Book of Revelation - Ch. 12, Vs. 7-8 (10/14/2018)

The War in Heaven and the Fall of Satan

Let's begin this morning with a prayer. Most gracious Heavenly Father, thank you for giving us this place to come together each week to worship you and to study your holy word. Thank you for putting your hedge of protection around us because we live in a world that is controlled by the evil one.

Thank you for all of your protection. Thank you for all of your insights. Thank you for all of the words that you have left for us. Bless us and keep us. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. We are in Revelation 12, verse 7.

And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels and prevailed not. Neither was their place found any more in heaven. That's not Satan's original fall.

If you'll turn back earlier in chapter 12 to verse 4, you'll see another fall. And his tail grew the third part of the stars of the heaven, and it cast them to the earth, and the dragon stood before the woman, which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.

Clearly, the original fall had to take place sometime before the birth of Christ in order that the dragon, Satan, be able to stand before the woman to devour the child when it was born. I think that it happened before Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden, long before the birth of Christ.

Now let's look back forward a little bit in chapter 12 to verse 8, and I'm going to reread that part. Neither was their place found any more in heaven, and the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world.

He was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast with him. So verse 8 and verse 9 had to occur later to bring an end to Satan's access to heaven. That hasn't happened yet, but will, I believe, at the beginning of the last three and a half years of Daniel's seventh, seventieth week of years.

The beginning of the great tribulation, right where we are in our study of Revelation today. Now I want you to focus on the phrase, in heaven. A state of war has existed since before the garden of Eden, but the theater of that war, beginning with the fall of Adam, has been the earth.

That is to say, the war took place since the fall of Adam. The main battles of the war takes place on the earth. Apparently Satan had already been cast out of heaven before he appeared to tempt Adam and Eve.

He did that in Genesis 3, verse 15, if you wish to go there. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. It shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

Now who's the enmity between? It's between Satan and his seed, and the seed of woman. I put Satan, but not really Satan, between Satan's seed and the seed of woman. The seed of woman is Messiah. The seed of woman is Jesus Christ.

And from this point on, the primary goal of Satan is to destroy the line of the Messiah. It is after the fall of man that the war on earth starts in earnest. Oh, Satan did come down into the garden. Satan did tempt Eve, and she tempted Adam, and they fell.

And the paradise in Eden was destroyed, at least from the perspective of man. But after the fall of man, the war on earth begins in earnest. Satan begins with Cain and Abel. He influenced Cain to kill his brother Abel, thinking that he might interrupt the line to the Messiah.

But instead of the line passing through Cain or Abel, the line passes through the third brother, Seth. Then we saw the angels that fell with Satan originally corrupt the human race. We see that in Genesis 6, verse 4.

There were giants in the earth in those days. And also after that, when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.

And God saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continuously. Let me pause there a minute and take comments from the very good.

There were giants in those days when the sons of God came into the daughters of men, and they bare children to them. The same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. Brother Otis used to think that the sons of God were the righteous sons of men, the sons of Seth.

He called them the Sethites. But there's not a real significant difference if you follow through. The descendants of Seth from the descendants of the other sons and daughters of Abraham. They were all born with sin in their genes.

The sons of God here refer to the direct, I don't want to say descendants, those forms of life that were directly formed by God himself. That includes angels. That includes Adam, and it includes Eve, but it doesn't include us.

Because we're not the direct creation of God. We are children of the direct creation of God. So sons of God here just means that these are not traceable back any further than God. God made the angels.

He made the good angels, and he made the bad angels. He made the good angels to perform their role, and he made the bad angels to perform their role. And one of the roles that they were here to perform was to corrupt the human race.

And that's what they did. Picking back up. And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and creeping thing, and the fowls of the air.

For it repenteth me that I have made them. Now, he didn't make them by mistake. He didn't make them accidentally. They didn't do something he didn't expect them to do. They did exactly what he put them here to do.

After all, God puts us, his children, in earthen vessels. So that whatever good comes from us can be traceable not to us, but to him. So it didn't surprise God. He didn't repent in the sense that he changes his mind and he wished he hadn't made them.

He repented in the sense that he grieved him. He was grieved at what they did. And then we come to one of the most beautiful phrases, I think, in the scripture. But, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Now you might notice, it didn't say he earned grace. It didn't say Noah was a good guy and therefore God spared him. It didn't say he deserved grace. It said he found grace. Where did he find it? Wherever it is that God put it.

