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Revelation 5 and the Song of the Lamb

Let's turn in our Bibles to the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, and we wanna read the words of a song in Revelation chapter five to begin this morning. It's a song sung in heaven that John the Apostle heard.

I would assert that Revelation five is a record of the Lord Jesus after he ascended out of the grave, the tomb, and ascended into heaven, came to the ancient of days, and received a kingdom. And that's what that scroll signified that he took out of the hand of the father.

The father gave him that scroll, giving the authority to the Lord Jesus to execute the decrees of God in history, namely bringing salvation to his people and ruin and damnation to his enemies. And so here we have the onset of the promised kingdom of God being realized, and John was a witness to this.

And so in heaven, it's declared to Jesus, "'You are worthy to take this scroll "'and to open its seals, for you were slain "'and redeemed us to God by your blood, "'and out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, "'and have made us kings and priests who are God, "'and we shall reign on the earth.'".

And so glory is given to King Jesus, the Lord Jesus, with the authority that God the father conferred upon him because of his faithful life, his faithful service to God, obedience to God, and his life even unto death.

Completing the Series on the Devil and Spiritual Warfare

Now, with today's message, I thought we were gonna complete our series. I thought that up until last night, then I thought of another topic that we have to deal with, and we will in a couple weeks. And so next week is Palm Sunday, and we already mentioned Jason will be here, Jason Austin, our friend, with his family, and he'll preach for us, Lord willing.

Following week is Easter week, and I'll preach then, Lord willing. And then that following week after Easter, we'll finish this series, I think. At least that's the tentative plan. But today, it's our desire and design to complete this study of the third great spiritual enemy to our souls, that being the devil.

The world, the flesh, and the devil. And we're always engaging in a spiritual battle with the devil. Initially, it was not my intention to take four Sundays to do this. I didn't want to, didn't want to take that much time, but there's so much biblical information about this subject, I couldn't really cut it any closer or shorter.

And even in completing our treatment today, we will not have done a thorough examination of this subject. I think we've done an adequate treatment of it, but not a thorough one. For the Holy Scriptures contain much information about the devil as the enemy of our souls, and it speaks a great deal of our spiritual engagement with him and his forces.

There are numerous Christian books available on this subject. I have a shelf full at home, and I would encourage you not to read any of them, frankly, or accept their teachings regarding the devil and spiritual warfare.

In fact, not only are most of them not helpful, I think most of them are probably damaging to the truth that you have in Scripture. These books are often based on what authors claim to be their own subjective experiences, observations, coupled with shallow and superficial assertions of being biblical in what they teach.

And these things sell, they sell widely. And so stay away from them, except for the few books that I mentioned. I mentioned two a couple weeks ago, and William Gurnall's book, and then Thomas Brooks' book.

However, this week I did obtain an additional book on this subject that I can recommend to you, and this is, the author is Frederick S. Leahy. I think he's still living. He's a reformed Presbyterian from Ireland, I believe, originally.

And his book is entitled Satan Cast Out, A Study of Biblical Demonology. And it's published by the Banner Truth Trust, and I didn't know that until after I received it on Monday. And I can highly recommend this book because it was published by Banner Truth, but also, it's just a thoroughly biblical presentation of the subject from a reformed understanding, and there's very few of those available.

This is one. And so the author not only dealt with the biblical information on the subject, but he also rehearsed a testimony of notable persons through history, Luther, Calvin, others, and whatnot, Edwards.

Their theological assessments and opinions regarding demon influence and possession. And then toward the end of the book, Leahy gave a summary of his conclusions, and I thought that these 10 points of summary was of such value that I actually included them at the end of your notes.

And so the last page, and you don't need to read them now, but the last page are basically 10 summary points that he made. I didn't agree with everything he said, but for the most part, this book was very good.

And so I would recommend it to you. Now, today I'd like us to better understand the victory that the Lord Jesus accomplished through his death on the cross over the devil and his forces. And so this subject falls under the purview of spiritual warfare, which we have addressed primarily as individual Christians, or as a church, engaging the spiritual forces that are opposed to us.

That's how we've been addressing it. But today I would like us to stand back and see the larger picture of God working in history, and in God's engagement against the devil and his forces. And in so doing, I would like us to understand clearly what God has accomplished, and what he will yet accomplish through the present kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I underscore that, present kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, in addressing this matter, we're standing back, we're seeing the unfolding drama, story of redemption, the history of redemption, and we're even gonna touch on matters of eschatology, or the doctrine of end times.

