Heaven's Side Of The Story (Revelation 12:7-12) | Pastor Jake Sweetman

In this compelling sermon, we journey through Revelation Chapter 12, revealing the celestial clash between divine forces and the powers of darkness. This message sheds light on the visionary drama within the text, introducing us to the key figures and exploring the heart of the prophetic plot. Discover the triumph of Christ over the dragon and how this victory provides profound implications for our lives. Gain insights into how we can overcome deception and remain resilient in faith, aligning ourselves with heaven's perspective. Tune in to explore themes of truth, redemption, and the unfolding of God's eternal kingdom. Subscribe for more transformative messages that delve deep into the scriptures and inspire your spiritual walk.

🌐 Follow Us:

- Website: cathedral-church.com

- Instagram: instagram.com/cathedral.church

- New to faith? Sign up for our 5 week daily devotional!

Transcript

 open to revelation chapter twelve who enjoyed last week wonderful who's been reading the book of revelation who feels like they have more questions than answers welcome back to the wonderful world of the apocalypse we are in week two of this prophetic apocalyptic letter a visionary drama that helps us see the world that we know from a perspective that we don't revelation

 pulls back the veil so that we can see our lives from heaven's point of view.

Who would like God's perspective on your life?

For God and the Lamb are reigning on the throne and our witness to Jesus actually truly matters.

We've begun in Revelation 12 because Revelation is structured in such a way that allows us to do so.

It's not a strict linear chronology of time.

It's

 It's kind of the same vision looked at again and again from differing angles.

And Revelation 12 is awesome because it introduces us to the main characters of the story and it brings us into the heart of the plot.

So I'm picking up from last week in verse 7.

This is an exciting text.

It says, Then war broke out in heaven.

Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.

 But he was not strong enough and they lost their place in heaven.

The great dragon was hurled down, that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray.

He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say, now, everyone say now.

Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah.

 For the accuser of our brothers and sisters who accuses them before our God day and night has been hurled down.

They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.

Therefore rejoice, you heavens, you who dwell in them, but woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you.

He is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short.

 You know that feeling that you get when you're sharing a space with somebody who's carrying all kinds of negative emotion, like anger or anxiety or unchecked insecurity?

It's like that person in that context has their own gravity and everybody gets pulled into their orbit.

And you can feel it, right?

The air shifts, people start to get tense, conversations maybe become a little bit awkward.

 But then that person, they leave the room and almost instantly the mood changes.

The air feels lighter, shoulders drop, everybody can breathe again.

That's the scene that our passage describes.

Only the one carrying all the heaviness is the dragon and the room is heaven.

 Our text today is made up of two parts.

It's a vision and a song.

And the song explains the vision.

That's something we're going to come across regularly throughout our time, our 38 weeks and counting in the book of Revelation, that often what John hears interprets what he sees, or sometimes what he sees interprets what he hears.

It's part of how the book works.

The drama of the apocalypse is as audible as it is visual.

 And the soundtrack often draws out the meaning of the imagery.

Here in chapter 12, John's vision continues, and then this heavenly song steps in to tell us what the vision means.

Now, the vision is somewhat disruptive to the flow of where we left off last week.

Last week, we left off with the understanding that the church, symbolized by this celestial woman in heaven, appears weak from an earthly perspective, but is actually strong.

 The dragon, by contrast, appears strong but is actually weak.

His insatiable pride leads to his downfall at creation, his defeat at the cross, and ultimately his destruction at the end.

And the church must remember this as she walks through the wilderness of this age.

Because if she is to overcome the one who is the epitome of hubris, she must align herself with the one who is the epitome of humility.

Christ, who overcame the dragon by dying on a cross,

 This path of overcoming, following Jesus in costly obedience is what Revelation calls faithful witness.

Would you say that together with me?

Say faithful witness.

That's a theme that's going to come up again and again.

The disciples are to endure in their witness to the truth.

The truth is that God alone is God, not Caesar, not Roman idols, not money, not sex, not power, not

 self.

God alone is God.

God's kingdom is the eternal kingdom, not the kingdoms of this world.

