Revelation 12:1-6 (Do Not Fear The War, Jeff Kliewer)

Psalm 92 and the Call to Praise God in Difficult Times

Thank you for allowing us to come into your living room this morning. We're gonna sing two songs to get started. One taken right from Psalm 92. It is good to give thanks to the Lord, to sing praises to your name, O Most High, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness at night.

Through these difficult times, we need to remember to continue to praise the Lord in the morning and praise him at night for his steadfast love and his faithfulness.

Let's sing together.

And make music to your name, O Most High.

Morning, and welcome again to Cornerstone Church. We're excited to have you here with us this morning on our virtual worship service. I'm looking out in the sanctuary and I'm trying to envision each one of you sitting out here.

But what I can do right now is I can envision you all sitting in your homes, watching, joining in with us, because I know, I know that even as we're not here together physically, we are all here together, worshiping, worshiping our Lord and Savior, rejoicing, rejoicing in him.

Last couple of weeks, we've been in Psalm 22. I wanna go there one more time. Psalm 22, verse 28. For the kingdom is the Lord's and he rules over the nations. You know, it's in passages like this that we get to reflect on the sovereignty of God.

We get to understand that regardless of what there may be around us and however people may be reacting around us, we have a sovereign, sovereign God. And because of that, we know that the kingdom is the Lord and we know that he rules over the nations.

In Genesis 1, it says that in the beginning, God created the world. And at the end of each day, he looked and he said it was good. And then he created man and he looked and he said, it was very good. Unfortunately, the story in Genesis continues because man accepted the lie from Satan.

They chose to believe Satan's lie and to not believe God. That impact has continued down to even today, to where today, our world continues, continues to choose to accept that lie. The world will tell us there is no God.

The world will tell us, don't follow that way. The world will tell us, follow your own dreams. The world will tell us to be our own master. You see, Satan is continuing, is continuing to try to convince man to not rely on the sovereignty of God.

Well, there's good news. And it comes in the form of two words that happen frequently in scripture. And those two words are, but God, regardless of Satan's ability to come after us. And we do know that he's called the prince of the power of the air, but God.

You see, David experienced opposition in the beginning of Psalm 22. He tells about, I've been calling out to you, oh Lord, where are you? And situations are difficult. Eventually he recognizes and remembers God's sovereign blessings to his fathers.

And then eventually he submits to him. And eventually he gets down to Psalm 22, where he confesses the kingdom is the Lord's and he rules over the nations. You see, we have a better promise. The world has these offerings for us.

Satan's behind much of it, but we have a much better promise. We have a God who sovereignly rules and he rules and he is our king. Amen. Turning to announcements. There's only a couple this morning. And the first one is a great one.

Happy Mother's Day to all of our mothers who are out watching us this morning. We praise you for the work that you've done. We thank you for the love that you've expressed to us. I pray that the Lord would be in your presence in a very, very close and special way this morning.

So happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers. The second announcement is a continuation of announcement. We are anticipating coming out of quarantine. We are anticipating being together again in close fellowship one with another.

And part of our desire as we come out of it is to celebrate baptism. We will be doing that when we come out. We will be setting up a baptismal. It will probably be limited to one a Sunday just for safety.

But we are excited about coming out of quarantine and to experiencing baptism. We're thinking about those of you who have been viewing over the internet to our virtual worship services that you would desire to come and be part of this with us.

We pray that the Lord is working in your heart, drawing you to him, that maybe you would be part of our fellowship and maybe you would be desiring to be baptized too. We're excited about all of that as it comes to be.

And so we pray together for that. And so now let's pray. Father, this morning, as we come together, we rejoice that we can be in your presence. We rejoice that we are together in your presence. And right now, Lord, we lift up the mothers amongst us.

We praise you for giving them the strength. We praise you for giving them the love. And as they responded, obediently loving and caring for us. We thank them. We acknowledge them. Lord, thank you for our mothers.

Happy Mother's Day. And Lord, as the word is going out this morning over this video, over this virtual worship service, we rejoice that your truth is going out into a world where there are lost hearts.

We pray, Lord, that the truth would be reaching hearts for those who are being encouraged to seek and grow closer to your face. Through this word, we lift them up and we pray, Lord, for the spiritual well-being.

