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Scripture

Revelation 17

Revelation 17

The Great Prostitute and the Beast

17:1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, 2 with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk.” 3 And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. 4 The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. 5 And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: “Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.” 6 And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.1

When I saw her, I marveled greatly. 7 But the angel said to me, “Why do you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast with seven heads and ten horns that carries her. 8 The beast that you saw was, and is not, and is about to rise from the bottomless pit2 and go to destruction. And the dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel to see the beast, because it was and is not and is to come. 9 This calls for a mind with wisdom: the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated; 10 they are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come he must remain only a little while. 11 As for the beast that was and is not, it is an eighth but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction. 12 And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal power, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour, together with the beast. 13 These are of one mind, and they hand over their power and authority to the beast. 14 They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”

15 And the angel3 said to me, “The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages. 16 And the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked, and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire, 17 for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast, until the words of God are fulfilled. 18 And the woman that you saw is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.”

Footnotes

[1] 17:6 Greek the witnesses to Jesus

[2] 17:8 Greek the abyss

[3] 17:15 Greek he

(ESV)

Categories
Scripture

Revelation 16

Revelation 16

The Seven Bowls of God’s Wrath

16:1 Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

2 So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and harmful and painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.

3 The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing died that was in the sea.

4 The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. 5 And I heard the angel in charge of the waters1 say,


  “Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was,
    for you brought these judgments.
6   For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets,
    and you have given them blood to drink.
  It is what they deserve!”

7 And I heard the altar saying,


  “Yes, Lord God the Almighty,
    true and just are your judgments!”

8 The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire. 9 They were scorched by the fierce heat, and they cursed2 the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory.

10 The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People gnawed their tongues in anguish 11 and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.

12 The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east. 13 And I saw, coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs. 14 For they are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty. 15 (“Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”) 16 And they assembled them at the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

The Seventh Bowl

17 The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” 18 And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings,3 peals of thunder, and a great earthquake such as there had never been since man was on the earth, so great was that earthquake. 19 The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. 20 And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found. 21 And great hailstones, about one hundred pounds4 each, fell from heaven on people; and they cursed God for the plague of the hail, because the plague was so severe.

Footnotes

[1] 16:5 Greek angel of the waters

[2] 16:9 Greek blasphemed; also verses 11, 21

[3] 16:18 Or voices, or sounds

[4] 16:21 Greek a talent in weight

(ESV)

Categories
Scripture

Revelation 15

Revelation 15

The Seven Angels with Seven Plagues

15:1 Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished.

2 And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. 3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,


  “Great and amazing are your deeds,
    O Lord God the Almighty!
  Just and true are your ways,
    O King of the nations!1
4   Who will not fear, O Lord,
    and glorify your name?
  For you alone are holy.
    All nations will come
    and worship you,
  for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

5 After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent2 of witness in heaven was opened, 6 and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests. 7 And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, 8 and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.

Footnotes

[1] 15:3 Some manuscripts the ages

[2] 15:5 Or tabernacle

(ESV)

Categories
Scripture

Revelation 14

Revelation 14

The Lamb and the 144,000

14:1 Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. 2 And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, 3 and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. 4 It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, 5 and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.

The Messages of the Three Angels

6 Then I saw another angel flying directly overhead, with an eternal gospel to proclaim to those who dwell on earth, to every nation and tribe and language and people. 7 And he said with a loud voice, “Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.”

8 Another angel, a second, followed, saying, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she who made all nations drink the wine of the passion1 of her sexual immorality.”

9 And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, 10 he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. 11 And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”

12 Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus.2

13 And I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed,” says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!”

The Harvest of the Earth

14 Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and seated on the cloud one like a son of man, with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand. 15 And another angel came out of the temple, calling with a loud voice to him who sat on the cloud, “Put in your sickle, and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth is fully ripe.” 16 So he who sat on the cloud swung his sickle across the earth, and the earth was reaped.

17 Then another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 18 And another angel came out from the altar, the angel who has authority over the fire, and he called with a loud voice to the one who had the sharp sickle, “Put in your sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, for its grapes are ripe.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle across the earth and gathered the grape harvest of the earth and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 And the winepress was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the winepress, as high as a horse’s bridle, for 1,600 stadia.3

Footnotes

[1] 14:8 Or wrath

[2] 14:12 Greek and the faith of Jesus

[3] 14:20 About 184 miles; a stadion was about 607 feet or 185 meters

(ESV)

Categories
Saturday Study Scripture

Saturday Study

Saturday Study

Revelation 9-13 (11.23.19)

Grab your Bible, and let’s go deeper into Revelation 12.

Read again Revelation 12:9-12:

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. And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “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 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. Therefore, 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!’”

This passage is one of the famous ones used in Scripture to give us insight into Satan. I thought we would take a little time this morning to look to the Scriptures and remind our hearts about who Satan is, the power he has, and how we have victory over him.

First, who is Satan?

