Deep Calls to Deep

Psalm 22 

Psalm 22 begins with words that are burned into the Christian psyche, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Matthew records Jesus’ anguished cry, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” (Matthew 27:46; see also Mark 15:35) – quoting this verse in the Aramaic language. The Psalm itself continues for 21 verses of something close to despair: “I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast; my mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws; you lay me in the dust of death.” 

 

Have you ever felt this kind of pressure? Have you ever been forced to go so deep within yourself that you wonder if there is any hope for relief? Keep the memory of such times in your mind as you hear the verses that we read from verse 22 on. The Psalmist continues: 

• I will praise God when I stand in the congregation of God’s people.
• All of God’s people should praise God.
• When I was in trouble, God heard me and helped me.
• God hears and helps all who are in trouble. That’s the kind of God we serve.
• All the families of the earth should also praise God, for God saves all of them.
• Even those who die bow down to God. Future generations also will serve God forever.

A regular recitation of praise! A complete contrast to the pressure and despair of the first 21 verses. We can assume that in some fashion beyond our ability to understand, God brings joy and safety to people who have given up all hope. If you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of the marrow of your bones. 

 

Mark 8 

The Gospel reading moves in an opposite trajectory from the Psalm. Psalm 22 moves from despair to hope; Mark 8 begins with the feeding of the four thousand, continues with the healing of a blind man, and comes to a climax with Peter’s great confession, “You are the Messiah!” The public response to God’s presence in Jesus’ ministry is growing, and an observer might think that “the best is yet to be”. What happens next?

• Jesus tells the disciples about his coming death and resurrection.
• Peter responds to his words by saying, “Don’t talk like that!” Jesus rebukes Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!”
• Jesus gives the crucial teaching: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”
• Jesus adds that God will embrace those who embrace this teaching, and that God will reject those who reject this teaching.

The same truth emerges as from Psalm 22: If you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. 

 

This Lenten Season 

Last week, our theme called us into the depths of the seas, a call to deep relationships. This week, our theme calls us into the depths of the woods, a call to deep commitment. I have a personal feeling about both of these themes. 

 

Thirteen years ago, I experienced something like a depression that almost crippled me – a bout with acedia, a kind of spiritual lethargy. Healing for that time came to me in a series of dreams. In the last dream, I was floating in the sea, an image that makes little sense, because I don’t swim and I’m afraid of the water. As I floated there, I realised that the sea was the sea of God’s love and that I was completely safe, no matter how the waves might toss and swirl about me. 

 

Fifty-two years ago, I went out into the woods with my sophomore class in college. We planned to spend the night at a cabin owned by our faculty advisor. The rest of the group did so, but I got separated from the others during a walk through the woods just before dark. I spent the night lost in the woods and walked out the next morning through a cathedral-like setting of the trees in the light of dawn. Being afloat in the sea and being lost in the woods are both experiences that lie deep within my memory. 

 

In both cases, a time of distress led to a time of joy and delight. How do we bring these images – deep in the water and deep in the woods – together with the Scripture passages we have just read to reflect on our commitment to God and to each other? 

 

A Synthesis 

Consider again the common theme that emerges from the Scripture readings: If you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. We are by nature self-centred. We are by our natures inclined to think of everything that others do in terms of how it affects us. “What’s in it for me?” is the essential question that we ask constantly, even if we do not ask it aloud. I have wondered, for example, why the Lord’s Prayer includes the line, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” I think that part of the answer is that by nature we evaluate everything in terms that place ourselves at the centre. 

 

When we nurture this self-centredness, Christian theology defines it as pride. It is the essential sin, mimicking the way that Adam and Eve chose to be “like God” and replace God at the centre of their own lives. If pride is the essential sin, then a reorientation of our lives, placing God at the centre, is the essence of salvation. We use terms like “dying to self” and “living for Christ” for describe this reorientation of our lives. 

