is meant to reveal. As we've said all along, Revelation is not meant to be read as some sort of national treasure map where we have to do complicated numerological divisions to get the meaning or take a word and read it backwards. It is meant to reveal what's going on in the world around us. I asked the first service, this question and it was like 85%, but who here uses contacts or glasses? Raise your hand, come on, let you see. Contacts or glasses? There's a few of you that aren't. Most of you are gonna be wearing glasses at some point, right? Those of you that are older would say, yep, it comes for everybody. Here's the thing, when you wake up without your glasses, without your contacts, you think you see the world rightly, or at least you see somewhat of the world, right? And then what happens, I still remember the first time I got glasses, I started to realize, I think something was weird. People can see things that I can't. So I put the glasses on, walked outside, and I was like, oh, this is what the world looks like. You could see the little leaves on the tree. Look at that. That is what God's word is meant to do. That's what revelation is meant to do. It's meant to help us see.
So today, we don't do this always, but I'd love to invite you to stand for the reading of God's Word. We're going to cover this whole chapter, but we're going to stand together and read verses 1 through 6. This is God's Word. And a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. And another sign appeared in heaven: Behold, a great red dragon with 7 heads and 10 horns, and on his head 7 diadems. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven and cast them to earth, And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child, he might devour it. She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days. This is God's word. And let's pray. Father, we pray that you'd give us ears to hear and eyes to see this morning. We pray that you would reveal revelation to us as we read your word. May we walk out of here not more confused, God, but rather walk out of here saying, now I see. We pray for your help in Jesus' name. Amen. You may take a seat.
Well, I want you to imagine something with me for a second. I want you to imagine that you live in a small medieval town. You're a simple farmer, but it's perhaps your day off. You wake up, stretch, enjoy the sunrise, except for one neighbor in the distance making a loud racket, which makes you grumpy. You walk to the market to buy breakfast only to discover most of the vendors are gone. You manage to find one guy giving out loaves of bread, and you notice that the paths in the town have seen better days. They are full of holes and cracks, and you think to yourself, 'This used to be such a nice town.' You walk past one building that is covered in soot or blackened or something and never repaired. To cheer yourself up, you walk into the tavern to enjoy some friendly conversation, only to find a haggard innkeeper and a handful of men with bandaged arms and bodies. And then a loud sound, that neighbor starts up again, so loud you can hardly think. And grumpily you say to the innkeeper, 'What happened to this town? This used to be such a nice town. This is all so inconvenient.' But the innkeeper looks back at you with shock on his face and says, 'Friend, where have you been?' We are under attack by a dragon. Can't you hear him roaring? If you are of able body, why aren't you at the walls? We are at war.
That is Revelation 12. Revelation 12 is meant to wake the church up to the reality that a dragon is roaring. We've seen in Revelation that wars are raging on the earth. There's famine, there's persecution, there's loss. And often we look at all this going on and we say, well, this is all rather inconvenient. I really wish I could sit quietly and have a coffee and plan my next vacation. But Revelation comes to us and says, 'Can't you hear him roaring? We are at war.'
Now, this passage begins a new section of Revelation that some commentators call the cosmic warfare section, which if you were like, 'Man, when are we going to get to the really crazy parts of Revelation?' We've arrived. Dragons, Beasts out of the sea, prophets that do miracles, war in the heavens. This is it. Now behind the evil and the persecution in the first half of Revelation, this next section, this cosmic warfare section helps us to see that there are not just visible enemies, people opposed to God, but invisible enemies as well. This is a, in other words, putting your glasses on and realizing we are in an unseen war. Seen war. And this letter is meant to encourage the church, specifically to encourage the 7 churches we find in Revelation 2 and 3 that you're studying in your community groups. But this is really drawing back the curtain to help us see we are in a cosmic conflict. But this picture is not meant to lead the church to despair or to give up or to cower and hide in the basement. No, It is meant to call the church to rejoice and conquer.