And this one true God has offered salvation and entrance into his kingdom through his son, the Messiah, Jesus Christ.

Disciples are to bear witness to this collection of truths, no matter the cost in life and death, as long as they walk the earth.

And that time of them walking the earth, that experience is what our passage last week left off labeling a wilderness.

 A season of tribulation between Christ's first and second coming.

The woman makes her way through this wilderness, the text is clear throughout the book, under God's care, experiencing his protection, experiencing his provision, but also still somewhat vulnerable to the attacks of the dragon.

You might expect the next verse, where we began today, to keep developing that story.

 You expect to read that the dragon followed the woman into the wilderness, chasing her so he can devour her.

After all, he failed last week to devour the son, so he might as well take vengeance on the woman.

And that scene is coming next week as we conclude chapter 12, when we see the devil in pursuit of the church.

But before we get there, the scene shifts.

And it's not a random change.

It shifts to show us something for our benefit.

 if the narrative kept going with the dragon chasing the woman, it might give us the impression that the dragon actually has the upper hand.

So instead, John is shown something else, an angelic war in heaven ending with the downfall of Satan and his angels.

Now, this is one of those moments in Revelation where the vision moves, but not to a different time.

It moves rather to a new angle.

Revelation is like a kaleidoscope.

 God turns it, and suddenly we see the same reality from a different perspective.

And the goal of this change here in this text is really simple.

It's to equip the church with the truth.

Everyone say the truth.

To equip you and I with the truth.

And we need that truth if we're going to fight the one who never stops spewing lies.

 And as with all the truth in Revelation, this one we'll talk about today points us back to the cross.

In the previous passage, we saw the triumph of Jesus over the dragon through his life, his death, his resurrection, and the benefit for us in that was implied.

But now with the turn of the kaleidoscope, we see the same defeat from heaven's perspective.

We're taken beyond the veil into the cosmic implications of the cross, and now the benefits for the church could not be clearer.

 That's what our text is about to uncover.

Our passage today is about heaven's side of the story.

It unveils the truth about the dragon's actual power, not the power he claims.

It reveals the truth about the church's actual position, not the position that she often feels.

 It's another angle on what we saw last week, only now with much more detail about the dragon's undoing, the Messiah's triumph, and what that means for the church as she walks through the wilderness.

This is heaven's side of the story, and John is pressing the question to you.

Will you listen to the truth, or will you keep believing lies?

Let's take it from the top and go back to verse 7.

 Then war broke out in heaven.

Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.

This is the stuff apocalyptic dreams are made of, friends.

Angels are warring in heaven.

Get your popcorn.

This is exciting stuff.

 Now remember, the vision that God is showing John is here for the purpose to unpack the impact of the cross, which in this point in history had taken place about 60 years before John wrote Revelation.

So this battle that John is seeing isn't happening in real time as John sees it.

 God is giving him a vision to have him understand reality in light of the death and resurrection of Jesus.

So like the rest of the imagery in Revelation 12, this scene is a symbol and is communicating something deeper than the angelic war itself.

Remember Revelation we learned last week is a book of signs.

The Greek word is semino.

It's where we get our English word semiotics, the study of signs and symbols.

And as a book of signs, it is showing us the heavenly reality behind the earthly experience.

 So yes, it's possible that Michael and his angels actually fought Satan and his angels in the heavenlies.

The point here is bigger.

This is a heavenly reflection of what happened on earth through the death and the resurrection of Jesus.

And what happened is that Satan was defeated.

 And the result of that defeat is that he was hurled out of heaven.

Just like that.

Like every single clash between God and the powers of evil throughout the book of Revelation, this one ends as quickly as it begins.

There's a whole lot of tension that builds up.

And then before you can even blink, the battle is over by the power of God and the Lamb.

From the cross all the way to the battle of Armageddon at the end of the book, you will see this expectation begin to rise for this great cosmic battle happening between God and the powers of evil.

And then...

 The battle just ends because Satan's power is no match for the power of God and the Lamb.

That's how it always goes.

