WHAT ANGELS LEARN IN CHURCH

Dr. W. A. Criswell

1 Corinthians 11:10

11-27-83    10:50 a.m.

 When we study the Word of God, it moves into an altogether different world.  The title of the sermon is What the Angels Learn in Church. 

First of all, they learn about us.  In 1 Corinthians 11:10, Paul writes, “For this cause ought the woman to have power on her head because of the angels.”  Is that not an amazing statement in the Bible?  The first part of the eleventh chapter of 1 Corinthians concerns how we ought to dress in church.  And particularly are the words addressed to the woman, how the woman is to dress in church—appropriately, acceptably, modestly—how she is to dress in church “because of the angels,” Paul says.  The angels are here, they meet with us, they praise and worship God as one of us, and because of the presence of the angels, the woman is to dress in a certain way: acceptably, beautifully, modestly, appropriately. 

That leads us to remark that the human species is the only one of God’s vast spectrum of creation who wears clothes.  We’re the only ones who put on garments, who wear raiment.  All the other things of creation that God made wear the garment that they’re born with, whether it be an insect, or a beetle, or an ant, or a fish, or a fowl, or a bird, or an animal, or a beast, or a creeping thing.  Everything that God has made does not wear clothes.  It lives and abides in the house or the garment in which it is born.  All except the human being.  It may be, for an insect, its incrustation.  It may be for a bird, its feathers.  It may be for a fish, its scales.  It may be for an animal, its furry, hairy clothing.  But we are the only ones that wear garments, that put on raiment. 

It may be that we are made in the image of God as the Bible says [Genesis 1:27], and God is always pictured as clothed in a garment of glory and of light.  In the one hundred-fourth Psalm and the second verse, the Lord God is described as being clothed in glory in garments of light [Psalm 104:2].  The ancient Jewish people referred to the garments of God as the shekinah glory, the light and the beauty and the splendor in which God is dressed.  And our Lord Jesus Christ is no less described as being clothed in majesty—beautiful, dazzling, white, splendid.  In the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Matthew, when the deity of our Lord shown through and He was transfigured on the mount, it says that His raiment became dazzlingly white as the brilliance of the sun [Matthew 17:2]. 

When Saul of Tarsus, the apostle Paul, met our Lord on the road to Damascus, he was blinded by the glory of the light, the shekinah majesty of the presence of Jesus [Acts 9:3-4, 22:6-7].  In the first chapter in the Book of the Apocalypse, of the Revelation, our Lord, glorified, is described.  He is so splendid: His countenance and His raiment, His robe as bright as the shining sun [Revelation 1:13-16].  And John says, “When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead” [Revelation 1:17].  In the Book of Daniel, our Lord is described as robed in light, in glory, in raiment of majesty [Daniel 10:5-6]. 

The angels also are always described in God’s Word as being clothed in white, splendid raiment.  In the twenty-eighth chapter of Matthew, in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke, in the sixteenth chapter of Mark, and in the first chapter of the Book of Acts, we have a description of the resurrection angels: the angels who were there at the tomb when Christ was raised from among the dead [Matthew 28:3; Luke 24:4; Mark 16:5; Acts 1:10].  And the ascension angels that stood by when our Lord returned to glory in heaven [Acts 1:10-11].  And without exception, the angels are described as clothed in raiment and garments of dazzling, brilliant white. 

We are made like them; the eighth Psalm says, “We are made just a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and power” [Psalm 8:5].  The Scriptures say we are made in the image of God [Genesis 1:27].  And as such, when we were created, we were created with a robe: a garment of beauty, and of light, and of glory, of holiness, and purity.  The second chapter of the Book of Genesis, describing our first parents, says that “though they were naked,” they were not created with a clothing like God made all the other animals, “though they were naked, yet they were unashamed” [Genesis 2:25].  Like the angels, and like our Lord, and like the great omnipotent Creator Himself, our first parents were clothed with glory, with light, with beauty, with holiness, with purity [Genesis 2:25].       

