What if guardian angels weren’t just comforting symbols… but cosmic warriors stationed in heaven’s throne room?
In this awe-filled episode of What the Bible Actually Says, Dr Tyson Putthoff opens one overlooked verse in Matthew 18:10—and watches the heavens split wide open. Jesus says the “little ones” have angels who continually behold the face of God. But in ancient Jewish thought, that wasn’t poetic language. It meant those children were guarded by the most elite beings in the cosmos—beings of flame and lightning, the face-gazers of heaven, the Angelic Guard of the Throne.
These aren’t background angels. These are the heavyweights—the ones who stand closest to God’s blazing glory, who carry out divine justice, and who report directly to the King. In the ancient world, even most angels didn’t get to “see the face” of God. But Jesus says children’s angels do. That’s not just sweet—it’s staggering. It means the most overlooked humans on earth are assigned the most powerful beings in heaven.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:15):
What's up everybody, Welcome to the What the Bible Actually Says
podcast. I'm your host, Tyson Puthoff,
and I'm glad to have you here today.
If this is your first time listening, Bao Kaba, welcome to
the show. If you're a regular listener,
Bokim Hashveim, welcome back. So before we dive in, as always,
don't forget to subscribe on your favorite platform so you
(00:37):
don't ever miss an episode and head over to
bibleactuallysays.com. Check out what we have going on,
what's coming up next. If you've been enjoying the
show, I'd love it if you'd leaveus a rating.
Share it with someone who's ready to go deeper in their
study of the Bible. Also, an incredibly exciting
announcement today. I want to let you know that my
(00:58):
my new book, Jesus, the Strategic Life and Mission of
the Messiah and His Movement, Volume 1 drops this week on May
30th. It's volume one of a three
volume series published with a call publishing company and it
is the perfect companion to thispodcast.
It's going to take you deeper than what we're able to do in
(01:20):
this podcast in a lot of ways. And it's also essentially a
guide book to take you from Jesus's birth to his death and
resurrection and ascension in chronological order.
It's going to unpack a lot of texts in the Gospels that are
tricky, just like we're trying to do here.
But it will, I think, give you awhole new sense of understanding
(01:42):
of who Jesus was and is and a lot of clarity on what it means
to follow him in a world in which, honestly, there's just a
lot of bad information and bad takes on Jesus and who he is and
what he wants of us. So check it out.
May 30th, Jesus Volume 1. Go to bibleactuallysays.com or
you can go to heycall.co that's HEKHA l.co or you can find it on
(02:06):
Amazon. Ebook is up for pre-order right
now. Print copy will be available on
May 30th to mark your calendars again, Volume 1 of Jesus cannot
wait for this book to drop. So in this episode we're
shifting gears. Over the past several episodes,
we've been deep in the weeds of Jesus's teachings on society,
(02:29):
economics, politics, and sort ofthe real world systems he came
to challenge and transform. We've explored what it means to
live out the values of his Kingdom here and now in bodies
and budgets and broken systems. And I'll be the first one to say
that it's been a bit heavy. It's been intense.
It's just been tough for me to study.
And it's, I know, been tough andconvicting and challenging and
(02:51):
confusing to listen to. And that's a lot of times what
Jesus does. He came to confront a really
messed up world. And in confronting a messed up
world, he had to be a little bittough and intense at times.
And so again, I understand it's been, it's been deep and it's
been heavy. I know that it's been that way
for you and for me in my study and in recording these episodes.
(03:14):
It's been a challenge. But today we're stepping back to
look at something a little bit different.
So we're zooming out from the social and stepping into the
cosmic. Because Jesus didn't just talk
about human systems. He spoke sometimes subtly and
sometimes explicit and shockingly, about the unseen
realm, the divine systems, aboutangelic beings, about heaven's
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hierarchy, about the mysterious forces that operate in the
heavenly world that runs parallel to our own visible
world right now, and about the entities that guard and guide
and gaze upon the face of God himself.
And here in this episode, we're going to start right there with
1 quiet line from Jesus in Matthew 1810 that cracks the
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heavens open. So grab your Bible and check out
Matthew 18. And I think that you're going to
like what we have to talk about today in this show.
Most of us have heard the phraseguardian Angel.
And many of us, even if we're not sure we believe in them,
have at least once hoped they'rereal.
I think maybe it was when you just narrowly avoided a car
(04:19):
accident, or when your child wandered too close to danger and
came came away unscathed. Or maybe it's just the idea that
someone is always watching over you and gives you a little bit
of support when things feel uncertain.
The idea of a personal protectorfrom heaven has become part of
how we think about faith, especially in popular Christian
(04:39):
culture, I think. And the images that come to
mind, though, are often quite far from biblical images of
these figures. We picture robed figures with
soft wings, Halos hovering overhead, gently leading
children across rickety bridges.Those come more from greeting
cards and cartoons, from precious Moments marketing than
(05:02):
they do from Scripture. And while they can be sweet,
they don't really match what ancient people, especially in
Jesus time, thought angels were like.
But here's what's surprising, Jesus doesn't just roll his eyes
at the idea of personal, protective angelic beings.
He might roll his eyes at that image that a lot of us have, but
not at the idea in general. And in fact, in Matthew 1810, he
(05:25):
not only affirms their existence, but he gives them a
starring role in one of the mostpowerful teachings that he gives
us in the Gospels. And here's what he says.
Matthew 1810. See that you do not despise one
of these little ones, for I tellyou that they're angels in
heaven. Always gaze upon the face of my
Father who is in heaven. OK, I want to read it again.
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See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell
you that their angels in heaven always gaze upon the face of my
Father who is in heaven. So that's a huge statement.
Not only do children or little ones have angels assigned to
them or that belong to them, butthose angels are in constant,
direct, visionary contact with God.
(06:09):
OK? And they're not just present in
the heavenly world. Jesus says they gaze upon the
face of God continually. As we'll see shortly, in the
ancient world, that kind of language was reserved only for
the most powerful and privilegedbeings in the heavenly
hierarchy. So here's the deal.
This verse isn't just a sweet idea, it's a door into one of
(06:29):
the most mysterious and majesticconcepts in ancient Jewish
tradition, what we call the angels of the face, Malakai
Hapanim. So in this episode, we're going
to explore Jesus statements about children and the angels
that belong to them or are assigned to them within the
broader historical context. We're going to try to understand
where this idea came from, what it meant in Jesus world, and
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what it might mean for us today.We're going to unpack the
language, take a look at ancienttexts and traditions, and try to
recapture just how astonishing it is that Jesus would say
something like this. So just as always, we first have
to do our best to understand both the text itself, right?
We've got to look at what the words actually are in Scripture.
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Then we have to understand the historical context within which
this text in Jesus statement originally emerged.
Only then, only when we understand text and historical
context, can we get into issues and questions that have to do
with what this means for us today.
So let's zoom out for a minute, because while Matthew 1810 may
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seem like a small, isolated verse, it's actually part of a
much bigger picture, a sprawling, dazzling world of
heavenly beings, cultural beliefs, and divine hierarchies
that stretched across ancient Jewish imagination, Greco, Roman
philosophy, and even far earlierancient Near Eastern and
Mesopotamian traditions. And the idea that divine beings
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guard the vulnerable wasn't unique to Jesus or the early
Christians or to Hallmark or precious moments either.
It was part of a broader world view in which the cosmos was
alive with beings, spirits, angels, otherworldly beings
assigned to protect, accompany or watch over human lives.
And there are a few things we need to understand at this point
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in order to sort of really startto understand the the magnitude
of what Jesus is saying here. So the first thing we need to
understand then angelic figures in the ancient world, in Jesus
world, were not what we often envision them to be.
So let's pause here for a second.
Because when Jesus talks about angels, he doesn't mean the
chubby, smiling cherubs from Renaissance paintings or from
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precious moments in the Bible. Angels are anything but cuddly
when they show up. People literally drop to the
ground in fear in Judges 13 as Addie.
My daughter pointed this out to me this morning on our way to
school. When Samson's parents realize
they've been speaking to the Angel of the Lord, Manoah says
we are doomed to die, We've seenGod.
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Joseph 1322. In Daniel 10, when the prophet
encounters an angelic being described with lightning eyes
and a voice like a multitude, hesays no strength remained in me
and I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground.
Daniel 10. Even in the New Testament, the
shepherds are terrified when theAngel appears to announce
Jesus's birth in Luke 2, in the guards at Jesus's tomb, these
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Roman guards shook and became like dead men when they saw the
Angel in Matthew 28. These aren't soft messengers.
They're cosmic enforcers, glorious, radiant, sometimes
barely distinguishable from God himself.
And in literature from the time of Jesus, especially in one
Enoch and three Enoch, angels are beings of blazing fire and
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unimaginable power, sometimes with multiple faces, wheels
within wheels, or eyes covering their bodies.
So when Jesus says that the little ones have those beings
watching over them, beings who always see the face of my Father
in heaven, he's not offering spiritual fluff.
He's making a claim about a realcosmic level protection.
The second thing we need to understand is how the ancients
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envisioned the angelic economy, and I'm not talking about
dollars and cents here, type of economy.
I mean, the structure in the hierarchy, in the inner workings
of the spiritual realm, which toancient minds was just as
organized and populated and complex as our own world, right?
It was just on the other side ofthat veil.
(10:29):
And the physics of the heavenly world was way different than
ours, where you could have fire residing with ice and where you
could have rivers of fire. Everything was fire.
It was super incredibly dangerous place.
It wasn't clouds floating around.
It was, it was an incredibly dangerous place in ancient
descriptions. And these heavens were alive
(10:49):
with these angelic beings. Not just a few winged choir
singers floating on clouds, but entire hosts or armies,
councils, courtrooms filled withterrifying, radiant and powerful
angelic creatures, each with different jobs, personalities,
temperaments, and even differentkinds of metaphysical makeup.
They were just made of differentstuff from each other.
(11:13):
So let's start with the roles ofthese angelic beings.
