told that you can't eat from every tree of the garden here. And Eve says, well, we can eat from the other trees, but this tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we cannot eat from it. And the day that we do, we are certainly going to die. And he says, come on, Eve. You're not going to die. You will not certainly die if you eat of that fruit. As a matter of fact, if you eat from that tree, God knows you're going to be like him. You're going to know good from evil. Don't you want to be wise, Eve? Don't you want to know the things that he knows? Don't you want to be as he is? And so Eve takes the fruit and she eats and she gives to her husband and he eats and they clothe themselves in their nakedness and in their shame and then here comes God walking through the garden and he comes through and he says, Adam, where are you? And they show themselves. They've made clothing out of fig leaves. And you see this scene where they weren't in fig leaves before, why are they now? And it's because their nakedness and their shame is being hidden. And the Lord asks, He said, did you eat from the tree that I told you not to eat from? And Eve says, well, Adam says, yes, I did. And the woman, she gave me the fruit to eat. And so Eve says, well, yes, I did. But the serpent deceived me into eating. And so the Lord peers down on the serpent. And he pronounces his curse on him. And he tells him, now you're going to be cursed above all the animals of the earth, and you're going to go down on your belly, and that's where you will be all the days of your life. And then what does he tell her? Or what does he tell the serpent? He tells the serpent, I'm going to put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. And you may reach up and bite his heel, but he will crush your head. We jump back into Revelation 12 and we're reading really a familiar scene. And it's a tense scene because this child that is about to be born, this child isn't just another child. This is the mortal enemy of the dragon. This is the one he's waited for. The one that he knows victory or defeat is finally going to come through the hands of. And he wants to destroy this child once he is born. The woman in this story is not Eve, though it makes us think of her. The woman in the story is not Mary, as Roman Catholics would teach. The woman in this story is God's people. God's people beginning in the nation of Israel. God's people who gave birth to the one that was promised to Eve, who gave birth to the promised descendant of Abraham, the promised offspring of David, who brought this child into the world by virtue of their lineage. But it crosses over not only the Old Testament and Israel, but into the New Testament and God's people throughout time. This becomes really clear when you read in verse 5 that the child is taken into heaven, but the woman is still here on the earth. What's in view with the woman here are God's people. The dragon really needs no description. John gives us a description anyway. In verse 9, he tells us that this dragon is that ancient serpent called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. The mortal enemy of the child is here too. And then we have the child himself who's going to be born. And we know that this child is taking us to think of our Lord. It's taking us to think of Jesus, the one who is going to give victory to the woman and the one who will conquer his mortal enemy, the dragon. It's no wonder that the dragon wants to snuff out his life. In John's vision, it then shifts from this heavenly scene where all of this is taking place. And we shift our focus then to the earth because he is swept down the angels with him down to the earth. And then the woman in verse five gives birth to a male child, one who is to rule over all the nations with a rod of iron. But her child was caught up to God in the throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God in which she is to be nourished for 1,260 days. I think the language in these verses makes it clear that we've had a shift in the scene from the heavenly scene that we were seeing just a minute ago to now something that's playing out on the earth. And frankly, we're not told a whole lot about what's playing out on the earth. The woman brings the child into the world, so we know the dragon hasn't succeeded in snuffing out the child's life. But then the child is taken off of the earth and he's taken up into heaven. And the woman is left there and she flees off into the wilderness. And that's where she's going to be. And you read this and it's kind of, you're like, all right, well, what's the deal with the child? Why is the child being snatched up off of the earth and into heaven? And why is the woman being left behind? And why is she now wandering around in the wilderness? But there's a lot of the story about the child and the dragon that John doesn't tell us here. When this child was born, the dragon tried to snuff out his life. And Herod began to systematically kill the young Judean children that were being born, the male children. And the mother and his father took him and they fled into Egypt and they were hidden there. And they didn't return until it was safe for them to do so. And so the dragon had tried to snuff out the boy and take his life and he wasn't able to do that. And then as the son of the woman grows up and he's living, he's faced with temptation and he's faced with