The next chapter in the Book of Genesis, chapter 3 says, “And the Lord came walking in the cool of the day” [Genesis 3:8], to visit with the man and the lovely consort by his side.  And when He sought them, He could not find them.  And the Lord God lifted up His voice and said, “Adam?  Adam?  Adam, where art thou?”  And Adam cried in response, “I have hid myself, for I am naked; and I am ashamed.”  And the Lord God said, “Who told thee that thou was naked?  Have you eaten of the tree forbidden?” [Genesis 3:9-11, 2:17].  In sin, in transgression, we lost our garment of holiness, and purity, and light, and glory, and we found ourselves naked and ashamed. 

There is no infidel that lives, there’s no unbeliever that exists, but every day bears witness to the truth of the Lord God Almighty, that we are a fallen people in sin and in transgression, and we are ashamed of our nakedness.  You are no exception, no one of us is.  If I invited any one of you, “Come and stand by me, and unclothe yourself and stand here before us naked,” you would of all people be ashamed. 

In talking with Corrie ten Boom, I was impressed by something that I suppose no one else noticed.  She said:

The most humiliating and the most devastating of all of the things that I endured in the days and the years in the Nazi concentration camp was this: the Nazi soldiers made us unrobe and paraded us in their presence, naked. 

And she said, “I was indescribably ashamed.” 

Sin and transgression and disobedience have taken away from us our garment, our robe, our dress of light, and majesty, and beauty, and holiness, and purity. 

Then the Bible says, “The Lord God made coats of skins, and clothed the man and his wife” [Genesis 3:21] to hide their shame and their nakedness.  He slew, in the garden of Eden, an innocent animal, and innocent animals, and pouring the blood out—the crimson of their life out—the earth drank up the first sacrifice for sin.  And out of the sacrifice of these innocent animals, God covered the nakedness of the first man and his wife [Genesis 3:21], and that is the Hebrew word for “atonement.”  Kaphar is the ordinary Hebrew word for “covering,” covering, and it is translated, “atonement.”  And the Lord covered our shame, and our sin, and our transgression, and our nakedness.  The Lord covered it.  He made atonement for us in blood and in sacrifice in order that we might stand in His presence, forgiven and holy and pure and without shame [Romans 5:11; 1 John 2:28].  Thus God has done for us, and the sign of that is the clothing that you wear.  Every day, it is another message, and another sermon, and another remembrance of what God has done for us: kaphar, “He clothes us”; translated, He makes “atonement” for us [Leviticus 16:32-33].  And He covers our sin and our shame and our nakedness that we might stand in His presence holy, undefiled, forgiven [Ephesians 5:27]. 

And that’s why the apostle writes in the Holy Word, when we come to church in the presence of the angels, we come dressed, clothed—in garments appropriate and acceptable to God [1 Corinthians 11:2-16]—thus the angels learn about us in church [1 Corinthians 11:10]. 

Number two, what angels learn in church: Ephesians, chapter 3, verses 9 and 10 [Ephesians 3:9-10].  The first part of the third chapter of Ephesians is an avowal on the part of the apostle Paul that verse 3, “By revelation, God made known unto me the mystery of the church” [Ephesians 3:3].  Verse 6, “That the Gentiles should be fellow heirs of the same body, partakers of the promise of Christ by the gospel…” [Ephesians 3:6]. Then he says, “I have been made a minister of that glorious mystery [Ephesians 3:7], a secret God kept in His heart, until He revealed it unto His holy apostles [Ephesians 3:5].  God chose me that I am to make known to all men [Ephesians 3:8], verse 9, “What is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the world hath been hid in God… [Ephesians 3:9].  To the intent that now unto the archē and unto the exousia in the heavens might be made known by the church the manifold wisdom of God” [Ephesians 3:10].