And it couldn't be more emphatic in this text.

I mean, four times in just a few verses, the text says that Satan is hurled down.

He's booted out of heaven without so much as a fighting chance.

And notice the language.

It's Michael and the good angels who wage war against Satan and his angels.

So the dragon isn't on the offense here.

 He's caught on his back foot.

He's having to fight back.

He's on the defensive.

Now think about that in relation to the cross.

Again, heaven's perspective on what happens as Jesus is nailed to the cross.

When we picture his body broken and bleeding and heaving for air, we tend to see that as a moment where the dragon was defeating Jesus.

A defeat, sure, that was reversed three days later at the resurrection, but that's not the story that Scripture tells.

 The cross was not a temporary defeat for Jesus.

The cross was his irreversible victory and resurrection did not reverse a loss.

Resurrection validated a win.

 And this is really clear in the mind of the apostle John who wrote Revelation and who wrote the gospel of John.

And he makes it especially clear in his gospel where Jesus' cross again and again throughout John's gospel is pictured as his initial exaltation, his initial enthroning, his triumph over the devil.

And here in Revelation 12, the picture is exactly the same.

While Jesus hung on the cross for you and for me, heaven's army was launching an all-out war

 war on the dragon and his demonic powers.

The dragon may have thought he was winning in the moments leading up to the cross, but at the cross, a completely unexpected war was unleashed against him.

It's like the battle of Helm's Deep in the end of Two Towers, Lord of the Rings, Two Towers, right?

It looks like the good guys are losing, but here's Gandalf on the hill at the break of dawn, and the orcs don't stand a freaking chance.

 The dragon loses and he loses big time.

In fact, he lost in a way that brought about a cosmic change so dramatic, it can only be characterized as the turning point in all of human history.

The dragon, the one who stood in heaven accusing God's people, demanding their guilty verdict, their punishment, their sentence of death,

 has been hurled down.

The bad vibe has been bounced out.

Like an internet troll who won't stop commenting, he's been permanently banned from the platform.

Like a corrupt prosecutor who practices all kinds of malpractice with slander and accusation to make you appear guilty, the dragon has been disbarred from heaven's courtrooms.

 And so the question for the church is really, really clear.

And this is the first point today.

If heaven won't hear the dragon, then why should you?

Whose voice do you believe more?

The one that says you're condemned or the one that says you're clean?

The text drives it home even further that

 NIV says that the dragon lost the battle because he was not strong enough.

But in the Greek, the original language, the text just literally says he was not strong.

That great, big, threatening, menacing, intimidating dragon was not strong.

And so he lost.

 It's not that the dragon was close to winning.

It's not that he almost had it, but he slipped at the last second.

No, the message is this, that the dragon's strength is nothing compared to the strength of the lamb and his cross.

His power may look real, but it lacks substance.

The dragon's complete lack of strength combined with God hurling him out of heaven leads to one very clear outcome.

He and his angels lost their place there.

In the Greek, it is literally, nor was their place found any longer in heaven.

 It's as though not a single trace of the devil's presence remains.

 That language likely echoes one of the prophet Daniel's visions in Daniel chapter 2.

We've looked at that vision several times this year.

When the kingdom of God begins to fill the world and the idolatrous kingdoms of this world that are represented by this statue are turned to dust and then swept away by the wind, the text says in Daniel 2, without leaving a trace.

That's the picture of the dragon's place in heaven.

Not a trace.

If he once was a sign in heaven, as we saw last week,

 He is not any longer.

There's not a trace of him left.

Now, can you just imagine that for a moment?

All of the accusations that could ever be made against you from every act of evil you've ever committed, every slight of hand you've snuck by, turned into dust, and then...

 blown off the map.

This is a major development in the story, not just of Revelation, but in the whole story of Scripture.

 Territory that the dragon held for a very long time has now been lost forever.

One scholar compares the combination of this text here in Revelation 12 to the analogy of a field officer and a staff officer.

The field officer is the one on the front lines fighting and winning the battle.

The staff officer, when they get word that the battle has been won, removes the enemy's flag from the map to show where the territory has been taken back.

