—For the reading of God’s word.
Revelation chapter 12. It’s the center of the book, literally, but it’s also considered a key and a pivotal vision for the entire message of Revelation. So we look to the reading of God’s word. If you join with me in prayer.
Our great God, we do ask that you would guide us by your word and by your spirit, that in your light we may see the light of your truth. And there, Lord God, we would find freedom and that we would discover your peace that you have brought to us through your Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. For it is in his name that we do now pray. Amen. Beginning in verse 1: And a great sign appeared in heaven, and a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars.
She was pregnant, was crying out in birth pains in 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 the 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. Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. When he was defeated and there was no longer any place for them in heaven, and the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, He is 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 have been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.
And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death. Therefore rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them. But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. I doubt many of you would think about putting a dragon in your manger scene or the, the crèche. Small child breathlessly running and telling her mom excitedly that she gets to be a sheep in the Christmas play and Billy gets to be the dragon.
A mom being asked to create a costume, a dragon with 7 heads. That would just be very strange to us. And yet chapter 12 does that. It puts the dragon right into the Christmas story, and it puts the dragon into the history of mankind in the conflict. And we certainly see the dragon standing behind him, behind King Herod, when he attempts to destroy Jesus.
He’s standing there when Herod’s men kill all the male children 2 and under in Bethlehem and in the region around. And our whole history comes with this dragon in the background. And we see this from Genesis chapter 3. There had been a cosmic conflict with a dragon, and he is a part of our history. He stands in the background for you and I as well.
It’s a warfare that we inherit, and we inherit it from one generation to the next. The good news of the story, of course, is that the end is already appointed and known, and we know the outcome. And we are living in the tension though, and that’s difficult for us. We’re called to live in a war zone, holding firm to an assured victory, even when it’s hard for us to see that victory. But God is a God of peace.
And he brought forward the Prince of Peace to destroy the works of the devil. And you and I then enter into the triumph of that peace as soldiers of Christ. And that seems to be a paradox. Paul even says in Romans 16, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
Seems almost antithetical. But that language takes us back to Genesis 3. In God’s paradise lurked something unforeseen, unbidden, and unwelcome. The chapter begins with, “Now the serpent, more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made, he said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say?'” And he calls into question God’s goodness. And from this temptation, Adam and Eve chose to sin and rebel against the Lord.
And just a little later in the curse that God declares upon the serpent, he says, “I will put enmity, hatred, between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike or crush his heel.” And so what we see is in Genesis 3, the gauntlet has been thrown down. War is openly declared. And that now goes forward into history.
Cain and Abel, the flood, Lamech, all the things that we see in the contesting of human history and the violence and the warfare all going ahead between these two warring groups. And the he, though, here Paul tells us in Genesis 3 refers to Christ. The ongoing warfare of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent culminate in Jesus. It’s in his sacrificial death, his glorious resurrection, that he has crushed the evil one. And this mortal wound has been struck in Christ’s first advent, his first coming.
And Paul tells us that as Christians, we are awaiting the final blow to come in the second advent, the second coming, which we see depicted here in Revelation.
But in the And in this process, he includes us. Seems odd that Paul would say, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.” How can that be? How in any way are we a part of this in that way? The crushing of Satan? It’s message, it’s key to what’s taking place.
And one writer puts it, “John is setting forth a spiritual truth in a pictorial form.” The veil is pulled back and we get a symbolic behind-the-scenes look at the whole drama of redemption in one magnificent panorama. And we’re brought here to a birth and to a battle. And it begins, a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of 12 stars. She was pregnant, was crying out in birth pains, the agony of giving birth. And begins, a great sign It’s a vision, it’s an allegory.
It’s like the whole of Revelation, it’s a story being told in a symbolic form to communicate to us a very vivid and dynamic spiritual truth. And as I mentioned, Revelation is permeated with the language of the Old Testament, and we see that here. Back in Genesis, Joseph had a dream that angered his brothers, and in one of the dreams that he dreamt, he saw the sun and the moon and 11 stars were bowing down to him, and that was understood to be his father Jacob and mother, and his brothers, who end up being the other 11 tribes. In the rabbinic writings, the sun and the moon represented Abraham and Sarah and their children. So we see who this woman is, who she’s representing.
