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The episodes are the weekly sermons from 922 Ministries (St. Peter and The CORE) of Appleton, Wisconsin.
Well, good morning. Happy Sunday. Welcome back to week number two of our five week sermon series on the epic book of Revelation.
Before we dive in today, I just need to say thank you so much for all of you who have been such an amazing support to me, my wife, my family over these past four weeks after ACL surgery. For those of you who prayed and texted and emailed and encouraged, for those of you who brought Popeyes and cupcakes and Chick-fil-a and pizza and tacos, I've had such good food over the past month. So it's so great. It's been a long journey. But to have so much support really is meaningful to me. So thank you as a pastor, as a person, for all your support and all of your help. And now back to the book of Revelation.
I wonder what you think about Satan. According to a recent survey, 42% of Americans think that Satan is fictitious, that it doesn't even exist. But Jesus was very convinced that Satan is real. I believe that. And if you believe that, too, I wonder what you think and how you think and how often you think about Satan, about the person that Jesus called the father of lies, the one the Bible calls the prince of this world, who leads the whole world astray. If we had time, just one on one, to talk, I wonder your mindset, your theology, and your beliefs about one of Jesus greatest enemies, the devil.
In my opinion, people get this messed up all the time in modern culture because we either think of Halloween Satan or horror movie Satan. But we forget about biblical Satan. There's the cartoony Halloween Satan, your buddy putting little horns on the top of his head or a pitchfork, the red jump. There's nothing biblical about that. Nor is this idea that Satan is just like some demonic, head twisting, jump out of the closet and try to scare you kind of person.
No. Satan in the Bible is much more subtle and crafty than that. What concerns me when I think personally about Satan is the simple, disturbing fact. Maybe I shouldn't mess with your day and share it, but here's what I think about Satan. He knows me.
According to the Bible, Satan has been around as long as human beings have been around, which means he knows exactly, exactly how to tempt a person exactly like me. He's watched the game film on people with my personality, and he's studied countless examples of people who are a lot like you. He knows what bait works best and what bait you won't bite on, ever. He knows what temptations to tempt you with and which ones are absolutely uninteresting to you spiritually.
It doesn't matter who you are, how you're wired, your strengths or your weaknesses. Satan has had a thousand tries at tempting and leading astray a person who's exactly like you. That is the data point about Satan that keeps me up at night.
Like, if you're a driven person, you're hardworking. He won't bother to tempt you with laziness and an extra nap per week. Instead, he will drive you to become so driven that you forget about the other things that matter so much to God. He'll make you so fixated on the goals and the achievement at work that you'll forget to ask yourself questions like, when's the last time I spent an hour in prayer? When's the last time I held my spouse's hand and led them in worship?
When's the last time I discipled my own children? He could care less. If you make a million dollars and are more successful than any member of your family has ever been, as long as he can turn that drive up a step too far to get you to cross a line.
Or if you're a compassionate person with a big heart, you might think, well, Satan would be intimidated by you. You're so compassionate. But no, he's seen you before, and he knows that if he can get you to turn up compassion just a step too much, that you become a people pleaser, someone who can never confront difficult issues or ask hard questions, just want to be liked, and you just want everyone to get along. He's okay with a person just like you, as long as he can turn you up a bit too far.
If you're an analytical person, he'll turn you into a critic. And your family can never do anything totally right.
If you're a person who likes to relax and let things flow, he'll turn you into a lazy person, and other people will have to pick up your slack.
If you're good with words and quick with a joke, he'll make you good at arguing and being defensive.
If you're intelligent, he'll make you too intelligent for supernatural things. The devil knows people just like you.
If you're a person of high standards who pushes hard at everything you do, he'll make you impatient and unforgiving for people who struggle and fall short.
If you're great with money, he'll make you fixated on the bottom line of finances instead of your faith.
If you're amazingly organized, he'll turn your calendar into your idol, which must be obeyed. Otherwise, there's no joy in your day, he knows you and he knows me.
When I think about that simple fact, like the devil who is relentless, who is a spiritual being who neither slumbers nor sleeps, when he is a master at manipulating people, I think of my own faith. I think about my wife, I think about my kids. And it's hard not to fear the devil.
I'm sure he's pleased if we turn him into some cartoon, laughable character while he subtly lurks like a prowling lion and devours us with our most common temptations.
This simple fact, I think, is why God gave us the book of Revelation. A lot of people avoid the book of Revelation with its numbers and its imagery and its visionary dreams. But within the Book of Revelation we find two such important things for our faith. We find out that the devil is real and he is fierce. It is not to be underestimated.
