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Do Not Fear The War Revelation 12:1-6 May 10, 2020
Good morning.
Thank you for allowing us to come into your living room this morning. We're going to 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. Good, and make music to your name,
O Most High. It is good to praise you,
Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High.
It is good to praise you,
It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name,
O Most High.
Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name,
O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name,
Lord, and make music to your name,
Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you,
O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High.
Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name,
O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name,
O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name,
Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make music to your name, O Most High. It is good to praise you,
O Most High. It is good to praise you, Lord, and make 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 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 O 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 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.
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 going to look at a twelfth 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. 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 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 has 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 keep ourselves engaged. Then on Sunday mornings we're doing a
Sunday School ministry, so we have 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 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, I 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 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 of 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. Yes, that the light of Christ might be seen today
And your acts of love and our deeds of faith
Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us
All your purposes for your glory
Teach us, Lord, full obedience
Holy reverence, true humility
Test our thoughts and our attitudes
In the radiance of your purity
Cause our faith to rise, cause our eyes to see
Your majestic love and authority
Words of power that could never fail
Let the truth prevail over unbelief
Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds
Help us grasp the heights of your plans for us
Truth unchanged from the dawn of time
That will echo down through eternity
And by grace we'll stand on your promises
And by faith we'll walk as you walk with us
Speak, O Lord, till your church is built
And the earth is filled with your glory
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 chapter 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 chapter 12, it is Mother's Day. And it just so happens that Revelation chapter 12, verse 1 and 2, 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 chapter 12, I fear that some might think I'm playing the role of the undertaker.
On Mother's Day, this is just going to 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, 1 through 6. 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 ten horns and on his head 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 the 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, an uncovering that we are to know.
So let's pray. And we're just going to 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. 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 and 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,
OK, 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 1, 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 chapter 12, verse 1?
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 9 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 is 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.
So 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 3, 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.
Satan has a singular hatred for Christ.
Satan's enemy is Jesus Christ. The name Satan, adversary, opposer, resistor, 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 worshipping 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, OK, 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 chance, 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, 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 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, 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 metanarrative 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 315,
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 714, 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 315 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 was 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 that he might devour the
Christ child. Moving on to verse five. We're only going to do two more verses today.
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.
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.
This person, as far as I know, not a believer in Christ, but told me this story because she knew that these things happen.
Most people wouldn't talk about such things. They'd be afraid that someone would say, oh, you're crazy. Or maybe you just had some kind of physical condition come over you.
Terrifying, right? Do not fear the wrong things.
In Christ, there is safety. And there is a power that's higher than the power of the enemy.
Whereas the devil does have real power, demonic powers.
And we're reading about them here, the desire to kill and the persecution of the
Jewish people. It says in verse 5 that the woman Israel gave birth to a male child.
That is the Christ. Christ was born, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.
Christ carries in his right hand a rod of iron.
And in Christ, there is no fear of the powers of darkness.
For those of us who have come into Christ and stand behind him, we have no fear of this present dark world.
In fact, I prayed this morning from Colossians chapter 2 that when
Christ was crucified on the cross and our sins were nailed behind his hands, his blood covering that written list of transgressions that was against us, not only did he cancel the legal debt that we owed, but he disarmed the powers of this dark world.
He canceled their power over us. And so we have no fear of evil.
I shall fear no evil, Psalm 23. This one holds the rod of iron.
Now to understand the significance of this, just go read Psalm chapter 2. This section, beginning actually in chapter 11, verse 17, when the seventh trumpet blows, draws upon Psalm chapter 2.
A great hallelujah breaks forth in heaven, joy in the throne room.
And why? Because the nations rage, Revelation 11, 18, which corresponds to Psalm chapter 2, verse 1.
But your wrath came. The wrath of God overcomes the powers of the enemy.
That's Psalm chapter 2, verse 5. And as you continue through Psalm chapter 2, you see here now correspondingly in Revelation 12, verse 5, he rules all the nations with a rod of iron.
We're told in Psalm chapter 2 he will dash his enemies to pieces like pottery. A rod of iron taken to an earthen pot will shatter that thing to pieces.
It stands not a chance. And so it is with Christ versus our enemy.
Nothing to fear. Our champion holds a rod of iron. Now the expectation of the
Jewish people was that this coming Messiah, the Psalm 2 Messiah, laughing at the power of the enemy,
Psalm chapter 2. He laughs. He's sovereign over that. That he would come riding a horse and conquer the enemies of Israel.
And so when Christ came and was crucified, it looked like weakness. And the
Jewish people by and large rejected that he in fact was the Messiah. But here we see that this child who grew up to be the man,
Jesus the Christ, who laid down his life for our sins, was caught up to God and to his throne.
In other words, his reign as king, smashing his enemies, was delayed.
Caught up refers to his ascension. He ascended from the mountain to the right hand of God.
And then his session, he sat down at the right hand of God the Father on his throne where he rules and reigns from heaven until he comes again to fulfill all the promises that he made throughout the
Old Testament and in the New of his coming reign on Earth. A thousand year millennial kingdom.
And so the expectation of a conquering Messiah was merely delayed. We are still looking for a second coming of Christ.