 Jesus is like the field officer.

He's on the front lines fighting the battle on the cross, defeating the dragon.

Michael and his angels are like the staff officer, removing the enemy's flag from the map to show where the territory has been taken back from him.

Which raises an important question.

What exactly is the territory that the dragon has lost?

The text goes on to expound verse 9.

The great dragon was hurled down.

 That ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray.

He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.

This is one of two places in Revelation where the devil is referred to by this fourfold moniker.

And the description feels very intentional.

It's kind of like...

 John is the school principal and he's naming the dragon first, middle, and last name.

And you know the dragon is in deep, deep trouble.

He begins with the ancient serpent.

That's a reference, of course, to Genesis chapter 3.

The one who slandered God's character and then deceived Adam and Eve into disobedience.

 Next up, he's the devil, literally the slanderer.

Next up, he's Satan, literally the accuser.

Finally, he's the one who leads the whole world astray.

Again, he's the deceiver, pulling people into rebellion against God.

Put all four of those names together, and you have somewhat of a pattern that actually lines up quite well with your life.

That first he deceives, and when you fall for it, then he slanders, then he accuses.

Also, he can drive you deeper and deeper into further deception.

 That's the dragon himself spiraling down, but he doesn't want to go down alone.

He wants to bring you with him.

And here's the maddening thing, right?

Like the reason the dragon's game works so well is that his accusations are not completely untrue.

Yeah, he deceived humanity into sin, but you and I are the ones who sin.

 We choose disobedience to God.

We choose rebellion.

We choose idolatry.

We choose immorality.

The devil opened the door.

You and I willingly walked through it.

And that's why all throughout human history, the devil hasn't just accused us to our face.

He's accused us before the very throne of God, having a place there.

Think of the story of Job.

 A man whom the scripture calls a righteous man that God blessed materially.

And one day as heaven's council gathers before the throne of God, here come all these angelic powers, the sons of God.

And right there amongst them, Satan shows up.

So bold to accuse Job to God's face, claiming, God, Job only worships you because you've blessed him so much.

 The whole thing is kind of a shocking picture for our materialistically formed worldview to imagine a gathering of unseen powers before God and Satan the accuser standing right there among them.

Think of Joshua the high priest in the book of Zechariah in your Old Testament.

Listen to chapter 3 verses 1 to 4.

Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord.

And Satan was right there at Joshua's right side to accuse him.

 The Lord said to Satan, the Lord rebuke you, Satan.

The Lord who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you.

Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?

Now Joshua himself, he was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel.

And the angel said to those who were standing before him, take off his filthy clothes.

Then he said to Joshua, see, I have taken away your sin and I will put fine garments on you.

 Now, when Joshua was instated as high priest over Israel, this is post-exile, post-Babylonian exile Israel, and his lack of qualification could not have been more obvious.

The high priest was meant to stand before God in spotless garments, representing the holiness of God's people.

But Joshua stood there in clothes so filthy, the Hebrew word that's used there can actually be used to describe garments that are stained with excrement.

He didn't just look unprepared for ministry.

 He looked utterly defiled.

 And it wasn't just about him.

As high priest, Joshua carried the spiritual state of the people he represented, a people fresh off the boat from exile because of their sin, still marked by the guilt and the compromise that had sent them into exile in the first place.

And in that moment, Joshua stood as the living picture of a nation unclean before a holy God.

What kind of voice do you think Joshua heard in his head at that time?

That accusative voice in his head, loud and clear, speaking against him, condemning him?

 Have you heard that voice as a follower of Christ?

The one that says you are disqualified, dirty, damned.

You heard that voice that says don't bother, don't pray, don't ask.

The one that whispers done for, defeated, discarded.

That's the voice of the dragon.

And in the heavenly realm, Zechariah watches the whole scene unfold.

 I imagine he saw Joshua in the flesh struggling and then God gives them this apocalypse.

This unveiling to see Joshua, why do you feel the way you feel?

It's not just a voice in your head.

As Joshua stands in the spirit realm before the angel of the Lord, right beside him at his right hand is Satan.