 

Apply this insight, then, to our overarching theme of developing deep commitments to God and to each other. Any relationship that exists primarily at the level of a self-centredness can only be a shallow relationship. Deep commitments require investment in the other: God invested God’s self in us by sending Jesus to die and rise for us. In response, our deepest commitment to Christ and the other comes when we are joined in Christ. We can use an image for this joining – “the body of Christ”, in which Christ is the head and we are the body itself. Or in a non-biblical and mechanical image, we are joined to each other the way that the spokes of a bicycle wheel are joined to each other – through the axle at the centre (the person of Jesus) and held in place by the hub of the wheel (the Holy Spirit). 

 

If we want deep commitments, we begin by recentering our lives in Christ. This truth brings us back to the insight from the Scriptures: If you want to know God in the depths of your being (or recentre on Christ), you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. 

 

How Does this Happen? 

For the past several months, I have been struggling with high blood pressure. When my blood pressure rises too much, I feel pretty miserable. By listening to my body, I have learned to recognise when I am internalizing stress and tensing up. I have also learned to relax intentionally, and when I succeed in relaxing, I can feel my high blood pressure subside. Relaxing feels so good that I wonder why I haven’t relaxed intentionally all my life! I think I can tell you why. 

 

Relaxing means letting go, letting go of my need to control what is happening and letting go of my need to fix everything. In the terms we have been using, relaxing means not needing to be at the centre of everything, not being in charge. Such letting go is so hard that it has taken a real physical problem to force me to do it, and even now I can do it only imperfectly. As we have said, if you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. 

 

A Cautionary Tail 

You may have heard recently in the news of the situation with Ravi Zacharias. After his death, it became clear that his public ministry, however successful, concealed a long period of time in which he abused his power and position to take advantage of a number of different women. One source (Patheos.com) describes the situation like this:

 

Like most people following the Ravi Zacharias scandal, I knew the full report of his misconduct would be bad when it came. The only question was how bad. Now that it’s dropped, we have the whole ugly picture. Calculated side deals, manipulation, Inception-like layers of deception. A man who publicly preached the vital importance of private virtue, yet ostracized anyone who dared to scratch the facade. For those on the outside of the scandal looking in, the story may not seem particularly shocking. Why should anyone be shocked that a powerful, charismatic religious figure gamed the system for sexual perks? But within the evangelical and apologetics communities, the shock-waves are going to be felt for a long time to come.

 

There are many hard lessons to be learned from this, including lessons about the culture that enabled Ravi to get away with his crimes for so long. It is now emerging that multiple people failed to act on what should have been clear warning signs, simply because they were blinded by loyalty. Ravi’s two-faced act made it beyond unthinkable to them that he might be concealing sin of this magnitude. And so it continued to lie concealed, right up to the day of his death.

 

The writer (Esther O’Reilly) observes that a basic problem undergirding the scandal was the extent to which Ravi Zacharias was in control of the whole organization that bears his name. He did much good in his ministry, but the fatal flaw at the heart of the whole was his control of every aspect of the ministry. Like the One Ring in Lord of the Rings, this level of control consumed him. “All power corrupts …” 

 

O’Reilly continues with a comparison to another prominent Christian of the last century: 

 

As I was reflecting on all this recently, my mind went back to another figure who was a “celebrity Christian” in his own way, …. This figure also had a magnetic appeal, also had a lucrative and popular ministry, and also used his platform to address the challenges of the Christian walk. …. I’m speaking about Christian singer-songwriter Rich Mullins…

 

He had first entered the business as a callow, troubled twenty-something, full of demons and wholly unprepared for the Nashville machine. After one of his tapes landed in the hands of a young Amy Grant, he went overnight from eccentric Bible college alum to CCM star. …. Where most artists feared failure, Mullins found himself terrified of his own success. The story of how he worked through that terror is instructive, inspiring even, though not conventionally so …. One can glean elsewhere that Rich was chronically depressed and battled a complex of addictive tendencies, including a lifelong struggle with alcohol abuse. …

 

In spite of all this, Rich was able to take enough initiative to set up a strong accountability network for himself. … He cut himself off from the bulk of his wealth, entrusting it to a board of local church elders who paid him an average working man’s salary and distributed the rest to charity. Recalling this decision …, his brother David reflects “I don’t know if it was the strength to do it or the utter terror of not doing it. I don’t know. Probably both.” …

 