So here's how I would sum up Revelation 12. This is what God wants for us today to know. Though the dragon roars, God's people rejoice and conquer. Though the dragon roars, God's people rejoice and conquer. We're going to look at 3 sections today. The first section is see the dragon. Have you ever seen one of those old maps maps that were drawn before we had an understanding of how the world worked, you know, and that it was round. And there would be a section of the map that there was an island and an island, and then it would just get blurry because nobody had ever been down there. And there's instances of sailors drawing in a sea serpent and writing, 'Here there be dragons.' Right? This is the unknown. And in fact, Even if you're not a Christian, you probably have the same experience every human does, which is you grow up a little bit afraid of the dark. I was one of those kids that once night fell, I was like, this is it, we're done for. This is when the monsters come out, they're gonna eat us. And my parents had to talk me down every single night, right? And I remember thinking, man, I wish someday when I grow up, I wish I was grown up already so I wouldn't be afraid anymore of anything. And then you grow up and you're like, Well, that didn't work. So the— and here's the other thing. Our culture, despite how safe we are in America, is still obsessed with movie after movie after movie of, no, no, this is the killer in the dark hiding. And then it's the same, it's just the same movie with different masks, right? And you're like, I wonder what's gonna happen in this movie. There's gonna be a guy in the dark killing people or a monster or something. And you're like, what about this next one? Same thing, right? Why do we keep replaying that over and over again? Because I think instinctively, We know there is something out there. And Revelation, unfortunately, confirms our worst fears, that there is a monster out there in the dark. This imagery of the dragon is not random. In fact, it intentionally calls back to a thread through the entirety of Scripture. In Genesis 3, there is a particular figure that tempts Adam and Eve to sin against God and rebel against him. If you recall, the creature is translated in the English as a serpent, a snake-like thing. And if you know anything about dragons, there's various kinds of dragons. Often they're serpent-like, snake-like, scaly things that often are in water. Sometimes they could fly, you know, depending on what part of the world you're talking about. And that That is an intentional callback. We're meant to see, oh, this is the serpent kind of unveiled from Genesis 3. And that serpent, in fact, goes— is threaded through the Old Testament. And often, sometimes God's enemies are pictured in imagery as a serpent, as an evil, as a Leviathan, as chaos, as evil roiling around in the sea. The water.
6 · Unpacks the symbolism of the dragon's description in Revelation 12: seven heads (cunning wisdom), ten horns (great power), seven crowns (authority/influence), and the sweeping down of stars (possibly the angelic rebellion)
And look at this dragon. Look at how he's described. He has 7 heads. If you're a kaiju fan, you're like, it's Ghidorah. Well, after his, you know, and if you're a kaiju fan, this is a great message for you. Welcome to church. He has 7 heads symbolizing cunning wisdom. He has 10 horns symbolizing great power. And he has 7 crowns symbolizing his authority over people on the earth, or ability to influence others on the earth. And his power is symbolized in him sweeping down these stars. Now, some believe that that even is a reference to before time began when Satan and his angels rebelled against God, and he has since swept them down. He is— regardless of whether or not that is here, we should note he is powerful, he is terrifying, he is real. And what is he doing? He is there attacking the woman. Now, it seems clear that the woman symbolizes the people of God, and you see that with the 12 stars over her head, representing the 12 tribes of the Old Testament. And this dragon hates the woman. And even more, he hates the offspring that she will produce.
7 · Uses a literary quotation from Tolkien to illustrate the necessity of acknowledging the reality of the dragon in Christian life and theology
In Tolkien's 'The Hobbit,' we find this great line that applies to Revelation 12. One character says, It does not do to leave a dragon out of your calculations if you live near him.
8 · Traces the protoevangelion of Genesis 3:15 forward through the Old Testament as the dragon waits to devour the promised seed
This goes back to Genesis 3, where God cursed the serpent, but gave— and cast Adam and Eve out of the garden, but gave a promise, the protoevangelion, the first gospel, the first announcement of good news. In Genesis 3, that one day the seed of the woman, a descendant of the woman, would crush the head of the serpent, though the serpent bruised his heel, right? There's this promise that one day that evil in the garden will be crushed. And so the dragon waits. He waits to devour this seed of the woman because he knows the gospel, the protoeuangelion. He knows the promise. And all throughout the Old Testament, there's this conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of evil, seed of the serpent, in a sense. Again and again, these people going back and forth, back and forth in the Old Testament through all the figures there. And yet, for all of his cunning, for all of his power. I don't know if you noticed this, but Satan did not snuff out the church in the Old Testament. He did not succeed in stopping the seed of the woman.
