OCTOBER 30 "DO YOU LOVE ANGELS?"

Do you love Angels?  Apparently, you're not the only one! The writer of Hebrews takes a whole chapter to dismantle, for the Gospel's sake, the worship of Angels. As one man famously quoted, "the more things change they more they remain the same." Here we are, a couple of thousand years later, still having to deal with this issue, of worshiping Angels, in the church.  We love Angels, they're beautiful (not sure how we know this?), they have wings, they fly and best of all, they don't judge. God, he's the boss, the mean guy! Angels, just help and do good. People who have a love affair with Angels, often are not that knowledgeable of the Bible. Angels may be beautiful and only there to help, but if you read Revelations, they judge (by God's decree) and kill worse than any villain in Hollywood. The Catholics like to worship Mary and Saints, Christians like to worship Angels. Each religion has their own demi-gods that they set up for themselves, rather than go to God himself. Jesus himself is the mediator between God and man, not Mary, not Saints, and not Angels. "I don't feel comfortable going to Jesus, why can't I just go through Mary, Angels or......".  The question is, "why don't you feel comfortable going through Jesus? Why do we avoid authority?  Why do we avoid the boss at work, the principle at school, the Pastor at the front door on Sundays?" Normally there is a reason.  Santa Clause is a distraction from Jesus on his birth. Easter Bunny is a distraction from Jesus on his Victorious Resurrection and Angels are another distraction from a relationship with the Savior Himself. We used to have a woman that would come out to church we her Angel lapel. She never came out to church without it and always had stories of Angels for us and the little kids. She would get the kids to kiss her Angel lapel. She would also talk to me about Angels and I would politely listen and try, like the author in Hebrews, to play down her worship of Angels and point her towards Jesus. I was never quite successful in that endeavor. I wonder if the author in Hebrews had more success? I once lost my wallet and the person I was with suggested we pray to Saint Antony to help us find it. I asked, "could we also pray to Jesus himself to help us find it, after all, He is God, I think He could probably do a decent job too".  The answer was, "well, of course you can, but He may be busy with other stuff, why trouble  Him for the small stuff, just pray to Saint Antony, don't' be difficult!"  Why trouble Jesus with the small stuff? Well # 1, because He told us to and # 2 because nowhere in the Bible does it mention praying to Saint Antony for lost artifacts. Once again, people who are often distracted by religious decoys are often people who are ignorant of The Word of God. In short, our scripture today is simply telling us to "stop worshiping Angels and putting them in a place of preeminence above our Lord and Savior, Jesus. Not just Angels, but Mary, Saints, Santa, Easter Bunny and whatever else we are lured into to draw us away from the one that the Holy Spirit is trying to lure us to, each and every day and that is Jesus, a name above all names, our mediator, our lawyer, our defender, a friend that sticks closer than a brother, a father to the fatherless, a comforter to the widow, the healer of the broken heart, HE IS the one we should go to, there is no other and if there was, there would still be no better, than Jesus, to go to in our time of need, affliction, distress and/or comfort. "Come to me, all you that are heavy burdened down"  Come to me, Jesus says, not a decoy, not an idol, not a lessor god, false god or Mary, Saint or Angel, but COME TO ME!