We pray, Lord, that the message of truth would be coming out, would be a blessing of your sovereignty. I pray, Lord, that through this, we would have hope. Through this, we would have an opportunity to speak.

And Lord, for those who are ill, for those who are impacted by the economy, we ask, Lord, that you would protect them, encourage them, and sustain them. Now, Lord, as Pastor Jeff takes us into Revelation 12, and as we're gonna look at a 12th trumpet, the war of ages where Satan comes to attack, yet, Lord, there is a promise that we should not fear because Christ will conquer over Satan.

We pray, Lord, for this message to be a message of warning and a message of encouragement and a message of hope. So we pray, Lord, for your Holy Spirit to touch our hearts, your Holy Spirit to speak powerfully through Pastor Jeff.

We pray for these things in Jesus' name, amen.

Youth Ministry Update and Online Discipleship

Hey, guys, Ben Honeyford, youth pastor at Cornerstone Church. Michael Stockland just asked me to give you guys a quick update with regard to the youth ministry and how we are doing. Happy to say that we're continuing to meet over Zoom, as many of you are.

Hopefully, you're not too Zoom-burned out, but on Friday nights, we're meeting at 645, and we have an opportunity to worship together, even though it's through YouTube, able to share the screen and have that time.

Also, teaching, we've been going through the 20 Basics of the Christian Faith by Wayne Grudem. That's been helpful, and we also have breakout rooms. So the Living Stones Middle School Ministry is able to break out, have a facilitator, whether that's Tim Robinson or myself, and also, for the Rock High School Ministry, have another room.

So the technology's enabled us to have that space, and really excited about that. Happy that we have Jessica Hagmeyer serving as well. She's helping out with the games. So we do our worship, teaching, breakouts, and then we have a little game time, just doing a scavenger hunt or some Bible trivia, just to keep ourselves engaged.

Then on Sunday mornings, we're doing Sunday School Ministry. So we're going through the Gospel of Mark, verse by verse, and just doing the simple approach of observation, interpretation, and application.

As we're looking forward to, as we finish up this season in the 20 Basics, we're looking forward to developing some ministry opportunities to share on some topical opportunities. So whether it's the big questions that you might ask as a middle schooler or high schooler, what are those things, what are those issues that we're facing, and try to really reach from the biblical standpoint and draw out the truth of God's word and apply it to our lives in ways that are meaningful and applicable.

So if you have a middle schooler or a high schooler, really encourage you to reach out to me, email me, give me a call. My email is ben .honeyford at cornerstonesj .org, or you can call me on my cell at 856 -840 -5339, and happy to talk with you as a parent and encourage you in any way that I can serve you in this capacity during this time, during this quarantine, as we continue to persevere with the youth.

So I do appreciate your prayers and that you would continue to lift up our young adults, our young children, as they continue to seek God and to grow in the knowledge of Jesus through that opportunity, that mission that we have for the youth ministry, which is to spiritually equip our young people with the word of God, to prepare them with discipleship, with life transformation, and then just to focus on enjoying God.

What does that look like? So that's some of our mission statement for the youth, and we would welcome you to check out the website, certainly cornerstonesj .org. Thanks again, guys. Thanks for your prayers.

Look forward to connecting with you soon. God bless you. Bye-bye.

You receive a deep shape and fact in your love At the light of Christ today and your acts of love

Coming to God by Grace Through Christ's Finished Work

Let us pray. Father God, we come to you this morning humbly, recognizing that we cannot come to you apart from your grace. We don't come by any merits of our own. We're not righteous, we're not worthy, but we bow before you, Father, asking that you would meet with us here today.

And we come through Jesus Christ, who has canceled the debt, the written record of offenses that was against us. He nailed those offenses to the cross, triumphing over them by his blood. So we come this morning through Jesus, recognizing also that in his death, he disarmed the rulers and the powers of this dark world.

He disarmed them. So we come this morning asking for victory over evil, over temptation, over sin that still resides in each of us. We ask for victory over the evil one. We pray that we would be made aware of the war that rages all around us.

And we pray that through your word, you would give us the victory. This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith. So Lord, we pray that you build our faith this morning by your word in Jesus' name, amen.

