Revelation 12:7-12 Grace Helps Me Win – Living By Grace Part 4

I like a good fight. Don’t you?

The scene in Revelation 12:7 opens like a great battle scene. The good guys are fighting the bad guys. The war of the ages breaks out in Heaven. The good guys are led by Michael. Michael is one of the top angels in God’s heaven. He is a fighting angel. The dragon whom Michael fights is defined in verse 9:

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
(Revelation 12:9 NKJV)

The dragon is Satan. So we have the good guys led by Michael.

GROUP #1 – DEFENDERS

Michael is one of the defenders of the faith of God. He is an angel in Heaven. One of his roles is to FIGHT FOR God. Incidentally, God and Satan are not equals. Satan is just an angel. As a result, Satan and Michael are equals. Michael is the defender. He fights and defends the kingdom of God. Satan leads another group:

GROUP #2 – DEFECTORS

Satan is an angel-defector. Satan defected from God’s kingdom. Just as in the Cold War, there were people who defected to the side of the Communists against the West. In Heaven, Satan defected and has tried to create his own kingdom. But the defection and rebellion won’t work. God will kick Satan out of heaven.

The Bible describes four different falls of Satan. Revelation 12:9 describes the second of these four falls.

From glorified to profane (Ezekiel 28:14-16)
From having access to heaven (Job 1:12, 1 Kings 22:21, Zechariah 3:1) to restriction to the earth (Revelation 12)
From the earth to bondage in the bottomless pit for 1,000 years (Revelation 20)
From the pit to the lake of fire (Revelation 20)

Jesus saw this fight coming. He prophesied about this defection in Luke 10:18

And He said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.
(Luke 10:18 NKJV)

So Satan has lost his glory. He will soon lose his access to Earth. In the meantime, Satan is moving around this earth as a great defector. He will try to attack a third group of people:

GROUP #3 – DECEIVERS

There are people whom Satan wants to deceive. You are I are in the middle of this fight. There is a great cosmic battle going on, and you are I are in the middle of it. Some of you have slept and have been captured by Satan. He wants to deceive you and help you help him destroy the plans of God. That is why Satan is working real hard in your life to deceive you. His time is about to be up. He is about to be defeated. He lost the decisive battle over two thousand years ago. Satan knows that he can’t win. So he wants you to be deceived. He wants you to not join God’s side. He doesn’t want you to see the victory that God wants to give you in your life. How does Satan go around deceiving you?

DECEPTION – PURPOSE OF LIFE

The first tactic that Satan uses to deceive you into not joining God is how you view your life. Satan is trying to make your life so distracting, that you forget to notice what is really important to you. Life is not about making money. Life is not about hoarding. Life is not about having the best job. Life is not about just working. Life is not about owning things – the best house, the most toys, the best new gadgets on the market, so life is not about consuming. Life has more meaning. There is a reason why you are breathing right now. There is a reason why you are married. There is a reason why you were given children. There is a reason that you are here today. God wants you to live a full life that only He can give you. Satan wants to deceive you into believing that what God wants for you is not good. His first victims were Adam and Eve. They fell into sin and sin leads to death. Sin will take you away from God’s good plan that God has for your life.

DECEPTION – SPIRITUAL ROAD TO ETERNAL LIFE

So Satan is not just interested in messing up your life here. Satan doesn’t want you to take the time to join God before this war ends. But Satan doesn’t just deceive you in the purpose of life. He wants to deceive you into believing that God is not who you need to have eternal life. He wants to deceive you into believing that all religions are just as valid. Satan wants you to believe that there are many roads to Heaven, not just one. Make no mistake about it, Satan is lying to you when you think that all religions lead to God. All religions are not valid. Only one religion, one kind of spiritual relationship will lead you to eternal life. Christianity is the only way. We now live in a world, where people will make choices about which god they want to follow. We now live in a hostile world. People who don’t believe in Jesus Christ, will accuse Christians of intolerance. People who live in today’s Europe, even here in Germany believe it is correct to teach Islam, Buddhism, and secular humanism alongside Christianity in schools. They insist that Christians should tolerate the desires of other people, and the spiritual paths that they choose to make.

God says that you have the right to know about Jesus Christ. Satan wants you to think that knowing about Jesus is a dangerous idea. So he will propose other forms of spiritual paths for you to choose. He will use an Islamic terrorist to violently make his point. He will use people who do not see the value of God in their lives to deceive you. Satan will use people who are angry at the way their lives have turned to deceive you. The accusations come from one source – Satan. Satan uses deceived people as soldiers in his fight against Jesus Christ and His followers. Some of us here in this room need to wake up to this reality.

GROUP #4 – CHRISTIANS

Satan is also out to fight Christians. He can’t make them defect from God’s kingdom. He can’t make them deceived into what they should believe. But he can try to deny victory in this life to the Christian.

If you have accepted Jesus Christ, then you are on the winning side. You have won the war. You just have to stay in the war long enough to see the victory completed. Satan is going to try to steal the idea that you have won away from you. All he can do is deny that the victory has taken place. Even though Satan can deny it, he can’t determine anything in your life. He does not control your destiny. Now he will try to accuse you. And he will try to get other people (even other Christians) to accuse you. But he can never deny you victory in this life.

And that’s why you have to stay strong.

GOD’S PART IN VICTORY – God’s part is already completed. This part was accomplished on the cross. By “the blood of the Lamb”, you have victory for eternal life.

MY PART IN VICTORY – This part of victory is three-fold:

1. When I testify about Jesus

As a Christian, I should tell people about Jesus for three reasons. I want to defend God’s claim on my life. I want to share a true story to those who are deceived by Satan about God and God’s purpose in my life. That means that I will want to tell others who think that Christianity is a lie I want to tell them how true it really can be. Finally, I want to deny Satan any victory in this war.

2. When I live my life ready for battle

Jesus that I would have to deny parts of my life to follow Him.

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.
(Luke 14:26-27 NKJV)

When a solder is on the battlefield, he doesn’t stop to take time off and go on a vacation. He doesn’t say: I know I am in the middle of a war, but I want to take my thirty days of vacation right now. This is like defecting and saying you don’t want to fight. When a sol

dier stops fighting he is acting in rebellion against his commander.

Some things in life you have to fight for. Some things in life will never happen if you wait around expecting others to do it for you. Victory in the Christian life is not going to happen when you decide to stop and take a vacation from God’s battle plan for your life. You won’t be able to see joy at the end of the battle if you don’t fight now. I want to see God’s victory in my life and so I need to fight for it.

But just as in any battle, we will suffer casualties. This brings up the last plan for victory that we can do.

3. I can refuse to love my life to the point that I don’t shrink from death

ILLUSTRATION: Burmese people and the missionary Judson.

So I encourage you not to give up. Take Jesus at His world and continue to follow Him. Our commander-in-chief, King Jesus is sending me too another battlefield. But we are all fighting this war, and with God’s help, we will win.

So I bid you farewell. It reminds me of a fellow Christian I knew – Dale Lovett. We worked together at a Boy Scout camp in Texas. I had just spent the hours with a young man, sharing with this young man about his need for Jesus Christ. Dale, the Camp Director, and a fellow Christian, came to me and told me that he was leaving. Events in his life caused him to need to drop his duties at the camp and go away with his family. He ended our conversation with these words:

“We probably won’t see each other again here on this earth. But we will meet again in Heaven.” Some of you, I may never see again on this earth. So folks, this is goodbye. That’s English for “God be with you.” Au Revoir as the French would say. But the Germans say it best:

Auf Wiedersehen

Photo by Olivia Snow on Unsplash