When I read that, I can hardly believe such an astonishing and amazing avowal, assertion: That “by the church is to be made known the manifold wisdom of God to the archē and the exousia” [Ephesians 3:10].  These are names that Paul gives to the hierarchy of the angels in heaven.  To the angels of God is made known the wisdom of the Lord by the church, in the church [Ephesians 3:10].  I repeat, it is so astonishing as almost to be unthinkable!  The angels of God, His first and primordial and pristine creation; the angels of God, as it were, stand in the sun.  They look with undimmed eye upon deity itself.  They fold their wings, crying: “Holy, holy, holy” [Isaiah 6:1-3].  Yet, nowhere in the Bible does it say that in their status and in their standing and in their being, in the very presence of Deity itself, do they learn the manifold wisdom of God. 

Look again, in the passage in Job that we just read, it says that the angels were present when God created this visible universe—when He flung these constellations, and these Milky Ways, and these stars, and these planets out into space—when He lighted the stars with the flames of His deity, when He created all that our eyes see and wonder and glory.  Job, in the passage that you read says when God did that, when He spoke by fiat these universes into creation, it says in the passage you read that the angels were present.  And they shouted with joy in amazement and wonder at what God had created [Job 38:7].  But nowhere in the Bible does it say that by the wondrous omnipotent creation of Almighty God is the wisdom of the Lord made known. 

And the angels, of course, were present when the Lord God recreated this earth in Eden [Job 38:7] and when the Lord created His last and most infinite wonder of being—when the Lord made the man and the beautiful fair consort by his side and created in them mind and soul and body [Genesis 1:26-27; 2:21-22]—and the angels were there in presence.  And they looked upon this marvelous Edenic purity and innocence, and glory, and majesty, and wonder.  But in no place in the Scriptures does it say that in the marvel of Eden and in the creation of the man and his wife, was the manifold wisdom of God made known to the angels. 

And in all of the record of the generations that pass, in that mystic revolution of those wondrous wheels with their eyes and eyes and eyes [Ezekiel 1:18], and all of the things that passed before our learning and our memory and our recognizance in human history, in no place in the Bible does it say that in the development of mankind, and in the story of our forefathers, nowhere does it say that in the providences of God and of life is the manifold wisdom of God made known to the angels.  But what the Book says is that in the church—in the church, in the church—is made known the manifold wisdom of God to the hierarchy of angels who look down upon us and who gather in this sacred assembly with us [Ephesians 3:10].  What a conception and what an exaltation of the assembly of God’s people! 

The apostle avows that there is more to be learned of God in the church than in all of the creation of the heavens above us.  There’s more to be learned of God in the church than in all of the succession of the generations and providences of life.  There’s more to be learned of God in the church than everything that God has made, that presents His glory and His majesty and His wonder. 

Mostly, the apostle says we learn of God in the church [Ephesians 3:10]. 

And God says we learn more of God, of His grace and love, of the majesty and glory, we learn more of God in the church than we do in all of the creation of God around us [Ephesians 3:10].  The Lord lives in His people [1 Corinthians 6:19]; He lives in His church [1 Corinthians 3:16], the Holy Spirit abides in the assembly of God’s saints.  And in the conversion of the lost and in the building up of the household of faith, the Lord is honored and the angels rejoice [Luke 15:7].  That’s what God says.

And when a man stands up and preaches to thousands and thousands, or when a man in a humble cottage gets on his knees and reads the Bible and prays, they are both alike, it is a miracle in the presence of the angels of God.  It’s a wonder, it’s a glory.  God says, beyond the creation of His hands in the heavens is the recreation of the soul, the redemption of a man who’s brought back to God, who humbly bows at the feet of Jesus, who asks the Lord into his heart and into his house and into his home. 

This is what the angels behold in church [Ephesians 3:10], and this is what we share with them who look down upon us from heaven.  It’s a glory, it’s like heaven.