Well, it happened just weeks ago that God providentially aligned the study through the book of Revelation with a holiday as it came up. So we came upon Revelation 7, and this particular passage lined up with Palm Sunday.

So it was great for me as a preacher because I didn't have to divert from our usual course through a book of the Bible to preach a topical message. I just got to keep on going into Revelation 7. And guess what?

Believe it or not, by God's great providence, the same thing has happened this morning. As we come into Revelation 12, it is Mother's Day. And it just so happens that Revelation 12, verse one and two, is about a mother giving birth.

Very good, very exciting. That means I can continue right along. However, it is not an unmitigated blessing in that something happens just at the birth of the child, and that is that a giant red dragon with multiple heads and horns on those heads tries to devour the child.

So needless to say, it's not exactly a comforting passage. And yet as we circle back around, I think we'll see that it is because the war that we're in is real and the fear that many people feel is real.

And yet this passage speaks, especially to mothers, to say, fear not. Fear not. I think of when Jesus was on the cross. He said seven things, and one of the seven things that he said was to his disciple John, saying, son, behold your mother.

Take care of her. And he said to the mother, to Mary, to take care of John. Behold your son. So he cared for his mother even while Jesus was dying on the cross. In the same way, he cares for mothers. He cares to alleviate the fears that many mothers have, especially the fear of anything ever happening to their children.

God is a caretaker. There are different kinds of pastors, and Adrian Rogers was a great one. He's now gone to be with the Lord, but he said that there were three kinds of pastors. There are, first of all, risk-takers.

Risk-takers are those who blaze a trail. They're leaders that take churches into uncharted territories. Secondly, there are caretakers. Now, caretakers are shepherds who look after people, and they care for the needs and the emotions and the feelings of people in the church.

And then finally, there are undertakers, and these are the pastors that just bury their church, usually by going into false doctrine and leading the church astray. Well, when I go into Revelation 12, I fear that some might think I'm playing the role of the undertaker.

On Mother's Day, this is just gonna bury us, but no, I believe that this, in fact, is caretaking. There is comfort in the passage of Revelation 12 for us today. Let's read it. Revelation 12, one through six.

Then I'll set the context, and we'll dive in verse by verse. And 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 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 seven heads and 10 horns, and on his heads seven 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 was 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.". I trust that at this point in the text, you are not just shutting down, turning off YouTube and saying, this church must be crazy.

What are these things that they're talking about? This is God's word. This is Holy Scripture. So we come to the word of God humbly to learn from it. And although there are mysteries or shall we say signs, symbols in here that are a little bit difficult to understand, they are not actually hidden.

This is an apocalypse. This is a revelation from God and uncovering that we are to know. So let's pray. And we're just gonna unpack what is here. Lord, I ask now that your spirit would help me to exposit what is already here in your text.

I pray that I would not import any meaning to it, but that by your spirit, I would draw out from the text what is here. Make anything that is unclear, clear. And I pray that you would use it in the lives of your people in Jesus' name.

Revelation 12 as Symbolic Vision and the Woman as Israel

So we begin with the first verse, a great sign. First of all, this is a sign. It is not a thing itself. It is something that points to a thing. If you're driving down the road, say you're coming to Cornerstone Church and you turn right on Mount Laurel Road.

You're driving on the road, but if you see the sign that says Mount Laurel Road, you don't try to drive onto it. The sign is not the thing itself. The word simeon in the Greek, the sign represents a symbol that points to a bigger reality, something other than the thing itself.

So what we have here, obviously, is imagery. And this is actually very helpful that the scripture would tell us when a great sign appears. Because if we're not told that it's a parable or that it's a sign or that it's an allegory, we ought to take scripture literally.

So when we read the book of John and we read about the life of Christ, there is zero indication that anything is allegorical or is a parable unless Jesus is telling a parable and then indicates it that way.

But I'm saying in the life of Christ, the things that he accomplishes, we're to take that literally. And so far in the book of Revelation, the same principle holds. We take literally what is given to us except there be indications of a parable.

Here we have one. It's a sign. It appears in heaven. It's a great sign, by the way, that the word great, mega, in the Greek, indicates that it's important, it's big. And that, in fact, is what we have.