9 · Anticipates the congregation's question about why this revelation of the dragon is encouraging
So what do we make of this? Why tell this to the early church? Why is this encouraging? It's like somebody showing up at your house and say, 'Hey, man, I don't know if you know this, but you have a dragon problem.' You know, you don't have a mice problem, you don't have a bug problem, you have a dragon problem. And you're thinking, 'We're going to go ahead and move.' You know, there's sometimes problems too big. What is the church supposed to do with this? First, we must clearly see the reality of the dragon. What are we supposed to do here? Well, there are two opposite errors Christians can fall into when it comes to the devil, to Satan, to spiritual forces. One is an overfocus on those things to the exclusion of the other clear things in Scripture. Meaning that you go down this rabbit trail of these kind of half references and allusions and you build a whole theology and you live kind of in that theology more than the just clear teaching of the Bible.
10 · Illustrates the first error (overfocus on spiritual warfare) with a personal story of a man obsessed with obscure demonology, neglecting basic Christian disciplines like Bible reading and church attendance
And I remember one time we took a phone call from somebody who had happened to listen to the radio program our church does during the week. And he was like, somehow we had referenced spiritual attack, maybe it was Ephesians or something. And so he calls the office like desperate, like, I've got to talk. To Pastor Ricky. It's, you know, I don't know what he said, but basically it's life or death, spiritual warfare. And so, you know, I happened to be free and in the office. So I was like, well, I mean, I'll talk to him if it's life and death. And so he began to describe, you know, all these strange events that he felt like he was experiencing and his girlfriend. And he was worried there were demons attacking his girlfriend or his girlfriend was possessed. And he worried about himself and he's going on and on and on. And so I began to just draw him out like, wait, wait, how? I'm like, where are you getting this? And so I found out like he's on these strange obscure message boards that are like, oh, I know the real meaning of Daniel, and it's this, and you gotta know this. And we've mapped out all the territorial spirits for each area of North America. And he just is like, he's going there. And so I began to draw him out and realize, are you reading the other parts of the Bible? Well, no, I've got this big spiritual problem. Okay, well, are you, you know, You going to church? No. So in other words, this had just taken over his life. That can happen.
11 · Diagnoses the second error as more common today: materialistic denial of spiritual realities
Now, I will say, because I grew up in the charismatic era, that may have been perhaps the lean at times in some more charismatic churches. But today, I believe we fall into the opposite error. We don't even acknowledge the reality of the dragon around us. And part of that is we live in a very materialistic culture. By that, I mean, we only believe in what we can see and touch and feel right in front of us. And we're very slow to believe in any sort of weird spiritual stuff out there. And so Christians are like, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.' Almost in an overcorrection. We used to be too much over there. So now it's just nothing. Nothing's going on in the spiritual realm. Everything is just, you know, it's just what I could see in front of me. And Revelation does not allow us to do that. Revelation says, 'Wake up, there's a dragon. Don't leave him out of your calculations if you live near him.' And we all live near him.
12 · Establishes the second major point: the dragon is powerful but limited
Now, second, we must also see the limits of this dragon. We're meant to see right away, as soon as he enters the picture, he is powerful, but he is limited. And we see his limits in the fact that, okay, for all of his cunning, he couldn't outsmart the plan of God. For all of his power, he couldn't overpower the church and destroy the seed of the woman. For all his authority over the nations, he couldn't stand against the ruler with a rod of iron. So we're meant to see, okay, powerful but limited.
13 · Identifies the male child in verse 5 as Jesus Christ, whose birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension are compressed into a single verse
Second point, we're meant to see the dragon. And second, we're meant to conquer with Christ's conquering, right? We see verse 5, she gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was caught up to God and to his throne. What is that? Now here's where I think just Christians, Sometimes you're like, well, that must be some weird obscure thing, right? It must be some future figure or something going on. But you're probably in the back of your mind thinking, this sounds kind of like the birth of Christ, right? There's a woman, there's a ruler trying to kill her son. Remember Herod and the slaughter of the innocents? And he escapes. You got it. Okay? So don't think like, 'Oh, this must be some weird thing.' No, that what you're thinking, you're on the right track. It is the birth of Jesus. And it skips very quickly, caught up to God and his throne, the ascension of Jesus. So in a blink, we go from him being born to him ascending. Now, why does it do that? Well, partially because Revelation, the rest of Revelation, especially 5, is very clear about the kind of the life, death, resurrection of Jesus. The Lamb standing as though he had been slain. In other words, That is almost assumed in the picture. So in that kind of snap is the whole breadth of Jesus' ministry.
