Reading from Revelation 9 verses 1 through 12, which is on page 17 of your outlines. So the fifth angel trumpeted and I saw a star that had fallen out of the sky to the earth and to him was given the key to the shaft of the abyss. So he opened the shaft of the abyss and smoke went up out of the shaft, like the smoke of a burning furnace and the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke from the shaft. And locusts exited from the smoke into the earth, and to them was given a capability just like the scorpions of the earth have capability. And they were told not to harm the grass of the earth, nor any green plant, nor any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And it was designated to them, not to kill them, but to torment them five months. And their torment is like the torment of a scorpion whenever it strikes a person. And in those days, the people will seek death, but not find it. They will want to die, but death will run away from them. Now, the appearance of the locus was like horses prepared for battle. And something like a golden crown was on the locus, And something like a golden crown was on their heads and their faces were like human faces. They had hair like a woman's and their teeth was like a lion's. They had breastplates like breastplates of iron and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. and they have tails like scorpions and stingers precisely in those tails. They have the capability to hurt the populace five months, having as king over them the angel of the abyss. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, while in Greek he has the name Apollyon. The first woe is past, but two woes are still coming after these. Father God, we thank you for the privilege that we have of even having your word in our hands. It is our desire to honor your word, to live it out, to understand not only the enemy, but the power of your grace to overcome the enemy. And I pray that you would give me the ability to clearly articulate and communicate the truths you have placed upon my heart. In Jesus' name I pray, amen. You may be seated. Well this is my third sermon on the fifth trumpet, and I'm spending more time on it for two reasons. The first reason is that this trumpet is frequently taken out of order by various schools of eschatology, and in the first sermon I pointed out there really is no need to do that. It fits the order of events perfectly. because the symbols of the demons were the symbols of the armies that Titus brought up from Egypt. And those armies were commissioned on October 31, but it took five months before the armies were able to engage Israel in battle, and that's exactly what verses 5 and 10 say. These demons behind Titus's armies could torment for five months, but they could not kill. Now the reason, the second reason that I am spending more time on this is that demonology is often neglected in Reformed circles, and it's really unfortunate The Puritan spoke about it a great deal and they taught their people how to engage in spiritual battle, but you just do not find much discussion of this and reform circles today. So last week I laid the groundwork for a theology of demonology by expanding on every word and phrase of verse one. And today we're picking up at verse two. And verses two through four give us hints, not only at the vast numbers of demons that exist in Satan's armies, but also of the massive hits that they were taken, uh, in the first century. Uh, point a can be a little bit intimidating, unnerving point B, I think should be a very encouraging, uh, point. Let me make a statement to you about the unnerving point a. The church worldwide is surrounded by billions, if not trillions, even hundreds of trillions of demons who would like nothing better than to see us done in with. And the reason I come up with a figure of trillions of demons is simply by logical deduction. I want you to look at a few scriptures with me. We're not gonna be preaching on the sixth trumpet, but if you look down at verse 16, This verse gives the number of demons that were stationed at the Euphrates and had up to this time been prevented from traveling outside that region. So that was just the demons in a very restricted locale. In the New King James it says, Now, the number of the army of the horsemen was 200 million. I heard the number of them. When I get to the preaching on this trumpet, I'll be pointing out that the word two does not actually occur in two-thirds of the Greek manuscripts, and it is missing from 100% of the ecclesiastical text, the F35 manuscripts. The vast bulk of them have 100 million. But either way, 200 million, 100 million is a vast number of demons to be stationed at the Euphrates River. Elsewhere, we discover that there were demonic armies stationed in every country of the world. For example, in Daniel chapter 10, it mentions a prince, a demonic prince who was over Persia. And when you study how long he was able to resist Michael the archangel and all of the myriad good angels that he had fighting with him, it is pretty clear that there must have been a vast demonic presence in Persia. That same chapter now speaks of a demonic prince of Greece in verse 20, who presumably is in charge of his own armies of fallen angels. Isaiah 14 describes the demonic powers over Babylon. Ezekiel 28 describes the demonic ruler over Tyre. Revelation 6 describes various demonic cherubim angels that had power in the empire of Rome, each of whom had different jurisdictions. Revelation 13 will describe a demonic prince that had authority over Israel. When I preached on Acts 