persecution and with pressure from the dragon throughout his whole life. He's tempted to revoke what is his to the devil and if he'll give those things over then everything in the world will be his if he'll just bow down and worship the dragon. He's faced with the persecutions of loneliness, of isolation, with the temptation to sin. So he's being tempted and yet he defeats the dragon again in a perfect, sinless life. Perfect obedience to the law. And he brings all things in the law to the conclusion for which they were intended. And so the dragon's defeated again because he can't cause the child to sin. And as the son of the woman grows up and he's just a few years older than I am, he's deserted by his closest followers. He's spit on. He's beaten. His robes are stripped off of him. He's called a blasphemer in the presence of the high priest. He's scourged. A crown of thorns is put on him. He's nailed to a piece of wood. He is nailed to a cross. And they set the cross up at Golgotha, and he dies there. And I'll tell you this, if the dragon can't defeat him there, he can't defeat him anywhere. And even in his death, he brings victory. And the wrath of God against his people is satisfied, and atonement is made for their sins. Well, they take him down, and they take him to Joseph of Arimathea's tomb, and they put him in there. And they put him in there, and they bring in a Roman guard, just in case, and say, listen, stand here, roll this big rock in front of the tomb. And you may not know this, but there's only three or four excavated tombs in all of Judea that have a big rock like this that you roll in front of the tomb. This not only showed that Joseph of Arimathea was a wealthy man, but they had this man in ultra custody, his body, and they roll this big rock in front of the entrance to the tomb there. And they tell the guards, no matter what, nobody comes in. Now in their defense, they didn't tell them nobody comes out, but they told them nobody comes in and gets this body. And then Mary comes on the third day and she looks in and there's nobody there. And she runs to tell the disciples about this. And so they run back to the tomb, and they look in there, and they go, sure enough, yeah, there's nobody in there. This is just like a man to do this. The woman said, there's nobody there, but he has to run and make sure. So he looks in there, and he goes, yep, sure enough, there's nobody in there. And then she turns around, and the next words out of Mary's mouth are rabbi. She sees Jesus there. And he told her, don't touch me until I'm ascended back to my father. Death couldn't defeat the Son of the Woman, and neither could burial. But what John focuses in on is what happens next. That after Jesus was raised from the dead, and He spent 40 days here on the earth, and He's continuing His ministry, and He's strengthening His disciples, and He's showing the evidence of His resurrection, the last that we hear from Jesus is in Acts chapter 1, and He prepares to ascend back into heaven. And it's this ascension back into heaven that John is telling us is a victory over the dragon as well. So His birth is a victory, and His life is a victory, and His death is a victory, and His burial is a victory, and His resurrection is a victory, and His ascension back to the Father is a victory. And we're not used to thinking about Jesus' ascension as being the mark of victory. But for the Son of the woman, He's ascended back into heaven. See, if you see this scene playing out in Revelation 12, and you think that this is a little baby that's been born into the world, and God, to save him, has reached down and snatched him out of danger. You're thinking about this story all wrong. John has left out all of the victories that he recorded in his gospel along the way, and now after this victory, he's being taken back into heaven. And by the way, this isn't his last victory either. Our Lord will appear again, and when He appears again, He'll appear as judge, and He will redeem all things to Himself. Our Lord isn't done with His victory over the dragon. This is what John is focusing in on. He's focusing on His ascension. But that doesn't really answer for us the question about the woman. What happens to the woman? Because the Son has ascended, and He's in heaven with the Father, and He's ruling with a rod of iron, and so He's calling all the nations to Himself, and He's governing all affairs that the people are faced with. But what about the woman? What about God's people that are left there? Well, she's in the wilderness. The wilderness can be an inviting place, and there are places in the Bible where the wilderness is a place of safety and refuge. As I alluded to moments ago, Jesus and his family disappeared into the Egyptian wilderness so that Jesus' life wouldn't be taken in Herod's persecution. Paul spent time in the wilderness receiving revelation from God, but the wilderness is also a place of destitution. It's a place where there's danger. It's a place of drought. Being in the wilderness can also be in the context of going back to the book of Numbers and after the Kadesh Barnea incident, being in a wilderness where you really are not supposed to be. But if you read carefully this verse, It tells us that he was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. The child is caught up in heaven to God in his throne. The woman's fled to the wilderness where she