14 · Traces Satan's attacks on Jesus from birth through the cross, showing that Satan appeared to triumph at the crucifixion but was utterly defeated at the resurrection
Now, this is the reality. Throughout Jesus' life, from his very birth until his death, Satan roared and snapped and tried to destroy. He sends Herod and the slaughter of the innocents. There's all these demonic people. You ever wonder why Jesus keeps running into demons everywhere? This guy might have something to do with it. And then on the cross, it seems as though Satan triumphs. The serpent does bruise, and this is literal, does bruise the heel of Jesus because what you die from on the cross is not blood loss, but suffocation. As people hung there and pushed themselves up, repeatedly with their heel until they could not anymore, suffocated and died. So Satan rejoices. He thinks, 'Ha! There he is in the tomb. We're done. Game over.' Until Sunday. When on Sunday, Jesus Christ ascends with a rod of iron from the tomb. And the power of the serpent is proven worthless in the face of Jesus Christ. That, ultimately, that is what we're meant to see in verse 5. Now, it is clear from Revelation that the ultimate final defeat of the dragon will be at the end of history, which we'll read very soon in Revelation. And we don't know all of God's purposes for allowing some measure of the dragon's ferocious hatred and influence in the world. But we do know this, that God delays the final day of the Lord in his mercy, that more may be saved, that the gospel would go to every tribe, tongue, people, and language, and all of God's people would be gathered. He delays in His mercy, and while He delays, the dragon roars.
15 · Interprets Revelation 12:7-10 as referring to the present reality inaugurated by Christ's death and resurrection: Satan has been cast out of heaven and stripped of his standing to accuse believers because the blood of Christ answers every accusation
Now, verse 7, 'Now when war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent who was called the devil, And Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. And I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, 'Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.' Now, there's a key decision. This is exciting, right? I mean, this is pretty cool. I mean, especially for me when I found this part of my Bible at age 12, I was like, 'There it is. There's the stuff.' Spiritual warfare. Now, the key decision, though, is what is this talking about? Is this before even kind of world history? Is this way back before Genesis 1 where You know, this is the fall of Satan that we're seeing in a flashback? Or is this a flash forward to the end of time where he'll be thrown down? Or is this the present? What is going on here? Well, I'm glad Vince is here because we're going to apply the Vince Corpus Rule for apocalyptic literature, which is trademarked. And it is as follows. If you're trying to interpret something confusing, Look for something clear, right? Like, if you're like, that's really confusing, then look around it for like, okay, well, is there any place, is there a handhold that I can hold onto here that will help me get there? And there is. I think it's verse 10. Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come. So when is that? Well, it seems like when Christ completed his death and resurrection and return to the right hand of the Father, right? I mean, that is what it seemed on its face to say to us. Now the salvation and power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, especially in context with the preceding verses. So, And that seems to line up with other sections of Scripture like John 12:31 or Luke 10:18 that suggests during the ministry of Jesus, he makes this reference to Satan falling like lightning, meaning Jesus has shown up. The seed of the woman has shown up and Satan's power is about to be curtailed. Now, it could be Now, why would it say then that Michael and his army, though, removed the devil and his demons from heaven? Wouldn't it be Jesus? Well, it could be that what is in view here is that until the work of Christ, Satan was allowed to have some level of access or standing in heaven in order to make his accusations against the people of God. So, we see this in Job, for example. But now after the cross, now after the death and resurrection of God, Satan loses the standing by which to make any accusations. So think of it this way: before Jesus, Satan had— I think it was Beale who said Satan had a little bit of a point before Jesus, meaning this: any believer or any Old Testament Jewish person that was sacrificing the right animals, was doing the right things. But we read in Hebrews, the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away sin. So they would die after having made these sacrifices in faith to the Lord. But it was kind of like, well, but how are you gonna remove their sin? That one died. And so Satan would come up and say, look at this one, look at this one, another one. He made the sacrifice, he did this, but, but, 'Look at how he talked to his wife. Look at how he moved the boundary at his neighbor's property. Oh, and this one, look, look, they committed adultery in their heart. Can't you see that?' Over and over and over again. And he accuses and he accuses. And look at that one, and look at this one, and look at that one. And they're a sinner, they're a sinner, they must be cast out. They're a sinner, they must be damned. They're a sinner. But what happens after the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The accuser of the brethren, before the accusation can leave his mouth, is silenced by the blood of Jesus. Here's what happens over and over and over again. Satan says, 'But what about this one?' And Jesus says, 'Covered.' 'What about that one?' 'Saved.' 'What about that one?' 'Redeemed.' 'What about that one?' 'Reconciled.' 'What about that one?' 'Justified.' And I may be reading a little bit into this, but I think what happens is Jesus says, 'Michael, could you get this guy out of here for me?' And Michael says, 'With pleasure, sir.' And Satan and his demons are like, 'No, we want to stay here. We're going to level accusations.' And Michael says, 'Uh-uh, you have no standing, Satan.' That, I think, is what we see in this moment. In view here.