The Old Testament Promise of the Kingdom of God

Lord willing, if we have the time. And so let's first consider the Old Testament promise regarding the kingdom of God. And we'll just say at the outset, we believe the promise of the kingdom of God coming in the Old Testament is realized through Jesus Christ in this church age.

Although there is a future aspect to it, or realization of it. And so it's important that we establish in our thinking a historical, theological, biblical context. The Bible is an unfolding story through history of what God has purposed to accomplish through Jesus Christ.

It unfolds through history. It's a record of historic events, God intervening and working in history. And so we should understand the beginning of the story in the Old Testament, if we're to recognize and understand clearly the climax of the story, which is the cross of Christ, as well as the finale of that story.

The securing and entrance of the people of God into the everlasting kingdom of God, as well as the eternal destruction and setting out the devil and all his minions and those in his kingdom. Now, God had originally created this world and particularly human beings as a kingdom over which he ruled as king.

And the Bible presents God as the creator, king, throughout its pages. And we've given emphasis to this in the past. In the beginning, God created all things good. It's declared that, of course, in Genesis 1.

And all things were compliant and in submission to God the creator, God the creator, king. And God had created man in a lofty role. Man and woman, Adam and Eve, were to be God's co-regents ruling over the physical creation on behalf of God, the true king of his creation.

When Adam and Eve sinned, the human race lost this lofty position in God of its place, the human race in the place of God's kingdom. And so mankind through Adam became a race of rebels, rebelling against God.

Before the fall of man into sin, all people and things were in lovingly subjection to God the king. After the fall, no one and nothing was in subjection to God the creator, willingly so, although God continued to be sovereign.

The human race was lost to the kingdom of God, excluded from paradise, the Garden of Eden, the paradise of God in which they had lived a blessed existence in fellowship with their God. And so through Adam's sin, all people became citizens of another kingdom.

Rather than the kingdom of God, they became citizens or a part of the kingdom of Satan. Satan became their master. They sold themselves in sin. And the devil became their master. It's described as a kingdom of darkness.

And the devil is set forth as ruling over this kingdom. And so through Adam's sin, the human race became subject to the devil. Since Adam's fallen to sin, the devil has ruled over the fallen world in which mankind lives.

That's what the Bible, the word of God declares. The devil has ruled over all human beings as subjects of his kingdom. He influences them to do evil by coercing them, enticing and tempting them, and controlling them as his subjects who do his bidding.

So in his kingdom, fallen people serve the devil. And the way they serve the devil, they're not aware of it, but the way they serve the devil is a purpose to live for themselves rather than for God who made them.

And so when they serve themselves, they're serving the devil and his kingdom. It's very important. Satan is set forth as the ruler of this age. He's described as the prince of the power of the air. He rules over the fallen kings of the earth through history.

He has his fallen angels, demons influencing and controlling his subjects through deception, subterfuge, through manipulation, false reasoning that's contrary to the will of God. He's a liar, he's a deceiver, he's an accuser.

The devil is said in the scriptures to have great authority and influence in the fallen world through principalities and powers. There's a hierarchy of angels. Some demons are stronger than other demons, Satan, of course, being the most powerful among them.

A hierarchy of angels or demons through which the devil influences and directs fallen authorities who are in positions of influence and power. Most of the time, the human governments of the world through history have been governed, directed, instigated, initiated, inspired by the devil.

Our founding fathers recognized the greatest danger to the liberty of individuals within a nation is the government, and that's why they advocated a limited government with a balance of powers of powers to protect the citizens from the tyranny that government tends to always impose upon its citizens.

It's the purpose of God to glorify himself in history through the recovery and restoration from sin of a people, however, bringing them out of this kingdom of the devil, even as the Lord was reestablishing a kingdom in which his people would love him, trust him, obey him, and rule over his creation on his behalf.

God wanted to fulfill his purpose of man being his co-regents, ruling over his creation on his behalf. And the whole story of Scripture is that of God redeeming and restoring his fallen creation to himself, establishing a mediatorial kingdom, and that's an important adjective, mediatorial kingdom, thereby bringing all of creation into willing submission to the true God.