He is coming again. And now the last verse this morning, and the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1 ,260 days.
This now brings us back to Israel, the woman, in the end times, in the last 1 ,260 days.
We'll learn about it next week because the parallel passage takes place in the same chapter, verses 13 and following.
But the big idea this morning is that God protects his beloved.
And here the mother of the Christ, Israel who gave birth to Christ into the world, will herself be protected.
Now Israel has suffered much at the hands of the enemies of God. Even after Christ was delivered into the world,
Israel has been persecuted unlike any other nation. And again, this is a reason to believe the
Bible. This people still exists today. The Israelites are in Israel since 1948.
The other surrounding peoples, the Amorites and the Hivites and the Hittites and the Girgashites and the
Parasites or whatever, all of these surrounding peoples are the bygone, forgotten peoples of a former age.
And yet, the Israelites remain. All of us know Israelites. None of you know a
Parasite. Or who was it that the scholars said didn't exist until recently?
The Hivites. There were, in the Bible, this people group called the Hivites. And the scholars said, ha, the
Bible made up a people group. Until recently, they uncovered in an archaeological dig evidence of the
Hivite people. Anyway, that's just another free aside. But here we are again in verse 6.
The woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God. God cares for his people.
Even after Christ came into the world and ascended to the right hand of the Father, yes, the
Jewish people have been persecuted. In 70 AD, driven out of Jerusalem.
And again and again in history, people have persecuted the Jewish people. In 1290, they were driven out of England.
In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And the Jewish people were driven out of Spain.
The 1880s, they were driven out of Russia. We all know the 1940s, the genocide that happened, the
Holocaust. The Jewish people have been attacked unlike any other.
And yet, all who call upon the name of their Lord shall be saved.
While their bodies could be touched, their eternal souls are safe in heaven. Those who believed in their
Christ, in the Messiah. And here again at the end, we see now a believing remnant who's protected by God.
And I think he's protecting them right up to the second coming of Christ. That when
Christ comes back, there will still be Jewish believers in the world waiting on his coming.
So in closing, do not trust in chariots.
Do not trust in horses. Do not trust in your own strength and ability to resist evil.
The temptations that come against you are not merely a natural impulse. They do come, first of all, from your fallen flesh.
But temptation is also demonic. And the troubling thoughts that might plague your mind and the fears that overtake you.
In this world that we live in now, many people are afraid. Afraid of the virus or afraid of economic collapse.
Maybe afraid of governments and the malevolence of world powers. And what are they going to do to me and my family and my children that I must protect?
Fear not. Do not fear the things of this world and the evil of this world.
Because our Christ holds the rod of God. He holds the power to conquer the enemy.
He will do so. It's only a matter of time. And until then, we are safe and protected under his wing.
He's like an eagle covering us with his feathers. Do not fear. It is not for Christians to live a life of fear.
It is for Christians to stand boldly. This is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith.
Be children of God who fear God and him alone, not the evil that's in this world.
And so let's tie this back around to Mother's Day. Mothers, you have a special place in the plan of God.
And we honor you this morning. And we recognize that God is using you to protect children, to raise them up, kind of as the front line in this war.
How do you fight this war for children? You pray for them. You pray for your children every day.
I am so blessed as a husband and a father that on a daily basis,
I'll hear from another room or in the same room, my wife praying for our kids.
I see that covering on their lives, a godly mother that prays for them. Mother, pray for your children.
I don't care if they're already grown and gone. You pray for them daily. This is your unique, God -given, protective role over their lives.
But don't stop at just praying. You train them to trust in Christ and to be fearless, to fear not the evil one, but to fear
God. Teach them to flee from temptation. Teach them that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the
Father. Teach them the word of God. Teach them to trust in Christ, the one born from Israel, who holds the rod, to be strong and fearless because our champion, our
Christ, has conquered. And so let's close in prayer. Lord God, this morning we covered just a small amount of territory in the text, and yet this broad panorama of history.
Thank you, Lord, in Revelation 12 for bringing us back out of the weeds to show us a picture of the forest.
Lord, thank you that the promise that you made in the Garden of Eden, Genesis 315, that you would crush the head of the serpent, that you have already conquered on the cross, and it's only a matter of time in history that we will see that victory won.
And so I pray for anybody who's hearing this message today, that they would put their faith in Jesus Christ, that they would recognize that, yes, evil is real, that sin is real, but that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of the living God. Put their trust in you today. God, I pray that you would use this message to save a few people, that they would recognize their need for you and they would turn to you, the one
Jesus who died and rose from the dead. And it's in your name we pray. Amen.
Through the storm and through the fire
There is truth that sets me free
Jesus Christ, who lives in me You are stronger,
You are stronger Sin is broken, You have saved me
It is written, Christ is risen Jesus, You are
Lord of all To seek and to save them
You are stronger, You are stronger Sin is broken,
You have saved me It is written, Christ is risen
Jesus, You are stronger
Sin is broken, You have saved me
It is written, Christ is risen Jesus, You are stronger
You are stronger Sin is broken,
Jesus, You are Lord of all I hope that's your prayer.
I hope that you can hide that in your heart and bring it to mind. You are stronger,