We have a big sign, a symbol that takes us kind of like, okay, on this camera, I could zoom in on my face if I were operating it, or I could pull back and widescreen, pan out. This here is the author, John, giving us a pan out, a widescreen vision of big things, the metanarrative of scripture.

We have been kind of enmeshed in the flow of the text. And now this sign appears to capture us and pull us out from the weeds, show us the forest. So in Revelation 11, the seventh trumpet had just blown.

We had been introduced to particular characters in the midst of the tribulation. Just big picture here, we are in the end times, the end of the age, the book of Revelation. But here in chapter 12, verse one, a great sign appears and we're shown a panorama of history, something that's been going on for a long, long time.

This 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. Who is the woman of Revelation 12, verse one? Answer, this is Israel. Now others have proposed that it's the church, which doesn't work because the church is always pictured as the bride of Christ, still betrothed to Christ, awaiting like a pure virgin, the marriage supper of the lamb.

And this marriage supper of the lamb happens in Revelation chapter 19. All throughout the New Testament, the church is pictured as the bride of Christ, never as the woman or the mother. Israel, on the other hand, throughout the Old Testament is pictured as the woman or the mother.

In the book of Hosea, she's the wife. She's the unfaithful wife, that God remains faithful to Israel even though she is unfaithful to him. In case you doubt me, turn to Genesis chapter 37, verse nine to 11.

You don't have to go there now, you can look it up later, but you'll be familiar with the story, the story of Joseph having a dream. And in his dream, the sun and the moon and the stars, 11 stars bow down to the 12th.

He, in that parable, is the 12th star. Joseph is the 12th star. And so in the imagery of Genesis 37, the sun represents Jacob, the moon represents Rachel, and the 12 stars represent the 12 tribes. And of course, Jacob's name is changed to Israel.

And so the allegory is clear, the imagery is clear, the sign, this is pointing to Israel. The nation Israel is the woman. She's clothed with the sun. She's radiant with the moon under her feet and on her head, a crown of 12 stars.

She's crowned with her sons. And so this is Israel. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. Israel, for all of the years of its existence, 4 ,000 years now, has been in the agonies of sufferings.

After 2 ,000 years, Israel delivered to the world the Christ. And in this big picture, this metanarrative of scripture, this is so important to understand. Israel was created as a nation to bring the blessing of the promised seed into the world.

That's what Abraham was first told in Genesis 12, 1 to 3. He would be a blessing and through his seed, all the world would be blessed. Genesis 12, 7, his offspring, singular, according to Galatians 3, 16, singular offspring, seed, as in one, the Christ would come and bring blessing to the world.

And Israel has travailed, has suffered under much persecution as they long for and wait for their coming Messiah. This is the imagery, waiting for their delivery, the Christ to come. She was pregnant, crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

Now, as I think about birth pains, never experienced them, giving birth, pregnancy, never experienced any of these things. Women, mothers, have uniquely experienced birth pains, pregnancy, giving birth, the agony of giving birth.

And I think we should just stop here and remember that and honor mothers for the nine months of pregnancy, unless there was a premature birth, and even still it'd be a prolonged period. As long as we've been locked down, just think how much longer just a simple pregnancy is.

And mothers gave this time to every child who's born into the world. Mothers deserve to be honored for this and children, honor your mothers. Be thankful for what they've given in terms of their bodies and their time and their life, and then birthing the children into the world, they have this special role in the economy of God.

And husbands, by the way, we need to understand this role that God has given them, to protect and care for the very children that they birthed into the world. Husbands need to be careful to defer in some sense to wives in the areas of eating and drinking and bedtimes and habits and the things that parents have to jointly decide in raising their children.

Men need to understand the unique role that God has created for women in raising children. Honor mothers in the role that they have been given. So that's just a little aside of a free Mother's Day special.

See, this is about Mother's Day. And now we get to the dragon. Verse three. And another sign appeared in heaven. Behold, a great red dragon. Now it's another simeon. It's another sign. So it's a symbol that points to something.

This image of a seven-headed, ten-horned with diadems dragon is an image of what Satan is like. I don't think he looks like this. In fact, he's a spirit. But the image is terrifying.

A dragon.

Red.