When Adam sinned, nothing was any longer in submission to God. By the end of the story, everything is under willing submission to God, even those that are cast into eternal hell and darkness. They too go in confessing that Jesus is Lord to the glory of the Father.

Now, by mediatorial kingdom, we are saying that God will restore the creation to himself through an intermediary or a mediator who would affect the restoration of all things into a right and holy relationship to God.

One once wrote, this was an old Baptist, I believe, a couple centuries ago, man was excluded from the kingdom of God at his expulsion from paradise. His restoration to that kingdom has been the grand end of all God's subsequent dispensations, and he means ages by that.

This restoration, according to the divine plan, was to be accomplished through a mediatorial kingdom of which the God-man Christ Jesus should be king. And under this kingdom of the mediator, the universe should no longer be governed immediately or directly by God, but immediately through the God-man, all power in heaven and earth being given unto him.

And so it's through this mediatorial kingdom that God is restoring all things to himself, bringing all things back into submission to himself. The first promise of this mediatorial kingdom is in Genesis 3 .15, in which God promises that the devil would be defeated and that mankind would be restored to God.

This verse is commonly called the Protoevangelium. We've talked about this many times. It's the first promise of the gospel in the Bible. It's the promise of God voiced to the serpent when he was declaring judgment upon the serpent, that this devil would be deposed and a promised son of the woman would ascend as king over the restored kingdom of God.

And it further set forth a veiled prophecy of Jesus Christ's death on the cross that would secure this great victory. And so God declared, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring, he shall bruise your head, you shall bruise his heel.

And by bruising your head, he's declaring that Satan's kingdom is coming to an end. He's taken a big fall. And it's gonna take place through the cross, Christ having his heel bruised, as it were, by the devil.

And so as history began to unfold, God began to call people from the human race to return unto him through faith. And this began to be realized. And you can see it in the Old Testament. First, there were individuals that God called out and some families.

And so we read, for example, early on in Genesis 4, 26, to Seth, that would have been the son to Adam and Eve, also a son was born, he called his name Enosh. And at that time, people began to call upon the name of the Lord.

God was forming a people, but they were mostly individuals. They were individuals coming to him, but from time to time, a family as well, like Noah's family. And so early in history, God preserved for himself individuals and some families.

But when God called Abraham or Abram and Sarai to live their pagan roots and travel to a land that he would one day give to them and their descendants, God made known through Abram that God would save a people, a collective people.

And that's important to understand. And from that people, form them into a nation and establish that nation before him in a place they could live before him in a state of rest and peace. A nation, God purposed to form, a kingdom he would form of a people that were to live before him.

God had promised Abraham that one of his seed would come to remove the curse of sin and restore his people to God. And later after God had constituted Abraham's physical descendants into a nation at Mount Sinai, Israel, God promised to bring his people into the promised land where they could live before God in a covenant relationship with him.

And so Israel would be a manifestation of a form of the kingdom of God in history where they were supposed to order their life according to God's laws. And later still, God caused kings to arise in Israel who would lead his people in victory over their enemies in order to enable the people of God to live before God in peace and security.

But the mediatorial kingdom of God in the Old Testament was largely in the form of God's promise. It was never realized. It was largely in the form of promise. The kingdom was yet to come. And that promise of the kingdom was taught and illustrated through types and shadows that pointed to the coming of Jesus Christ, the promised king over the one day inaugurated kingdom of God.

Yes, a form of the kingdom of God was seen in ancient Israel. Israel was a political entity comprised of a physical ethnic people, the Jewish people. Israel was to invade and conquer the land that God had promised.

And Israel was to displace the Canaanite peoples of the land and establish a theocracy in which they lived under the authority of the law of God with God as its rightful king. And during the period of judges, God was manifesting himself as king through those judges who were his co-regents within his kingdom.

However, Israel, of course, in the land would prove itself not to be the mediatorial kingdom in which all of its citizens would live in joyful submission and compliance to God and his law. Nevertheless, Israel did set forth in the land in some ways what the promised kingdom should be and would be like one day.

God had given to Israel his moral law, even the 10 commandments to order its national life. And in addition, God gave to Israel the ceremonial laws and the civil laws by which people could serve God in a fashion that foreshadowed the true worship of God through Jesus Christ.

But as we said, in the Old Testament, the kingdom of God was largely in the form of promise. A kingdom that God had promised that one day would be inaugurated and the coming kingdom of the Messiah would be an expansive kingdom, reaching far beyond the physical borders of ancient Israel.