16, I showed how Paul bound the python spirit that was over the whole region of Greece and Macedonia. And we're gonna return to that passage in a little bit because the demonic king of verse 11 of our passage here is exactly the same God that Paul had to deal with in Acts chapter 16, Apollo. But the point I'm making right now is that every country has its demonic hordes unless those hordes have been bound in the pit. And if one region at the Euphrates had 100 million demons that could be spared to be poured out upon Israel, How many demons remained in Euphrates and how many demons were there in other countries? We don't know for sure the number. We don't know whether it would be legitimate to multiply 100 million times the number of countries in the world. I doubt that that is accurate because that does appear to be just one grouping of demons at the Euphrates. I believe it was attached to Vespasian's army in that region. But just that one verse all by itself would seem to most authors to indicate that demons at least number in the billions. But I want you to take a look at verses two through three where we have a metaphor of a locust plague coming up out of the pit. So he opened the shaft of the abyss and smoke went up out of the shaft like the smoke of a burning furnace and the sun and air were darkened because of the smoke from the shaft and locusts exited from the smoke into the earth. Now I'm not gonna get into whether people were actually able to see literal smoke. It may be. Some people think that this was one of the volcanoes. and the ashen smoke was the historical symbol representing the vast numbers of demons that are likened to a locust plague. I'm not going to get into that, but almost all commentaries agree that the darkening of the sky was a locust metaphor of how many demons were arising. It's such a massive number of demons that it darkens the sky. When I was in fifth grade in Ethiopia, there was a massive locust plague that flew through the boarding school where we were at. It completely darkened the sky. It was almost like night. and it stripped every green thing off of the ground. It even ruined, they ruined the paint off of the buildings and the wood that was there. I was very curious as a kid. I ran out, I thought this was really cool. Ran right back in very quickly because I was getting all scratched up. So that was the kind of locust plague that many times afflicted the world. That was the kind of locust plague that people feared. How many locusts would be in a plague like that? Well, if we contrast that with some of the milder infestations that have happened recently, it'll give you a little bit of a picture. Recently, Egypt had a tiny locust infestation of 30 million locusts. And they said it hardly impacted anything at all. So that was not a big locust plague. In 2005, there was a locust plague of billions of locusts in Australia. That was a little worse, but not nearly as bad as the many locust plagues that have hit various countries over the past generations, even in my lifetime. And I did a little bit of research, and I found that to actually darken the sky would require trillions, if not hundreds of trillions, of locusts. The book, The Locust Effect, describes one such locust infestation in the Midwest that was particularly damaging. It says, in 1875, trillions of locusts weighing 27 million tons. Now, let's just stop and think about that figure a bit. A ton is 2,000 pounds. So you get 27 million tons. You multiply 27 million times 2,000. You come up with 54 trillion pounds of locusts. Now, I don't know how many locusts it takes to make up a pound, but we're talking very literally, multiplied hundreds of trillions of locusts. So let me read that statement again. In 1875, trillions of locusts weighing 27 million tons swarmed over nearly 200,000 square miles across the American Midwest. an area greater than California, and ate everything, every day consuming the equivalent of what two and a half million men would eat. The locusts ate fence posts and the paint and siding from houses. They ate the wool off the backs of live sheep and the clothes left outside on clothes lines. When families hurriedly threw blankets over their gardens, the locusts defoured the blankets and then gorged themselves in the plants. Settlers watched their cows and other livestock die without grain or feed to provide them. The point is that to have a locust plague that actually darkens the sky, you're talking about multiplied trillions of demons in one army alone, the army of Apollyon. Now when you add to that the army that's listed in verse 16 and the armies of other countries, then the Puritan claim that there are hundreds of trillions of demons does not seem exaggerated at all. Now sadly, most Reformed Christians act as if demons don't even exist in their day-to-day thinking and their day-to-day living. But if you've read much of the Puritan writer, William Gurnall, who wrote the big book, Christian Complete Armor, I think most of you have at least volume one of that. If you've read very much in there, you realize that it's absolutely imperative that we take on three enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil. Now, how many of you are really, really good at fighting the world, at fighting your own flesh, but you've never even given a second thought to fighting against demons? It's actually a foolish stance to take because if we are not making advancements against them, if we're not fighting against them, the likelihood is that they are making an impact in our lives. And it's worthwhile doing an inventory in