Why is he red? Because of blood and fire. This is an image of deadly and terrifying destruction. Seven heads and ten horns. We'll learn later that those ten horns represent ten kings. And Satan is animating this world empire as it comes together.

These united nations as they come together in opposition to God. We learn that later on in the text. But here, Satan is pictured this way. 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. Satan has a singular hatred for Christ. Satan's enemy is Jesus Christ. The name Satan, adversary, opposer, resister.

This being, Satan, is the opposition to God. God has existed from all eternity. God created Satan. But Satan rebelled from God, sought to overthrow God. I do think that Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28 make reference not just to the earthly kings, but to the animating spirit behind them.

Referencing Satan, the guardian cherub in the garden of Eden, in the garden of God. Having rebelled from God, he falls from his exalted position. Before he fell, he was Lucifer, a worshiping angel, an angel of light.

And now he's a fallen angel. And so he opposes God. He resists God. In the world that we live in today, people doubt the existence of demons and of Satan. They think it's metaphorical, that there is no reality behind the Simeon, that the text of the Bible is archaic and not to be believed by modern day, sophisticated, scientific, western, smart people.

But Satan is a real being. In fact, those who deride the concept would not be left with even a construct of evil. Some people will say, well, okay, Christian, you say that God is real and that he's in control of everything and he's a loving God.

Well, then how do you explain the existence of evil? Because God, if he wanted to, could stop evil. And if he was loving, he would. So how could there be evil in the world? That question, as difficult as it is to answer, although we have answers in Christ through the scripture, as difficult as it is, that question cuts both ways.

Because unless there is a God and some standard of good, the whole concept of evil makes no sense. Evil is the deprivation of good. And unless there is a God who is good, then there would be no evil. There would just be space dust and random chants and things that just happen in the universe.

But when you see evil, if you see something demonic manifest, if you see the evil of World War II and the atrocities under Adolf Hitler, when you look evil in the face and you know that it exists, you're forced to confess that there must also be a God.

I just heard this the other day on the Eric Metaxas show last Sunday. I just happened to tune in on the radio while I was driving somewhere. And the person who was talking said he saw a demonic manifestation and that is how he became a believer in that moment in Jesus Christ.

Normally Satan and demons hide. They don't want to be known. They would rather you believe that they don't exist and your sinful behaviors and your temptations and the deep, dark thoughts that might enter your mind.

That these things are merely natural and they only come from you. They'd rather not be known. In fact, I've only rarely seen manifestations of demons. I have seen when I was a missionary praying for a young man in a room, a manifestation of a demon.

I was the only one in the house. Everybody else had left. And praying over this person, he began to scream and holler, different kinds of voices coming out and praying in the name of Jesus, by the blood of Jesus, that thing had to leave.

Interestingly, it wasn't that scary. There's nothing to be afraid of when it comes to actual manifestations of demons. So this is not the most comforting Mother's Day message, I understand. But I'm going to stay with the text here.

Continuing my story, as I left that house and went a couple doors down to where the rest of the group had gone, one of the young men in the group said, hey, when we laid hands on this person that I just told you about, I felt coldness come into my hand.

And that coldness went up my arm, through my entire body, and gave me the shivers. And I am scared to death. And I don't know why that just happened. Now, mind you, this person did not know what happened after he left.

So I asked him a question, because something occurred to me. I said, when you prayed for him, how were you praying? Well, I was just saying the words that you guys were saying. I said, if you died today, would you go to heaven?

And he said, oh, I don't know. I don't think so. I'm not a very good person, but I try. And I asked some follow-up questions. And what I realized through those questions was that this young man, who was laying hands on someone else, was himself not a Christian.

And so he had no protection, no covering from the blood of Jesus, as he prayed on this person who was manifesting a demon. And so I circle back around to my point. It's rare for events like that to happen.

And when they do, in either of these two cases, I was not afraid. There was not a sense of fear. But what was more deep and more profound was that this young man was not himself believing the truth about Jesus Christ.

And the deception that he was under had nothing to do with the feelings that went through his body and the coldness that entered him. That tipped him off to the fact that there really was a spiritual world that he was ignoring.

And that day, he prayed to a Christian that was praying to Jesus.

That you should accept Christ.