Rich also spoke openly, though tastefully, about his struggles with lust as a lonely single man. … He tells an embarrassing story on himself about an incident in a German train station where he and his best friend were having a highly explicit accountability “talk,” unaware that the only other man in the station was listening with understanding. At one point, the man leaned over and asked, “Excuse me, are you Rich Mullins?” As Rich puts it … , “I had to think back over our conversation to decide whether I was or not. But then I decided that I must be.” …

 

O’Reilly concludes her analysis with a quote from Rick Mullins himself,

Maybe when God calls us, it feels like a pain. And for years in my own life, I tried to drown that pain. I tried to avoid that pain. I tried to fill that ache with all kinds of what I can now look back on and see was a lot of stuff that was destroying me, corrupting me. And to listen to the call of God means to accept some of the emptiness that we have in our own lives. And rather than always trying to drown out that feeling of emptiness, instead of always trying to fill it with a lot of junk, to allow that to be a door through which we go to meet God. 

 

If you want to know God in the depths of your being, you must have everything else other than God squeezed out of your marrow. If you want deep commitments to God’s people and the people around us, you will make them only as you enter into their pain and hurt and find God there. Sometimes we name this openness “vulnerability”. Today we have named it as releasing control of our own lives and opening ourselves to God and to each other. “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me. By day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me – a prayer to the God of my life.”

 

Steinbach Mennonite Church 

28 February 2021 

 

Focus statement: We are transformed by God as we follow God’s voice along the path of life, a voice calling us to deep commitment. Even when our path leads deep into unfamiliar woods, as we lose ourselves, we are found. 

 

Going Deeper Questions: 

1) I said that developing a deep commitment to God and others require openness about our own struggles. What are the dangers of such openness? Can we be “too vulnerable”? 

2) How can we live the kind of de-centred life (re-centred on God and others) if we have not fallen into radically selfish ways in the first place? What if you were brought up to think of God and others naturally? Do we still need to be saved from our selfishness? 

3) What do you think is the basic reason that so many television pastors and evangelists have fallen into addictive habits of sex or drugs or some other failure? 

4) How are we different from them? 

 

 

Psalm 22:23-31

²³ You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you offspring of Israel! ²⁴ For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him. ²⁵ From you comes my praise in the great congregation; my vows I will pay before those who fear him. 

²⁶ The poor shall eat and be satisfied; those who seek him shall praise the Lord. May your hearts live forever! ²⁷ All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord; and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. ²⁸ For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. 

²⁹ To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him. ³⁰ Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord, ³¹ and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that he has done it.

  

Mark 8:31-38

Jesus predicts his death

³¹ He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. ³² He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 

³³ But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

The way of the cross

³⁴ Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. ³⁵ For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. ³⁶ What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? ³⁷ Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? ³⁸ If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

Talking About Jesus

Over the past summer, we have spent “moments with the master” each Sunday morning. Intuitively, we recognize that as Christians we want to know about Jesus. I want to take that intuition deeper and ask why it is important for us to learn from Jesus today.

Many people in Canada would acknowledge that Jesus was a great teacher, but they would suggest that studying his life and teachings is more appropriate for the classroom than for anyone to use to orient their own lives. Why do we believe that Jesus makes a difference for us today, and not just for the people who were alive two thousand years ago?

The “Trilemma”

The people of Jesus’ day asked the same question, if we believe the Gospel records. “Who is this man,” they asked, “that the wind and the waves obey him?” Jesus was aware of the speculation that swirled around him. He asked the disciples, “Who do people say I am?” They reported the general speculation that they had heard on the street: “Some say you are Elijah. Some say you are ‘the prophet’.” Jesus asked them directly, “Who do you say I am?” Peter responded, “You are the Messiah, the Son of God.”

Jesus’ own words and actions were designed to force the question. In John’s Gospel, John records a series of teachings that made clear who Jesus saw himself to be. We did a series here at SMC some years ago on the “I am” passages in John, culminating in the provocative statement, “Before Abraham was, I am!” “I am that I am” – or more briefly “I am” – is the most common translation of Yahweh, the Hebrew name for God. No wonder that the religious leaders were clear that Jesus had committed blasphemy. If he was not telling the truth, he deserved to be punished with death!