The devil comes in full and living color in the Book of Revelation. And yet at the same time, we find in this book the answer to these temptations. We find a way to overcome, to slay the dragon and to resist. The one who knows our name, knows our weaknesses, and knows perfectly how to tempt us. And today I want to share with you those two truths by walking through an entire chapter of the Book of Revelation.
Now, I haven't preached in a few weeks, so I got a lot of minutes and a lot of words left in this heart. So today we're going to walk through kind of a long chapter in three separate sections. And what you're going to find is that the devil is fierce, but you can overcome him with faith. You're going to find out that the devil is stronger than you thought he was, stronger than you yourself, but he's not stronger than you and God together. So today I want you to grab a pen. I want you to open your hearts and your ears as we open up this great Revelation from Jesus and find out that there is an answer, there is a way to defeat our greatest enemy is through faith in the mighty name of God.
So let's jump in. Revelation chapter twelve begins. With these words:
“A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven. An enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that it might devour her child the moment he was born.”
Uh oh. The first picture that this picture is, is a picture I'll show you right here. A fierce, enormous dragon versus a very, very pregnant woman. Now, the dragon we're about to find out later in this chapter is the devil. And as you can see, the Book of Revelation pictures him in the fiercest possible terms.
He's not just a dragon, he's an enormous dragon. He doesn't have just one head to tempt you and bite you. He has seven. He has ten horns to gore you, crowns on his head to prove his authority as the prince of this world. He's waiting on tippy claws to devour this woman, which might make you ask, well, who's the woman?
I believe in this instance, the woman is meant to represent us, Christianity. You might know sometimes in the Bible that the church of Jesus is described like a woman, the bride of Christ, she's sometimes called. She's clothed majestically because Jesus clothes us in his righteousness and in his purity, in his forgiveness and in his salvation. And there's a hint here that she has a crown with what? Twelve stars on her head.
You know what the number twelve represents in the book of Revelation? The Church of Jesus. So in the Old Testament, God's people were divided into how many tribes? Twelve. In the New Testament, when Jesus chose his apostles, how many did he pick? Twelve. So twelve is often the number that represents the christian church.
So she has this crown of twelve sorrows to remind us this is Christianity, this is the people of God. And compared to the dragon, she's not so strong. Now, don't be mad at me, any of you ladies who are pregnant right now or recently gave birth, but here's what I've learned about pregnant women: They're not that fast.
I think with this brace I could limp a woman who had just given birth. She's very pregnant, and here's this enormous dragon who's obviously going to devour her. This picture is meant to make us think that the church of Jesus, with all of our weaknesses and flaws, is very temptable, very fallible human people. You would think we are dead face to face with the devil.
Which is why I love what the book of Revelation says next. There he is, waiting for the child to be born. Look what it says in verse five.
“But the woman gave birth to a son, a male child who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God into his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1260 days.”
Just when you think this little baby is going to get devoured in one bite, snatched up to God and saved, it kind of reminds you, right after Jesus was born, do you remember when the wicked king Herod tried to kill Jesus? I mean, you think Mary and Joseph are in Bethlehem, They're far from home, they're poor. They're carrying an infant, who's going to cry and give them away. Here's the king with his mighty army. Of course they're going to die. Until God steps in with a dream and an angel and he whisks the family off to Egypt. He saves them from certain death.
The child is saved, and then did you catch it? The woman, The Church, me and you are saved, too. Somehow we run away from the devil to a place that God himself has prepared for us, that we might be taken care of. Here's my favorite part. It's the hardest part, where God might take care of us for 1260 days.
All right, quick show fans, how many of you are mostly caffeinated by this point of the day? All right, if your hand isn't up right now, I need you to pinch your thigh and squeeze it as hard as you can. This will be about the deepest this sermon gets, so get ready for it. What does that mean? That God takes care of his church from the devil for 1260 days?
I think this is like a symbolic way of saying that God is going to take care of his people to the very end. Here's why. I think that 1260 days is 42 months, right? 30 days in a month times 40, 212, 60, and 42 months is 3.5 years. Correct. I think that all of human history in the Bible is sometimes represented by the number seven, just like God spent seven days creating the world.
So if you take all of human history from Adam and Eve until the end of the world as a big seven, and you divide it with Jesus in the middle, the first big chunk, what we call the Old Testament, would be 3.5. And since the time of Jesus to the very end of the world would be 3.5, I think what this passage is saying is that for all 1260 days, from the time Jesus was snatched back up to heaven and sits at the right hand of God to the time when Jesus comes back to the very last day of earth's history, God will take care of his people. Did I lose you? Yeah. Ask a math major next to you. They'll explain it to you after church, right? This is such good news.
