way of the cross. Michael and the angelic hosts have carried out God’s holy judgment against the evil one in heaven and have sentenced them to eternal death. Surrounded and protected by these good angels, we join our voices with theirs each Sunday morning. Revelation 5:9–10: “Worthy are You, for You were slain, and by Your blood You ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and You have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth.” The message of the Archangel Michael today is this: we win. Christians win the final victory, because Christ has redeemed us from all sin and from death and from the power of the devil. God dispatched Michael and the angels, the angelic army, to carry out His final cleanup operation. Your future is secure. You will walk into the heavenly veil free and unimpeded. The way is clear. God will send His angels to see that you get there. He will command His angels concerning you to guard you in all of your ways. The biblical text says no evil shall prevail against you, for your sins are forgiven. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.