Not whispering in the corner, not lurking in the shadows.

He's right there accusing Joshua to God's face.

It's a courtroom.

It's a courtroom.

 Joshua is on trial.

Satan is the prosecutor.

God is the judge.

And here's the thing.

Satan's accusations are not wrong.

Joshua is in filthy clothes.

He's unclean.

He's sinful.

He's not righteous.

He's not worthy to serve God as a priest.

But God, knowing that one day he would pay for Joshua's sins with his own blood, turns to Satan and says, the Lord, that'd be me, rebuke you.

 It means shut up.

 And just like that, the accuser is silenced.

The case is thrown out and Joshua is clothed in clean garments.

Friends, what God does for Joshua in that moment, silencing the accuser and clothing him in righteousness, Revelation 12 says he has now done for every single believer permanently.

Zechariah's vision is a single case file.

Revelation 12 is the Supreme Court clearing the docket once and for all.

 Zechariah 3, divine gag order.

Revelation 12, eviction notice.

Devil, get out of my courtroom.

Be removed from my presence.

The one who once stood at the right hand of God's people accusing them now has no right to stand there at all.

His place is revoked.

His voice is silenced.

And the courtroom atmosphere has been forever changed.

 Which means that the accusations ringing in your head are not coming from heaven's courtroom.

They are coming from the losing lawyer who's shouting as he walks defeated down the hallway after the trial is over.

And so I ask you again, here's my second point today.

If heaven won't hear the dragon, then why should you

 How much of your week is spent agreeing with the wrong verdict?

How much of your life has been hijacked by the dragon's lies?

How much sleep have you lost rehearsing the wrong script?

How much of your life is lived according to the wrong narrative?

Whose story are you living in?

Heaven's?

Or the dragon's?

 What opportunities have you sabotaged?

What challenges have you backed away from?

What invitations to deeper devotion have you turned down because the voice of the dragon in your head told you you weren't capable?

What joy in this life have you left on the table because that voice told you you weren't worthy enough

 Friends, your worth is not measured by your record, it's measured by His blood.

You don't have to wonder whether or not you're worthy because worthy is the Lamb, not just to receive blessing for Himself, but blessing for His people as well.

And in Him, you belong to heaven's story forever.

These Old Testament examples, they show us the position that Satan has held before God's throne pretty much for all of human history.

 Legally speaking, because God is just, Satan has had the right to come before God and accuse us of sin, demanding the punishment and destruction of humanity, even of those who lived faithfully, because every single one of us has fallen short of the glory of God and sinned against him.

So the dragon's claims were not baseless, but even so, this must have made the dragon so mad.

God never handed his faithful people over to the devil for their destruction.

 Instead, he cared for them.

He blessed them.

And in their death, he brought their spirits to abide in his presence, to wait until the day that he made all things new, including their bodies.

And this evidently infuriated Satan so much.

Our text actually says he had the nerve to stand before the throne of God day and night, never taking a break.

You wonder why your thought life is such a battle.

Day and night.

Day and night.

 Accusing God's people to condemn us.

But now, suddenly, irreversibly, he has been hurled down to the earth and his angels with him.

In one verse, John says it twice on either side of both the names.

He uses that same phrase just to drive it home.

The deceiver, the slanderer, the accuser has been decisively removed from his place in heaven.

I feel victory in the room today.

So he can still whisper his accusations to you here on earth.

 But he can't shout them in heaven anymore.

And one day his voice will be silenced for good.

And until that day, you and I are called to overcome him.

 See, this is the first time in the book of Revelation where the text speaks about the dragon being hurled or thrown down.

The other occasion comes at the very end in Revelation chapter 20, I believe it is, where the dragon is thrown into the lake of fire, a place from which he can never return.

And these two moments in Revelation 12 and 20, they're like bookends.

And the space in between, that's where we live right now.

 That's what we're reading here in chapter 12.

It's not the end of the story, but it is a turning point.

And in the meantime, you and I, we have a part to play.

Standing for the truth against the devil's deceptions.