our families and saying, you know, is there any evidence that Satan has made an impact upon our family? What actions should we take? In verse four, We see that these demons could not touch the believers who were sealed on their foreheads by God. It says, and they were told not to harm the grass of the earth, so obviously it's not a literal locust plague, nor any green plant, nor any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. Now, who had the seal of God on their foreheads? Earlier we saw it wasn't every believer. It was believers who were completely devoted to God's cause, who hated sin, and who clung to righteousness. And the same was true of those who were sealed in Ezekiel chapter nine. In verse four of Ezekiel nine, God gave this command to the angel in that chapter. The Lord said to him, go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done within it. So the only ones sealed in that chapter were the ones who hated the iniquity in their society. They loved God's righteousness. They were passionate for him. This is what first John 5, 18 says. We know that whoever is born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who has been born of God guards himself and the wicked one does not touch him. And we're gonna be spending some Sundays examining this chapter's demonology so that we can get a better handle of what it means to guard ourselves so that Satan cannot touch us. If we're not guarding ourselves, if we don't understand his strategies, if we're not fighting against his strategies, we're going to be in trouble. Satan has plenty of demons to spare to harass Christians and to try to make the church of Jesus Christ ineffective week by week. I need to be restored to the Lord's table because I feel the incredible oppression of demonic. opposition. A lot of Christians aren't even aware that there's demons, you know, that are messing with our lives and yet those demons can tempt us. They can move our hearts just like they move David's heart in 1st Chronicles chapter 21 verse 1 to number Israel. He didn't even realize he was being swayed, was being moved by Satan in that chapter, but he was. Demons can turn couples against each other. They can move people to gossip. They can bring bitterness between people. And you wonder, you look at it and you wonder, why is there even bitterness here? It's an irrational thing that can occur. Many conflicts occur within families because they are not recognizing the right enemy. They think their enemy is flesh and blood, you know, and it's not. It's the demonic, and they've not gone to the Lord in prayer and in spiritual warfare. In Matthew 13, it indicates demons can be involved in even a little thing like snatching the word of God out of your hearts as soon as the preacher preaches that word. And that's Matthew chapter 13. Those demons do not want the word to take root, so they will worm their way into our minds to make them wander, or be lazy, or be critical, or be uncaring. Demons really could care less if you are academic and very diligent in your studies on other subjects, so long as you are not academic and diligent in your study of the scriptures. If he can keep you shallow in your understanding of Christianity, you're not going to be as much of a threat to him as you would be otherwise. And so there's a reason why Paul admonishes us in Ephesians chapter 6 to continually put on the whole armor of God and continually resist Satan. Any Christian worth his salt is daily battling with demons. The armies of demons are real, they are numerous, and they are powerful, and to ignore them is foolishness on a high order. In any case, most commentators take this metaphor of a locust plague as a picture of billions of demons at a minimum, and perhaps trillions and even hundreds of trillions. We don't know the exact number. We just know that there's a lot of them. There's just an awful lot of demons out there. Now, one of the encouraging things later on is we're gonna see there are twice as many good angels as there are fallen angels. But let me give you more encouraging news. This is your next point. At some point in history, these demons had been bound in the pit. That means they can be bound in history. Let me repeat that. They can be bound in history. And we ought to study what it takes to bind Satan's army. What did it take to bind certain demons at the Euphrates so that they could not infest other countries? What did it take to bind them there? What did it take to bind these demons previously in the pit so that they would not be able to come up? Verse 2 says, so he opened the shaft of the abyss, so there was an unlocking of the prison going on. Verse 3, and the locusts exited from the smoke into the earth. Now we'll be seeing a similar future binding of Satan in Revelation, sometime future to us, but before the thousand years and a similar unleashing of Satan and his demons out of the pit at the end of history. In other words, at the end of a thousand years. There will be so many enemies unleashed from the abyss, it'll be like the sand upon the seashore. I've recently, you may be curious about this, but I've recently been finally convinced by Francis Nigel Lee and B.B. Warfield and a number of other scholars that I've been studying that there will be no final apostasy in history. I used to scoff at that position thinking just reading it on face value, Revelation 20, surely that has to indicate that there's going to be a great falling away at the end of history. And it was a big hurdle for me to get over. But Francis Nigel Lee points out that the tares and all of the