has a place prepared by God. This is no ordinary wilderness. This is a place that God has created for her. This is a refuge that he has created for her in the world. If you're reading this revelation from John in the first century, nobody has to tell you what it's like to live in the wilderness where Christians are expelled from their homes. where they're torn from their families, where they're imprisoned wrongly, where they're fed to wild animals, where they're ostracized as blasphemers and pagans, where they're crucified and beheaded and they suffer. And John is writing to them and he's saying, you look around and everything you see around you is wilderness. But this is a place that God has prepared for you. See, when we read this story in Revelation, I want to be careful on this point. I don't want to elaborate on it too long because Tommy is going to get antsy. But I want to try to make this as clear as I can. Don't read yourself into the Bible where you don't belong. Also don't read yourself out of the Bible where you do belong. And as John is writing about God's people, he's writing about those Christians who are suffering. And he's writing about the next generation of Christians that are suffering, and the next generation. All the way to our present day, Christians can look at Revelation 12 and go, there we are, in the woman, in the wilderness. The church has a history of being in the wilderness and suffering persecution, and yet they didn't crumble under this, they weren't defeated. Not even when they were killed were they defeated. No persecution could stamp out the going forth of the gospel. One of the great blessings of being here at GBC the last couple years has been getting to know so many people. And there are so many more people to get to know than there were two years ago. And in getting to know people, something that I know about this church, the people that I know and have gotten to know well, and some of you who I've not gotten to know as well, is that you wake up and you feel like you're in a wilderness. There are people in this church who have decided we are going to follow Christ. We are going to prioritize the worship of God in our family. We're going to prioritize membership in a healthy local church. We're going to raise our children to love the Lord. We're going to recapture their education. We're going to recapture how we discipled them. And we are going to be a family that worships the Lord. And that has caused you. to be ostracized from some of your family. That has put a rift between some of you and your parents, between some of you and your siblings, between some of you and your children. And it feels like you're in a wilderness. But I want to remind you, the woman doesn't go into a wilderness that's barren, but into a place that is prepared for her by God. We live at large in the wilderness. It's really indescribable, it's unspeakable, the kind of wickedness, the kind of evil that pervades our culture. And it's not political, and it's not ethnic, and it's not cultural, but what it is, is it's spiritual warfare. That some of these are offspring of the woman, and some of these are offspring of the dragon, and there's war here. And this war that we are waging, we see it more and more clearly every single day. I will tell you I'm the furthest thing from a political preacher, so don't mishear me or misrepresent me on this point, but I want to talk about what we see here in the wilderness. We will probably see the largest scale revolution, cultural revolution, in this country when Roe versus Wade is overturned. Perhaps then we've seen since the Civil War, perhaps going back to the Revolutionary War. And this is a battle over whether or not women can kill their children in the womb. I remember being a young man and same-sex marriage was legalized and then it was normalized and now gender is a thing of the past and pronouns, anything I guess can be a pronoun. And now our culture is starting to look at pedophilia and go, is this really that bad? I mean, is this really that wrong? If you don't think that the depths of our culture are that deep, you've got to get out here. You've got to get out in the world some. You've got to see this. And it's not just in the world, it's in the church. Some of these men here tonight were with us at the abortion meal when we went a couple weeks ago. And the people on the other side facilitating the abortions included people that are music ministers at churches and people who are professing Christians. One lady told me that, I asked her why she could work on the Sabbath because she's a Seventh-day Adventist, and she said, it's lawful work on the Sabbath because I'm doing the Lord's work on the Sabbath. Another lady told me when we were sharing the gospel with her, she said, I guess it's a good thing that I sinned, otherwise it sounds like Jesus died for nothing. What a waste. There's darkness here. And if you don't think it's getting darker, I don't know what to tell you. There will be a time where our ability to meet together and get together will be challenged. There will be a time where the things that Tommy Walls and Jeff Johnson and Michael Seawald and Jimmy Federle and others say from this pulpit is going to be monitored and censored and they're going to be asked to give an account for it. And there might be a time where we can't preach here anymore so we'll have to preach under a tree somewhere and we can't preach under the tree anymore and we'll have to preach in the jailhouse and then preach to ourselves in solitary confinement if that's where we end up. And this sounds really like fear mongering. But you have brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world that are already facing it. And this ground that we stand on is no more sacred, this ground we stand on won't preserve us. But the Lord will. And the Lord has not abandoned us in the wilderness, but he has prepared a place for us in the wilderness. In the final scene, it shifts in verse 7, we now are taken back to heaven. Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world. He was thrown down to the earth and his angels were thrown down with him. Now, if you try to read Revelation chronologically, you're going to run into all kinds of problems in verse 7. Because this isn't, you know, ask yourselves things like, well, the serpent's down here dealing with the woman, but then he's up here in heaven fighting with the angels, and then you try to connect that to when Satan fell, but this must have been before Genesis chapter 3 at least, right? And so you're reading about this and trying to fit it together chronologically, and I just want to alleviate you of the burden that I don't think you're going to find a solution to that. I think what you're finding is you're seeing what's happening behind the scenes. And in heaven, you have Michael, an angel of the Lord, and you have the dragon who are fighting with one another. Some, even some of our Reformed forefathers, John Calvin, for example, wanted to read Jesus into this verse and say that Michael actually represents Jesus. I think that that's a really difficult interpretation and reading of this. I don't really buy that at all, primarily because Satan's peer and his enemy is not Jesus. Jesus has no peer. It's his fellow angel. There was a time before he was the dragon and the devil and Satan and the accuser that he was known as Lucifer. And probably he and Michael, and it's debatable in which order, were the two strongest beings that the Lord had ever created. This is no small war or conflict that's going on in heaven. This is two of the most powerful entities that God has brought into existence going to war with one another. If you've been following along closely, it's no surprise who wins. The devil once again is defeated, or the dragon is defeated. And there's no longer, it says, any place for him in heaven. So he's cast down, the ancient serpent called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, thrown down to the earth, and his angels, it says, were thrown down with him. But then there's this sound that John hears in heaven. And the sound cries out, And it says, Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of His Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And hear this, they have conquered Him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives, even unto death. There's a point of tension here that surfaces in the text. And that point of tension is this, if they are victorious, if they have conquered Him by the blood of the Lamb, and if they've conquered Him by the word of their testimony, and if they have no regard for their life, they don't value their lives as to be above death. I like the way the New Revised Standard Version translates this and says, they did not cling to their life even in the face of death. Then how can they be in the wilderness? And how can they be persecuted? And how can they be chased around? And the answer is because those things aren't what determine victory for them. They can be persecuted and be victorious. They can be killed and be victorious. But what the dragon can never take from them is he can never take from them the redemption that they have in Christ and he can never take from them the word of their testimony either unto themselves or with those with whom they share it. I was reading a very short biography of a missionary recently. And I don't say this at all to try to disparage this person or to criticize them or condemn them. And I don't pretend that I would be particularly better. But this person is in a country that's very hostile to Christianity. They were kidnapped one day because they were part of a Christian organization. They were found out. They were taken. They were put into prison. They spent several years in prison. And it was as terrible as you would imagine it would be. They were beat. They were starved. They were mocked. They were sexually abused. It was a woman, this particular missionary was. And this missionary figured that she had no hope to live. And I want to read this quote to you. So she eventually gets a court date, which is pretty unheard of, to give you a little back story. So she actually, this is going to go to trial, whereas it normally wouldn't. And she says, going to court was a victory. People who are sent to labor camps for political crimes, crimes like following Jesus, are never sentenced by a judge. They just disappear from the cells. Most Christians go there, meaning away, they just disappear. But my persistent denials have paid off. They have not found me guilty of being a Christian. That doesn't sound like victory to me. These did not love their life, did not cling to their life even in the face of death. They weren't afraid of the dragon and the dragon couldn't defeat them and their