 That's how we fight the ancient serpent, standing for the truth against his deceptions.

Let me give you a picture of what that looks like.

I love that title, ancient serpent.

Where does that take us?

It takes us back to Genesis 3.

What does God do to the serpent in Genesis chapter 3?

He pronounces judgment upon him for leading humanity astray.

Here's the judgment of the serpent.

You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust.

Everyone say dust.

You will eat dust all the days of your life.

 That was Satan's original hurling down.

He tries to exalt himself above God.

God brings him down to the dust.

The Jewish prophets, they pick up on this image and they carry it all the way into the new creation.

Isaiah 65 and verse 25.

I can imagine him writing this verse with so much joy.

This verse is a chiasm.

It means it's the same way backwards and forwards and we're drawn in our attention to the middle.

The wolf and the lamb will feed together.

The lion will eat straw like the ox.

This is talking about new creation.

And dust will be the serpent's food.

 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

So there's peace on either side.

But right there in the middle, if you thought the serpent was getting a break, no.

He's eating dust for breakfast, lunch, and dinner all the way on into new creation.

And so when we see in Revelation 12 that the cross has hurled the dragon down, the picture in our mind should be that this dragon does not breathe fire.

He has been doomed to eat more dust.

 The devil tried to devour the son.

Instead, he's wound up with a mouthful of dirt.

And here's the question.

How do we, the church, keep feeding it to him?

The hymn answers the question.

Verse 10.

Is this helping anybody today?

 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven.

So we had the vision, now comes the song.

Here comes the interpretation.

I heard a loud voice in heaven say, now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah.

An allusion there to Psalm chapter 2 where God and his Messiah reign over new creation.

Now, most commentators say here that the loud voice that's making this declaration is the voice of the saints in heaven, that is the church.

 They're the ones who are crying out that the dragon has been thrown down.

The kingdom and power of God and his Messiah has come upon the earth.

That's important because usually when Revelation talks about the coming kingdom of God, it's looking to the end of history, the fully consummated kingdom.

Here in Revelation 12, it's the initial inauguration of God's kingdom that has come into the world that you and I in heaven are celebrating.

We're not waiting for God's kingdom to be established.

 It has been established.

Hear me.

Revelation is not an escape manual.

 that tells you when you can expect to escape the tribulation that is happening in this age.

No, Revelation is an announcement that the kingdom has entered the world through the Messiah, Jesus, and is still growing and spreading throughout his church.

One of the things we're going to see as we travel throughout this book is that we are participating in the coming kingdom of God, his victory over the dragon.

And so though it may feel like the dragon has the upper hand over us at times, in reality, in Christ, you and I have been raised up.

 And he has been brought down.

And so for the fourth time in the text at the end of verse 10, the accuser of our brothers and sisters who accuses them before our God day and night has been hurled down.

 The charges that Satan used to bring no longer stand because the blood of Jesus has paid for them in full.

Listen to me.

At the cross, a seismic shift took place in heaven and a fault line opened up and the dragon was shoved through that fault line.

He was hurled down to the earth once and for all, forever removed from the presence of God.

So Satan can't do to you what he did to Job.

That is an unrepeatable event.

 He cannot do... Someone say, praise God for that.

If you know the story, you'd be laughing too.

He can't do to you what he did to Joshua, the high priest.

Heaven used to be praise punctuated with accusation.

Now it's only praise.

The devil is gone.

The whole atmosphere has changed.

 There are no demonic voices left in heaven to speak against those whose faith is in Christ.

No accusations remain.

Listen to this.

There is not a negative word spoken about the believer in heaven.

Every charge has been met and answered by the blood of Jesus.

And that is exactly...

 Not approximately, exactly what the Apostle Paul is talking about in Romans chapter 8.

When he said, if God is for us, who can be against us?

Who then is the one who condemns us?

No one.

Christ Jesus, who died, more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding.

 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The only voice that speaks your name in heaven is the voice of Jesus Christ, and he only speaks it as a matter of interceding for you, never to condemn, never to accuse.

Amen.

 Heaven's record on you is clean.