He found grace. He didn't earn it. He found it. And then we come to Abraham. We just now started. Now I don't really like you back there on the back row. I can't stand it. It's okay, you can sit on the back row if you want to.

I want you up here where I can question you. By the way, we just got past a verse in Genesis. Where it's talking about the flood. The beginning of the flood. And it said there were giants in the earth in those days.

And also after that when the sons of God came into the daughters of men. And bare children to them. And I commented that brother Otis always took that to be the children of Seth. As compared to the children of the other children of Adam.

But I don't think that's it. I believe it's the angels. The sons of God are referring to angels. And it could refer to Adam. And it could refer in a sense to Eve. But not to us. Because we're not direct descendants.

We're not the direct result of creation of God. We are the result of the children of those. So the description there is that these are angels, I believe. And that's Dr. MacArthur's position as well. Okay, that catches us all up.

And then we got to the phrase, But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He didn't earn the grace. He didn't deserve the grace. He found the grace. Then we come to Abraham and Isaac. Go to verse 16 of chapter 22 of Genesis.

Genesis 22, 16. If you ever wonder why the Jews are treated in the world as they are. Why the Jews are treated like they are in the world. And have been treated from thousands of years ago in this fashion.

You go no further than right here. Genesis 22, verse 16. By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord. For because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seeds as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore.

And thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies. And now look at verse 18. And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice. Who's this seed that the Lord is talking about that in this seed shall all nations be blessed?

Well, the seed, the single seed, Jesus. Not the multiple seeds. He will multiply the seeds, but there is a single seed that all nations will be blessed in. And that seed is the Messiah. That's the seed of woman.

That is the Messiah. Satan now knows that the seed of woman will come through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So it's no longer the whole world Satan has to worry about if his goal is to disrupt the line of the Messiah.

He can focus on the nation of Israel. So Satan refines his focus to the nation of Israel, attempting to exterminate Israel in the hopes of destroying the line of the Messiah. We follow on through the history of the Israelites.

Satan persuaded Pharaoh after he let the people go to take his army and go after him. And they chased them into the Red Sea and cornered them against the sea. And the sea miraculously opened. And the children of Israel walked through on dry land.

And then Pharaoh and his army took pursuit, went through the wall of water to catch the Israelites and kill them. And the wall of water closed in on them. And they all drowned. That's going to be reminiscent of something that we will come to if we get all the way through chapter 12 today.

Satan persuaded Pharaoh to pursue Moses and the children of Israel, following them through the Red Sea where the Egyptian army is swallowed up in a way that will come to mind as we work our way through the rest of chapter 12.

Then later, Saul, remember King Saul? King Saul was full of demonic spirits. He couldn't sleep at night. So you remember what he did? He got David to play for him. He called David to play music for him to soothe him.

And David played the music and it soothed him. So as the story plays out, what does Saul do? He attempts to kill David. And had he succeeded, the royal line would have been ended right there. Later, Haman, remember Haman?

Haman was an antagonist of the Israelites after the fall. After the Babylonian captivity, after Cyrus had captured the Babylonians and King Xerxes took the throne. Remember the story of Esther? Yes. And the queen that refused to obey his commands.

And so he replaced her and put Esther in her place. Well, Haman, the advisor to the king, rises to a position of power and proposes a plot to destroy all the Jews only to be foiled by Esther. And in fact, what do you call it?

I want to say crucifix, a cross, but it wasn't a cross. It was the gallows that he had designed for Mordecai to be hung on. He himself was hung on them. Do you remember that now? And that's okay. That's my job is to remind.

Then we come to the curse on Jeconiah. Remember Jeconiah? The most evil, maybe the most evil of all the kings of Israel. So bad that Jeremiah in chapter 22 verse 30 writes this. Thus saith the Lord, Write ye this man childless.

Make it be as if he had no children. A man that shall not prosper in his days. For no man of his seed shall prosper sitting upon the throne of David and ruling Judah anymore. Now who's he talking about?

He's talking about Jeconiah, the king of Judah. Where's the Messiah coming from? The line of David. The line of David passed through Jeconiah. So you've got to imagine the state of the demons when they recognized that Jeconiah had been cursed.

But unbeknownst to Satan, the line didn't go through Solomon and his children. It went through Nathan and his. The line went through the line of Mary, not through the line of Joseph. The line of Joseph gave him his legal status.

The line of Mary gave him his genetic heritage. And so the line of the Messiah did not go through Solomon and through his descendants, one of whom was Jeconiah, but through Nathan and his. And there's all kinds of demonically inspired attempts to interrupt, interfere with the line of Satan.

