One of the things we preachers love to do at Christmas time is to add to the Christmas cheer by telling everybody that a great deal of what they've learned about Christmas from Christmas cards and school nativity plays is completely and utterly wrong.

You know the kind of thing.

There is no biblical reason for thinking that there were three wise men.

It is debatable whether Jesus was born in a stable and there

is literally no biblical support for your school nativity play including the role of

Little Drummer boy. One of the other major players in any self-respecting nativity scene of course are the angels,

but even here the Christmas preacher can find yet another festive parade to reign on.

Only certain kinds of angels are said

explicitly to have wings, cherubim and seraphim. And typically, angels are not

the demure figures we see on Christmas cards.

They have a name in Hebrew, Malachim, or in Greek,

Angelos, from which we get the word angels.

The word literally means messenger, so angel isn't

so much a type of being as it is a job description. Their role is to take messages and announce them, which is what we see

them doing, for example during that first Christmas. An angel named Gabriel is

sent by God to Mary to tell her that she'd found favour with God.

Another angel appears to the Shepherds announcing that a Savior had just been born in Bethlehem and so on. In the early church there was even a heresy

that claimed Jesus was an angel which may explain in part why we read in Hebrews.

After making purification for sins, Jesus Christ sat down at the right hand of the majesty on

high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

In fact we read Christ is worshipped by the angels.

What would it be like to see an angel? Well, they are beings created by God, but they are

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