The case has been closed.

And if the verdict stands in heaven, there is nothing on this earth that can overturn it.

So to listen to Satan, to listen to the dragon, is to be lured into a life of false defeat, sucked into the orbit of despair.

 So if heaven's atmosphere is so clear, why is yours still so heavy?

What voices are you letting linger in the room?

Listen, there's too much on the line.

The kingdom of God has come now, and we are the vehicle through which it is traveling throughout the earth.

 We've got dust we're supposed to be feeding the devil, and we can't do that if we're too busy feasting on his lies.

They have triumphed, verse 11, over him, over the dragon.

You and I have triumphed over him.

How?

By the blood of the Lamb.

By the word of our testimony.

By not loving our lives so much so that we shrink from death.

Our triumph shows up in three ways.

First, by the blood of the Lamb.

In other words, before you lifted a finger, the battle was already won.

 The cross was not just Jesus' victory over the dragon, it was your victory over the dragon.

In that very moment, God's people won.

One scholar says it this way, C.B.

Caird, in his story, ours was already written.

That means our victory is settled.

It's secure in heaven.

 Now, by this point in Revelation, the reader has already seen that the blood of Jesus has accomplished much.

First, in chapter 1, it's freed us from our sins, made us a kingdom of priests.

Then in chapter 5, purchased us out of the nations, made us a kingdom of priests.

Then in chapter 7, washed our robes clean, giving us clean garments so we can serve in God's temple as a kingdom of priests, serving Him day and night.

The blood has freed us, redeemed us, and washed us.

The battle was won the moment Jesus shed His blood on the cross.

And the evidence for that is the word of your testimony.

 That's the second way you share in the triumph.

The word of your testimony is just another way of saying faithful witness, bearing witness to the truth.

God alone is God.

Salvation comes through Christ alone.

Here in chapter 12, though, our faithful witness takes on a deeper dimension.

It's not just proclaiming the truth.

It's declaring a verdict.

 To conquer by the word of our testimony is to stand in agreement with God's verdict over us.

And that matters because as the devil keeps coming at you with deception and accusation, you overcome him every time you choose to agree with God.

You feed the devil dust every time you rehearse the truth.

When the devil tries to lure you into idolatry and into sin, you don't bow the knee.

You speak the truth.

Resisting lies is how we win.

And every time we resist, we are declaring, I am redeemed.

 I am restored.

I am a saint in Christ Jesus.

There is only one God, one Messiah, one eternal kingdom.

There is only one hope of salvation, one path to everlasting life.

Every other God is a cheap imitation, promising satisfaction that it cannot deliver, but always promises, just like Satan has always done.

This is how you overcome deception, with the word of your testimony.

 And on the days, on the days where you fall for the deception, when you give in to sin and Satan and he seizes the opportunity to slander and accuse you, you go to God and you say, God, I repent of my sin.

Hey, God, the devil says I'm this, but I know you're not listening to him.

And you say I'm that.

 I choose to believe you.

Help me live in alignment with who you say I am.

And then you call your brothers and sisters from your neighborhood group and you ask them to pray for you.

You confess your sins so that you can continue to live in the true narrative instead of the false one that's pulling you into despair.

If you choose to give yourself to this kind of life, you will experience victory over the dragon

 but it will come at a cost.

Because there are those who are caught up in the devil's deceptions, and you will experience ridicule and exclusion or slander because you bear witness to the gospel.

But even in your suffering, this too is your victory over the dragon.

Because you overcome him by loving not your life so much as to shrink from death.

That suffering, in whatever form it takes, is your way of sharing in the death of Jesus on the cross.

And remember, the cross was not the dragon's victory.

 The cross was the dragon's defeat.

It was the moment he was hurled down.

Therefore, to carry your cross is to gain victory over the dragon.

When you suffer, hear me, those of you who are suffering, when you suffer patiently, when you endure the trials of life, the devil literally can't win.

Even when he thinks he wins, he loses.

Even when he makes you suffer,

 Your faithfulness in the midst of that suffering literally shouts back his defeat and reminds him of his soon coming destruction.