This is saying as bad as it might seem, as you hear the wars and the rumors of wars, the protests and the counter protests, as you struggle with your own weaknesses and sin, as you stumble and fall and wonder, man, is my faith gonna make it? God has said there is a place that you can run to, a place where I will take care of you. Not for 1000 days, but I hope you can figure out by yourself in the end, no, to the very last day, until Jesus comes back, God will take care of his church.
It might seem like we are so outmatched, but once God steps in and provides for us through his word, his promises and his forgiveness, to the very end, he has promised to watch over your soul. He started a good work in your heart and he's promised to carry it on to completion.
A couple months ago, I saw these two little brothers walk into church at our north campus. One was eight years old and one was five years old and they were clutching these little books that I learned from their parents were their favorite books in the whole world. If you've raised little boys, maybe you're familiar with this. The books were basically what would happen if this mighty beast fought that mighty beast. Have you heard of these?
What would happen if a great white shark battled a giant octopus? What would happen if a silver backed gorilla battled the lion? Can you imagine little boys reading these like, yeah, what would happen these epic battles? I was thinking, what if there was a new addition to that book series? What would happen if a seven headed dragon fought a pregnant woman?
Like, uh. I think I know. But isn't it amazing that even though the church seems so frail and weak, even though the surveys are saying, well, the next generation doesn't care about Jesus, isn't it amazing that despite all the things that have happened in the past 2000 years that seemed like they would stamp out the church, from roman emperors throwing christians into the coliseum to atheistic regimes wiping out pastors, churches and faith, isn't it amazing that for 2000 years the church still stands and Jesus has made a promise that because of God's care and concern, even the gates of hell will not overcome the christian faith?
So the next time you're worried that you're outmatched, maybe you could write down this truth that we just learned from Revelation, chapter twelve, that you plus God's care is greater than Satan. Subtract the intervention of God and you and I are in grave danger. But add God's promise to take care of his church, his bride, for 1260 days. And you know how to slay the dragon.
Which brings us to part two. For today, as John continues to write in Revelation, chapter twelve, he says this in verse seven.
“Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels,
What we would call the good angels,
“fought against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels,
what we call demons,
“fought back, but he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them. But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you. He's filled with fury because he knows that his time is short.”
What do you think? Was that good news or bad news?
Well, the devil tried to fight against God and the angels, and he couldn't win. That's good news. Therefore rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them. But did you catch the bad news? But woe to the earth, because the devil has gone down to you. He was hurled down where he leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and all of his angels, the demons, were hurled with him.
That's the sobering part about living here on earth. We're not in heaven yet, and the devil's prowling like a lion, accusing, tempting, trying to lead the whole world astray. And trying to lead you and those you love astray, too.
I was thinking the other day about how the devil does that. How has he been able to lead so many people astray? And although there are individual techniques that he might use, I think historically there are two big temptations that the devil has always used. And I bet one of them works pretty well on you.
The devil either becomes to you the great excuser or the great accuser when it comes to sin. He will either convince you to take sin too lightly and he will become the excuser, or he will lead you to take sin so seriously that he becomes the great accuser.
The Bible as some of you know, has two primary teachings, the law and the gospel. How God wants us to live and what Jesus did for us when he died. And the devil knows if this is what matters most to the Christian faith, he has to fiercely pounce on one or both of those teachings. So he excuses or he accuses.
And I'm curious, which of the two works best on you?
Maybe it's the excuses. Maybe somehow he's convinced you that what's bad in the Bible isn't so bad in real life, that what Jesus had to bleed and die for is just being human. Or you being you.
Now, how many christian guys get out on the golf course each spring and slice their first drive and say, “Oh, my God, Jesus Christ?”
Like it's just some name, some word to be used in vain. It's so clear what the Bible says about the sacredness of the name of Jesus, and yet we toss it around like it's nothing. And it just seems like it's nothing because everyone does it, right. We excuse it.
I think about God's love for gathered worship, so evident that God organized the christian religion, that we could do life together as a community. But I wonder in this community, I wonder among us, how many times we say sorry to the pastor for missing church, but we've never once said sorry to the coach for missing the tournament for the sake of church.
Just feels normal to us.
I think what the Bible says about authority and parents and family, but we just seem to, like, get a free pass when we turn a certain age to roll our eyes at our mom or talk back to our dad. We don't need to honor or obey anyone. We're our own people. The Bible is so clear about our respect and submission to those that God has put in authority.