salvation and the power and the reign of Christ and his kingdom has been proclaimed and it is final. I want to leave you with just a few comments on what it's like to live victoriously in the wilderness where we all find ourselves. First of all, I want to say that you have victory over the enemy because your accuser is silenced. The dragon was used to having an audience with God. He was used to standing before him and saying, have you considered Job? Have you thought about Job? Have you looked at him? Is Job really the man that you think that he is? Is he really as committed to you as you think he is? And what's scary is apparently behind the scenes he's doing this for so many of God's people. Can you imagine being the dragon standing in front of God when David sins with Bathsheba? Can you imagine being a false prophet in Israel and preaching a false gospel? And what the dragon's thinking as he stands in front of God and says, look at this one. Look what he's doing. Look at Aaron. He's telling Moses they just threw gold into a fire and it came out as an Egyptian calf. Have you seen this guy? Is he yours? Are you sure? But no more does he stand in heaven to accuse us. His place has been usurped, John tells us, by our advocate, Jesus Christ, the just, who sits in heaven and pleads to the Father on our behalf. Our enemy accuses us, and he whispers in our ear, he may no longer have an audience in heaven, but he has one on the earth, and our enemy accuses us. And he says, if you really were a Christian, you wouldn't think that terrible thought. If you really were a Christian, you wouldn't struggle day and night with this sin. If you were a Christian, you wouldn't be so weak in your faith. If you belong to God, you wouldn't be so hypocritical in the way that you live. If you belong to the Lord, now how could He forgive you? Look what you've done. Look what you've done. Look how you've lived your life. You think He's gonna just absolve you? Think He's just gonna forgive you? Don't believe that nonsense. Live your life and die and perish. Be done with it. But I want you to know that your accuser has been silenced. And those accusations against you don't carry any weight in heaven if you have been bought and redeemed in the blood of the Lamb. And if Christ stands as your advocate, the devil has no power over you. The dragon is defeated. He has no ability to accuse you and he has no right to accuse you any longer. And we don't listen to the accusations that are made against us. We listen to what God says to us in Christ, that all the Father has given to me, I have lost none. Come to me, take my yoke upon you. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. So while you're living these days in the wilderness, remember that your accuser has been silenced. Also remember that your victory does not depend upon you, but it rests on the finished work of Christ. What's inescapable here, what can't be taken away, is that they have the victory because they have the blood of the Lamb. The blood of the Lamb has been shed, it's been accomplished, it's done. He's purchased them with His blood, He has redeemed them, and there's nothing that will now reverse this process. And the dragon is defeated, and you can imagine the depth of defeat that's been painted here in Revelation 12, what He must experience. You understand why our enemy is so enraged, why he's so angry against us, why he prowls about like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour, but it's not going to be us. He's not going to devour us who have been washed in the blood of the Lamb. Our victory does not depend on us. It depends on the finished work of Christ. And finally, our victory is not measured in the number of our days. but in the faithfulness of them. It's possible that while you're here in the wilderness you will die an untimely death. And I know theologically there's no such thing as an untimely death, but this is not a systematic theology lecture and I don't have time. I mean I do have time if you want to put it to a vote. your death is not going to come at the hands of an enemy who's defeated you. Because our victory is not measured in the number of days, but by whether or not we're faithful. And so whether we die a natural death in old age, Whether we go to the mission field and we die there, we're persecuted here and we die here, whether somebody persecutes us and destroys our family and destroys our lives, our victory isn't measured by the number of those days that we have here. They're all dust anyway. They're all a vapor anyway that's here today and gone tomorrow. But our victory is measured in the faithfulness of them. May it never be said of us that our persistent denials paid off, and we were not found guilty of being Christians. My friends, hear this final verse. It says, Rejoice, O heavens, and you who dwell in them. But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short. And the trajectory of the rest of the chapter just puts us back in the same theme, back in the battle between the dragon and the woman. But it ends on this note, that the dragon became furious with a woman and he goes off to make war with the rest of her offspring. So your forefathers have come and died in faithfulness. Now his war is with you. It's on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. May we hold to that testimony. Amen. the standless bowerheads. Father, what hope?