Jesus’ claims about himself – that he was the Messiah, the Chosen One of God, One with the Father, the Son of God – these claims presented the Jewish people with a problem. They were strict monotheists, and they saw immediately that Jesus was claiming to be one with God. C.S. Lewis has described the problem they faced as a “trilemma”, that is, as a problem with only one of three possible solutions. Either he was lying – and therefore an evil man, or he was like someone who thinks he is a poached egg – and therefore clinically insane, or he was telling the truth. His contemporaries gave all three responses.

We also face the same question. Jesus claimed to be one with God. If he was right, then the very basis of all reality is found in him. We should pay attention to him! If we say he was wrong, we have to show that he was out of his mind or lying. How do we answer this trilemma? One way is by reading the Bible and taking the text seriously, but many people have not read the Gospels or researched the Scriptures – either to learn about Jesus or to determine if they are credible sources for us today.  They would probably say that Jesus was a great moral teacher – like Mohammed or Confucius or the Buddha or any other great religious teacher from the past. They would add that he was certainly not God.

It is important that we notice how Jesus’ contemporaries actually responded to him. Mark 3 records the response of Jesus’ contemporaries when he burst on the scene:

Then he went home; ²⁰ and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. ²¹ When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” ²² And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”

You see that the religious leaders said he was demonically-inspired, and other people said he was mentally unbalanced. What his family thought we don’t know, but they tried to get him out of the spotlight, perhaps to give him time to be healed of whatever was wrong with him.

As we read the Gospels, however, it becomes clear that he was not possessed by the devil. As he hung on the cross, the thief dying alongside him said, “And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” The common view today – that he was a great teacher – speaks against the possibility that he was an evil man. Whatever else he was, we know that Jesus was good.

It is also clear that Jesus was not insane or mentally unbalanced. The Sermon on the Mount, with its repeated “You have heard that it was said of old, but I say to you”, shows how well he carried authority and sanity within himself. At the end of Matthew 7, we see this response to his teaching: “²⁸ Now when Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were astounded at his teaching, ²⁹ for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes.” He was good, and he was sane.

 That leaves only the third option: Jesus was telling the truth about himself. C.S. Lewis summarizes the argument in this way:

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. … Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. (In Mere Christianity)

Lewis’ argument has been described as saying that Jesus was a “liar, lunatic, or Lord”.  It is not proof that Jesus is divine, but it makes clear the logical force of the claim that Jesus is truly the Son of God. If this argument is correct, then all of reality derives its shape from Jesus

If reality derives its shape from Jesus, we should take what he said and did really seriously. We should spend as much time with Jesus as possible – “moments with the Master”.

People of the first centuries could read the Scriptures and find them relevant. What about us today? Does this still hold true today for us, two thousand years later? If most people do not read the Scriptures and do not know anything about Jesus, on what grounds will they decide that this “trilemma” has any meaning in their lives?

The Trilemma in our Lives

The trilemma has power if people read the Bible and accept its authority. People around us may not read the Bible, but they do read our lives. You and I are the only Scripture that many people will ever read. If they see Jesus in us, and if the Jesus they see is attractive, they may stop and pay attention to who Jesus really is.

Unfortunately, some Christians show a picture of Jesus in their lives that is profoundly unattractive. If you ask some people what they think of God – based on what they see in Christians around them – they might say that God must be ready to judge everyone who doesn’t agree with him and send  them straight to hell. We have said often in this church that God is love and that the heart of our faith is to love God and love others. Lee’s sermon last week reminded us again that we live out a costly and difficult love, made possible only by God’s Spirit living within us. Many people around us would laugh at what we say, because they don’t see it in Christians’ lives. I say again, you and I are the only Bible many people will ever read.

For many, the claims of Jesus, then, rest on the way we show Jesus in our lives. What could be more important, then, for us to spend “moments with the Master”, that is, time with Jesus? If people see Jesus in us, then we can lay his claims before them. If what they see in us is not good, people will not turn to God because we are not showing the reality of God.