16 · Unpacks Revelation 12:11 to show that God's people are not passive observers but active conquerors
Now, again, verse 10 lays out a reality that the salvation and power and kingdom of God and the authority of Christ has come and the accuser of the brothers have been thrown down. And for this part of it, we're just in the stands, we're clapping. We're like, 'Get 'em, Jesus! Get 'em, Michael! Yeah!' And yet, then in verse 11, we discover, oh, we're on the field. Verse 11, 'And they have conquered him.' They, who's they? The saints. 'They have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even to death. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them.' Now, here is what is surprising. We're not passive observers. The people of God are not passive observers. They are on the field. And this phrase, 'They have conquered,' Vince and I were looking at this this week. Vince helped me note that that phrase, which is past— I'm sorry, grammar nerd sidetrail here. Everybody, I'll tell you when to tune back in. That 'they have conquered' is past tense, but in the original language, it's what's called the aorist tense, which is the summary tense. Meaning from a cosmic perspective, it's like we look back, we see the whole history of God's people, and the summary statement over God's people is they have conquered. Meaning this: Old Testament conquered, the believers in the first century conquered, second century conquered, third century conquered, fourth, fifth, 21st century. Here's the end of the story in the 21st century. They have conquered. Conquered. Until the end of time when Jesus returns to claim his bride, that will be the summary statement over the church. They have conquered. Oh, isn't that good news? Wouldn't that be encouraging to read in the 2nd or 3rd century where you're like, Caesar seems pretty powerful, these people don't like us, now you're also telling us about a dragon. What are we supposed to do with this? Jesus says, the summary over you, brothers and sisters, is they've conquered.
17 · Demonstrates historically that the church has indeed conquered despite appearing to hang by a thread in the first century
And is that not what we see? In the first century where it seemed like the church was hanging on by a thread, about to be snuffed out by the power of Rome, the gospel spread to Samaria and Judea and North Africa and into Italy. And the centuries since then, it continued to spread through Europe into Africa. And here's one of the most unique things about Christianity versus other world religions, the center of Christianity keeps moving and changing. Where other religions have their center fixed with an ethnic group, a people group, and for the most part stay there and may spread out from there, Christianity is just all over the place. It's here, now it's here, now it's here, now it's here. It's everywhere. Why? Satan continues to fail year after year after year. And he will continue until the end.
18 · Identifies Satan's primary weapon not as overt supernatural attack but as accusation
Now, notice though what it says Satan's big weapon is, right? Satan's big ability. My son Cohen is into Pokémon cards right now. So if you're 11 or 12, this is where you jump back into the message. He's into Pokémon cards. And there's like, on each Pokémon there's like an attack, and they have like a lame attack and an okay attack, and then like the boom, like you dead. And so it seems as though Revelation is saying, oh boy, here comes his big attack. Here's the big attack of Satan. And you're like, I knew it. It's like demons in the woods or it's, you know, some crazy, you know, possessing a world leader, whatever, you know. No, the big attack of Satan is accusation. And you're like, what? That doesn't seem like anything. Now, we're going to get into the fact that Satan uses attack in the form of the beast. He uses deception in the form of the false prophet. He uses seduction in the form of Babylon. But what he's called here is the accuser of our brothers, and the thing that he had that was most deadly was his accusation.