I could give you a dozen more, but if I did we wouldn't get any further than that. But one thing we know about them all, every one of them failed. The Messiah was born exactly as prophesied, notwithstanding Revelation 12, 4.

And the dragon stood before the woman, which was ready to deliver for to devour her child as soon as it was born. Was he able to do that? He wasn't able to prevent the birth and he was not able to devour the child at the birth.

Satan and all his demonic horde failed to stop the birth of Jesus. But that didn't stop them from continuing to try to stop the mission of Christ. Satan caused Herod to try to kill all the male babies.

Remember that? That were born in Bethlehem, pardon me. He continued later on after Jesus was baptized in the temptations in the wilderness. He tried to tempt Christ to worship Him. And he continued right on until the death and burial and resurrection of Christ.

Now when Christ was resurrected, Satan has now effectually failed. He's lost. He was unable to prevent the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. It's done. But Satan's not done. I told a little story about the scorpion and the fox.

You know, I heard on TV that same story quoted this week. But he quoted it as the scorpion and the frog. Okay. One of us got it wrong. Maybe it's two variations of the same story. Yeah, we'll go that way.

Nonetheless, Satan is Satan. He is the evil one and he will continue to be evil. And he continues to be evil right on up and through our time. Paul warns us in Ephesians 6 verses 10 through 12. Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers and against rulers of the darkness of this world and against spiritual wickedness in high places.

Well, we went through that. Principalities and powers and rulers of darkness. But spiritual wickedness in high places. That says that in the heavenlies there is still some presence of Satan. In fact, Satan is known as...

One of the names he is known as is the accuser. Why is he known as the accuser? Why is Satan called the accuser? He stands at the throne of God accusing the brethren. And how long does he do that? How long does Satan stand at the throne of God accusing the brethren?

As long as they're brethren? Well, I think that in terms of where we are in Revelation that is about to end. Right now, today, he has access to the throne of God. And if you come before the throne, Satan will accuse you.

And he will say, Ron, you are worthless. You are not worthy to be here. And Jesus will say, you're right. But I took his penalty. He is here on my charge. So, he defends us. That will soon stop. Because he will soon no longer be there to accuse the brethren.

But he's there now. Spiritual wickedness in high places. Even though Satan's attempt to prevent Christ from establishing his millennial kingdom failed when Christ was resurrected, he continued his act of rebellion until Revelation 20 verse 1.

We're going to skip ahead a little bit. Revelation 20 verse 1. But this won't end it. Revelation 20 verse 1 doesn't end anything. Well, it ends a lot of things. But it doesn't end everything. And I saw an angel come down from heaven.

Having a key to the bottomless pit. And a great chain in his hand. Why do you think it's a great chain, David? Why do you think the chain he has is a great chain? It needs to be. Who's he going to chain?

He's going to chain Satan. It's going to take a great chain to chain Satan. And he lay hold of the dragon. In case you don't know who that is. The old serpent. Which is the devil. And Satan. And he bound him for a thousand years.

And cast him into the bottomless pit. And shut him up. And set a seal upon him. That he should deceive the nations no more. Now, he won't deceive them directly by his deceiving them. And he won't deceive them indirectly by his minions deceiving them.

He and all of his minions will be sealed up in the bottomless pit. For a thousand years. And then it says, till a thousand years should be fulfilled. And after that he, and he doesn't say his minions, he must be loosed a little season.

Now, what do you think is going to happen when he is released? You would think that the people of the world would just ignore him. But that's not what happens. Men living in a perfect environment. Ruled with a perfect king.

Rebel. Well, even though the environment is perfect. And even though the ruler is perfect. The men are not. And many do rebel. Now, Brother David and I had a discussion over breakfast. And I changed my word from most to many.

And I'm not sure whether it's most or many. But I do know this. There's a lot of them. If it's not most, it is still many. Look at verse 7. And when the thousand years are expired, Satan shall be loosed out of his prison.

And shall go to deceive the nations which are in the four quarters of the earth. Gog and Magog. To gather them together to do battle. The number of whom is as the sands of the sea. Now, a large number are going to be deceived.

Whether that's many or most, I don't know. But I do know this. The sands of the sea are very numerous. Go now to Psalms chapter 2. If you don't think the Bible is inspired. And the writers of the Bible are inspired to write the words of God.