enemies of God's kingdom are going to be resurrected after the thousand years. And these countless citizens of hell, both the resurrected unbelievers and the demons who are unleashed from hell, both of them will gather together to make one last attack upon God's people. But before they can achieve anything, the saints will also be resurrected, and they will join in judging those nations, including the extinct nations of Gog and Magog. They'll be there. And there are scriptures that indicate that 100% of Gog and Magog are in hell right now. They were completely wiped out in Old Testament times. Now, when we get to Revelation 20, we're gonna be looking at some very, very interesting language in the Greek, which indicate that those Those enemies are not then living on the earth. They come up out of the earth, out of Hades. So he's not talking about an apostasy of living people, but Satan deceiving people who have been newly resurrected into thinking that they can have a successful rebellion. Well, I won't deal with that controversy anymore today, but I thought you might want to have a heads up of where that's heading. The main point that I want to make this morning though is on almost every interpretation of Revelation, there are demons who get bound more than once in history. And there are demons who get unleashed from the pit more than once in history. That's the key point. I believe there are multiple bindings of the demons as the gospel goes forth, multiple releasings of demons from the pit as nations apostatize. The final binding of all demons is still future to us and the final releasing of all demons out of the pit along with all of the, what the scripture speaks of is the nations that are now dwelling in hell. That's still future to us too. So what is this binding and loosing? And we're gonna get into that in much more detail when we get to Revelation 20, but there's a hint of it right here in this chapter. If you look at verse 11, it calls the demon king who came up out of the pit, Apollyon. On my first sermon on this trumpet, we saw that that is simply the Greek spelling of the Latin God, Apollo. Okay, it's the same being. Now for first century readers who are familiar with the book of Acts, this would immediately have caught their eyes because the apostle Paul had to confront Apollo in Acts chapter 16. He cast Apollo out of a person and this demon had been influencing the whole region. He was actually the God who was over Macedonia and over Greece and so Paul dealt with, uh, with him and gauged in what we call high level confrontation of territorial spirits. So the first conclusion you can come to is Apollo was obviously not in the pit in acts chapter 16. He's very much hanging around. He's causing a great deal of trouble for the church. Um, FF Bruce, William Hendrickson and other authors point out that the Greek and act 16 is crystal clear that the slave girl who made their masters so much money was possessed by the demon spirit Python, which is another name for Apollo. And I pointed out in that sermon that Apollo was a demon who had the whole of Greece and Macedonia in a stronghold grip. Well, as a direct result of Paul's head-on conflict with Apollo, that whole region was opened up to the gospel in a powerful way. And Apollo and his demons were either consigned to the pit on that day or in subsequent church history, but that binding had to have occurred sometime between Acts 16 and our chapter. Now, of course, we saw that it wasn't the first high-level confrontation of the demonic kingdom that had happened in the book of Acts. In that sermon, I pointed out that Peter's confrontation of the sorcerer Simon Magus in Acts chapter 8 was a head-on confrontation with the demon who was over the whole region of Samaria. The second high-level confrontation was in Acts 13, where Paul had a successful win against Elymas the sorcerer. And as a result, the civil magistrate, Sergius Paulus, who had been in bondage to that spirit, was freed up. And it freed up that whole region again to the gospel. The third example was the confrontation of Apollo in Acts 16, opening up Greece and Macedonia. And the fourth example was in chapter 19, where Paul dealt a lower level demon a major blow in the city of Ephesus. And back then, I just encourage you to review. I'm not gonna review what I said on that chapter there, but I do give some cautions, because there has been some unbalance in demonology that's gone on. But just because some have gone to extremes in what you might think of as hyper charismatic circles does not mean we should ignore this kind of confrontation. I think they are onto something and we need to study this out. It was certainly something that was done historically by the church. Well, if Apollo was bound in 8050 or sometime thereafter, that means that he has been in prison in the abyss for upwards of 16 years. And there were other demons that Christ and the apostles consigned to the pit. This was an absolutely essential part of spiritual warfare to make breakthroughs in new regions that had not yet had the gospel. And when pioneer missionaries have failed to do this, you can see them historically. They have worked for decades and decades with zero results. because they've neglected this strategy of warfare. So the period of history between 8030 and 8070 becomes a paradigm for the church on how to take over the world once again. But what do a lot of reformed people do? They say, oh yeah, miracles that happened in the first century and the casting out of demons. That's just a first century phenomenon. It has nothing whatsoever