The promised Messiah's kingdom would encompass the entire world. And that passage we read in Revelation 5 speaks of this, people from every tribe, every nation worshiping God. God, of course, had raised up David as king over Israel and it was through David that the nature and expanse of the promised messianic kingdom came to be understood more clearly.

And as the gradual decay and disintegration of Israel unfolded in history, as recorded in the Old Testament, the hope and expectation of the coming son of David and the establishment of his kingdom, the kingdom of God, came to the forefront of Jewish expectation.

But in God's promise of the mediatorial kingdom of the coming Messiah, God declared that he would deliver his people from the control and power of evil forces that had enslaved them. He would do so even as he brings them into the kingdom of his son.

And through the salvation that God would accomplish on their behalf, God would secure their willing and joyful obedience and compliance to his government over which he would install the son of David. And so within the kingdom of the Messiah, both Jews as well as a multitude of Gentiles from every tribe and nation would have a part.

And the prophets speak of that. Particularly, I gave two references there. Wasn't just Jews, but it was going to be Jews plus a multitude of Gentiles that would come into the Messiah's kingdom, the kingdom of God.

The Fulfillment of the Kingdom in Jesus Christ

Now we would assert, secondly, that the realization of God's promise of his kingdom is in Jesus Christ. The Bible makes it abundantly clear, we would advocate, that when Jesus Christ was born, it signaled the time of fulfillment of God's promise of the long-expected kingdom of God.

The opening verse of the New Testament signals this event when Matthew, in Matthew 1, verse 1, declared the book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. This is the Messiah.

The angel Gabriel made this clear to Mary that the child that she would bear was the promised son of David who would inaugurate the promised kingdom of God. Gabriel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

Behold, you will conceive in your womb, bring forth a son, shall call his name Jesus. He will be great. He will be called the son of the highest, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David.

And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. He was the promised Messiah who would rule over the promised kingdom of God. And Zechariah, the father John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah, inspired by the Holy Spirit, declared, blessed is the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and redeemed his people.

The time had arrived. And has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant, David. As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets who have been since the world began, that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us, to perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness, before him all the days of our life.

In other words, living within the kingdom of God. And so, with the presentation of the Lord Jesus in the gospels, the gospel of the kingdom of God is announced. The long-awaited promise of God, of the kingdom of God, had arrived in the life and ministry of Jesus.

And so, we read of our Lord's ministry. Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom. The gospel, in the gospels, is principally the good news of the arrival and inauguration of the kingdom of God.

And so, he proclaimed that gospel of the kingdom, and healed all kinds of sickness, all kinds of disease among the people. And similarly, we read later, when Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, again, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, the good news of the kingdom, healing every sickness, every disease among the people.

And later still, he declared that after his departure from this world, this gospel of the kingdom would continue to be proclaimed throughout the world. He told his disciples, and this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in all the world as a witness to the nations, and then the end will come.

And I think the end he was talking about there was the end of Jerusalem and the temple that the disciples were asking him about. The point we wish to make is this, and this is important. And by the way, this assertion is not agreed to by the majority of sincere evangelical Bible believers.

But this is what the Bible teaches, I would assert. The kingdom of God of the New Testament, that God inaugurated through the ministry, death, resurrection, and enthronement of the Lord Jesus is the promised kingdom of David of the Old Testament.

We are privileged and blessed to be citizens of the kingdom of God. Living in the kingdom of the son of David, foretold and foreshadowed in the Old Testament. But what God brought before his people through the coming of Jesus Christ was not what the people of Israel were anticipating or looking for or even desiring.

Their expectations were far removed from what God had inaugurated through Jesus Christ. The Jewish people of New Testament days expected a restored earthly political kingdom with physical borders. A deliverance from the Roman oppressors, liberty, political liberty.

But what God had actually promised ancient Israel was a kingdom that was spiritual in nature. And the reason for this was because the real problem that brought an end to Israel's kingdom in the Old Testament was a spiritual problem.

It was a sin problem. It was a problem with their sin, which had alienated them from the life enjoyed by those who know God and live before God in his kingdom. And so the Old Testament record of the physical enemies of Israel, their defeat of Israel, and the subsequent oppression that all Israel had experienced were God's just punishment upon Israel for its sin.

