A number of weeks ago, our theme for worship was “spiritual warfare.”  Remember that?  We were reminded about our unseen enemy in the spiritual realm, the devil and the demons.  We spent some time considering Paul’s encouragement to put on the full armor of God from Ephesians 6.  Our arsenal includes truth and righteousness and faith and the Gospel of peace and prayer.  Remember that?    One of the things we did not talk about that day was the unseen army who fights for us.  We are talking now about the holy angels.

I don’t know if you have ever noticed a certain little feature in our hymnal.  At the top of each page, in small letters, is a word that describes what type of hymn is on the page.  There are categories like Christmas and Easter.  There headings like Redeemer, Justification, Prayer, and Commitment.  I have here the hymnal from when I was a child. 

If you had been walking around a shopping mall in the 1990s you would have seen a particularly odd type of decoration lining the walls of the novelty shops.  These bizarre posters were normal sized, but they didn’t look like much.  No people, no pictures, no slogans, just little bits of color all arranged in perfectly random chaos.  You might describe them as a “colorful-static.” 

We in America are confused. We are confused about “means” and “ends.” What do we mean by that? Well, “ends” are where you want to be. It is the goal. It is the “end.” It’s the destination. A “means” is how you get to your end. For example, when you go on vacation, you don’t climb in the car and yell, “Yay! We’re here!” No. The goal of your vacation is not sitting in the car in the driveway.

It was Saturday in Nazareth. The Sabbath Day. And the faithful sons of Abraham gathered where they did every Sabbath. They gathered at the synagogue. They were in the right place! Here in the synagogue the scrolls of the Old Testament, what they called the tanakh, were read and expounded. Here they heard the Word of Jehovah. In the synagogue they would hear the prophecies of the Messiah who was to come and bring salvation. Indeed, they were in the right place! Because of the Word of God present there the synagogue was the gate to heaven!