19 · Personal testimony of the pastor's own struggle with accusatory thoughts revealed through journaling
Look, I've started journaling recently. And on the advice of a good biblical counselor I'm talking to, and he's like, okay, I want you to just, sometimes when you're discouraged, get some of these thoughts out on paper. And so I was surprised, 'cause I was like, okay, some of these thoughts going through my mind, when I mess up or fail, here's what goes through my mind. Ricky, you're a failure. You are worthless. You can't help others. Look at you. 'Look at your impatience with your kids. Look at how you failed to love your wife. Look at how a friend was in need and you did nothing. You didn't reach out to them. This other person was hurting, you didn't help them.' Oh, brothers, sisters, I mean, that— like, I've been through some, like, physical pain in the last 2 or 3 years. That hurts worse. That disables you. That makes me feel like I'm on my knees. So I was sharing this with somebody and they listened to a little bit of that and they just said, you know, that sounds satanic. And I was like, well, that's not satanic. Satanic is like when he like, you know, brings a dead body back to life and is like, right? That's the kind of activity I'm looking for from Satan. But this is what Revelation 12 says. This is the thing. That destroys Christians if they will listen to his voice.
20 · Summarizes Satan's unchanging strategy from Genesis forward: tempt to sin, then condemn for sinning
The playbook of Satan has not changed from what we see in the Bible. Here's what he does. In Genesis 3, he tempts people to sin, and in the rest of the Bible, he condemns them for the sin. 'Hey, why don't you sin?' 'Oh, look, you sinned. You're the worst.' 'It's not that bad. You'll be fine.' 'You're the worst!' Right? That's— And so here's the reality. In the Bible, We have Satan's playbook. You know, it's like we stole the enemy's playbook and we opened the binder and there are two plays. And you're like, 'Oh, I think we could do this,' right? Play number one, seduction, deception. Play number two, condemnation, accusation. Over and over and over and over again.
21 · Applies the theology to practice: the way to silence Satan is with the blood of the Lamb
So what do the people of God do? I remember being on the phone with that guy I was talking to with all this complicated demonology stuff. And I said, 'Well, brother, are you a Christian?' And he's like, 'Well, what do you mean?' He's like, 'I read my Bible.' And I'm like, 'No, no, no, but are you a Christian? Have you believed in the Lord Jesus Christ for your salvation, called upon the name of the Lord, and committed to follow him all the days of your life?' And he was like, 'Well, sometimes I go to church.' And I'm like, 'No, that's not what I'm talking about.' So I began to draw him out, and I began to realize I don't know if this guy is a Christian. So, I, at the end, kind of in summary, I told him, 'Brother, the way to silence the enemy is with the blood of the Lamb.' Right? That is the weapon laid out for us in Revelation chapter 12. And when we do that, James 4:7 says, 'Resist the devil and he will flee.' So sometimes we were like, 'I need to do demon warfare. I need like a chart, like, you know, all over the wall with strings and, you know, doing that stuff.' No, this is it, brothers and sisters. They conquered by the blood of the Lamb. Meaning this, when Satan brings an accusation, we answer with the blood of the Lamb.