Psalm 110; Hebrews 1

This brings us finally to the Scriptures we read this morning. Jesus and the first Christians used the first verse of Psalm 110 to point to Jesus as the Messiah. “The Lord says to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’” Jesus himself quoted this verse (recorded in Matthew 22) to suggest that “the Son of David” was he himself. Peter used in (recorded in Acts 2) to argue that Jesus fulfills the messianic prophecies. The writer to the Hebrews used it in the chapter we read as part of his argument that Jesus reveals God fully. Psalm 110:4 also appears in Hebrews 1 and is picked up later in the letter to the Hebrews as evidence that Jesus is the Messiah.

The key point is that Jesus reveals God fully. Here how Hebrews 1 says it:

1 Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. ³ He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact representation of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word.

Jesus is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact representation of God’s being. When you see Jesus, you see God. That’s why it is so important for us to spend time with Jesus. That’s why it is so important for us to spend “moments with the Master”.

Moments with the Master

We had 11 different moments with Jesus this past summer.

A Thrilling Moment: Jesus Cooks Breakfast for the Disciples. Jesus brings life into the worst moments of our lives. We also are people who bring life to each other.

A Trusting Moment: Jesus and the Leper. Jesus rewards those who trust him with healing and self-worth. We also are people who inspire trust in those who know us.

A Teaching Moment: Jesus Washes the Disciples Feet. Jesus taught his disciples to serve each other. We also are people who model service in every area of life.

A Touching Moment: Jesus and the Bleeding Woman. Jesus was open to a woman seen as unworthy. We also are people who recognize people on the margins as “images of God”.

A Terrifying Moment: Jesus and the Woman Caught in Adultery. Jesus replaced the fear of judgment with the transformation of forgiveness. We also are people who extend forgiveness and life to those our world condemns.

A Tempting Moment: Jesus and the Rich Man. Jesus presents us with a choice – follow God or follow wealth. We also are people who choose Jesus before anything else in life.

A Tender Moment: Jesus and Thomas. Jesus accepted Thomas’ doubts as evidence of his authenticity. We also grow through questions rather than trying to shut them down.

A Terrific Moment: Jesus and Zacchaeus. Jesus saw beneath the surface and extended grace to a sinner. We also are people to whom and through whom God’s grace flows.

A Tearful Moment: Jesus and the Sleeping Child. Jesus responded to the end of life by bringing new life. We also are people who embrace the new life that endings bring.

A Telling Moment: Jesus and Peter Walking on Water. Jesus gave Peter a clear vision of strength in the storms of his life, transforming impetuous Peter into a steady rock. We also are people who discern the presence of God in the storms that we face.

A Tenacious Moment: Jesus and the Syrophoenician Woman. Jesus healed the woman’s daughter when she clung to her faith although he had rebuked her. We also are people who break the categories of our society to embrace and follow our Master, Jesus.

These moments reveal God’s nature to us, and we in turn show who God in Christ is to the world. Remember: You are the only Bible most people will ever read. It’s vital that you and I know Jesus intimately so that we can be God’s people in this world fully. There’s an old song that says it in the chorus: “Be like Jesus, this my song, In the home and in the throng; Be like Jesus, all day long! I would be like Jesus.”

Steinbach Mennonite Church 

6 September 2020

Texts: Psalms 110; Hebrews 1

Psalm 110

Assurance of Victory for God’s Priest-King. Of David. A Psalm.

¹ The Lord says to my lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.” ² The Lord sends out from Zion your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your foes. ³ Your people will offer themselves willingly on the day you lead your forces on the holy mountains. From the womb of the morning, like dew, your youth will come to you.

⁴ The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.” ⁵ The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath.

⁶ He will execute judgment among the nations, filling them with corpses; he will shatter heads over the wide earth. ⁷ He will drink from the stream by the path; therefore he will lift up his head.

Hebrews 1

God Has Spoken by His Son

1 Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, ² but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. ³ He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, ⁴ having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs.

The Son Is Superior to Angels

⁵ For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have begotten you”? Or again,

“I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”? ⁶ And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him.”

⁷ Of the angels he says, “He makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire.” ⁸ But of the Son he says, “Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom. ⁹ You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”

¹⁰ And, “In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands; ¹¹ they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like clothing; ¹² like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing they will be changed. But you are the same, and your years will never end.” 

¹³ But to which of the angels has he ever said, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”? ¹⁴ Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?