Ancient texts describe angels asmessengers.
OK, The Hebrew is malach, the Greek angelos, which is kind of
their most basic function. That's kind of the name that we
know them all by. But that is really just the
beginning. Some angels were guardians
posted at cosmic boundaries, like the flaming sword bearing
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cherubim who blocked the way to Eden in Genesis 324.
Others were warriors, part of Yahweh's heavenly host, ready to
strike down armies, kind of likethe Angel in Second Kings 1935
who wipes out 185,000 Assyrians in one night.
Talk about powerful. Some served as scribes, like the
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Angel in Three Enoch who writes down the deeds of humanity.
Others were intercessors delivering prayers to God, as
seen in Tobit 12, where the Angel Raphael says I brought
your prayer before the Holy One.And then there are the
gatekeepers in Hiccoloth Rabati.Again, I talk about all of these
in my book Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology.
(12:18):
It's a scholarly book, but it's still got a lot of fascinating
stuff in it to do with these angels and their relationship to
God and to humans. So in Hiccoloth Rabati, part of
this ancient Jewish mystical literature, we get a really
detailed description of the seven heavenly palaces, or
Hecoloth in Hebrew, Hecal being temple, and each is guarded by
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angels so terrifying that even the righteous soul ascending
through visions needs passwords or divine names to get past
them. If you don't know the passwords,
you're incinerated on the spot. You're just destroyed.
It's painful, it's terrifying, and it's inevitable if you don't
have the right password, becauseyou have to be worthy and you
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have to be transformed to a certain level if you want to get
any closer to God. And so these angelic guardians
of the gates made sure that onlythose who are worthy and only
those who were capable of withstanding God's presence
could get through these gates closer and closer to God.
But here's where it gets really wild.
Not all angels have the same attitude or temperament either.
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Just like the roles differ, so do the dispositions of these
angels. The messengers are usually calm
and composed. They're designed for delivering
words from the divine. But the enforcers?
They're different. These are the fiery hot tempered
destroyer types. Think of the Angel of Death in
Exodus 12, who sweeps through Egypt to strike down the first
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born. Or Abadan in Revelation 9, the
Angel of the Abyss, whose very name actually means destruction.
In Section Samuel 24, it's an Angel who stretches out his hand
to destroy Jerusalem, and only adivine intervention stops him.
In one Enoch 10, the Archangel Uriel is the one who binds the
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fallen angels under the earth toawait judgment.
These angels aren't just radiant, they're dangerous.
They carry divine wrath like a weapon.
And the ancients believe that angels didn't just have
different jobs and personalities, they had
different metaphysical constitutions.
The stuff that they were actually made of differed from
one type of Angel to another type of Angel.
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Some were made of light, some offire, some of wind.
In the mystical Merkava literature, especially 3 Enoch
and Hiccolo Zutarti, some angelsare said to be formed from
rivers of flame, others were made from snow, others from
lightning. Some angels have hundreds of
eyes and multiple faces. In Ezekiel 1, the Orphanime, or
wheels are covered in eyes and move in perfect synchrony with
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the four faced coyote or living creatures.
In Three Enoch 19, we're told that the angels closest to the
throne burned 7 times hotter than fire and are made of coals
of glowing judgment. They exist in such radiant
intensity that even the highest ranking angels beneath them
can't look directly at them. Only a few beings like Metatron,
(15:13):
who's this kind of exalted humanturned Angel in the ancient
literature, who is called the Prince of the Face, can stand so
close to the divine throne that they see God's face and survive.
And not every Angel can withstand the divine presence or
the divine face in two Enoch 22 When the patriarch Enoch is
(15:33):
brought before God, he's transformed into a being of fire
and glory just so he can stand in the presence of the face of
the Lord. This is the sort of metaphysical
rewiring that this figure in this ancient text has to go
through in order to be able to stand in God's presence, in
God's immediate presence. That's how dangerous God's
presence is even to heavenly beings.
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In Isaiah 6, the seraphim or literally burning ones cover
their faces with their wings because even they fiery as they
are, their their name literally means fiery ones can't look at
God directly. Their continuous cry holy holy
holy is not a it's not a lullaby.
It's an earthquake. When they speak, the thresholds
(16:18):
of the temple shake. So when Jesus says in Matthew
1810 that the angels of these little ones continually behold
the face of the Father in heaven, he's not talking about
harmless fluff balls fluttering around with Halos.
He's talking about beings who reside in the inner sanctum of
heaven, the elite, the face seers, the ones that lesser
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angels would burn up trying to approach.
And somehow, somehow, these are the ones watching over children
assigned to them, representing them, carrying their needs,
their cries, their dignity before the throne of God.
So of all the angels and all of that which was going on in the
heavenly world, there was still this belief that humans had this
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particular type of divine being that looked over them, that
followed them around in some way.
In the broader ancient Near East, across Mesopotamia, Egypt,
and even in the Greco Roman world, divine protectors were
everywhere. So for example, in Mesopotamian
belief, people were thought to have protective spirits called
(17:21):
lamasu or shehdu. These weren't just decoration on
palace walls, they were actual divine figures assigned to guard
individuals, to guard their homes and even cities.
Sometimes they were fierce bull like creatures with wings and a
human face. Other times they were individual
guardians meant to deflect curses and harms.
You'd pray to them, you'd invoketheir name, maybe even wear an
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amulet marked with their image. These beings were placed at city
gates, temples, and homes to ward off evil and protect sacred
places. So in a Syrian text, kings
invoked these lamassu as guardians not just of territory
but of their own person and household.
In Egypt, there were ka spirits,sort of a person's life force or
spiritual double, who remained attached to you even after your
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death. These weren't quite guardian
angels in a modern sense, but the idea that this divine part
of you or spiritual being accompanied and watched over you
was pretty widespread in Egypt. The line between gods and
messengers, between divine forces and protective presences
was a lying. It was pretty blurry in these
traditions, but the concept was was clearly there.
And again, I've talked about this in another book of mind
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gods and humans in the ancient Near East.
If you want more on that there. And then we step into the Greco
Roman world and we find daimonase, not demons in the
spooky horror movie. Since these were divine
intermediaries, they were guardian spirits and they were
assigned to a person at birth. Socrates even talked about his
daimonion, a sort of spiritual voice or presence that guided
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his conscience and warned him about times when he was heading
in the wrong direction. Plutarch described daimonas as
benevolent beings who stood between humans and the gods,
keeping watch and occasionally intervening in times of danger.
And remember, this isn't just this esoteric theology, it was
just assumed by everyone in the ancient world to be how the
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cosmos worked. So when Jesus talks about
children having their angels in heaven who always behold the
face of God, he's tapping into something that's both familiar
because everybody talked about it and thought about it and knew
about it. But it is also really radical
the way he takes it to a new level.
In the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, we find repeated
examples of angels acting as personal guides and protectors.
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In Exodus 2320, for instance, God promises Israel, I am
sending an Angel before you to guard you along the way and to
bring you to the place I have prepared.
The Hebrew word here, malak simply means messenger.
But it's clear that this angelicmessenger or being functions
more like a bodyguard or escort appointed by God to protect the
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vulnerable as they journey through dangerous territory.
And Jesus would have known aboutthese stories, and so would his
listeners. So would those sitting around at
this time. In fact, he would have grown up
hearing midrashic expansions andsynagogue discussions about the
roles and ranks of angels. By Jesus time, the Jewish world,
as we can see, had a really richly developed and layered
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hierarchy of angelic beings, from seraphim to cherubim to
ophanim to the watchers to the angels of the face and so forth.
And some were messengers, otherswarriors, some were deliverers
of visions and prophecy. And some, like these, we're
assigned as protectors of God's little ones.
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So let's slow down for a moment.Take a deep breath.
Because what Jesus says in Matthew 1810 is one of those
verses we tend to breathe past without realizing just what
Jesus is actually saying there. That it might actually be one of
the most remarkable statements he ever makes about what he
believes and about what it's like in the other world, the
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angelic world, the heavenly world.
It's truly incredible, and on the surface, it sounds like
something you'd find embroideredon a baby blanket or whispered
during a lullaby. Their angels always behold the
face of my Father in heaven. But if you've been listening to
this podcast for any length of time, you already know that
Jesus doesn't do sentimental fluff.
(21:22):
This isn't just a poetic flourish.
It's not something that he says that he expects his listeners to
tuck away in their hearts as a bit of encouragement, but that
really has no reality or teeth. It's not that.
Instead, it's a deeply loaded, theological, or we might say
Angela logical claim embedded ina campaign moment that tells us
as much about Jesus world view as any of his better known
(21:45):
parables. Let's look at the text Jesus
says again. We read it above.
See that you do not despise one of these little ones.
I tell you that their angels in heaven continually behold the
face of my Father who is in heaven.
Right away we have to recognize the placement.
Jesus isn't just making this comment out of nowhere.
It comes at the beginning of what we might call a community
(22:08):
discourse. It which is a long section in
Matthew where Jesus outlines thevalues and behaviors expected of
those who belong to his new society or what we've been
describing throughout the seriesas the Kingdom or empire of God,
the Makuta de Allah. This chapter, Matthew Matthew 18
in particular starts with a question that exposes the
disciples misunderstanding of the Kingdom altogether.
(22:30):
Who is the greatest. The question is asked in Matthew
18 one. So that question frames what
follows. It's sort of the thesis
statement and Jesus uses that asa teaching moment to reinforce
what we've been talking about all along that is in his empire,
his new society. It's those who truly need him,
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who are truly vulnerable, who are at the center.
We've talked about that in several episodes.
And in response, Jesus doesn't just lecture them, He doesn't
criticize him, He doesn't condemn them.
He looks around the crowds gathered around and he picks up
a child. And that moment, that act in
itself was absolutely subversive.
(23:11):
It was radical. It was countercultural.
Jesus picks up a child. So in the ancient world,
children, they were socially invisible in a lot of ways.
Economically, they were viewed as burdensome because they
didn't work. They just borrowed from the
system and they were legally powerless.