to do with us. They don't treat it as a paradigm. They hold to what we call a radical form of cessationism. And I believe it has made the modern church rather powerless in their missions. In any case, when I say that 80, 30 through 70 gives us a paradigm on how to take over the world once again, let me remind you of the extent to which the world had already been taken over prior to the Great Tribulation. If you did not hear that sermon, you might be skeptical that the gospel had really gone that far. So let me just at least give you some hints, some of the scriptures that we looked at. In that previous sermon, we had looked at the fact that there were hundreds of millions of Christians that had come to Christ in every part of the planet as a result of the early church's aggressive spiritual warfare and evangelism. And then the great tribulation of 80, 62 through 68 saw most of those Christians killed. Now people focus on the killings, but you can't kill a lot of Christians unless there was a lot of Christians that were converted, right? So it was a massive success. And then you had the great tribulation happening that almost wiped out the church. So in one sense, the church had to start all over again. And we're going to be seeing in a later chapter that the 144,000 were sealed on their foreheads, were virgins dedicated to God, were a key part of the initial re-advancement of the church after AD 70. But when you study the early church fathers like Athanasius and and many others, you see that they used exactly the same spiritual principles of warfare that the pre-AD 70 church had used. They obeyed Christ's call to first bind the strongman of a region and then to plunder his house. You can't plunder the house, which would be evangelism discipleship, till you first bound the strongman of that region. It was doing that that made the church able to convert people from every part of the globe by 8066. Now let me just give you a few scriptures in case you didn't hear that sermon. Colossians 1.6 says that by the time he wrote Colossians, the gospel had gone to the whole world and was bringing forth fruit. Colossians 1.23 says that the gospel had already been, quote, preached to every creature under heaven. You might say, there's just no way. That can't possibly be. Well, go argue with Paul. He's inspired. I'm going to believe him. If he says it was preached to every sentient creature under heaven, I'm going to believe what he had to say. Paul claimed in Romans 1-8 that the faith is spoken of throughout the entire world. And Romans 10, 18 says that it has gone out to all the earth, to the ends of the world. Romans 16, 26 says that the gospel had been obeyed in every part of the world and in all nations. Well, that means it has been successful. There's been incredible success of the gospel in the first century. How were they able to have that kind of success? Well, I believe part of the answer is that they engaged in the kind of spiritual warfare that is recorded for us in the book of Revelation. This book is in part, it's many things, but it's in part, book of Revelation is in part a spiritual war manual. It teaches us how to war against Satan. And I believe that their spiritual warfare against these demonic hordes stands as a model for us today. We are either pushing Satan's kingdom back behind the gates of Hades. That's where these demons were locked, right? We're either pushing them back behind its gates of Hades or those gates of Hades are being opened up and demons are marching against us, but there is no in between. The church is having very little success in America because we are not taking seriously one of those battle fronts, which is the demonic. It's obvious that in the past few decades, hordes of demons have been unleashed upon America. But back to the encouraging news. What are the hits that Satan took, that his kingdom took? I believe Act 16 would be one of them. Somehow the church managed to bind Apollo and his massive army to the pit sometime before October 31 of AD 66. That's encouraging. It shows it's possible. Zechariah 13 says this is what the gospel does. It says it's going to eventually cleanse the land, the earth, the whole planet of all demons. It's prophesying that's going to happen, so that should be a part of our strategy. But why does God unleash these demons on October 31 of 8066? Why, when the church has made so much success in getting rid of demons, why would God unleash them? That doesn't make sense, does it? Why doesn't he just leave them in hell? Well, there are two reasons. In the last sermon, I dealt with the first reason, and that is that demons are unleashed as a judgment on a nation that refuses to submit to God's laws. God does not allow backslidden nations to continue to enjoy the fruits of previous Christian generations forever. No, there's a cost to apostasy. There comes a time when a nation has given Satan legal ground for the demonic to be at work. And we saw also that this was the period of the great apostasy, the great falling away within the church. And the apostles were very troubled by all of the false teachers and the apostasy that was happening in their own lifetime. So anytime there's apostasy, the demonic gains ground. And I'm gonna address that in the next point. But the second reason God allows the presence of demons is given in chapter 12. It gives Christians the opportunity to learn spiritual warfare, and it tests the church so as to divide between the chaff and the wheat. The demonic is increasing in America, but rather than crying about it, we ought to just learn what