Forthwith appeared a shining throng: angels as worshippers

Our Advent Evening Prayers will be looking at different features in the Christmas story, and our news sheets will have a more in-depth look at another feature: angels. This week we're looking at angels as worshippers.

Although the main rôle of angels is to be messengers for God, they are perhaps most associated with praise and worship. So we get the popular image of angels with harps and occasionally trumpets. Both of these images come from the Bible (Revelation 5:8 and 8:6), although, as we learned last week, it would be wrong to think that this is what angels spend most of their time doing. There is a debate about whether angels sing, as there are few references to angelic singing: they are more often described as 'saying' or 'crying' and their sound is likened to trumpets (Revelation 1:10). But what they sound like is less important than what they are saying.

Praise and worship of God is the specific task of the cherubim and seraphim (Isaiah 6 and Ezekiel 1), and their ministry is carried out solely in the presence of God in heaven. Angels, on the other hand, are go-betweens for the heavenly realm and the earthly realm, so they join in with the heavenly worship when they are there, and encourage worship on earth when they are here. In some ways they are part of the answer to the prayer that Jesus taught us to say: they help us to see how the Father's name is hallowed in heaven, so that we may hallow it in the same way on earth.

This is why the most famous heavenly worship 'song' is "Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come" (Revelation 4:8). Their worship focuses on the holy character of God and his actions past, present and future. This reminds us that God's primary characteristic is holiness. We often think of 'love' being the defining characteristic of God, and it's true that God is love (1 John 4:8), but his love is only able to be exercised because of his holiness. As God is holy, nothing impure can ever enter his presence, and as he is self-sufficient, he needs nothing else outside of himself. Therefore, everything in heaven and on earth only exists because God wills it. He could choose to be in splendid isolation from creation, but instead he wants to be intimately involved with his creation and in particular with humanity. But because our sin makes us impure and deserving of punishment, it is only because God is loving that he makes us a way by which we can be saved: God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). However, if God were not holy we would not need to be forgiven to enter his presence. Only a holy God can be self-sufficient, just and all-loving.

Angels proclaim God's holiness in heaven and so they lead the world in glorifying God, hence the famous Christmas song of praise: ‘Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests’ (Luke 2:13-14). The angels acknowledge God's greatness, giving him the credit for the wonderful gift of Jesus; with the phrase 'in the highest' having the double meaning of encouraging the praise of God 'to the greatest extent' as well as 'in heaven'. As we looked at last week, God is to be praised for redeeming humanity from its sin.  Angels know how wonderful it is to be in God's presence, and so they rejoice that now humanity can also enter God's presence. As Jesus said “the angels of God rejoice over one sinner who repents” (Luke 15:10 Good News Translation).

The worship given by the angels reminds us that we too should praise God for who he is and what he has done for us,  and when we do so we join in with the heavenly worship with the angels, and archangels and all the company of heaven. The shepherds, after seeing the baby Jesus, went back to work joining with the angels glorifying and praising God (Luke 2:20). Will you join the angels in worshipping too?

The hills are alive with the sound of praising

Here's my article for Broughton's July magazine:


It's one of the greatest cinematic opening sequences. The camera swoops down over the mountains and zooms in on a woman running across a meadow; the orchestra swells and as we focus in on her she begins to sing “The hills are alive with the sound of music”. I don't know if the beginning of Broughton Primary School's production of the Sound of Music will be quite as dramatic but I'm sure that the whole of the show will be brilliant as usual.

That uplifting opening song uses the image of the natural world being alive with the sound of music and of humanity joining in with that music. But this isn't just a poetic image of how the noises in the world could be heard as musical, rather it is actually a description, perhaps unknowingly, of a deep biblical truth. Isaiah 49:13 says “Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains!”, and 1 Chronicles 16:32-33 says “Let the sea resound, and all that is in it; let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them! Let the trees of the forest sing, let them sing for joy before the Lord”. Many other places in the Bible talk of creation singing and making music and the book of Psalms, Israel's hymn book, ends with this verse “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” (Psalm 150:6).

The Bible affirms that all creation has this musical quality, but unlike the song in the musical, this is not just a way of describing a joyous 'life force' that connects every part of the natural world. The musicality of creation, including humanity, has a purpose, and that purpose is to praise God. Revelation 4, echoing Isaiah 6, describes some of what goes on in heaven speaking about the angels constantly saying “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.” (Traditionally the speech of angels is said to be the same as human song). So the constant music of creation joins in with the constant song of heaven to praise God.

We praise God for who he is, but we also praise him for what he does. 1 Chronicles 16 gives two of God's wonderful acts that particularly deserve praise. Verse 23 says “Sing to the Lord, all the earth; proclaim his salvation day after day” and in verse 33 creation sings because he comes to judge the earth. So creation praises God because of his judgement and his salvation.

It may seem odd to praise God for his judgement, but deep down it's what we all crave. We see a world where to much is wrong and we long for it to be put right; we see evil seemingly unpunished in this word and long for there to be justice. However, the problem is that justice demands that all wrongdoing is punished. Jesus commands us to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) but Romans 3:23 reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” and Psalm 130:3 asks “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?” Only what is holy can enter the presence of the Holy God and we are all far from holy.

Therefore, we also rejoice in God's salvation. Romans 3 goes on to say “all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood – to be received by faith.” Jesus died to take the punishment we deserve so that through repentance and faith in him we can be forgiven. And as we turn to the Lord “the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12).