My wife and I, Andy, we joke about our own kids, whom we
(23:34):
absolutely adore, and they're absolutely incredible kids.
But we'll joke about how our teenage kids are unemployed,
can't feed themselves, can't drive anywhere, contribute
nothing financially to the household, and that we can't
wait for the day when they can actually take care of
themselves. And we're joking they're growing
up too fast. But in a lot of ways, that's how
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children were viewed in the ancient world.
It wasn't some calloused view ofkids necessarily.
That's not what I'm saying. But there was a social and
political conception of childrenas not being contributors to
society. So when the question arises,
who's the greatest in Matthew 18, one.
And Jesus picks up the child. He's doing what Jesus does.
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He's answering a question in an unexpected way and in a way that
completely upends traditional social and political and family
values. And yet Jesus doesn't just bless
the child or pray for the child.He puts the child in the middle
of the room and says, unless youbecome like this, you can't even
enter the Kingdom. And it's right after this that
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Jesus says, see that you do not despise one of these little
ones. So that word despise in
Matthew's Greek means more than just look down on, OK.
It means to dismiss, to devalue,to treat is insignificant.
Jesus is saying don't you dare overlook or disregard these
children because heaven doesn't literally.
(24:59):
Then he drops one of the most profound lines.
You'll hear him say their angelsin heaven continually see or
gaze upon the face of my Father.So let's look at that first.
Their angels, Hoi ongoloy Altonein Matthew's Creek.
This is personal language. Jesus doesn't say angels watch
over them. Angels watch over children.
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He says children have angels, plural, possessive.
OK, angels, these angels belong to them.
They are theirs. And this was a common belief in
many Jewish and Greco Roman traditions that certain
individuals or classes of peoplewere assigned heavenly
protectors. Jesus of course, takes it to a
whole new level, but we find this elsewhere.
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So in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament we get glimpses in
passages like Psalm 9111 for He will command his angels
concerning you. Annual 10, where different
nations appear to have angelic patrons or protectors, or in
Jewish mystical texts especiallyworks like 3 Enoch, where angels
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are often given charge over individuals or communities or
even souls. But Jesus adds something more
specific here that you really don't find anywhere else.
These angels, he says, continually behold the face of
my Father in heaven. This isn't just casual watching.
To see the face of God was in Jewish tradition the highest
possible honor and only available to those who could
(26:24):
literally physically withstand the incinerating glory that
emanated off of God's face. And also quite literally, if
this was a death sentence for unworthy or incapable beings.
Remember Moses in Exodus 33, he asked to see God's glory and God
says you can't see my face for no one can see me and live.
There are entire sets of texts and traditions that were written
(26:47):
by ancient Jewish Mystics and I've written about a lot of
these in in my book. I did my doctoral thesis over
this, but you find this widespread tradition based on
text like Exodus 33, about the incinerating and dangerous
nature of God's face. And you find in these texts,
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these ancient Jewish Mystics would go to great lengths to try
to figure out the formulas and the right words to say and the
right purity actions to take so that they could first get into
the heavenly realm so they couldascend or descend into the
heavenly realm where they could experience God.
But once they got there, they knew how dangerous it was going
to be. They knew they were going to see
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all of these different angels and all of these different
fiery, remarkable sights and sounds and scenes.
And so they would try to do whatever they could to prepare
themselves and transform themselves so that when they got
close to God, they wouldn't be burned up alive because they
understood that seeing God's face, or even just the closer
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you got to God, the more dangerous it was.
And so who was able to see God'sface?
That's the question. So in the ancient imagination,
only the holiest of angelic beings, only those who are
ontologically or metaphysically constructed, the stuff they were
actually made of, were able to stand or fly close enough to
(28:10):
God's face. Only they were able to dwell in
God's presence and look at him directly.
And these had a name. These were called the Malakai
Hapanim, the angels of the face.You find them in ancient Jewish
books like Jubilees One Enoch, Three Enoch, where they serve
not just as guardians but as emissaries of God's glory.
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In Isaiah 6, even the fiery seraphim cover their faces
before God because they're not worthy, nor are they
metaphysically durable enough towithstand the fiery appearance
of God's face. It's like you and me trying to
stare at the sun. It hurts our eyes and it can do
a lot of damage to your eyes. So please don't try it.
Just take my word for it. Same thing in ancient ideas
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about angelic beings in heaven. Only those who were created to
be able to withstand God's destructive facial glory could
do so. And the name they went by was
based on just that, their ability to look at God's face.
Hence their name, the angels of the face, Molokai Hapenim.
And it's here where Jesus says that these children's angels,
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they don't cover their faces. They look directly at God, the
angels to which Jesus refers in Matthew 1810, who see the face
of God, it's not just as poetic way of saying they're close to
God. These dudes are powerful.
They are the elite inner circle of angelic beings in heaven.
In Jubilees 2, one to two, we meet the Malachi Hapanim, the
(29:40):
angels of the Face who are appointed to stand in direct
worship before God, and they never leave the divine presence.
These aren't just errand runningmessengers, they're throne room
residents. Jubilees 127 goes even further,
saying that the angels of the Face shall watch over them,
meaning God's people. So these angels don't just
worship, they protect, they guide, They're heaven's most
elite, and they're assigned to guard in Jesus's mind, the
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little ones. And it keeps getting better.
In three, Enoch 171 of those exalted beings is named
outright. Metatron mentioned him above,
and he's also called the Prince of the Face.
There are some traditions that even call him the lesser Yahweh
because he was so powerful that some people in the ancient
world. And then some of these
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traditions get him confused withGod himself.
And I'm not saying that I agree with that view, but that is an
ancient view that you find in these ancient Jewish texts.
So it's really fascinating in Isaiah 6391 of these angels of
the face acts on God's behalf and he rescues and redeems the
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people in the Aramaic Targums, the Aramaic translations of the
Hebrew Bible. In Jesus world, Genesis 32, one
describes Jacob encountering theangels of the face directly, not
just generic heavenly figures. And Hycoloth Rabati describes
these angels as standing right next to God's throne, radiating
the light of the Shekinah, God'svery presence.
(31:08):
These angels are blazing with the glory of God himself.
And Jesus says that it is these who've been assigned not to
kings, not to generals, not evento the high priest, but to
children, to these little ones. So think about that for a
minute. Let it sink in.
The most powerful beings in heaven, those with unrestricted
access to the very presence of God, the very face of God, are
(31:31):
tasked with watching over children, not kings, not
priests, not the wealthy or wiseor righteous, but children, the
ones that society forgets, underestimates, excludes.
And it's interesting because we often think that in the heavenly
world, the evil influencers, right?
We talked about Satan or demons or things like that.
(31:52):
We'll, we'll discuss, kind of clarify some of that in a
separate episode. But we think that evil
influencers in the other world are probably doing their best to
derail those who are powerful leaders in our world,
influential people, people who matter socially, politically,
economically. And then on the other hand, the
most powerful good forces, right?
The most powerful angelic beingsin the heavenly world right now,
(32:14):
God has instructed to protect and go to bat for those powerful
and important people, right? We tend to think that way, but
Jesus actually says, Nope, it's not those who matter whom God
has chosen to protect with the most formidable celestial
beings. It's those society and politics
and the rest of the church and the rest of the world tend to
(32:34):
think, don't matter who have these angelic beings, these
angels of the face watching overthem.
This is Jesus's theology of cosmic priority.
The lowliest on earth are the highest in heaven.
We've talked about that throughout this series of
discussing Jesus, but here he really takes it to a whole new
level, a whole new cosmic level.And it's, it's worth noting that
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in Jesus Aramaic, the concept ofseeing the face isn't just
visual, it's relational in a lotof ways.
It's about standing in someone'sgood graces, having direct
access, being in intimate proximity.
So these angels aren't just divine babysitters, they're
actually cosmic advocates. They stand before God not just
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to observe, but to represent thechildren's needs, their hurts,
their prayers and cries, day andnight, continually without
ceasing, without taking time off.
And this flips the entire systemon its head.
And I saw a news video, a clip of a four year old child sitting
(33:39):
in a courtroom before a judge defending himself in a trial in
which he was being deported. And this is a four year old and
he couldn't speak English, not very much.
And so they put headphones on him so that he could have a
translator speaking into his earas the judge and as the
(33:59):
attorneys trying to deport this 4 year old child gave him his
sentencing and and asked him questions.
And I just, I had to sit back. That was just a couple of days
ago. I had to sit back and think, you
know, the kids alone, he's in court by himself, 4 year old.
That has to be the most terrifying experiences that a
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human could face at that age. And he's about to be removed
from the only country that he's ever known.
And I just could not help but topicture the reality of the
angelic forces surrounding that 4 year old child at this moment.
The angels of the face sat next to that boy in the courtroom
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with one foot on earth and 1 foot in the very presence of God
at this moment. And they're going to defend him
and they're going to avenge him no matter what happens to him in
this life. That's what Jesus is addressing
right there. These angels aren't just divine
(35:04):
babysitters. They are cosmic advocates.
They stand within God's immediate presence before his
face. And they represent the
children's needs, their hurts, their prayers, their cries, day
and night, continually without ceasing, without taking time
off. Including that boy who couldn't
speak English, who was being deported and being read his
sentence in a courtroom in New York in a language he didn't
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understand. What Jesus says here flips the
entire system on its head. In most ancient hierarchies,
whether Jewish, Greco and Roman,you name it, including ours
today, access to the divine was limited, restricted, guarded.
We saw this when we discussed the temple incident in John two
in a previous episode. And yet here's Jesus saying, you
(35:49):
see this kid right here? You see the kid sitting in the
courtroom right now defending himself.
His angels have better access toGod than the highest of priests
or the most powerful or influential leader has.
And that's staggering. That was staggering in Jesus's
day, and it should be for us today.
And it's all part of Jesus's larger mission to declare and
(36:10):
embody a Kingdom that reorders reality from the bottom up.