it takes to be involved in spiritual warfare. And I think Judges 3, 1 through 4, perfectly describes the second reason. It says this. Now these are the nations which the Lord left that he might test Israel by them, that is, all who had not known any of the wars in Canaan. This was only so that the generations of the children of Israel might be taught to know war, at least those who would not formerly known it. Namely, five lords of the Philistines, all the Canaanites, the Sidonians, and the Hivites who dwell in Mount Lebanon from Mount Baal Hermon to the entrance of Hamath. And they were left that he might test Israel by them to know whether they would obey the commandments of the Lord, which he had commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses. So he's giving two reasons for leaving enemies in the land. to train believers in war and to divide between the men and the boys. Okay. When it comes to spiritual warfare, basically that's what he's saying. It separates between those who are going to be radically following God's word and those who are going to be operating in terms of the wisdom of the world. But I do want to end with that first reason. It is implied in verse three when it says, and to them was given a capability just like the scorpions of the earth have capability. Now, on another sermon, we'll be getting into the physical manifestations that are very similar to actually being stung by a scorpion. We'll look at that later. But I want to focus on that word capability because Pickering has mistranslated it. It's the Greek word exousia. And the dictionary gives seven definitions for that word, none of which means capability, and all of which deal with the legal sphere, the legal framework. He translated it that way, probably because he didn't see how the normal definitions would fit for a literal locust. But here's the dictionary definitions. First of all, the legal right to choose, control, or dispose of property. Second, the ability to control or govern, or the jurisdiction to control or govern. Third, authority. Fourth, official power exercised by a legal office. Fifth, ruling authority. Sixth, the sphere in which authority is exercised. And seventh, the means of exercising authority. You'll notice how every one of those definitions deals with the legal sphere or authority. So literally, this should be translated, and to them was given authority just as the scorpions of the earth have authority. Now Pickering will respond. But scorpions don't have authority. None of those legal definitions for exousia really fits a literal scorpion. Let's go through them. They don't have the legal right to control or dispose of property since they don't own property. They don't have the ability to govern since scorpions don't have a king, don't control or govern territory. They don't have authority. They don't have official office. They are not ruling authorities. They don't have a sphere in which that authority is exercised, and they don't have the means of exercising authority. A literal locust simply does not fit any definition of the word exousia. But I think the answer is not to change the definition of the word. Stick with the definition of the word. Let's translate it literally as power or authority or legal ground. And instead of applying it to literal scorpions, I mean, we've not been dealing with literal locusts, right? Instead of applying it to literal scorpions, let's take that phrase to be referring to demonic scorpions that God had allowed to continue on the earth as contrasted with scorpions who were bound in the pit. The scorpions of the abyss were those whose authority has been taken away. Scorpions of the earth are those demons who had not had their authority taken away because they remained on the earth. So you've got two kinds of demons, those of the abyss, those of the earth. Scorpions of the abyss, scorpions of the earth. Do demons have authority given to them by God and authority taken away from them by God? Well, yes, they do. In Luke 4, 6, Satan claimed that he had authority over the nations. He was willing to give all of that authority to Jesus if Jesus would only bow down and worship him. And Jesus' response was to quote the scripture saying we're to worship God alone. From whom alone comes all authority? From God alone. Now, some people say, well, Satan's claim to have authority over all the nations was a false claim. Was it a false claim? No, it was not. Acts 26, 18 says that every time a person is converted, he is turned from what? From darkness to light and from the authority, the exousia of Satan to God. It clearly states that Satan has authority. And we're rescued from that authority. 1 Peter 3 verse 22 speaks of demonic authorities and powers being subjected to Jesus after the resurrection. Well, Jesus didn't have much of a victory if they didn't have any authority for him to win over them. Ephesians 2, 2 speaks of Satan being the prince of the exousia of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience. Ephesians 6, 12, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, and that's actually the word exousias. or authorities against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. You see, the reason I'm going through all of these scriptures is we need to understand that there is a kingdom of darkness with various levels of jurisdiction and authority. Now, in a future sermon, I may get into how that kingdom is structured, but Colossians 1.13 says, we've been delivered from the exousias of darkness. But that implies that unbelievers are still under Satan's exousias. Colossians 