That goes for the government, too. How we should speak about our leaders despite their flaws. It's so clear in the pages of the Bible. But do you know what they're saying? Do you know what they're doing? Excuse, excuse, excuse.
I think what the Bible says about alcohol, I think about my home state of Wisconsin. Now, around here we say, as long as you're not driving, I'd just like to have a good time.
Some accident. In one. Peter, chapter five, it says, be sober because your enemy, the devil, prowls like a roaring lion.
Tipsy gazelles get devoured and buzzed Christians do, too.
I think about sex and money. Man, we have a million excuses, right? Well, it's just how I feel. It's how I've always been. I didn't choose it.
We love each other. We're committed. No. And somehow we need to throw out the vow. We need to throw out God's design for how he wanted our relationships to be. We become the Lord and master of our bodies and our sexuality.
I think the excuses we make for holding on to every dollar and cent that God gives us, the sins of the church, the sins of people like me, become an excuse to just hold on and hoard every dollar and every cent.
Think of how blunt we can be. We lack compassion and kindness. But I'm telling the truth.
The devil is so. He's so bad and he's so good at what he does, because what God hates, we stop hating.
When's the last time you thought that the biggest problem in the room was you instead of someone else?
When's the last time you confessed? Like the apostle Paul, I'm the worst of sinners.
When's the last time you wept over your own sinfulness and brokenness?
Now the great excuser is great at what he does, and if that won't work, he's got another tactic. I can't believe you did that. You go to church. What? You did that. You got drunk, you hooked up, you said that. And now you're going to pray like God would listen to you. You think you have any place in heaven? You are so dirty, so unworthy.
Why would God love a person like you? You are so broken, so messed up. You're still struggling with the same thing. Have you changed in five years? He just accuses and accuses and accuses. If he can't get you to take sin too lightly, he'll get you to take it so seriously that you can't smile and you can't breathe and you can't relax. You can't experience the joy of your salvation because it can't possibly apply to a sinner who's as sinful as you.
Woe to the earth, Revelation says. The devil is filled with fury. And he's not hiding under the bed. He's just whispering excuses and accusations, hoping that you believe one, if not both.
How do you overcome the father of lies? How do you get past those two big temptations that have worked on countless souls for countless years?
Did you catch it? Verse eleven. But they, the brothers and sisters, triumphed over him. The devil. How? By the blood of the lamb.
What the devil cannot stand and cannot stand up against is the blood of Jesus. You know the movies? You pull out a cross to keep away a vampire. It is actually the cross that keeps away the evil one. It is the blood of Christ that exposes both of those great lies for what they are.
Can you see why? If I see Jesus bleeding for my sins on the cross, how can I say, “well, not a big deal.” As they smash the crown of thorns into his head, as I'm watching nails pierced through the only sinless flesh that has ever endured on this earth, how could I say, “well, it's just how I am.”?
There's an old hymn that says,
If you think of sin but lightly, nor suppose it's evil, great.
Here you can esteem it rightly, and here your guilt may estimate.
Stand in front of the cross of Jesus, think about the wages of our sin, and you won't excuse it. You'll see it for what it is, the wickedness that cost the son of God his very life.
And while you're watching, let the accusations lose their power over you. Because if Jesus shed his holy, precious blood for you, how could you not be forgiven? If Jesus, with arms stretched wide, did not question, “It's finished?”, but declared with a loud voice, “It is finished!” How could your sin not be finished if he's the son of God, who knew everything wrong that you would ever do? And he said, I paid the price in full. How could the price not be paid?
What will the devil accuse you of that hasn't been forgiven by the blood of Jesus? Let him accuse you. Yeah, I said that. Yeah, I did that. But, devil, don't forget what my Jesus did for me on that Friday when he shed his holy, precious blood. That your lies wouldn't stick, that there would be a place for me beside the throne of God. And the devil's good at his job, but he is not so good that he can overcome the blood of Jesus. So grab a pen and write this down.
You cannot overcome Satan, but you plus Jesus' blood absolutely can.
Focus on the blood. Sing of the blood. Thank God for the blood. Preach about the blood. Hear about the blood, and you will have the ultimate answer to defeat the devil.
I recently heard about this little girl who came to believe that. My wife, who is a preschool teacher of three and four year olds, came home from teaching a few months ago. And she told me about the most epic day maybe ever of her teaching ministry. All these little three and four year olds were sitting in their carpet squares, and she decided to tell the kids about the two great truths of the Bible. She used the classic illustration, maybe you've seen it, where she pulled out a jar of water and says, this is usually, and if you and I can be good and clean and pure. We get to be with God.