In the Sermon on the Mount, in the Sermon on the Plain that
we've been discussing, He blesses the poor, the morning,
the meek in Matthew 19, shortly after this account in Matthew
18, Jesus says, let the little children come to me, for the
Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
And here in Matthew 18, he basically says if you're
(36:30):
despising children, if you're ignoring the vulnerable,
marginalizing the lowly, you're despising the ones heaven honors
most. But more than that, you're
getting yourself into a sticky situation with some kids whose
celestial bodyguards are subservient to no one in all of
heaven but God himself. So think about it like this.
If all of the angels in heaven had an Ultimate Fighting
(36:52):
Championship, just knock down, drag out, fight to the death,
the angels of the face would easily and handily destroy them
all. And those are the angelic beings
Jesus is talking about here who defend and represent and stand
before God on behalf of that four year old kid who didn't
speak English but didn't have the right citizenship, sitting
(37:15):
in that courtroom in New York. And so while we may not know the
full metaphysics of guardian angels, how they operate,
whether they intervene physically or invisibly, Jesus
clearly believes in them. And he makes a very clear
statement about who they are andwhom they represent.
And not only that, he roots their entire role in a cosmic
(37:37):
system where the powerless are seen, known, and fiercely
protected by the most powerful beings in heaven, just below God
himself. So the next time you or I think
about what heaven values, or wonder what Jesus's campaign
platform really looks like that we've been talking about all
along, remember this. It starts with a child, a
warning not to despise them, in a reminder that their guardians
(38:01):
are not to be trifled with. And that is just the beginning.
When we take all of this contextinto account and we go back and
we read Matthew 1810, it truly is astonishing.
He says that the angels of the little ones behold the face of
God continually. They are the ones standing in
the throne room before the blazing, unfiltered presence of
(38:23):
God. And they are assigned to
children. They are assigned to the
overlooked. And we've got to keep in mind
this isn't just sentimental spirituality.
This is cosmic politics in the divine court where rank and
proximity matter. Jesus says the bottom of the
earthly ladder is guarded by thetop of the heavenly hierarchy.
(38:43):
And in that context, Jesus's statement hits even harder
because he's not just making a pious theological claim.
It's hard to overstate how revolutionary this is.
As we've we've talked about, ancient religions often reserved
divine access for the high born.Temples were off limits to the
unclean. Mysteries were kept behind
veils. Prophets were seers, Kings had
(39:05):
oracles. But Jesus declares that heaven's
inner circle is peopled by guardians assigned to children,
the least powerful members of society.
This is the inversion of ancientreligion, and it's inversion of
our own democracy and our own views of how power and privilege
operate. And let's not miss this.
Jesus isn't just saying this in private.
(39:27):
He's in the middle of a public teaching about greatness in the
Kingdom that we find kicked off with the question, who is the
greatest in Matthew 18? One.
And Jesus responds by calling over the child and says, unless
you change and become like this,you won't even get in.
And then as if to make it crystal clear, he adds, don't
despise one of these little onesfor their angels.
(39:47):
See the face of my father. And this isn't a metaphor, it's
a statement that needs to be heeded.
And it means that anytime we disregard, diminish, or dismiss
those the world calls less than,we're not just hurting them for
violating the order of heaven. Because in Jesus Kingdom, his
empire, the guardians of the least are the greatest in glory,
(40:09):
the protectors of the poor sit in the presence of God.
And the children we so easily overlook, they are literally the
VI PS in the divine court. This isn't just a theology of
angels either. It's a theology of work.
And this flips the whole social map upside down.
As we mentioned, children weren't viewed in this
romanticized sense. So when Jesus applies the
(40:30):
language of the angels of the face who belong to these
children, he's not just saying kids are important.
He's saying the divine order of heaven revolves around
protecting the humble like these.
And there's something really beautiful and human in that, I
think. I mean, think about it, every
generation, every culture has told stories to children about
guardian spirits, right? Maybe to soothe their fears,
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maybe because we as adults need to believe someone's watching
over them when we can't. But Jesus doesn't offer this as
a bedtime story or a soft comfort.
He makes it a theological claim,an imperial claim.
These are heavens, top tier angels, and they're on
assignment to the lowest ranked people in your world.
So treat them accordingly. It's as if Jesus is saying you
(41:14):
may not see who's watching, but heaven does.
And not just watching you, but watching them.
Those you're tempted to overlook, belittle, or treat as
insignificant. Which means, in Jesus's view, a
child with no education, no wealth, no political clout, with
no representative in court before a judge who speaks a
different language, who might not have the backing of Caesar
(41:37):
himself. That child has the backing of
the most powerful being in all of heaven, just below God
himself. And here's where it gets even
more astounding. These angels don't just stand in
heaven because they're impressive on their own.
They're there because someone sent them.
Someone authorized them. Someone commands them.
That someone is Jesus. This isn't always emphasized,
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but it should be. Jesus isn't just making an
observation about angelology here, He's hinting at something
much deeper about himself. These angels, the elite powerful
face gazers, are under his own command.
They answer to Him, they serve at his word.
And we get a glimpse of this later in the Gospel in Matthew
2653, when Jesus is being arrested in the Garden of
(42:20):
Gethsemane. Peter pulls out his sword,
trying to defend him. Jesus says put it back, put your
sword away. Do you think I cannot call on my
Father? And he will at once put at my
disposal more than 12 legions ofangels.
I pause. There a legion was a Roman
military unit, about 5-6 thousand soldiers. 12 legions
would have been over 70,000 angels.
(42:40):
Not these sweetheart players, warriors, messengers, cosmic
agents. And I'm not saying that Jesus
meant these numbers to be literally, but what I am saying
is that he is saying if I wantedto, I could unleash a flood of
divine power that would reshape the earth.
But I'm not going to because that's not the will of God.
(43:01):
And he doesn't. Not because he's weak, but
because his mission is stronger than that type of violence.
So when Jesus talks about these angels assigned to children
continually gazing on God's face, he's not just giving us a
hallmark moment about spiritual protection.
He's showing us that Heaven's fiercest loyalty is aimed toward
the most vulnerable on earth, and it's his authority that
(43:23):
makes it happen. It means that the kids in our
lives, the ones we see as fragile or ordinary or chaotic
or small, they're not alone. They're guarded.
They are known, and not by background angels on the B team,
but by heaven's elite. And those angels?
They report directly to Jesus's Father, which means their
authority flows through Jesus himself.
(43:45):
And if that's true of children, what might it mean for the other
little ones? Because Jesus doesn't always
mean children. When he says these little ones
in Matthew 1042 and other places, he use the same language
to refer to those who are vulnerable, low in status,
dependent, marginalized, picked on, outcasted, shunned, shamed.
(44:06):
The ones who show up but don't get the mic, could it be, and I
don't know, but could it be thatthey too have their angels,
their own face gazing angels assigned to them and that Jesus
is saying, and they matter to meand anyone who looks down on
them will answer not just to me,but to the entire court of
heaven. Whatever Jesus means by this
specifically, it's truly breathtaking to see the reversal
(44:29):
of how power usually works in Rome.
Just as in most empires, divine protection is for emperors, for
kings, for warriors, for the powerful.
We think of it today, the president and former presidents
and and top officials at the highest level of the US
government get Secret Service. They get these elite Protective
Services assigned just to them. But in Jesus world, divine
(44:54):
protection is reserved not for those powerful, not for the
important, not for the wealthy, not for the noticed, but to the
ones that the world passes by. These are the ones who get the
heavenly Secret Service, heavenly throne room security
detail. And just imagine that for a
second. Imagine what that says about
your worth in the eyes of God, not based on your resume, your
(45:16):
strength, your credentials, yoursuccess, your wealth, your
power, your fame, but based on the factory, the fact that you
belong to Jesus, that you are loved by Him, that you are one
of his little ones. You might be exhausted, you
might feel like a mess. You might feel like you've been
crawling through life just trying to keep up.
But Jesus says be careful how you treat the ones the world
(45:38):
calls small, because I've assigned heaven's fiercest to
them. So what do we do with all that?
I don't know entirely, to be honest, and I know that we need
to slow down. We need to look again.
We need to stop ourselves when we're tempted to overlook, to
dismiss or to rush past the least of these.
(45:59):
Whether that's a child in our own circle.
Whether that's that child, that 4 year old, sitting in the court
facing a judge with no representation, who can't speak
the language and who doesn't know what's going on but is
being told he's being moved to adifferent country than the one
he's known. A frazzled parent, a tired
stranger, the man or the woman pushing a shopping cart on the
(46:21):
side of the street. I don't know.
But maybe we need to stop and look again at them.
Because if they have an Angel assigned to them who exists and
lives in the throne room of God,maybe we should pay more
attention. And maybe, just maybe, there are
days when you yourself are in such a small place in life, in
such a low pit, that you 2 are assigned one of these angels of
(46:45):
the face. Because in Jesus Kingdom, even
the smallest and the lowliest and the most hurting of persons
is assigned to the greatest honor, the most powerful
protection, and the closest proximity to God.
That's not just a comfort, that's cosmic.
And on those days when you feel like you're in the pit and where
nothing is going right, where the world is against you, where
death is creeping up on you and just wrecking your life and
(47:09):
chaos has thrust your entire world into disorder.
I think we could safely say thatit's on those days most of all,
on those days when you are not alone.
When you are being surrounded and protected and represented in
the very courts of heaven by themost powerful and most fierce
and most terrifying representatives of God himself,
(47:32):
the angels of the face. So if this episode stirred
something in you, if it's challenged you, encouraged you,
caused you to think about something afresh, stick with me.
We're just getting started. This is what the Bible actually
says. And this is the Jesus who sees
the unseen, who commands the angels and still calls children
the greatest in the Kingdom. This is a gospel that lifts,
(47:56):
texts and surprises us again andagain.
And I think it's worth everything.
So share this with someone who needs it, someone who's felt
overlooked, someone raising kidsor whose child or children might
be undergoing some challenges. Someone who wonders if heaven
notices the little one. Jesus says you're not only seen,
(48:16):
but you're guarded by heaven's elite.