This is heaven's side of the story.

The story you listen to matters.

Listening to deception is what got humanity into this mess.

Listening to the truth is the only way you can get out.

And what's at stake is not just your peace of mind.

This isn't just about you and your internal peace.

 This is about the kingdom of God moving forward, advancing throughout the earth, so that the promise the Father has made to the Son that he would inherit the nations, the ends of the earth as his possession, would be fulfilled.

When we believe the word that God speaks over us, we step forward in freedom.

As long as God's children stay bound by the devil's deception and accusation, the orphans of this world will stay bound by sin.

 Because we are too weighed down by guilt and shame and fear to ever bother bearing witness to them about the gospel.

So much of what holds us back from living by faith is fear that stems from believing the wrong story.

Stories about our past the devil keeps dragging into our present.

Whether because of sins committed against you that make you feel ashamed

 or sins committed by you that riddle you with guilt the dragon is the source of every deception if you resist the lies you resist him the text ends by saying rejoice heavens you who dwell on them but woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has gone down to you he's filled with fury

 Because he knows that his time is short, we're brought back into this tension.

Rejoicing in heaven, you and I share in that rejoicing.

Here on earth, the battle still rages, and at times it feels costly, even according to the text, it feels woeful.

The devil has lost the battle for your soul, and so now he rages to have an impact on your body and your mind.

Don't forget, he is not operating from a position of power.

He is raging because he knows his days are numbered.

 As one scholar put it, the great red dragon has great anger because he has little time.

Thus he has entered the room of this world with anger, with anxiety, with deep-seated insecurity.

And the dragon cannot rein it in.

 Through deception, he pulls the world into the orbit of his tantrum, thrashing about with his accusations.

So are you going to allow the enemy's chaos set the tone of your inner life?

Or the direction of your life?

Or are you going to live in the peace of heaven's cleared out courtroom?

The task for the church is very, very clear, at least according to our passage today.

If heaven won't hear the dragon...

 then why should you?

He's been hurled out of heaven.

Don't give him a home in your head.

The air is a whole lot lighter when you don't give him that space.

Let's stand our feet across all of our locations.

I'd love you to close your eyes.

 Center your attention on the Lord.

Every eye closed.

I want every distraction removed right now.

Don't leave.

Don't go to the bathroom.

Don't make noise.

There's a way to be in the presence of God.

Just be.

What's the message you keep hearing in your head

 That makes God seem smaller, weaker, or less good than he is.

That makes you think you're smaller, weaker, or less loved than you are in Christ.

That message is not God.

It is the voice of the dragon.

Here's what you do.

You kick him out through repentance.

 Some of you maybe even need to do that right now.

To change your mind.

To change your direction.

To turn to God, repent of your sin.

To receive His forgiveness.

To accept the fact that all sin is false advertising and it does not satisfy.

 And in repentance, receive the verdict.

You are justified in Christ, no longer condemned.

Next, you lock the door through water baptism.

You identify yourself with the death of Jesus and therefore the victory of Jesus.

You identify yourself with the day the dragon was hurled out of heaven.

 And then in coming up out of that water, you are resurrected with Christ and you enter into newness of life.

Third, you turn the deadbolt by meditating upon the truth.

You don't combat his lies simply by saying no to the lies, but by saying yes to truth.

You study the scriptures.

You rehearse and you memorize what you learn.

 Finally, you drown out the voice of the dragon with ongoing confession.

You don't walk the Christian life alone.

You confess to brothers and sisters who can pray for you, who will praise God alongside of you.

The devil's voice speaks loudest in our darkness.

So if we constantly turn the lights on to the confession of sin, the singing of praise, and the offering of prayer, his voice is turned down.

 Lord, we love you.

We thank you for the truth that the dragon has been hurled down.

This is heaven's side of the story and we choose to live in that story.

Help us spur one another on, on the days where we give the dragon's voice too much credence to come back into alignment with the truth, to agree with your verdict and to overcome the one whom you have led the way in overcoming.

 In Jesus' mighty name, amen.