God is holy. So if you're holy, you get to be with God. God is perfect. And so if you're perfect, you get to be with God. But then she pulled out the little dropper with a yellow dyed liquid, and she talked about the times when we're not so good.
Our sins, our struggles. And as those yellow drops fell into water, they dissolved into the jar, dirtying it, making it imperfect and impure. One little girl sitting in the back corner of the room, she started to panic. She said, miss Kim, how are we going to go to heaven?
But that's when Kim pulled out the Jesus jar. A jar not just of regular water, but a jar that was actually filled with bleach. And she poured that bleach into the stained water. Do you know what happened to it? Well, I got the parents permission to show you what actually happened. Take a look at the little girl in the back.
It's kind of like this happened. Watch.
It’s clean again! Now you can go to heaven!
Yes! Yes! Yes! How priceless is the faith of a child? What are we gonna do? We're sinful. But Jesus fixed it. I love that it's clean again.
I want you to believe that, too, that your sin was a problem that you could not fix. But Jesus could. You. Plus the blood of Jesus Christ is the ultimate answer to the devil's lies, and it is your ticket to heaven.
Which brings us to the last part. I want to study with you today. I'm going to move quickly, but I need your help. All right. So this is the crowd participation of the sermon. Follow my lead. Revelation twelve. Let's jump in. At verse 13, it said,
“When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.”
Say uh oh.
One more time. Say uh oh. Uh oh. Verse 14.
“But the woman was given the two wings of a great eagle so that she might fly to the place prepared for in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent's reach.”
Say oh. Oh. Time, times half a time. 3.5 equals to the very end. Verse 15.
“Then from his mouth, the serpent spewed water like a river to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent.”
Say uh oh. Uh Oh. But verse 16.
“The earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.”
Say oh. Oh. Verse 17.
“Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring.”
Say, uh oh. Uh oh.
“Those who keep God's commands and hold fast to their testimony about Jesus.”
And if you'd keep reading, you would say, oh, oh.
Uh oh, oh, the devil. Uh oh, oh, Jesus.
I love the book of Revelation. It's a synopsis of the whole Bible. It's bad, it gets worse. But don't worry, because Jesus wins. So let me have you write this down. Here's the big message we're learning from Revelation, chapter twelve. And in fact this whole book that God gave us that:
You are not greater than Satan but you plus God always are.
Did you know that the devil does not want you to read the book of Revelation. He wants you to be so confused and baffled by over interpretations and mysterious numbers that you just stay away from it. Because it is the book that exposes him for the fierce predator that he is and also shows that by the mighty name of Jesus, he is the prey of the Gospel.
And that's why I have a prayer for you. I pray that for the next 1260 days to the very end of your life, you stay close to the blood of Jesus. I don't want you just to be spiritual. The devil's cool with spiritual. I don't want you just to pray to some higher power. It doesn't bother the devil for 1 second. I want you to build into the rhythms of your life the one thing that the devil cannot stand up against.
The blood of Christ, the thing that will make you take your sin seriously, no matter how fierce your personal struggle, is the thing that will convince you at the end of the day, the end of every day, that I am forgiven, safe and saved because of Jesus. I want you to come to a place like this where the cross is lifted high and the gospel is proclaimed every single Sunday. Where it's not morality tales or tips at being a better human. But the blood of Christ is proclaimed in all of its glory.
I want you not just to pray to God. That's good. I want you to have a daily connection to the word of God where the blood of Jesus shows up on nearly every page.
I want you to be rooted not just in some religion or vague spirituality. I want you to be rooted in the message of Jesus that is about the blood. Because at the end of the day, the blood is the thing that defeats our greatest enemy.
Now I want to invite our band back up here on stage because I want to sing about that amazing blood of Jesus. There's a classic hymn that was written over 100 years ago that just reminds us of these basic truths. There's nothing in the world that can empower us to stand against the devil. There's nothing that can wash away the sins of our past. There's nothing that can make us whole despite our human brokenness. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
And today, as we sing about the blood of Christ and the cross of Christ and the great sacrifice of Christ, I want you to believe the goodness of the Gospel, that God wasn't waiting around until you were strong enough to fight the dragon yourself. Instead, he came down from heaven, he endured incredible pain, and he conquered the devil. Crushed his head, even though His heel was struck at the cross.
So, brothers and sisters, I want you to stand up. I want us to triumph over the accuser of the brothers and sisters, we triumph over him by the blood of the lamb. What can wash away your sin? Let's sing the answer to that question. Nothing but the blood of Jesus.