22 · Provides extended concrete examples of how to answer Satan's accusations with Scripture
I want you to see what this looks like and feels like. For example, the accusation comes. By the way, these are all from me. You write your own. 'You are so far from God. God would never accept someone like you. You'll never get close to him.' But the answer in Ephesians 2 is this: 'But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near.' near by the blood of Christ. You say, 'No, Satan, I was far from God, but Christ has brought me near.' Or maybe Satan says, 'You're no one to God. God doesn't care about you. He doesn't see you. He doesn't remember you. His attention is not on you. He has no obligation to you.' Galatians 4 says this: that Jesus came to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father!' So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. And you say, 'Yes, Satan, because of Jesus' work, we relate to God differently. I was nothing to him. I was far from him. I had no access to him. But he has grabbed me through the blood of Jesus Christ and made me a son. Amen. Amen. Yes. What about this? Your future is without hope. You have no future. You look at the future and it is an empty void, and you wonder if God will be there. If you wonder if God cares about you, you wonder what happens if this marriage breaks up? What happens if my kids turn away from the faith? If I lose my job? If my cancer doesn't improve? What happens then? God doesn't know, God doesn't care. This is the answer, 1 Peter 3. 'Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to,' listen, 'to an inheritance that is imperishable.' undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed at the last time. Meaning this, that when Satan shows you your future and it's an empty void and there's nothing there, you say, 'No, I can fill in the picture. I know what's going to happen. There is an inheritance.' imperishable, undefiled, unfading, kept in heaven for me. And by the way, I, until that day, am being guarded by the power of God himself. And this is all not my doing. It doesn't depend on how good I can make that future. But I hate it when people are like, 'You gotta manifest your future. You gotta kind of project yourself to create a future.' No, I can't project nothing. But Jesus can. Brothers and sisters, listen, so I did this. If this is helpful for you, on the back table there's a sheet I'd love for you to take if this is where you're living. It's just, it's called Answering the Accuser. We'll post it on our website, and it just is a number of these, and I'm going to add one more that God brought to mind after the message. If this is you, man, take this, put it in your Bible, and answer him. Answer him. Look, here's the thing. When we make demonology, Satanology, all this stuff so complicated, and we got to do all these complicated things— listen, it's good to pray in the name of Jesus. Yes. Resist the devil. Yes. But it seems as though Revelation 12 is suggesting that the most powerful spiritual warfare weapon we have is the gospel of Jesus Christ. And so all along, church, as we've been saying, we want to be a gospel-centered church, we want to do everything that— we want to sing the gospel, pray the gospel, preach the gospel, take the gospel to the city. When we've been doing that, you may not have realized it, but we have been waging war on Satan himself.
23 · Briefly exposits Revelation 12:13-17, interpreting the flood from the dragon's mouth as words—accusations and deceptions
Oh man, there's so much I could say. There is so much I could say here. All right, so here's what I want you to just very briefly look at verses 11 to 17. It's this picture of God's people fleeing into the desert and the serpent in verse 15 pouring water like a river out of his mouth after the woman to sweep her away with the flood. Well, what is that? Well, in Revelation, warfare is done through words. So that the accusations of the enemy, the deceptions of the enemy, they're pouring out of his mouth seeking to destroy the woman. But verse 16, 'But the earth came to the help of the woman, and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed the river that the dragon had poured. And then the dragon became furious and went off to make war.' Look, this is the reality. The third point is very simple and brief. Trust God's ongoing protection. Expect that the dragon is going to keep raging. He's going to keep pouring seduction, deception, accusation out of his mouth. We must expect his work. We must not forget that some of the thoughts that may haunt you in your mind are just the work of the enemy. But we must also see this: God preserves his people from the dragon. Isaiah 43:2 says, 'When you pass through the waters, I will be with you, and through the rivers they will not overflow you.' Well, what does that seem to echo? Doesn't that seem to echo the Exodus? Where it seemed as if there's no way through this water, there's no way to do it, we're dead. We're about to get killed by a satanic Egyptian army behind us. And God himself parts the waters, holds back the waters to preserve his people. God still does the same work. Work today. So expect the work of the enemy, but also expect God will preserve you, brother or sister. When you think, I don't know if I can make it, man, this war is hard, the dragon's big, his roar is terrible, I feel the fire, I'm getting singed here, I'm getting more than singed here, God preserves his people.