Israel had broken the Mosaic covenant with God and therefore God's promise of a restored kingdom of David would be spiritual in nature, not physical in nature. God having brought a remedy to their backsliding and rebellion, causing them to love him and serve him in faith and obedience.

And so the Messiah would restore believing Jews to that promised kingdom, but he would also deliver believing Gentiles from their sin, bringing them into his kingdom. We read it in Luke 13, and here is the passage in Matthew 8, the parallel.

Jesus said, I say, and this was upon the Roman centurion expressing faith in Jesus. I say to you that many will come from the east and west, in other words, Gentile lands, and sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,.

Where?

In the kingdom of heaven, which is Matthew's reference to the kingdom of God. But the sons of the kingdom, those would have been natural born Jews, will be cast out into outer darkness and there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

And so all true disciples of Jesus would enjoy the spiritual and eternal blessings of God for being in a new covenant relationship with God through Christ. And the reason would be is that the son of David would secure the obedience of his citizens through their conversion by imparting to his people the Holy Spirit who would ensure their faith and obedience to their king.

And moreover, the enemies from which God would deliver his people were not political enemies. The physical powers of Rome that ruled over Palestine, that's the kind of kingdom Israel was looking for. The deliverance that Jesus would accomplish was from the principalities and powers which the devil employed to keep his people enslaved in their sin and powerless to escape.

And Jesus would set his people free from the bondage of sin and the devil, enabling them to live before him in faith and love and obedience. And so Jesus told some Jewish leaders who wrongly thought they had salvation.

We read, Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, if you abide in my word, my disciples, indeed, and you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. There's where liberty is found. And they answered, we're Abraham's descendants.

I've never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say you'll be made free? Jesus answered, most assuredly I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. A slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever.

Therefore, if the son makes you free, you shall be free indeed. He's talking about the liberty of the children of God within the kingdom of God. The spiritual freedom in which the disciples would live before God in faith and liberty of conscience was the blessing enjoyed by those who entered the kingdom of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

And our Lord taught his disciples throughout his earthly ministry the true nature of the kingdom of God. It was far different than what the Jews had anticipated. It was not a physical political nation as once existed under King David.

It was a spiritual kingdom in which people are set free inwardly to live and serve God. And so the parables of the kingdom in Matthew 13, our Lord, through those, corrected and instructed his disciples as to the true nature of the kingdom of God, and every one of them were correctives as to the current expectation of the Jewish people.

In the parables of the kingdom, our Lord corrected and instructed his disciples in the true nature of the kingdom. And so when our Lord first told his disciples, say, the parable of the sower, it prompted their question.

In chapter 13, verse 10, that'd be Matthew 13, 10 and following. Then the disciples came and said to Jesus, why do you speak to them in parables? He answered them, to you it's been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven.

And again, that's Matthew's description of the kingdom of God. He was writing to Jews. He probably used the word heaven to avoid the repetitive use of the term God because it was regarded as so holy. It's for you to know the secrets of the kingdom of God.

But to them it has not been given, for to the one who has, more will be given. He will have an abundance, but from the one who is not, even what he has will be taken away. And so it was through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross that the Lord Jesus fully and finally defeated the devil and his forces, breaking the devil's authority over his people and thus setting them free, enabling them to come in repentance and faith unto him.

And we read of this in Paul's letter to the Colossians in which he tells of the work of God the Father in saving his people through Jesus Christ. He, that is God the Father, has delivered us from the power of darkness, that's the kingdom of the devil, and conveyed us into the kingdom of the son of his love in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.

And in Colossians 2, Paul wrote of the believers union with Jesus Christ in his life, death, and resurrection thus being set free from the principalities that had bound them. And you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he is made alive together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us.

He's taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. And here it is, look at verse 15. Having disarmed principalities and powers, he stripped the devil and his forces of any kind of spiritual weapons to defeat his people or keep them from coming into his kingdom.

And he made a public spectacle of them triumphing over them in it. King Jesus conquered the devil and his forces on the cross. The devil and his forces could no longer prevent the kingdom of God from expanding throughout the world.

And so through his cross, Jesus stripped the devil of his power to prevent God's elect from coming to salvation. In order for the Lord Jesus to bring salvation to his people he had to deliver them from the power of the devil.