I think it was genuine, I hope so. I haven't been in touch with either of those two young men, so I don't know whatever came of it. But I say this to you, dear listener, because I don't want you to fear the wrong thing.

Fear not demons and spiritual forces of this dark world, but fear the one who will cast them into hell and has the power also to punish you in eternal fire unless you repent. Fear God, but perfect love casts out all fear.

The perfect love of Christ is such that He came into our world, and if you read the stories of the Gospels, He's casting demons out left and right, and they have to flee. He has power over them, and then He lays down His life on the cross.

The demons cheered and thought that Christ was defeated, but in fact He laid down His life for His friends in order that having been buried and rising from the dead, those who look to Him in faith are forgiven of sin.

Our sins are carried away on the cross, and we, beloved, are born again. We are forgiven. Our sins taken away, and we belong to Christ now. And perfect love casts out all fear. So as I read in verse 4 about these demons, that the third of the stars of the heavens are demons.

Evidently a third of the angels that God made followed Satan in rebellion. I get that also from chapter 12 verse 9, looking a little bit ahead to next week's sermon here. It says about the ancient serpent, the devil, Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him.

So there's a parallel there with verse 4. The stars then are these demons that have followed, and the dragon stood before the woman who was about to give birth, so that when she bore her child, he might devour it.

This is his plan, to devour Christ. And as we look now, this is a simeon, a sign, the meta-narrative of history, the big picture of what's been going on. We must go all the way back to creation, where first of all there was only God.

Then he made these angels at some point during creation, and Satan rebelled and fell. When man was made, they encountered this fallen angel in the form of a serpent, an ancient serpent, in the Garden of Eden.

Falling into his temptation, Adam and Eve sinned, and sin entered the human race. But right away in Genesis 3 .15, God promises that one from the woman, a seed of the woman, and this is the only case where a woman is shown to have seed, in that the Holy Spirit puts into the womb of Mary the seed that Christ would be conceived.

Born of a woman, born under the law, but born in no ordinary way. Isaiah 7 .14, Christ comes into the world, born of the woman, born for our salvation. So this was Satan's plan, to prevent this promise from coming true.

The Genesis 3 .15 promise, the seed of the woman, he must stop this. And so ask yourself this question, why have the Jewish people been so persecuted throughout history? Why have they been the center of world affairs for so long?

Well, when Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the patriarchs, settled in the land, Joseph, because of the famine, brought them down to Egypt. And for 400 years they were there in Egypt, 430 years in Egypt. There came the time for them to come out of the land, but before that, Pharaoh decided to kill all the boys born in Israel.

A genocide, an attempt to exterminate the Jewish people by killing all the male children born. Why would this be? And as you look forward again and again, there is the persecution of the Jews. Even King Saul, trying to pin King David, who is not yet the king, to the wall with his spear.

What was he doing? He was trying to eliminate the seed of the Messiah. To kill the Jewish line that would bring forth the Messiah into the world. To kill David would be to cut off the line of Christ. This was what inspired the murderous rage of Saul, or that wicked Haman, and before that, the Assyrians that came to conquer and destroy Israel, or the Babylonians that came, and then the Persians with Haman, who sought the genocide of the Jewish people.

And last week we talked about how it happened again under Antiochus Epiphanes, destroying the Jewish people. The murderous rage of the devil can be explained by this verse right here. So that when she bore her child, he might devour.

And so it was that when Jesus was born into the world, King Herod sought to destroy him in Bethlehem and ordered the killing of every boy under two years old. Didn't know which one it was, which one the Messiah was, but he had learned from the Magi who came from the east, who saw the star of the Messiah, that the Messiah had been born in Bethlehem.

And so the murderous rage of the devil flared up, and he might, that he might devour the Christ child. Moving on to verse 5. We're only going to do two more verses today. 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.

Thus far, the sermon has been maybe a little bit terrifying, because this text itself is scary. But what I have found is that many people, mothers, fathers, children, all adults, struggle with fear. Deep down inside of us, we know that there is a God, and we also know that there is a war.

There are enemies of God, unseen forces, and we try to pretend that they don't exist, and yet those fears are only repressed. I think of a person who once told me that when she was home alone with her kids, out of the house with her husband, all of a sudden some spirit came over her, and she was pinned to the ground, unable to move, and terrified.