And some go, well, isn’t it talking about Mary? Yes and no. She is Mary as far as Mary’s a part of the faithful community of God’s people, but the woman represents more than Mary. The woman is a picture of the Lord’s faithful remnant who have existed before and after Christ, His coming the first time. We would say the invisible church, the faithful people of God, all those whom He has called out, whom He has elected as His own, the faithful Messianic community.
Of whom Mary is a part. And these birth pains are often understood then as the persecution of the faithful to the Lord from the fall of Adam up until the time of Christ. The consequences of this warfare, they’re real. And we get this extraordinary interest into this huge red dragon, and verse 9 makes it very clear who this is. It’s a reference to Satan.
Another sign appeared in the heavens, and 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, cast them to the 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. In the ancient world, dragons were thought of as serpent-like. If you want a visual, think more Chinese than English, but that’s the picture of this— the giving birth of the Christ child and Satan wanting to destroy him.
And throughout Scripture, we are given these references to the dragon, and it can stand for different things. In Isaiah, there’s a striking picture there of God coming against the dragon of Egypt. And there Isaiah says, was it not you, to the Lord, who cut into pieces Rahab, who pierced the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep? Or Ezekiel 29, behold, I am against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great dragon that lies in the midst of the streams.
And just speaking of Satan himself, Job, he praises God by saying, by his winds the heavens were made fair. His hand pierced the fleeing serpent. And the prophet Isaiah combines all of these various images, speaking of God’s great victory over the serpent. And Isaiah 27, he says, in that day, the Lord with his hand, great and strong on his sword, will punish Leviathan. The fleeing serpent, Leviathan the twisting serpent, and he will slay the dragon that is in the sea.
This picture of who he is, both metaphorically sometimes represented in people and nations standing against God, as well as who he is himself. And this dragon has a real strength, a real power. That’s the number 10 tells us that he has a tenfold strength and authority. He seemed to possess 7 heads with crowns in them And he is here in the midst with real authority over some parts of the earth, with a real power to come against the people of God in very harmful ways. And he’s ready to attack, and he has been attacking ever since.
And we see then the sweeping away of the tail and these stars falling to the ground. And there are some who think this is speaking of this great heavenly rebellion where the angels fell with Satan. It very well could be, but others have seen it actually as his persecution of the stars, being those who are being martyred in their faith, that those who are shining for the Lord who have been taken out by the dragon, thinking back to Revelation 6, the martyrs calling out, how long, O Lord, before you judge? Either way, a warfare is depicted. This dragon, in all of his false sovereignty, attempts to destroy the male child.
And we’re told, verse 5, she gave birth to the male child who is to rule the nations with a rod of iron. That comes right out of Psalm 2, the Messianic Psalm, that he would come and rule the nations. But her child was caught up to God and to his throne. The child comes forth in this, this power and the might of what his role is to be, and in an almost anticlimactic way, he’s caught up to heaven. So you get the whole birth, the life, the death, and resurrection of Jesus summed up in about half a sentence.
It’s a victorious birth.
But the previous chapters that John has laid out so far are following this ascension in this particular way. And from this point, the other chapters are also— they’re pointing both to this same story. It gives us God’s perspective from what’s taking place. From God’s vantage point, this isn’t a conflict. He wins without any effort.
Thank you very much, this child is mine. Satan could never have any hold on the Holy One of Israel. The gospel, of course, gives us the details of the agony of Christ’s suffering in life, but John here is giving us a God’s-eye view, and the victory was from the start, of accomplished. There was never any doubt. The victory was always God’s.
I like how one writer said it. He said, the dragon did not end the child’s life. Instead, the child ended the dragon’s reign. He ended the dragon’s reign. And because of this, another says, Jesus’ ascension means the battle is won, and so we live in the hope of victory.
The ascension means the battle intensifies. And so we cannot relax our guard or let down our weapons. We fight in hope, but we must fight. Ignoring either is disastrous for the church. We are engaged in a conflict.
We are brought into a battle. And we see this unfold in verse 6. The woman, she flees into the wilderness where God has prepared a place for her. In the wilderness, she’s being protected.