And hey, if you want to check out more than we're able to
cover in these episodes, go and check out my new book.
Volume 1. Jesus, the Strategic Life and
Mission of the Messiah and His Movement comes out May 30th.
They call Publishing Company andis packed with everything we've
been talking about here plus a whole lot more.
(48:37):
I head the Bible actually says.com to learn more or the
publishers website heycall.co orAmazon May 30th grab your copy.
Thanks for sticking around and as always, Lake will mod.
Go and learn and I'll see you next time on what the Bible
actually says.
What's up everybody, Welcome to the What the Bible Actually Says
podcast. I'm your host, Tyson Puthoff,
and I'm glad to have you here today.
If this is your first time listening, Bao Kaba, welcome to
the show. If you're a regular listener,
Bokim Hashveim, welcome back. So before we dive in, as always,
don't forget to subscribe on your favorite platform so you
(00:37):
don't ever miss an episode and head over to
bibleactuallysays.com. Check out what we have going on,
what's coming up next. If you've been enjoying the
show, I'd love it if you'd leaveus a rating.
Share it with someone who's ready to go deeper in their
study of the Bible. Also, an incredibly exciting
announcement today. I want to let you know that my
(00:58):
my new book, Jesus, the Strategic Life and Mission of
the Messiah and His Movement, Volume 1 drops this week on May
30th. It's volume one of a three
volume series published with a call publishing company and it
is the perfect companion to thispodcast.
It's going to take you deeper than what we're able to do in
(01:20):
this podcast in a lot of ways. And it's also essentially a
guide book to take you from Jesus's birth to his death and
resurrection and ascension in chronological order.
It's going to unpack a lot of texts in the Gospels that are
tricky, just like we're trying to do here.
But it will, I think, give you awhole new sense of understanding
(01:42):
of who Jesus was and is and a lot of clarity on what it means
to follow him in a world in which, honestly, there's just a
lot of bad information and bad takes on Jesus and who he is and
what he wants of us. So check it out.
May 30th, Jesus Volume 1. Go to bibleactuallysays.com or
you can go to heycall.co that's HEKHA l.co or you can find it on
(02:06):
Amazon. Ebook is up for pre-order right
now. Print copy will be available on
May 30th to mark your calendars again, Volume 1 of Jesus cannot
wait for this book to drop. So in this episode we're
shifting gears. Over the past several episodes,
we've been deep in the weeds of Jesus's teachings on society,
(02:29):
economics, politics, and sort ofthe real world systems he came
to challenge and transform. We've explored what it means to
live out the values of his Kingdom here and now in bodies
and budgets and broken systems. And I'll be the first one to say
that it's been a bit heavy. It's been intense.
It's just been tough for me to study.
And it's, I know, been tough andconvicting and challenging and
(02:51):
confusing to listen to. And that's a lot of times what
Jesus does. He came to confront a really
messed up world. And in confronting a messed up
world, he had to be a little bittough and intense at times.
And so again, I understand it's been, it's been deep and it's
been heavy. I know that it's been that way
for you and for me in my study and in recording these episodes.
(03:14):
It's been a challenge. But today we're stepping back to
look at something a little bit different.
So we're zooming out from the social and stepping into the
cosmic. Because Jesus didn't just talk
about human systems. He spoke sometimes subtly and
sometimes explicit and shockingly, about the unseen
realm, the divine systems, aboutangelic beings, about heaven's
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hierarchy, about the mysterious forces that operate in the
heavenly world that runs parallel to our own visible
world right now, and about the entities that guard and guide
and gaze upon the face of God himself.
And here in this episode, we're going to start right there with
1 quiet line from Jesus in Matthew 1810 that cracks the
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heavens open. So grab your Bible and check out
Matthew 18. And I think that you're going to
like what we have to talk about today in this show.
Most of us have heard the phraseguardian Angel.
And many of us, even if we're not sure we believe in them,
have at least once hoped they'rereal.
I think maybe it was when you just narrowly avoided a car
(04:19):
accident, or when your child wandered too close to danger and
came came away unscathed. Or maybe it's just the idea that
someone is always watching over you and gives you a little bit
of support when things feel uncertain.
The idea of a personal protectorfrom heaven has become part of
how we think about faith, especially in popular Christian
(04:39):
culture, I think. And the images that come to
mind, though, are often quite far from biblical images of
these figures. We picture robed figures with
soft wings, Halos hovering overhead, gently leading
children across rickety bridges.Those come more from greeting
cards and cartoons, from precious Moments marketing than
(05:02):
they do from Scripture. And while they can be sweet,
they don't really match what ancient people, especially in
Jesus time, thought angels were like.
But here's what's surprising, Jesus doesn't just roll his eyes
at the idea of personal, protective angelic beings.
He might roll his eyes at that image that a lot of us have, but
not at the idea in general. And in fact, in Matthew 1810, he
(05:25):
not only affirms their existence, but he gives them a
starring role in one of the mostpowerful teachings that he gives
us in the Gospels. And here's what he says.
Matthew 1810. See that you do not despise one
of these little ones, for I tellyou that they're angels in
heaven. Always gaze upon the face of my
Father who is in heaven. OK, I want to read it again.
(05:46):
See that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I tell
you that their angels in heaven always gaze upon the face of my
Father who is in heaven. So that's a huge statement.
Not only do children or little ones have angels assigned to
them or that belong to them, butthose angels are in constant,
direct, visionary contact with God.
(06:09):
OK? And they're not just present in
the heavenly world. Jesus says they gaze upon the
face of God continually. As we'll see shortly, in the
ancient world, that kind of language was reserved only for
the most powerful and privilegedbeings in the heavenly
hierarchy. So here's the deal.
This verse isn't just a sweet idea, it's a door into one of
(06:29):
the most mysterious and majesticconcepts in ancient Jewish
tradition, what we call the angels of the face, Malakai
Hapanim. So in this episode, we're going
to explore Jesus statements about children and the angels
that belong to them or are assigned to them within the
broader historical context. We're going to try to understand
where this idea came from, what it meant in Jesus world, and
(06:52):
what it might mean for us today.We're going to unpack the
language, take a look at ancienttexts and traditions, and try to
recapture just how astonishing it is that Jesus would say
something like this. So just as always, we first have
to do our best to understand both the text itself, right?
We've got to look at what the words actually are in Scripture.
(07:13):
Then we have to understand the historical context within which
this text in Jesus statement originally emerged.
Only then, only when we understand text and historical
context, can we get into issues and questions that have to do
with what this means for us today.
So let's zoom out for a minute, because while Matthew 1810 may
(07:37):
seem like a small, isolated verse, it's actually part of a
much bigger picture, a sprawling, dazzling world of
heavenly beings, cultural beliefs, and divine hierarchies
that stretched across ancient Jewish imagination, Greco, Roman
philosophy, and even far earlierancient Near Eastern and
Mesopotamian traditions. And the idea that divine beings
(07:59):
guard the vulnerable wasn't unique to Jesus or the early
Christians or to Hallmark or precious moments either.
It was part of a broader world view in which the cosmos was
alive with beings, spirits, angels, otherworldly beings
assigned to protect, accompany or watch over human lives.
And there are a few things we need to understand at this point
(08:19):
in order to sort of really startto understand the the magnitude
of what Jesus is saying here. So the first thing we need to
understand then angelic figures in the ancient world, in Jesus
world, were not what we often envision them to be.
So let's pause here for a second.
Because when Jesus talks about angels, he doesn't mean the
chubby, smiling cherubs from Renaissance paintings or from
(08:39):
precious moments in the Bible. Angels are anything but cuddly
when they show up. People literally drop to the
ground in fear in Judges 13 as Addie.
My daughter pointed this out to me this morning on our way to
school. When Samson's parents realize
they've been speaking to the Angel of the Lord, Manoah says
we are doomed to die, We've seenGod.
(09:02):
Joseph 1322. In Daniel 10, when the prophet
encounters an angelic being described with lightning eyes
and a voice like a multitude, hesays no strength remained in me
and I fell into a deep sleep with my face to the ground.
Daniel 10. Even in the New Testament, the
shepherds are terrified when theAngel appears to announce
Jesus's birth in Luke 2, in the guards at Jesus's tomb, these
(09:26):
Roman guards shook and became like dead men when they saw the
Angel in Matthew 28. These aren't soft messengers.
They're cosmic enforcers, glorious, radiant, sometimes
barely distinguishable from God himself.
And in literature from the time of Jesus, especially in one
Enoch and three Enoch, angels are beings of blazing fire and
(09:46):
unimaginable power, sometimes with multiple faces, wheels
within wheels, or eyes covering their bodies.
So when Jesus says that the little ones have those beings
watching over them, beings who always see the face of my Father
in heaven, he's not offering spiritual fluff.
He's making a claim about a realcosmic level protection.
The second thing we need to understand is how the ancients
(10:08):
envisioned the angelic economy, and I'm not talking about
dollars and cents here, type of economy.
I mean, the structure in the hierarchy, in the inner workings
of the spiritual realm, which toancient minds was just as
organized and populated and complex as our own world, right?
It was just on the other side ofthat veil.
(10:29):
And the physics of the heavenly world was way different than
ours, where you could have fire residing with ice and where you
could have rivers of fire. Everything was fire.
It was super incredibly dangerous place.
It wasn't clouds floating around.
It was, it was an incredibly dangerous place in ancient
descriptions. And these heavens were alive
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with these angelic beings. Not just a few winged choir
singers floating on clouds, but entire hosts or armies,
councils, courtrooms filled withterrifying, radiant and powerful
angelic creatures, each with different jobs, personalities,
temperaments, and even differentkinds of metaphysical makeup.
They were just made of differentstuff from each other.
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So let's start with the roles ofthese angelic beings.
Ancient texts describe angels asmessengers.