They ruled over them. And so when we read in the gospels of our Lord casting out demons, Jesus declared it was proof that he was inaugurating the kingdom of God that God had promised to Israel. We read several times in the episode of Matthew 12.

We've read this episode several times in the last few weeks. One was brought to Jesus who was demon possessed, blind and mute, he healed him. So the blind and mute both spoke and saw and all the multitudes were amazed and said, could this be the son of David?

There was the evidence, but it didn't fit their conceptions. But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, this fellow does not cast out demons except by Beelzebub, the ruler of the demons. But Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.

Every city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he's divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand? The devil's kingdom. And if I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons cast them out?

There are Jews that claim to be casting out demons. Therefore they'll be your judges. But if I cast out demons by the spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you. He's talking about the kingdom promised in the Old Testament, the kingdom promised to David.

And then he said these words, for how can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds a strong man? And then he will plunder his house. He who is not with me is against me.

He who does not gather with me scatters abroad. So after our Lord declared the present reality of the promised kingdom of God, the Lord Jesus spoke of the necessity to restrict and restrain the devil in order to set his people free from their sin, enabling them to become the citizens of the kingdom of God living under him.

And so our Lord spoke of first the necessity of binding the strong man before Satan's house could be spoiled. In order for Jesus to become the savior of his people, he had to first strip the devil of his authority and his ability to keep his people in bondage.

And this was accomplished on the cross. He in effect deposed Satan's authority. When our Lord was raised from the dead, he ascended and was enthroned in heaven. He thereby vanquished the devil as a conquered enemy.

And as a result, the Lord was able to expand his kingdom throughout the entire world. Hence this church age. Take note in the passage that we read above referencing two kingdoms. He mentioned the kingdom of God in verse 28, and he alluded to the kingdom of Satan in verse 26.

If Satan casts out Satan, he's divided against himself. How will his kingdom stand? Our Lord made it clear that through his ministry, the kingdom of God was defeating the kingdom of Satan. The Lord used the metaphor of a man who intended to rob another man's house.

If the thief were to be successful in his plan to rob the house, he must first be the stronger man in order to overcome and tie up the owner of the house who would attempt to defend his goods from being taken from him.

To bind the strong man, therefore, is a metaphor to describing the preventing of Satan from defending his house, that is, keeping his kingdom secure. When our Lord delivered this man from demon possession, this event, Jesus declared a signal that he had rendered the devil bound, unable to prevent the release of the one that he had held captive.

No demon had any authority to resist Jesus. The devil himself had no authority to resist Jesus. And the casting out of demons was indicative of the fact that the devil and the demons no longer had power to keep his people enslaved.

He had authority. And so the Lord Jesus clearly defeated the devil. And again, the kingdom was inaugurated when King Jesus rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and he came up in fulfillment of Daniel 7, took that kingdom, that scroll from the hand of the Father from the Ancient of Days, and he was given a kingdom over which he now rules as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

The Binding of Satan and the Millennium

Now, with this in mind, what we've said thus far, we want to take a few minutes and talk about the binding of the devil and the doctrine of the millennium. And here we get into the doctrine of last things.

And again, I realize, you know, our position, my position, I should say, I don't want to voice, you know, on behalf of anybody else, we recognize as a minority position of today's evangelical churches.

And so I realize the burden of proof is on me and us to set this point. But we need to consider the binding of the devil and the doctrine of the millennium. Again, we've asserted that God's promise of a coming kingdom in the Old Testament has been realized in the life, death, resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It was due to Jesus' obedience unto his Father, even unto his death on the cross, that led to and resulted in the enthronement of Jesus Christ over the kingdom of God when he ascended from the dead and ascended into heaven.

When Jesus received from the Father the promised kingdom, he sat down on his throne and commenced his reign over the kingdom of God that had been promised to and through King David. And so we read of Jesus, he's gone into heaven, he's at the right hand of God, that's the place of authority and power, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him.

The devil and all his dominion is made subject to King Jesus. But in contrast to what we've set forth and affirm regarding the present kingdom age of the Messiah's reign, most evangelicals do not affirm the teaching that we've already presented.

They do not believe that the kingdom of God that was promised to King David was inaugurated by the risen and enthroned Lord Jesus. Rather than understanding the kingdom of God to be the restored kingdom of David, which is holy spiritual in nature, they advocate and promote a yet future literal kingdom, their words, of David that will be inaugurated at the second coming of Jesus Christ.