Peace Lutheran Church
2025 Sermons
Posts Tagged "Angels"
Saint Michael and All Angels (Observed)
September 28, 2025
Text: Luke 10:17-20
Theme: Rejoicing
Outline:
1. Rejoicing over Satan’s defeat
2. Rejoicing over Angels
3. Rejoicing over Jesus, that we are written in heaven
Sermon
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
My dear beloved flock, the text for our mediation today is the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke, the tenth chapter, verses seventeen through twenty.
Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Today we celebrate a special feast day. A feast day is the day when we celebrate and honor someone. Today, we are celebrating Saint Michael and all the angels. What does an angel do? An angel protects you. It is why one of the angels is called Michael. He is a really strong angel called an archangel. The angels fight battles that we cannot see. Spiritual warfare happens and we may not even realize that Michael is fighting with the angels to protect us from harm. God loves us so much, and he commands his angels to protect believers. How can we join the angels and the disciples in rejoicing in the work
that God gave them to do? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you.
1. Rejoicing over Satan’s defeat
As we gather today for the feast of Saint Michael, our text really does not say a lot about angels. The only angel it mentions is Satan falling like lighting from heaven. It seems a bit of an odd text for this feast day. Yet, it has much to tell us about angels, what they do, and how we can rejoice with them.
Just before our text, seventy-two disciples had been sent by our Lord to go out two by two to all of the surrounding towns and villages. They went out proclaiming that the Kingdom of God was coming. They healed the sick and proclaimed the gospel as they went. They probably didn’t think about it at the time, but when Jesus gave them the authority to heal the sick, that included the authority to heal those physically and spiritually sick from demon-possession. It’s probably better that they didn’t think about it beforehand, because they might have been reluctant to go if they knew they were going to be dealing personally with demons and fighting directly on the front lines. But having dealt with them, and having driven them out, they were filled with joy: “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name!“
Jesus rejoices in the disciples rejoicing. He confirms that as they went about their ministry, the enemy’s kingdom was toppled. “I saw Satan fall like lighting from heaven.” Satan falling points to one of the jobs of Saint Michael and all the angelic host, make war against Satan for our defense and protection. Which is another cause to rejoice.
2. Rejoicing over Angels
Saint Michael and the angelic host make war against Satan, to the point that Satan, and all who followed, were kicked out of heaven and imprisoned in Hell. This is a fight that was not even close. Satan knows that he was defeated. He will never win, yet he keeps trying over and over to drag down to Hell with him more and more people.
We could think of it like a football match today. Two teams going head to head, battling it out for supremacy. The score is not even close, 40-0. The losing team keeps sending a running back. He runs the football up the middle, only to get clobbered by a linebacker out of nowhere. Then replay is shown from multiple angles, and one of the announcers would remark, “Man, he just keeps getting clobbered. Why does he keep getting back up? He’s going to be have to be taken off the field on a stretcher soon!”
Something similar happens to the devil in a very real way. He is defeated, not by sword or force of might, but purely by the Word of God. Consider when Saint Michael and Satan in Jude are fighting over the body of Moses. Michael simply states, “The Lord rebuke you.” Satan flees defeated.
The same still happens today. Angels stand with the pastors God has placed in His church. God’s angels do battle with the devil’s forces through the Word of God, the sword of the Spirit, wielded by pastoral soldiers. Just as Gandalf and his fellow wizards, who in Tolkien’s mythology were god-like figures with supernatural power. Yet, they were forbidden to engage the enemy Sauron in direct conflict, and match power with power. In order to fight, they were required to support the humble efforts of mortal men, elves, and hobbits. Similarly, the angels are forbidden to use their mighty power in open battle, but are placed by God into the service of His church.
When the gospel is shared and people believe it. Then and there the power and influence of the devil is overcome. When we listen attentively to the gospel and take it to heart in faith, whether here or at home, whenever another baby is baptized and brought from the devil’s kingdom into the family of God, whenever we receive our Savior’s body and blood for the forgiveness of sins, whenever God’s Word takes root in the heart of another through a Christian’s conversation, Michael and the angels advance, and the devil moans, “Oh no, not again!” Down he goes, like lightning from heaven. Thud, he lands. Thud, he loses.