OK, The Hebrew is malach, the Greek angelos, which is kind of
their most basic function. That's kind of the name that we
know them all by. But that is really just the
beginning. Some angels were guardians
posted at cosmic boundaries, like the flaming sword bearing
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cherubim who blocked the way to Eden in Genesis 324.
Others were warriors, part of Yahweh's heavenly host, ready to
strike down armies, kind of likethe Angel in Second Kings 1935
who wipes out 185,000 Assyrians in one night.
Talk about powerful. Some served as scribes, like the
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Angel in Three Enoch who writes down the deeds of humanity.
Others were intercessors delivering prayers to God, as
seen in Tobit 12, where the Angel Raphael says I brought
your prayer before the Holy One.And then there are the
gatekeepers in Hiccoloth Rabati.Again, I talk about all of these
in my book Ontological Aspects of Early Jewish Anthropology.
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It's a scholarly book, but it's still got a lot of fascinating
stuff in it to do with these angels and their relationship to
God and to humans. So in Hiccoloth Rabati, part of
this ancient Jewish mystical literature, we get a really
detailed description of the seven heavenly palaces, or
Hecoloth in Hebrew, Hecal being temple, and each is guarded by
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angels so terrifying that even the righteous soul ascending
through visions needs passwords or divine names to get past
them. If you don't know the passwords,
you're incinerated on the spot. You're just destroyed.
It's painful, it's terrifying, and it's inevitable if you don't
have the right password, becauseyou have to be worthy and you
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have to be transformed to a certain level if you want to get
any closer to God. And so these angelic guardians
of the gates made sure that onlythose who are worthy and only
those who were capable of withstanding God's presence
could get through these gates closer and closer to God.
But here's where it gets really wild.
Not all angels have the same attitude or temperament either.
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Just like the roles differ, so do the dispositions of these
angels. The messengers are usually calm
and composed. They're designed for delivering
words from the divine. But the enforcers?
They're different. These are the fiery hot tempered
destroyer types. Think of the Angel of Death in
Exodus 12, who sweeps through Egypt to strike down the first
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born. Or Abadan in Revelation 9, the
Angel of the Abyss, whose very name actually means destruction.
In Section Samuel 24, it's an Angel who stretches out his hand
to destroy Jerusalem, and only adivine intervention stops him.
In one Enoch 10, the Archangel Uriel is the one who binds the
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fallen angels under the earth toawait judgment.
These angels aren't just radiant, they're dangerous.
They carry divine wrath like a weapon.
And the ancients believe that angels didn't just have
different jobs and personalities, they had
different metaphysical constitutions.
The stuff that they were actually made of differed from
one type of Angel to another type of Angel.
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Some were made of light, some offire, some of wind.
In the mystical Merkava literature, especially 3 Enoch
and Hiccolo Zutarti, some angelsare said to be formed from
rivers of flame, others were made from snow, others from
lightning. Some angels have hundreds of
eyes and multiple faces. In Ezekiel 1, the Orphanime, or
wheels are covered in eyes and move in perfect synchrony with
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the four faced coyote or living creatures.
In Three Enoch 19, we're told that the angels closest to the
throne burned 7 times hotter than fire and are made of coals
of glowing judgment. They exist in such radiant
intensity that even the highest ranking angels beneath them
can't look directly at them. Only a few beings like Metatron,
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who's this kind of exalted humanturned Angel in the ancient
literature, who is called the Prince of the Face, can stand so
close to the divine throne that they see God's face and survive.
And not every Angel can withstand the divine presence or
the divine face in two Enoch 22 When the patriarch Enoch is
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brought before God, he's transformed into a being of fire
and glory just so he can stand in the presence of the face of
the Lord. This is the sort of metaphysical
rewiring that this figure in this ancient text has to go
through in order to be able to stand in God's presence, in
God's immediate presence. That's how dangerous God's
presence is even to heavenly beings.
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In Isaiah 6, the seraphim or literally burning ones cover
their faces with their wings because even they fiery as they
are, their their name literally means fiery ones can't look at
God directly. Their continuous cry holy holy
holy is not a it's not a lullaby.
It's an earthquake. When they speak, the thresholds
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of the temple shake. So when Jesus says in Matthew
1810 that the angels of these little ones continually behold
the face of the Father in heaven, he's not talking about
harmless fluff balls fluttering around with Halos.
He's talking about beings who reside in the inner sanctum of
heaven, the elite, the face seers, the ones that lesser
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angels would burn up trying to approach.
And somehow, somehow, these are the ones watching over children
assigned to them, representing them, carrying their needs,
their cries, their dignity before the throne of God.
So of all the angels and all of that which was going on in the
heavenly world, there was still this belief that humans had this
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particular type of divine being that looked over them, that
followed them around in some way.
In the broader ancient Near East, across Mesopotamia, Egypt,
and even in the Greco Roman world, divine protectors were
everywhere. So for example, in Mesopotamian
belief, people were thought to have protective spirits called
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lamasu or shehdu. These weren't just decoration on
palace walls, they were actual divine figures assigned to guard
individuals, to guard their homes and even cities.
Sometimes they were fierce bull like creatures with wings and a
human face. Other times they were individual
guardians meant to deflect curses and harms.
You'd pray to them, you'd invoketheir name, maybe even wear an
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amulet marked with their image. These beings were placed at city
gates, temples, and homes to ward off evil and protect sacred
places. So in a Syrian text, kings
invoked these lamassu as guardians not just of territory
but of their own person and household.
In Egypt, there were ka spirits,sort of a person's life force or
spiritual double, who remained attached to you even after your
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death. These weren't quite guardian
angels in a modern sense, but the idea that this divine part
of you or spiritual being accompanied and watched over you
was pretty widespread in Egypt. The line between gods and
messengers, between divine forces and protective presences
was a lying. It was pretty blurry in these
traditions, but the concept was was clearly there.
And again, I've talked about this in another book of mind
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gods and humans in the ancient Near East.
If you want more on that there. And then we step into the Greco
Roman world and we find daimonase, not demons in the
spooky horror movie. Since these were divine
intermediaries, they were guardian spirits and they were
assigned to a person at birth. Socrates even talked about his
daimonion, a sort of spiritual voice or presence that guided
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his conscience and warned him about times when he was heading
in the wrong direction. Plutarch described daimonas as
benevolent beings who stood between humans and the gods,
keeping watch and occasionally intervening in times of danger.
And remember, this isn't just this esoteric theology, it was
just assumed by everyone in the ancient world to be how the
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cosmos worked. So when Jesus talks about
children having their angels in heaven who always behold the
face of God, he's tapping into something that's both familiar
because everybody talked about it and thought about it and knew
about it. But it is also really radical
the way he takes it to a new level.
In the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, we find repeated
examples of angels acting as personal guides and protectors.
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In Exodus 2320, for instance, God promises Israel, I am
sending an Angel before you to guard you along the way and to
bring you to the place I have prepared.
The Hebrew word here, malak simply means messenger.
But it's clear that this angelicmessenger or being functions
more like a bodyguard or escort appointed by God to protect the
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vulnerable as they journey through dangerous territory.
And Jesus would have known aboutthese stories, and so would his
listeners. So would those sitting around at
this time. In fact, he would have grown up
hearing midrashic expansions andsynagogue discussions about the
roles and ranks of angels. By Jesus time, the Jewish world,
as we can see, had a really richly developed and layered
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hierarchy of angelic beings, from seraphim to cherubim to
ophanim to the watchers to the angels of the face and so forth.
And some were messengers, otherswarriors, some were deliverers
of visions and prophecy. And some, like these, we're
assigned as protectors of God's little ones.
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So let's slow down for a moment.Take a deep breath.
Because what Jesus says in Matthew 1810 is one of those
verses we tend to breathe past without realizing just what
Jesus is actually saying there. That it might actually be one of
the most remarkable statements he ever makes about what he
believes and about what it's like in the other world, the
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angelic world, the heavenly world.
It's truly incredible, and on the surface, it sounds like
something you'd find embroideredon a baby blanket or whispered
during a lullaby. Their angels always behold the
face of my Father in heaven. But if you've been listening to
this podcast for any length of time, you already know that
Jesus doesn't do sentimental fluff.
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This isn't just a poetic flourish.
It's not something that he says that he expects his listeners to
tuck away in their hearts as a bit of encouragement, but that
really has no reality or teeth. It's not that.
Instead, it's a deeply loaded, theological, or we might say
Angela logical claim embedded ina campaign moment that tells us
as much about Jesus world view as any of his better known
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parables. Let's look at the text Jesus
says again. We read it above.
See that you do not despise one of these little ones.
I tell you that their angels in heaven continually behold the
face of my Father who is in heaven.
Right away we have to recognize the placement.
Jesus isn't just making this comment out of nowhere.
It comes at the beginning of what we might call a community
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discourse. It which is a long section in
Matthew where Jesus outlines thevalues and behaviors expected of
those who belong to his new society or what we've been
describing throughout the seriesas the Kingdom or empire of God,
the Makuta de Allah. This chapter, Matthew Matthew 18
in particular starts with a question that exposes the
disciples misunderstanding of the Kingdom altogether.
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Who is the greatest. The question is asked in Matthew
18 one. So that question frames what
follows. It's sort of the thesis
statement and Jesus uses that asa teaching moment to reinforce
what we've been talking about all along that is in his empire,
his new society. It's those who truly need him,
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who are truly vulnerable, who are at the center.
We've talked about that in several episodes.
And in response, Jesus doesn't just lecture them, He doesn't
criticize him, He doesn't condemn them.
He looks around the crowds gathered around and he picks up
a child. And that moment, that act in
itself was absolutely subversive.
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It was radical. It was countercultural.
Jesus picks up a child. So in the ancient world,
children, they were socially invisible in a lot of ways.
Economically, they were viewed as burdensome because they
didn't work. They just borrowed from the
system and they were legally powerless.
My wife and I, Andy, we joke about our own kids, whom we
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absolutely adore, and they're absolutely incredible kids.