24 · Concludes by circling back to the opening illustration and issuing a prophetic charge to the church: wake up, man the walls, conquer through the blood of Jesus, trust God's preservation
So in the end, here's my burden for us as we end. We're going to end by singing a Martin Luther song that you did not know was about spiritual warfare. But every time you've sung this song, you have been waging spiritual warfare. So we're going to sing it at the end. 'Here's My Burden' started with this picture of somebody in a town looking around like, 'Man, the streets are just terrible here. I don't know what's happened to this town. Ugh,' you know. So you go into the tavern and open the newspaper up, and you're inconvenienced by the dragon roaring and yelling all over you. I feel like often that's us as American Christians. We're like, 'I can't believe Starbucks got rid of the cinnamon dolce stuff. I love that,' you know, like, or, you know, or even like something good, like, 'Man, my boss at work, man, this is just terrible. My boss at work, should I report him? This is frustrating,' right? We have all these concerns. Here's what Revelation 12 is saying to us. Wake up, wake up, hear the roar. You're at war. Take up arms, man the wall. That's the call. The call of Revelation 12 is wake up, church, man the walls, conquer through the blood of Jesus, trust God's persevering power. That's the call. Would you stand and let's go to war. Oh, Father, I pray that as we sing, you would seal Revelation 12 in our hearts. Lord, I pray for any weary soul like me, here today. God, please, through the power of your Spirit, strengthen us. May we not just see the dragon, but may we see the serpent crusher with a rod of iron and his foot on the head of the serpent. And may we as a church, God, strengthen one another. When the roar is loud and the fire is hot, may we gather around each other, brothers and sisters, hold fast to one another, lift one another up. And we as a church at Cross of Grace, may we not let anybody wander or be on the fringes or kind of wander away from the people of God. God, you've promised to preserve your core corporate people. That's where safety is. That's where protection is. I pray that we would cling to one another as we cling to Christ. And if anyone is here and does not know the power of Jesus, if they're like that brother I talked to— well, not brother, that guy I talked to on the phone— what I pray that they would see that the solution is not for them to tough it out or manifest a good future. It's to come to Jesus. And I pray that they would hear his voice today. Amen.
25 · After the congregation sings 'A Mighty Fortress,' the pastor steps back in with a pastoral word about the song's meaning, connecting it to Revelation 2 and the call to be faithful until death
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing. A helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing. For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe. His craft and power are great, and armed with cruel hate, on earth is not his equal. Did we in our own strength confide? Our striving would be losing. Were not the right man on our side, the man of God's own choosing. Dost ask who that may be? unknown. We will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him. His rage we can For, oh, his doom is sure. One little word shall fell him. That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them, abides. The Spirit and the gifts are ours through him who with us died death. Let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. The body they may kill, God's truth. His kingdom is forever. His kingdom is forever. I love the songs where we sing about serving the Lord until the very end. One of the songs we sang this morning says, His redeeming love shall be our song until the day we die. Serving Him until the day we die. Revelation chapter 2, Jesus speaks to the church at Smyrna, and He says, be faithful until death. We have the right man on our side. The Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus. He has called us. He has saved us. We overcome him by the word of our testimony. The blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony. When you get down, when you get weary, when you doubt, think about your testimony. You didn't save yourself. We can't. We were running away from from God. The Bible said we were His enemies, and all of a sudden something stopped us and caused us to consider our sinful state. The Holy Spirit of God stopped you, caused you to turn around. We overcome the enemy by the blood of the Lamb and the word of our testimony.
26 · Final application calling the congregation to memorize Scripture as the weapon against the enemy
Check this out. Psalm 119: How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word. With my whole heart I seek you. Let me not wander from your commandments. I have— and ask yourself if this is you, okay? This is the psalmist. He says, I have stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. Blessed are you, O Lord. Teach me your statutes. With my lips I declare all the rules of your mouth. In the way of your testimonies I delight as much as in all riches. I will meditate on your precepts and fix my eyes on your ways. I will delight in your statutes. I will not forget your word. This piece of paper that Ricky has at the back table, it's filled with God's Word. Store it up in your heart so when the tempter comes, just like Jesus in the wilderness, when the tempter came to him, what did he say? It is written. It is written. It is written. I remember when I was just a young Christian back in the '70s, there was this little paperback book called The Jesus Person. The Jesus Person Pocket Promise Manual. And it was, and it was just a little book of God's promises. If you're fearful, here's some scriptures. If you're sad, here's some scriptures. If you're weary, here's some scriptures. If you're filled with fear, here's some scriptures. Here's some promises to lay up in your heart, to to fight the enemy. If you're not memorizing God's Word, you are open season for the enemy. Lay up God's Word in your heart so that when he comes, you say, listen, it is written. There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. No condemnation, for he has redeemed you. He has called you by his name. He has given you a place in his family. We are his sons. We are his sons. Cross of Grace, you are sent. God bless you all.