2.15 says Jesus disarmed principalities and exousias triumphing over them in his resurrection. And yet, even though they're legally defeated, we still see those exousias exercising some authority. We already saw in Revelation 6, verse 8, that the two demons, Thanatos and Hades, were given some authority by Christ to do four things, to kill with a sword, with hunger, with death, and with the beasts of the field. So it's obvious that earlier Jesus had not allowed those demons to exercise that authority. They had no authority to do those things. Now he's giving them the authority to do those four things. Why does he do that? Revelation 13 verse 2, it says that Satan gave the beast power, a throne, and great authority. It doesn't say Satan thought he gave him great authority. No, God himself says he had great authority and he gave the beast great authority. Well, that means Satan has some jurisdictional authority. And I could go on with other scriptures. So simple logic indicates that when Apollo and his minions were confined to the pit, they lost exousia, however you want to translate that. When they were released from the pit, they were once again granted limited authority like other scorpions still on the earth had. And we saw that demons on the earth were called scorpions in scripture. I'll just remind you of a couple of scriptures. Ezekiel 2.6, God tells Ezekiel that he was surrounded by scorpions, but to not be dismayed by their words or their looks. In Luke 10.19, Jesus said, behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt you. So here's the bottom line. These demonic scorpion locusts were 100% deprived of their authority in the pit sometime after 50 AD. When they were released, they were given limited power, limited authority to torment men who did not have the seal on their foreheads for five months, but not to kill anybody. Authority is expanded later to be able to kill, but the point is God is still sovereign. He has authority over everything, but he gives demons authority in certain circumstances if they meet certain conditions. Okay, there is a legal framework within which Satan and his demons have to operate. The killing would start after five months, so authorities expanded at that time. We'll get to that in a later sermon, but I do want you to just take a peek at verses 20 through 21. The reason their authority is expanded is because of lack of repentance. It says, yet the rest of the people, those who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as to stop worshiping the demons, even the idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, wood, which can neither see, nor hear, nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders, or their sorceries, or their fornications, or their thefts. Repentance and cleansing in the blood of Christ is the key to relief from the demonic. But the inverse is also true. Rome's lack of repentance gave demons continuing authority, actually it's not just continuing authority, gave demons increasing authority to infect them and influence them. And what is true on a national level is also true on an individual level. Why were the trillions of demons that were unleashed on the Middle East, on Israel, not able to touch the 144,000? Well, we won't get into it. I'll just list very, very quickly. But in chapter 14, he gives the answers. First, they were redeemed. 4. They know God intimately, 3. They guard their mouths, 5. They lead a blameless life, 5 in the majority text. They are sold out of the Lamb, 4. They are sexually pure. In other words, they've given no legal ground for the wicked one to be able to touch them. Satan has zero exousia, zero authority to be able to infest their lives at all. because they have not given him that legal ground. Now there are things that do give legal ground for Satan to keep working in even a believer's life. One of those things is a failure to confess your sins and to forsake them, to repent of them. Verses 20 through 21, I think are pretty clear on that, but there's many other illustrations in scripture. You look in Hosea. And you wonder, why did these people do such irrational things in Hosea? And he says, well, just give one example. He said it was the demons behind the idols that they worshipped. Now they said, we're worshipping Jehovah. But they worshiped idols. And he said there were demons behind those idols. He called them demons of harlotry. You can look up the scriptures. And it was those demons of harlotry that moved all of Israel to engage in harlotry. It was just a massive thing that had begun to happen. But it started with idolatry. Failure to humble ourselves before God and man concerning our sins makes us powerless before the attacks of demons. And this is why James admonishes us to confess our sins to one another and to pray for one another that we might be healed. When we hide our sins, we're exalting ourselves. When we confess our sins, we're humbling ourselves and God exalts us. He gives more power and more grace to those who are humble. And so James says that if we're cleansed in the blood of Christ, we can resist the devil and he has to flee from us. Ephesians 4, 26 through 27 says that when we let the sun go down on a wrath, in other words, when we have not confessed our sins and repented of them, which involves a turnaround saying, I hate my son, I'm going to turn away from it. I want to do something about it. When we do, when we continue to harbor anger, it gives a foothold or some translated an opportunity for the devil to be at work in our lives. Why? because we've given him legal