This is not the only thing that angels do. Yes, they protect us from Satan. But they have other jobs as well. One of their jobs is to rejoice and worship God. They are continually in the presence of the Lord, giving Him the honor and glory due to His holy name. As His people, we are late for the grand celebration. The angels have been worshiping since the very moment of their creation. As the Psalmist says, “When the foundations of the earth were laid, the morning stars sang together. We might call to mind the angelic Host worshiping the Lord in Isaiah’s vision in chapter six or announcing the Birth of Jesus to the shepherds ending in a wonderous songs of praise. We are indeed late, but they welcome us in and deign to join our meagre words and praises with theirs. As we state in the Proper Preface, we worship with Angels, archangels, and all the Host of Heaven, joining in unending praise. Join them in singing the praises of God in the Gloria and the great feast of victory of the Lamb. We cry with them, “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Sabaoth, Heaven and earth are full of your glory.”
There is an even greater cause for rejoicing than driving the devil and his demons far away through God’s word and sacraments, so that he falls like lightning from heaven again and again. There’s a greater reason we join with them in unceasing praise.
3. Rejoicing over Jesus, that we are written in heaven
What is that greater reason? As our Lord says, “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” That is the cause of intense rejoicing.
We rejoice that the very Word of God became flesh in Jesus Christ, that our names would be written in heaven. Because of Jesus, we have been saved. Saved, not by a mighty display of power and authority through a myriad of angels, but saved by meekness and humility in a small, tiny infant who was laid in a manger. If Jesus had wished to use the way of power, He could simply have called on His Father to send twelve legions of angels against His enemies (Mt. 26:53).
Jesus defeated every single one of the assaults of Satan with the Word of God, which proceeded like a sharp, two-edged sword from His mouth (Rev. 1:16). Jesus defeated the devil by seeming to be defeated Himself, by suffering and dying, by shedding not the enemy’s blood but His own blood upon the Cross of Calvary, for us men and for our salvation. Through this seeming defeat Jesus caught the devil entirely off guard. The devil, who was rejoicing to see his foe laid in a tomb, was suddenly struck silent by the glorious appearance of the resurrected Lord in His prison.
Jesus descended into Hell that He might declare that He has indeed fulfilled the promise given in Genesis 3:15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring[e] and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Jesus heel was brused upon the cross but the head of Satan has been crushed. That is why Jesus makes the reference in our text. He has tread upon the serpents and scorpions heads. Because of the work of Jesus, sin, death, Satan, and Hell have been eternally defeated. Because of Jesus and His death and resurrection, your sins, my sins are forgiven. Your name, my name, the names of all believers are written in heaven.
Dear beloved flock, rejoice! Rejoice in the work of the holy angels for your protection and good. Join with them in praise unending of the Lamb who was slain, slain that we are His forever and ever. Until the day when we join the angelic host in endless praise forever at the great marriage feast of the lamb which has no end.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep, your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2024
The Song of the Angels
Luke 2:1–20
Sermon Outline
There’s Beauty to Be Found Considering the Noise of Christmas.
I. Like many on that first Christmas night, tonight we are singing the song of sorrow.
II. But the angel of the Lord has come armed with a new song for you to sing, a heavenly song of joy.
Sermon
When we think of the night Christ was born, we tend to think of it as being very serene and quiet, a night where no noise polluted the air. But we don’t think this because the Bible tells us it was abnormally noiseless that night of Christ’s birth. The Bible says no such thing about the decibel levels of Bethlehem or the surrounding area. Rather, we think this because that’s what we’re told by hymns like “O Little Town of Bethlehem” and, of course, “Silent Night.” Now, in fairness to those hymns, I don’t think the authors were trying to add to the Word of God or asserting that this silence was a historical fact. I think they use silence as a poetic way of depicting the tranquility of Christ’s birth, a way of showing how every other care and concern and sorrow and fear faded away in the moment that God’s only-begotten Son first breathed the air he was going to fill with salvation.
On the one hand, it’s a beautiful thing to consider that kind of metaphorical silence on the night of Christ’s birth. But on the other hand, too,
There’s Beauty to Be Found
Considering the Noise of Christmas,
to consider the songs of sorrow that were ringing through the air across the world on the night of Christ’s birth and how they can now be transformed into songs of joy.
I.
While it may have been rather quiet in that little town of Bethlehem, there was most certainly wailing somewhere. That night, just a few miles away in Jerusalem, King Herod perhaps cried out in his sleep, having nightmares over the blood he’d shed, how he’d taken the lives of his own family members, his wife, his own sons, to protect his throne, a throne that didn’t really belong to him. Perhaps that night Israel’s false king sang a song of sorrow, crying out for peace he couldn’t achieve, no matter how much blood he shed.
Certainly throughout the world, various emperors and kings and chiefs sang that same song the night of Christ’s birth, furious that all their strength, all their wisdom, all their wrath could not conquer their enemies, secure their glory, or bring peace to their people.