And there arose a war in heaven. Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. The dragon and his angels fight back, but he was defeated, and there’s no longer any place for them in the heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, the ancient serpent who’s called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He’s thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
This warfare we see with Michael, uh, in the background of this is running Daniel chapter 10, where a similar language is used of Michael contesting with, with demonic forces over what’s taking place with Israel and what was to come, particularly in the fulfillment of that in Antiochus IV, the abomination of desolation, with the temple being desecrated, a literal fulfillment there. But what we see is this ongoing and continuous warfare And what’s taking place here, some are like, there’s obviously not a consensus of when all of these things take place, but it seems likely that what John is speaking about here is the life of Jesus. In John 12, as Jesus is looking towards the cross, he makes the comment, “Now the prince of the world will be cast out.” And we also read in Luke 10, when Jesus sent out the 70 to, to go and proclaim and preach the kingdom. And it said they returned with joy and they said, Lord, even the demons are subject to your name. And there he said, I saw Satan fall like lightning from the heaven.
Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions. Again, the context of this is the kingdom proclamation in, in demonic war and over the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. So this contest taking place, the kingdom going forward, Jesus moving towards the cross, and in all of this there’s a clear eviction notice has been given and enforced. You are out.
That’s the glory of the gospel. Jesus ascends and Satan descends, and there’s bad news in that as well. In verse 10, I heard a loud voice saying, now the salvation And the power and the kingdom of God, the authority of his Christ have come. The accuser of the brothers have been thrown down, who accuses them night and day before our God. That name Satan in Hebrew, it simply means accuser, adversary.
And in Greek, diabolos, the devil, also one who slanders, one who divides. The accuser has no place to accuse the people of God. Why? Because of Christ’s great victory. He took away all accusation against his people.
Those who bear his name have been given his righteousness. His verdict declared, you have been justified. We have been united to him. The accusation no longer stands against God’s people. That’s why Paul can say in Romans 8, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Yes and amen. And he goes on, and he answers the question why. Paul says, because the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do by sending his own Son. And that’s immediate praise to us.
Our identity is now in Christ. The accusations no longer stand. Feel the weight of that? Who here does not rightly bear an accusation against themself? Who here is not marked by some profound weight of sin or thinking, if only other people knew?
But in Jesus, those accusations no longer stand. We have been given a new identity. And it is no longer labeled with our sin. That’s why the gospel is good news.
We stand before God, before his courtroom, and we have been given and rendered a verdict of not guilty by virtue of the righteousness of Christ given to us by faith alone. None of us earned it. It’s entirely grace. Nobody did something to win this over. It is given by God.
Through his Son freely.
That is the— what sets us free.
And we have this in the midst of a bloody conflict, that we now live free and justified in the midst of this battle. And we see it’s still raging in verses 12 to 17. The accuser, the dragon, is not going without a fight. He attempts to destroy the church, the faithful community of Christ. He stands against her.
But what we see even here is God bringing, bringing the woman into the wilderness, bringing her into protection. The place of the wilderness is both— can be places of trial, but also places where God is protecting and preserving. And he has lifted her up, these wings. Exodus 19:4, a very beautiful picture of that. But woe to you who are on the earth, for the devil knows his time is short and he has great wrath.
In verse 17, the dragon came, became furious with the woman, and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, of those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus.
I’m sure you’ve noticed I did skip over something. It’s verse 11. And they, the faithful community, the people of God, they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they love not their lives even unto death. The final victory of Jesus is brought through his body, the church. How do they conquer?
They conquer by testifying to Jesus and his finished work, his complete work. They lay down their lives for him. The great and mighty weapon of suffering love, which we have received from our Savior, is what is in play.
Peace in the New Testament is obtained and maintained through communion with Christ.
And you also notice that for all the imagery of this warfare, the Bible speaks in stark contrast of its warfare with the warfare of the world. The triumph comes in sacrifice, not in demanding rights. The triumph comes in a willingness to die, literally and figuratively. The triumph comes when the faithful community looks like, sounds like, smells like their Savior. Suffering love wins.
I’m not talking about pacifism. I’m talking about how you live your life open to God and to the world around you, living as one who no longer bears the accusations of the evil one. Paul reminds us in Ephesians 6 that we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but what? Against rulers, against powers, authorities, against powers over the present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places. He gets our eyes off of one another.
Not saying we can’t do terrible things to one another, we do. He’s saying that greater conflict, what we’re a part of, is a satanic conflict.
That is who we are ultimately waging war against. And you and I usher in Christ’s victory and peace every time we choose to forgive, choose to reconcile. You usher in his victory every time you choose to be inconvenienced by another for the sake of Christ. When you lay down your life for somebody else’s needs.