Think in terms of the millennial kingdom. And the end of the millennial kingdom. And the revolt that's going to take place at the end of the millennial kingdom. As you read Psalms 1. Why do the heathen rage?

And the people imagine a vain thing. A vain thing. What that means is. What they are imagining they are not able to do. The kings of the earth set themselves. And the rulers take counsel together. Against the Lord and against his anointed.

Saying, let us break their bands asunder. And cast away their courts from us. And he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh. And the Lord shall have them in derision. Then he shall speak unto them in his wrath.

And vex them in his sordid pleasure. Yet I have set my king upon my holy hill of Zion. Who is that king that God has set on the holy hill of Zion? That's Jesus. And what is he doing there? He is ruling in the millennial kingdom.

He is sitting there in Jerusalem. In Jerusalem ruling the world from Mount Zion. Jesus ruling the earth during the millennial kingdom. From the throne of David. And I will declare the decree the Lord hath said unto me.

Thou art my son. This day have I begotten thee. Ask of me and I shall give thee heathen for thine inheritance. And the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. What does Jesus reign and who does he reign over?

The whole world. And we're the heathen. And the Jews are the nearby ones. He's got us both. He rules the Jews and he rules us. All the way to the uttermost parts of the earth. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron.

Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel. He's talking about these kings and the rulers who are taking counsel to defy him. Be wise therefore. O ye kings be instructed ye judges of the earth.

Serve the Lord with fear and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the son lest he be angry. And ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are they that put their crust in him. Yes.

This is the Old Testament. This is David writing of future. Beyond Daniel. David beyond Daniel. Daniel is way later than David. David. Israel. Israel. David. The fall of Israel. The Babylonian Empire.

Daniel. Daniel's prophecy. Right on through to John and his prophecy. But this is way back in the Old Testament. It's amazing. It is amazing how it all ties together and fits together. And they can't see.

And why can't they see? It is amazing that it's in black and white and they still can't see. And they can't see because they're not allowed to see. The Old Testament was there. You could have read just the Psalms.

If all you read was the Psalms, you would have the entire creation plan laid out. And you would know. I believe if you'd read any book of the Bible, Old or New Testament, and you study it hard enough, the entire plan is in that book.

I'm not even sure it's in every sentence, but I can't vouch for that. But I can tell you, I can vouch this much. It is everywhere. The plan of salvation is everywhere. Yes, it is true that we battle against spiritual wickedness in high places.

But the battleground we fight on is the earth. We don't yet go to heaven and fight the battle. We fight it on the earth. And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the dragon fought in his angels.

This war is different. This is the second battle in Satan's war on God to take place in heaven. The first battle was what? The first battle was in Revelation 12, verse 4. When Satan was cast out with a third of the angels with him.

Before the time of Christ. This one is fought after. This one is fought after us today. In the first battle, Satan and his angels were defeated and cast down to earth. Where they continued their rebellion.

Even though they were cast down, they continued to have some access to heaven. We experienced that in Job. When Job met before the counsel of God and said there was a day when the sons of God. Oh, and by the way, who are they?

The sons of God? Those are the angels. Came to present themselves before the Lord. And Satan came along among them. He was one of the sons of God. And the Lord said unto Satan. Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord and said.

From going to and fro in the earth. Why is he in the earth? Because he is cast down and his angels with him. And walking up and down in it. And then we have the whole story of Job. And all of his, I don't want to say torments.

All of his problems. Trials. All of his trials. Just to think that we're Christian doesn't mean we don't have trials. We see further evidence of several evil spirits in heaven in 2 Chronicles. I thought Brother David brought this up last week.

This particular event. 2 Chronicles 18, 18. Again he said. Therefore hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting upon his throne. And all the host of heaven standing on his right hand and on his left.

Now it doesn't say that, but I kind of imagine. Up there, what are they? The host of heavens. They're the angels. And on his right hand are the good angels. And on his left hand are the bad angels. That's just my visualization of what it's saying here.

All the host of heaven nevertheless. Standing on his right hand and on his left. That's all the heavenly host. That's the good angels and the evil angels. And the Lord said. Who shall entice Ahab, king of Israel, that he may go up and fall at Ramah Gilead?

And one spake after this matter and another spake of that matter. Then there came out a spirit and stood before the Lord and said. I will entice him. And the Lord said unto him. Wherewith? The Lord said.

How are you going to do it? And he said. I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all of his prophets. So what's he saying? I am going to send false prophets to him and tell him to do something.