Throughout the world that night, wives sang the song of sorrow in empty beds, weeping over husbands that never came home from war. Husbands sang it as their wives died in childbirth. Mothers sang the song of sorrow as they watched their children swallowed up by diseases they couldn’t drive away. Fathers sang with them as their children wailed with empty stomachs. They sang the song of sorrow because they were unable to make the rain fall on the earth or force the barren ground to yield its fruit.
Throughout the world that night, sinners lost in darkness sang the song of sorrow, unable to see the light of God. They bloodied their hands crafting idols who wouldn’t answer their prayers. They sacrificed the flesh of animals, the flesh of men even, to bring themselves nearer God. But they couldn’t find him—couldn’t find his mercy, his forgiveness, his salvation, his arms. All they found was condemnation and confusion.
And across space and time, tonight, we are singing that song of sorrow. We look out at this world of darkness, a world filled with war and bloodshed, hatred and cruelty. Our versions of kings and emperors rise up against other nations and pour out violence to puff up their own glory, glory that will be forgotten in a generation. Anger and bitterness poison our world. Neighbors who are supposed to look out for one another look for reasons to hate one another. People who were supposed to be loyal to us cast us aside, betray us, lie about us, walk away from us. So we look out on a world teeming with the sins outside us, and we sing the song of sorrow.
We sing that song again when we see the world teeming with our own sins. Just as we were betrayed, we’ve betrayed. Just as we were hurt, we hurt. We’ve worshiped ourselves, made idols of our own pride, our greed, our selfishness. We tried to build a world of light and glory and comfort for ourselves by trusting in our own strength, our own goodness. And what was the result? More darkness, more cold, more loneliness, more sorrow, more sin. So tonight on the night of Christ’s birth, here we are, far from silent. Here we are singing the song of sorrow.
II.
But fear not, because now the angel of the Lord has burst into the night sky in Bethlehem, and he has come armed with a new song for you to sing. He has appeared in that silent night sky with the glory of the Lord shining around him, armed with words of peace that silence every song of sorrow and give you the right to join the heavenly song of joy.
“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger” (vv 11–12). This the angel declares, and then the song grows in voices and majesty, with the heavenly host proclaiming, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is well pleased!” (v 14).
And what do the words of this song say to you, to us, to all of mankind? Those words proclaimed to Herod and every other king that the hour has come for them to turn from their violence, to see that peace had now arrived, because flowing within the veins of that little child in Bethlehem was the only blood that could give man peace with God. That little child would grow into the man who would carry his cross to Calvary, shed his blood, and win salvation, win peace, win eternal life for all who believe.
Here, in these angelic words, the wife and mother who mourns her lifeless kin can know comfort, knowing that the one who will conquer the grave has arrived. Here, the father and husband who failed to drive away starvation and disease can rest as the infant Christ rests in his mother’s arms, knowing that nothing will stop the Son of God from crushing Satan, destroying sin, conquering death in his bloody cross and empty tomb. Here, those wandering in darkness dashing themselves to pieces on worthless idols can hear the song of the angels, rush to Bethlehem, look upon the countenance of the infant Christ, and see the face of God.
Tonight, you can do likewise. Tonight, you can join those of every tribe and nation and generation who weep the tears of sorrow. You can join those who share your song of sorrow over this sinful, fallen world. You can go to Bethlehem and join the angel’s song of joy because the Son of God is born. There before you is the one who will crush every sorrow, shatter every grave, dry every tear, and clothe you in the eternal comfort of his Father.
Tonight, the kings of the earth can sing with joy as they lay their heavy crowns at the infant feet of Christ, knowing that he will do what only the King of kings can do—give mankind peace with God and peace with one another. And in the same way, you can bring him what weighs you down, all your sins, your iniquities, your festering, clawing guilt that won’t leave you alone.
Leave those at the foot of the manger, because this is the Son of God born to carry them to the cross. And there at Calvary, your Lord finished the journey that begins in Bethlehem tonight. He destroyed your every iniquity, buried your every sin in a grave that will never be opened. With his nail-pierced hands, he ripped the devil’s claws off of you, killed the beast, and gave you the right to live with him in his kingdom forever.
So right now, rejoice in this holy night that is not silent. Rejoice in this holy night that is filled with singing saints of every nation, with angels and archangels, with all the host of heaven proclaiming the song of Christ’s love and victory, the song we never need to stop singing because Jesus Christ our Lord will never stop singing it to us.
In Jesus' name. Amen.