But we'll joke about how our teenage kids are unemployed,
can't feed themselves, can't drive anywhere, contribute
nothing financially to the household, and that we can't
wait for the day when they can actually take care of
themselves. And we're joking they're growing
up too fast. But in a lot of ways, that's how
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children were viewed in the ancient world.
It wasn't some calloused view ofkids necessarily.
That's not what I'm saying. But there was a social and
political conception of childrenas not being contributors to
society. So when the question arises,
who's the greatest in Matthew 18, one.
And Jesus picks up the child. He's doing what Jesus does.
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He's answering a question in an unexpected way and in a way that
completely upends traditional social and political and family
values. And yet Jesus doesn't just bless
the child or pray for the child.He puts the child in the middle
of the room and says, unless youbecome like this, you can't even
enter the Kingdom. And it's right after this that
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Jesus says, see that you do not despise one of these little
ones. So that word despise in
Matthew's Greek means more than just look down on, OK.
It means to dismiss, to devalue,to treat is insignificant.
Jesus is saying don't you dare overlook or disregard these
children because heaven doesn't literally.
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Then he drops one of the most profound lines.
You'll hear him say their angelsin heaven continually see or
gaze upon the face of my Father.So let's look at that first.
Their angels, Hoi ongoloy Altonein Matthew's Creek.
This is personal language. Jesus doesn't say angels watch
over them. Angels watch over children.
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He says children have angels, plural, possessive.
OK, angels, these angels belong to them.
They are theirs. And this was a common belief in
many Jewish and Greco Roman traditions that certain
individuals or classes of peoplewere assigned heavenly
protectors. Jesus of course, takes it to a
whole new level, but we find this elsewhere.
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So in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament we get glimpses in
passages like Psalm 9111 for He will command his angels
concerning you. Annual 10, where different
nations appear to have angelic patrons or protectors, or in
Jewish mystical texts especiallyworks like 3 Enoch, where angels
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are often given charge over individuals or communities or
even souls. But Jesus adds something more
specific here that you really don't find anywhere else.
These angels, he says, continually behold the face of
my Father in heaven. This isn't just casual watching.
To see the face of God was in Jewish tradition the highest
possible honor and only available to those who could
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literally physically withstand the incinerating glory that
emanated off of God's face. And also quite literally, if
this was a death sentence for unworthy or incapable beings.
Remember Moses in Exodus 33, he asked to see God's glory and God
says you can't see my face for no one can see me and live.
There are entire sets of texts and traditions that were written
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by ancient Jewish Mystics and I've written about a lot of
these in in my book. I did my doctoral thesis over
this, but you find this widespread tradition based on
text like Exodus 33, about the incinerating and dangerous
nature of God's face. And you find in these texts,
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these ancient Jewish Mystics would go to great lengths to try
to figure out the formulas and the right words to say and the
right purity actions to take so that they could first get into
the heavenly realm so they couldascend or descend into the
heavenly realm where they could experience God.
But once they got there, they knew how dangerous it was going
to be. They knew they were going to see
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all of these different angels and all of these different
fiery, remarkable sights and sounds and scenes.
And so they would try to do whatever they could to prepare
themselves and transform themselves so that when they got
close to God, they wouldn't be burned up alive because they
understood that seeing God's face, or even just the closer
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you got to God, the more dangerous it was.
And so who was able to see God'sface?
That's the question. So in the ancient imagination,
only the holiest of angelic beings, only those who are
ontologically or metaphysically constructed, the stuff they were
actually made of, were able to stand or fly close enough to
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God's face. Only they were able to dwell in
God's presence and look at him directly.
And these had a name. These were called the Malakai
Hapanim, the angels of the face.You find them in ancient Jewish
books like Jubilees One Enoch, Three Enoch, where they serve
not just as guardians but as emissaries of God's glory.
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In Isaiah 6, even the fiery seraphim cover their faces
before God because they're not worthy, nor are they
metaphysically durable enough towithstand the fiery appearance
of God's face. It's like you and me trying to
stare at the sun. It hurts our eyes and it can do
a lot of damage to your eyes. So please don't try it.
Just take my word for it. Same thing in ancient ideas
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about angelic beings in heaven. Only those who were created to
be able to withstand God's destructive facial glory could
do so. And the name they went by was
based on just that, their ability to look at God's face.
Hence their name, the angels of the face, Molokai Hapenim.
And it's here where Jesus says that these children's angels,
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they don't cover their faces. They look directly at God, the
angels to which Jesus refers in Matthew 1810, who see the face
of God, it's not just as poetic way of saying they're close to
God. These dudes are powerful.
They are the elite inner circle of angelic beings in heaven.
In Jubilees 2, one to two, we meet the Malachi Hapanim, the
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angels of the Face who are appointed to stand in direct
worship before God, and they never leave the divine presence.
These aren't just errand runningmessengers, they're throne room
residents. Jubilees 127 goes even further,
saying that the angels of the Face shall watch over them,
meaning God's people. So these angels don't just
worship, they protect, they guide, They're heaven's most
elite, and they're assigned to guard in Jesus's mind, the
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little ones. And it keeps getting better.
In three, Enoch 171 of those exalted beings is named
outright. Metatron mentioned him above,
and he's also called the Prince of the Face.
There are some traditions that even call him the lesser Yahweh
because he was so powerful that some people in the ancient
world. And then some of these
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traditions get him confused withGod himself.
And I'm not saying that I agree with that view, but that is an
ancient view that you find in these ancient Jewish texts.
So it's really fascinating in Isaiah 6391 of these angels of
the face acts on God's behalf and he rescues and redeems the
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people in the Aramaic Targums, the Aramaic translations of the
Hebrew Bible. In Jesus world, Genesis 32, one
describes Jacob encountering theangels of the face directly, not
just generic heavenly figures. And Hycoloth Rabati describes
these angels as standing right next to God's throne, radiating
the light of the Shekinah, God'svery presence.
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These angels are blazing with the glory of God himself.
And Jesus says that it is these who've been assigned not to
kings, not to generals, not evento the high priest, but to
children, to these little ones. So think about that for a
minute. Let it sink in.
The most powerful beings in heaven, those with unrestricted
access to the very presence of God, the very face of God, are
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tasked with watching over children, not kings, not
priests, not the wealthy or wiseor righteous, but children, the
ones that society forgets, underestimates, excludes.
And it's interesting because we often think that in the heavenly
world, the evil influencers, right?
We talked about Satan or demons or things like that.
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We'll, we'll discuss, kind of clarify some of that in a
separate episode. But we think that evil
influencers in the other world are probably doing their best to
derail those who are powerful leaders in our world,
influential people, people who matter socially, politically,
economically. And then on the other hand, the
most powerful good forces, right?
The most powerful angelic beingsin the heavenly world right now,
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God has instructed to protect and go to bat for those powerful
and important people, right? We tend to think that way, but
Jesus actually says, Nope, it's not those who matter whom God
has chosen to protect with the most formidable celestial
beings. It's those society and politics
and the rest of the church and the rest of the world tend to
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think, don't matter who have these angelic beings, these
angels of the face watching overthem.
This is Jesus's theology of cosmic priority.
The lowliest on earth are the highest in heaven.
We've talked about that throughout this series of
discussing Jesus, but here he really takes it to a whole new
level, a whole new cosmic level.And it's, it's worth noting that
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in Jesus Aramaic, the concept ofseeing the face isn't just
visual, it's relational in a lotof ways.
It's about standing in someone'sgood graces, having direct
access, being in intimate proximity.
So these angels aren't just divine babysitters, they're
actually cosmic advocates. They stand before God not just
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to observe, but to represent thechildren's needs, their hurts,
their prayers and cries, day andnight, continually without
ceasing, without taking time off.
And this flips the entire systemon its head.
And I saw a news video, a clip of a four year old child sitting
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in a courtroom before a judge defending himself in a trial in
which he was being deported. And this is a four year old and
he couldn't speak English, not very much.
And so they put headphones on him so that he could have a
translator speaking into his earas the judge and as the
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attorneys trying to deport this 4 year old child gave him his
sentencing and and asked him questions.
And I just, I had to sit back. That was just a couple of days
ago. I had to sit back and think, you
know, the kids alone, he's in court by himself, 4 year old.
That has to be the most terrifying experiences that a
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human could face at that age. And he's about to be removed
from the only country that he's ever known.
And I just could not help but topicture the reality of the
angelic forces surrounding that 4 year old child at this moment.
The angels of the face sat next to that boy in the courtroom
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with one foot on earth and 1 foot in the very presence of God
at this moment. And they're going to defend him
and they're going to avenge him no matter what happens to him in
this life. That's what Jesus is addressing
right there. These angels aren't just divine
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babysitters. They are cosmic advocates.
They stand within God's immediate presence before his
face. And they represent the
children's needs, their hurts, their prayers, their cries, day
and night, continually without ceasing, without taking time
off. Including that boy who couldn't
speak English, who was being deported and being read his
sentence in a courtroom in New York in a language he didn't
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understand. What Jesus says here flips the
entire system on its head. In most ancient hierarchies,
whether Jewish, Greco and Roman,you name it, including ours
today, access to the divine was limited, restricted, guarded.
We saw this when we discussed the temple incident in John two
in a previous episode. And yet here's Jesus saying, you
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see this kid right here? You see the kid sitting in the
courtroom right now defending himself.
His angels have better access toGod than the highest of priests
or the most powerful or influential leader has.
And that's staggering. That was staggering in Jesus's
day, and it should be for us today.
And it's all part of Jesus's larger mission to declare and
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embody a Kingdom that reorders reality from the bottom up.
In the Sermon on the Mount, in the Sermon on the Plain that
we've been discussing, He blesses the poor, the morning,
the meek in Matthew 19, shortly after this account in Matthew
18, Jesus says, let the little children come to me, for the
Kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.
And here in Matthew 18, he basically says if you're
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despising children, if you're ignoring the vulnerable,
marginalizing the lowly, you're despising the ones heaven honors
most. But more than that, you're
getting yourself into a sticky situation with some kids whose
celestial bodyguards are subservient to no one in all of
heaven but God himself. So think about it like this.