ground, and God gives Satan authority to attack us. And actually, that passage says that anything that grieves the Holy Spirit deprives us of the Holy Spirit's authority over demons, which makes perfect sense. How did Jesus cast out demons? It says very clearly, he cast out demons by the exousias of the Holy Spirit, the authority of the Holy Spirit. So if we've grieved the Holy Spirit, We lose the Holy Spirit's authority over demons. We can't get anywhere with demons. It just makes total logical sense. Luke 10 verse 19 says, Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you. Okay, God gives us that authority, but God can take away that authority when we're not walking cleansed, we're not walking right with him. So we must take into consideration the whole legal framework within which demons operate. And that's what is implied in that verse, he gave them authority. Same authority that the demons on the earth had. Anyway, that's how I wanna end my sermon this morning. If you want a summary paradigm of how to live victorious over the demonic, take 1 John 5, 18 through 21 seriously. It was just the last four verses of the book of 1 John. They show you how if you have certain conditions in place, the wicked one cannot touch you. That's what we want, right? We want to be completely impervious to demonic attacks, just like the 144,000 were completely impervious to the demonic attacks in verse 4. In 1 John 5, 19, it says, the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. But that doesn't need to be true of you. It became true one day of David. Remember I mentioned 1 Chronicles 21, it says Satan moved David. He was under the sway of, David was under the sway of Satan, and he started numbering Israel. Now he didn't realize that he was under the sway of the devil, but when he became cleansed in the blood of Christ, he was no longer under the sway of the wicked one. But it is a danger that can happen to Christians. First condition, last four verses give three conditions. First condition is break off all idolatry from your life. That's in verse 21. He was writing to Jewish Christians who probably were shocked when he said, little children, keep yourselves from idols. They said, we've never worshipped an idol in our lives. They were thinking of wood, you know, wood idols, gold idols, silver idols. Yeah, they hadn't worshipped idols in that gross sense that verse 20 talks about, but idols can be mental. Idols can be social. Idols can be political, ecclesiastical. There are all kinds of idols. In fact, Calvin says our hearts are basically idol factories. So if John could make as one of the conditions of maintaining our authority over Satan, little children, keep yourselves from idols. We need to take idolatry seriously as well. Idolatry can You know, involve the entertainment that you're involved in. Your car can be an idol. Your family can be an idol. Anything that captivates you in a way that keeps you from being sold out to Christ is likely an idol. The second condition that John insists upon is that we must break off all habits of sin. Verse 18 says, we know that whoever is born of God does not keep on sinning. There is a habitual pattern there, but he who has been born of God guards himself and the wicked one does not touch him. That doesn't mean you're going to be sinless. But it does mean you will not be lackadaisical about your sin. You'll be guarding your heart. You're going to be quick to repent of the sin. You're going to be quick to put it under the blood of Christ. You refuse to allow it to become a habit. The third condition needed if we're to maintain authority over demons is to develop a deep and personal walk with God every day. Verse 20 says, and we know that the son of God has come and has given us an understanding that we may know him who is true and we are in him who is true in his son, Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life. God is the only source of authority over the enemy. So it's imperative that you walk in the spirit. Now, God will sometimes allow demons to have access to our lives to test whether we will meet these three conditions. Verse three says to them was given authority, not one wit of authority will be granted to demons. If we walk in the spirit and do not indulge in the lusts of the flesh. So my prayer is that God would give each one of you an increasing understanding of the enemy and his strategies. You know, Paul said, we're not ignorant of his strategy. I don't think we can say the same today. The church of Corinth was not ignorant of his strategies. May we not be ignorant of his strategies. May we understand the enemy and have an increasing faith that greater is he who was in you than he who was in the world. God bless you. Amen. Father, thank you for this, your word that describes some of the legal framework that is involved in binding the hand of demons from being able to influence our lives, sometimes even binding them to the pit and the legal ground that is involved in some of the defeats that we experience. And I pray that you would open the eyes of our understanding to be able to walk in this in a way where day by day we experience the victory that 1 John talks about. We end out this service in singing the psalm and just pray that you would grant to us, Father, the faith that David had, that even though he was surrounded by millions of enemies, not just human, but demonic enemies as well, that he was able to sleep. He was able to sleep the day before that great battle, knowing that if you are for us, who can be against us. And so we pray this in Christ's name, amen.