Too often we want to take the easy task of taking up the weapons of the world to engage in warfare in the way that they do, and that cannot be with the people of God. It’s easy to be distracted, to chase after the wrong thing. We can feel good about ourselves as defenders of the truth, all the while we leave the greater matters alone. Think about who were the best defenders of the faith in the time of Jesus. Everyone would identify the Pharisees.
They’re the ones who are really getting after it. They’re the ones who are really calling it. They’re the ones sticking it to people, getting in their face. Down with the Romans, down with anybody that they don’t think measures up to their standard.
And they’re the ones who crucified the Lord of glory. How easy it is for us to get distracted on the wrong things, to take up the weapons of this world’s warfare. The brothers James and John, they’re traveling to Jerusalem. The cross is in front of Jesus in Luke 9. And they’re going through a Samaritan village that refused to show them hospitality.
And their response to Jesus is, “Shall we call down fire on them?” Hey, they’re not on mission, they’re not on point, they’re against us. Smack them down. Come on, Jesus, they deserve it. And Jesus turned and what did he do? Rebuked them.
Because the cross is a very odd weapon. It’s too big to wield as a club. It’s too obtrusive to hide. It’s too hideous to spruce up. It’s too offensive to dilute.
But deep, true, and abiding peace are found only in the cross of Christ.
Spiritual warfare in the church is what that means. And what does that look like? Well, it means we refuse to gossip, to spread accusations. We don’t do the devil’s work for him. We don’t become the accusers of our brothers.
We become advocates and not accusers. We choose to extend grace, mercy, and forgiveness, to be men and women of biblical peace. So that does mean standing against falseness, false teaching, lies, deception. Standing against, yes, and standing for for loving our enemies, blessing those who say all kinds of evil against us and who persecute us. It’s standing against and standing for.
It’s coming in the same manner of Christ to the world around us, who came into the midst of rebellious glory thieves like you and I and was willing to lay down his life and die for them. And then we’re commanded to do the very same thing. We don’t get a pass on this because we bear his name, we bear his image, we bear the grace that we’ve received. And that frees us then to go in his power to do these very things that’s impossible for us alone. Ours is a supernatural faith.
Nobody does this on their own. Nobody loves their enemies well and turns the other cheek when people are saying all kinds of evil against you. We stand up and want to defend our rights and our name, and we want to— no. How do we move against that? The Holy Spirit in you bringing forth the victory of Christ into the world around us.
That’s when Paul says that the God of peace will soon crush Satan. Where? Under your feet. This is what that is. That’s what the warfare is.
Is to be. And when we as God’s people can take that as our mantle of our calling as soldiers of Christ in the manner of Christ, when the world can say, “You look, you smell, you sound like Jesus,” we have done something.
When they can recognize Jesus in the midst of his people, the church, we have done something. The glory and the honor of Christ is upheld. The victory is moving forward, is advancing into a hostile environment because of why? Because of the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. They did not love their lives even to death.
May that mark us as the people of God here at Faith Covenant, here in the Valley and beyond. May, may the world be able to see that Then we will have literally the dragon fading in the background and the glory and the majesty of Christ coming to the forefront as we await in this time between times. I don’t know when he’s coming back. When he comes back, it’s gonna be good and beautiful and glorious, and we will be without spot, without wrinkle, without blemish. As the bride of Christ.
And in the meantime, in the meantime, we are about the business of his kingdom in the manner of our King and our Savior, in the spirit and the good news of our Savior, that the world would know from us not more accusations, but pointing to the advocacy of Jesus Christ.
That we would demonstrate that in how we live with one another and how we care for one another and how we tell the world, not more accusation, that’s the devil’s work. The advocacy of Jesus, the rule and the reign of the one who came into the midst of this godforsaken place. To redeem and to claim it for his Father. Pray with me. Father Almighty, we do thank you.
We thank you for the blessings of redemption that you’ve given to us. And Lord God, we also confess that we wage warfare very poorly, and we ask, Lord, that you would continue to transform us into that kingdom of priests Father, into that holy nation. Father, that you would continue to lead us into victory in the manner and the likings of Jesus. And Lord God, I would pray that you would continue here. There are eyes that are closed and ears that do not hear, that you would open them, that you would cause blind eyes to see and deaf ears to hear.
Lord, that you would grant saving faith, draw men and women, children to your Son Jesus. We thank you for the salvation that is ours. We bless you for the victory of our King, in whose name we now pray. Amen. Please stand.
What wonderful.
Discaimer: This sermon text was generated by an automated transcription service.