If all of the angels in heaven had an Ultimate Fighting
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Championship, just knock down, drag out, fight to the death,
the angels of the face would easily and handily destroy them
all. And those are the angelic beings
Jesus is talking about here who defend and represent and stand
before God on behalf of that four year old kid who didn't
speak English but didn't have the right citizenship, sitting
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in that courtroom in New York. And so while we may not know the
full metaphysics of guardian angels, how they operate,
whether they intervene physically or invisibly, Jesus
clearly believes in them. And he makes a very clear
statement about who they are andwhom they represent.
And not only that, he roots their entire role in a cosmic
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system where the powerless are seen, known, and fiercely
protected by the most powerful beings in heaven, just below God
himself. So the next time you or I think
about what heaven values, or wonder what Jesus's campaign
platform really looks like that we've been talking about all
along, remember this. It starts with a child, a
warning not to despise them, in a reminder that their guardians
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are not to be trifled with. And that is just the beginning.
When we take all of this contextinto account and we go back and
we read Matthew 1810, it truly is astonishing.
He says that the angels of the little ones behold the face of
God continually. They are the ones standing in
the throne room before the blazing, unfiltered presence of
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God. And they are assigned to
children. They are assigned to the
overlooked. And we've got to keep in mind
this isn't just sentimental spirituality.
This is cosmic politics in the divine court where rank and
proximity matter. Jesus says the bottom of the
earthly ladder is guarded by thetop of the heavenly hierarchy.
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And in that context, Jesus's statement hits even harder
because he's not just making a pious theological claim.
It's hard to overstate how revolutionary this is.
As we've we've talked about, ancient religions often reserved
divine access for the high born.Temples were off limits to the
unclean. Mysteries were kept behind
veils. Prophets were seers, Kings had
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oracles. But Jesus declares that heaven's
inner circle is peopled by guardians assigned to children,
the least powerful members of society.
This is the inversion of ancientreligion, and it's inversion of
our own democracy and our own views of how power and privilege
operate. And let's not miss this.
Jesus isn't just saying this in private.
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He's in the middle of a public teaching about greatness in the
Kingdom that we find kicked off with the question, who is the
greatest in Matthew 18? One.
And Jesus responds by calling over the child and says, unless
you change and become like this,you won't even get in.
And then as if to make it crystal clear, he adds, don't
despise one of these little onesfor their angels.
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See the face of my father. And this isn't a metaphor, it's
a statement that needs to be heeded.
And it means that anytime we disregard, diminish, or dismiss
those the world calls less than,we're not just hurting them for
violating the order of heaven. Because in Jesus Kingdom, his
empire, the guardians of the least are the greatest in glory,
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the protectors of the poor sit in the presence of God.
And the children we so easily overlook, they are literally the
VI PS in the divine court. This isn't just a theology of
angels either. It's a theology of work.
And this flips the whole social map upside down.
As we mentioned, children weren't viewed in this
romanticized sense. So when Jesus applies the
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language of the angels of the face who belong to these
children, he's not just saying kids are important.
He's saying the divine order of heaven revolves around
protecting the humble like these.
And there's something really beautiful and human in that, I
think. I mean, think about it, every
generation, every culture has told stories to children about
guardian spirits, right? Maybe to soothe their fears,
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maybe because we as adults need to believe someone's watching
over them when we can't. But Jesus doesn't offer this as
a bedtime story or a soft comfort.
He makes it a theological claim,an imperial claim.
These are heavens, top tier angels, and they're on
assignment to the lowest ranked people in your world.
So treat them accordingly. It's as if Jesus is saying you
(41:14):
may not see who's watching, but heaven does.
And not just watching you, but watching them.
Those you're tempted to overlook, belittle, or treat as
insignificant. Which means, in Jesus's view, a
child with no education, no wealth, no political clout, with
no representative in court before a judge who speaks a
different language, who might not have the backing of Caesar
(41:37):
himself. That child has the backing of
the most powerful being in all of heaven, just below God
himself. And here's where it gets even
more astounding. These angels don't just stand in
heaven because they're impressive on their own.
They're there because someone sent them.
Someone authorized them. Someone commands them.
That someone is Jesus. This isn't always emphasized,
(41:58):
but it should be. Jesus isn't just making an
observation about angelology here, He's hinting at something
much deeper about himself. These angels, the elite powerful
face gazers, are under his own command.
They answer to Him, they serve at his word.
And we get a glimpse of this later in the Gospel in Matthew
2653, when Jesus is being arrested in the Garden of
(42:20):
Gethsemane. Peter pulls out his sword,
trying to defend him. Jesus says put it back, put your
sword away. Do you think I cannot call on my
Father? And he will at once put at my
disposal more than 12 legions ofangels.
I pause. There a legion was a Roman
military unit, about 5-6 thousand soldiers. 12 legions
would have been over 70,000 angels.
(42:40):
Not these sweetheart players, warriors, messengers, cosmic
agents. And I'm not saying that Jesus
meant these numbers to be literally, but what I am saying
is that he is saying if I wantedto, I could unleash a flood of
divine power that would reshape the earth.
But I'm not going to because that's not the will of God.
(43:01):
And he doesn't. Not because he's weak, but
because his mission is stronger than that type of violence.
So when Jesus talks about these angels assigned to children
continually gazing on God's face, he's not just giving us a
hallmark moment about spiritual protection.
He's showing us that Heaven's fiercest loyalty is aimed toward
the most vulnerable on earth, and it's his authority that
(43:23):
makes it happen. It means that the kids in our
lives, the ones we see as fragile or ordinary or chaotic
or small, they're not alone. They're guarded.
They are known, and not by background angels on the B team,
but by heaven's elite. And those angels?
They report directly to Jesus's Father, which means their
authority flows through Jesus himself.
(43:45):
And if that's true of children, what might it mean for the other
little ones? Because Jesus doesn't always
mean children. When he says these little ones
in Matthew 1042 and other places, he use the same language
to refer to those who are vulnerable, low in status,
dependent, marginalized, picked on, outcasted, shunned, shamed.
(44:06):
The ones who show up but don't get the mic, could it be, and I
don't know, but could it be thatthey too have their angels,
their own face gazing angels assigned to them and that Jesus
is saying, and they matter to meand anyone who looks down on
them will answer not just to me,but to the entire court of
heaven. Whatever Jesus means by this
specifically, it's truly breathtaking to see the reversal
(44:29):
of how power usually works in Rome.
Just as in most empires, divine protection is for emperors, for
kings, for warriors, for the powerful.
We think of it today, the president and former presidents
and and top officials at the highest level of the US
government get Secret Service. They get these elite Protective
Services assigned just to them. But in Jesus world, divine
(44:54):
protection is reserved not for those powerful, not for the
important, not for the wealthy, not for the noticed, but to the
ones that the world passes by. These are the ones who get the
heavenly Secret Service, heavenly throne room security
detail. And just imagine that for a
second. Imagine what that says about
your worth in the eyes of God, not based on your resume, your
(45:16):
strength, your credentials, yoursuccess, your wealth, your
power, your fame, but based on the factory, the fact that you
belong to Jesus, that you are loved by Him, that you are one
of his little ones. You might be exhausted, you
might feel like a mess. You might feel like you've been
crawling through life just trying to keep up.
But Jesus says be careful how you treat the ones the world
(45:38):
calls small, because I've assigned heaven's fiercest to
them. So what do we do with all that?
I don't know entirely, to be honest, and I know that we need
to slow down. We need to look again.
We need to stop ourselves when we're tempted to overlook, to
dismiss or to rush past the least of these.
(45:59):
Whether that's a child in our own circle.
Whether that's that child, that 4 year old, sitting in the court
facing a judge with no representation, who can't speak
the language and who doesn't know what's going on but is
being told he's being moved to adifferent country than the one
he's known. A frazzled parent, a tired
stranger, the man or the woman pushing a shopping cart on the
(46:21):
side of the street. I don't know.
But maybe we need to stop and look again at them.
Because if they have an Angel assigned to them who exists and
lives in the throne room of God,maybe we should pay more
attention. And maybe, just maybe, there are
days when you yourself are in such a small place in life, in
such a low pit, that you 2 are assigned one of these angels of
(46:45):
the face. Because in Jesus Kingdom, even
the smallest and the lowliest and the most hurting of persons
is assigned to the greatest honor, the most powerful
protection, and the closest proximity to God.
That's not just a comfort, that's cosmic.
And on those days when you feel like you're in the pit and where
nothing is going right, where the world is against you, where
death is creeping up on you and just wrecking your life and
(47:09):
chaos has thrust your entire world into disorder.
I think we could safely say thatit's on those days most of all,
on those days when you are not alone.
When you are being surrounded and protected and represented in
the very courts of heaven by themost powerful and most fierce
and most terrifying representatives of God himself,
(47:32):
the angels of the face. So if this episode stirred
something in you, if it's challenged you, encouraged you,
caused you to think about something afresh, stick with me.
We're just getting started. This is what the Bible actually
says. And this is the Jesus who sees
the unseen, who commands the angels and still calls children
the greatest in the Kingdom. This is a gospel that lifts,
(47:56):
texts and surprises us again andagain.
And I think it's worth everything.
So share this with someone who needs it, someone who's felt
overlooked, someone raising kidsor whose child or children might
be undergoing some challenges. Someone who wonders if heaven
notices the little one. Jesus says you're not only seen,
(48:16):
but you're guarded by heaven's elite.
And hey, if you want to check out more than we're able to
cover in these episodes, go and check out my new book.
Volume 1. Jesus, the Strategic Life and
Mission of the Messiah and His Movement comes out May 30th.
They call Publishing Company andis packed with everything we've
been talking about here plus a whole lot more.
(48:37):
I head the Bible actually says.com to learn more or the
publishers website heycall.co orAmazon May 30th grab your copy.
Thanks for sticking around and as always, Lake will mod.
Go and learn and I'll see you next time on what the Bible
actually says.
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