And it's all going to be a lie. That could not possibly be a good angel. What happened? Do you remember? The Lord said. Okay. Do it. And he did. And he enticed Ahab. And Ahab went out and an archer shot an arrow into the sky.

And he came down and struck the king in the very place that he had no armor and killed him. Just surely by accident. Or not. I'm getting a shake of the head. No. Not by accident. As was intended from the beginning.

So Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the dragon fought in his angels and prevailed not. Neither was there a place found any more in heaven. Now we got a different ending. Satan again loses.

Satan lost in the first battle and was cast down to the earth in his angels with him. And maintained some foothold in heaven. Satan fell again. But this time he no longer has any access to heaven. That access will now be denied.

Satan and his demons will forever be barred from heaven. They will be confined to two places from now on. The earth? Well, maybe three places. The earth, the bottomless pit, and the eternal lake of fire.

Now I thought I'd go back. Because we have, well maybe we don't have time. Do we have time? I think we'll go back and look at the layout of the wars, the battles between Satan and Jesus. The first battle, the original rebellion.

It was fought in heaven before the creation of man. The outcome of that battle was Satan and his followers were cast to the earth. But retained some access to heaven. That was the result of the first battle.

The second battle begins in the Garden of Eden with the temptation of Eve. It's fought on the earth. And it continues until Revelation 20. When the angel comes and throws Satan and his minions into the pit.

During battle two, after the fall in the garden, but before Revelation 20, a serious skirmish occurs which causes God to intervene and destroy the earth with flood. Preserving only eight people and enough animals to populate the earth.

And we've read that already. One verse I'd like to read though out of that. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he is also flesh. Yet his days shall be a hundred and twenty years.

A lot of people say, well that's when the lifespan of people stopped being 800 years and started being shorter. But you look at people after that, they were still five and six hundred years old. Abraham, way later than this, was a hundred years old when his son was born.

So they still lived a long life. It wasn't a hundred and twenty years. The hundred and twenty years we're talking about here is the time spent from the time Noah started building the ark. Testifying the coming flood until the flood came.

That's the time that he gave them. Time to repent. Which, what did they do? Peter says this, which sometimes were disobedient when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was preparing were in few, that is eight souls were saved by water.

How many were saved? Eight. How many perished? Everybody else. How many years did they have to get ready and repent? A hundred and twenty. How many did? Eight. Well, okay, you're saying maybe one. I'm not going to argue with John.

We know from what happened after that that these guys, even though maybe they did repent, if they did repent, they weren't perfect were they? It didn't take long, even for Noah, to get drunk. The first thing he did was get drunk.

Genesis 6 tells us what happened to man, but what happened to the angels that sinned? 2 Peter tells us that. For God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down, and delivered them into chains of darkness to be reserved unto judgment, and spared not the old world, but saved Noah the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing flood upon the world of the ungodly.

All of that is in battle too. Battle three, what happens? Another war in heaven. The fight between Michael and his angels, Satan and his angels. The outcome, Satan and his remaining angels lose all access to heaven.

They're cast down to the earth, and they know something that they didn't know before. What is that? That was out of the blue. Satan reads the scripture. He knows it better than any of us do. He knows that from the time he and his angels are cast out, he has 1 ,260 days, not very long.

Satan and his remaining angels lose all access to heaven. Now Satan and all his remaining assets are confined to the earth where the battle which is raging on the earth intensifies, and the great tribulation begins.

The last three and a half years of Daniel's 70th week of years. Battle two continues and gains intensity until the mighty angel comes down. 1 ,260 days later, wraps him up in chains and dumps him in the bottomless pit to end the great tribulation and to begin the millennial rule.

Praise God. There's a little more, but I'm not going to go into that. We'll pick it up next time because we've got people standing out waiting for Ron to get started, and I'm not going to hold them up too long.

I only ran two minutes over. Ron, would you lead us in a prayer? Could you lead us in a prayer, Ron? Well, that's actually not a bad place to stop. Well, I was confused, John, because you and your wife weren't here earlier, and I said, well, maybe they're on this trip to Florida.

Oh, you went back for coffee? Who went back to change? Oh, yeah, and I saw Paul come in, so I said, well, that's not what it was. So I'll check with Steve. Yeah, I don't think it's any real big hurry.

We haven't registered yet, but we're going to.

You were talking about contacting Jennifer and First Psalm. Yeah, I don't know that it's the right time, but it's interesting.

I will bet that if Steve Lawson said it, that it is. And what is the 90th Psalm?