Satan opposes God as the chief of all fallen angels by deceiving, tempting, and lying. Satan only has the access and ability that God permits him. He is also known as the devil, the enemy, the tempter, the father of lies, the adversary, and the accuser.

Satan uses things like:

Doubt—to make you question God’s Word and His goodness.

Discouragement—to make you look at your problems rather than at God.

Diversion—to make wrong things seem attractive, so you will want them more than right things.

Defeat—to make you feel like a failure, so you don’t even try.

Delay—to make you put off doing the God-honoring things, so they never get done.

In Genesis 3:1 we see Satan using his tricks to tempt Adam and Eve to sin.

Genesis 3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?”

Now, I could spend a lot of time focusing on all the things that Satan does to trick us, trip us up, and sway us to sin, but I want to focus more on a right understanding of who we are in Christ and what that means for Satan’s ultimate influence in our lives. Notice in Genesis 3:1, it says that Satan was the shrewdest of all the creatures the Lord God had made. The truth is that all things that are not God are God’s creation—even our adversary, the devil.

God alone is the almighty Creator, Sustainer, and Ruler of everything. There is nothing equal with Him. There is no adversary by which God is frustrated. There is no one that trips God up and makes things hard for him. Everything that is is because God allows it to be. This includes Satan. Satan does nothing that the almighty Creator and Sustainer doesn’t ultimately allow.

We see so many examples of this, but none clearer than Satan’s persecution of Job. Nothing that Satan did to Job was outside of the permission and authority of God.

Often, we see these modern pictures or paintings of Jesus and Satan arm wrestling, with heaven and hell waiting in the background, but the truth of Scripture reveals this to be an inaccurate view of the relationship between Satan and Jesus. Satan holds no authority or power over God. Satan is not God’s contender. Satan is 100% at the mercy of the One who holds all things under His rule and reign—that is God Almighty. The dominion Satan has been given is given by God. The dominion of hell that Satan will eternally suffer in will be held together, not by Satan, but by God.

Our passage says that Satan knows his time is short, so he is vigilant in his attacks and tricks and work. But we must never forget who ultimately sits on the throne and rules over all things—God! We must never give Satan more credit or power than he is due. We are saved, sanctified, and secured by the power of God. It is in God we trust. It is in God we believe. It is in God we rest. It is in God we live and do what we do.

This truth must be correctly understood in our hearts, so we don’t ever see Satan’s hand on our lives as having more power than God’s. Can you choose to give into temptation and sin and thereby give into Satan’s advances? Absolutely! But that NEVER means that he is more powerful than God. We must always see Satan as being under the sovereign and almighty hand of God. Our hope is not in avoiding Satan’s advances; our hope is in CHRIST!

Let’s remember what has happened.

Our passage today says that Satan is conquered. This is a great truth we must rightly understand.

God declared war and victory on Satan all in the same verse: Genesis 3:15.

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

In other words, the Son of God, Jesus, will come and He will defeat you. We who have repented of our sin and trusted our lives to Jesus alone are victorious in Christ.

Colossians 2:13-14 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

It is in Christ that we confidently stand up to the devil and yell the words of 1 Corinthians 15:54-56:

… “’Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 8:31-39 says it so well:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In all these sufferings we are more than conquerors! Conquerors means they are under our feet! They are defeated!

So when we read in our passage, Revelation 12:10-11, “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 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,” it is saying, “Satan has been conquered, and Jesus has him and death under His feet.”

The accuser has been defeated, because we now have an advocate of the greatest kind—Jesus Christ Himself. The accusers, adversaries, and enemies are conquered by the blood of the Lamb (Jesus)!

Romans 3:25 (NIV) God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith …

Praise God that our bloodied champion came and conquered the enemy you and I never could. This is what God promised would happen back in Genesis 3:15.

So, we must understand rightly that:

  1. Satan is in no way on the same level as God, dueling it out in a cosmic battle. NO! God always has, and always will have, supreme and complete authority over all things—including Satan.
  2. Satan has been defeated on our behalf. We are now more than conquerors with Christ. We are no longer enslaved to sin and his rule in our lives. We have a new power at work within us. A new power to fight the temptation of sin we still face.

Romans 6:5-11 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

It is on this foundation that we put on our spiritual armor and fight sin and Satan every day until God determines his time on earth is finally done and calls it all to an end and calls us home.

Soldiers, we must know God is God and there is no equal. Jesus has conquered Satan and death, and we will join Him in that victory. We must also know that we are still at war as we testify of Christ to the lost. Our adversary is still on the hunt to trip us up in order to make our testimony weak or our faith in God less. While his efforts are futile in the end, they still can cause great damage to our lives and mission.

This is why Peter says, “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).

This is why James says, “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7).

Are we at war? Yes. Has that war already been won? Yes. Do we armor up and fight on because our Commander has saved us and called us to it? Yes.

We must have a right view of Satan and God. We must have a right view of Christ’s victory over sin and death on our behalf.

We must know that Satan loses! He has been conquered and will be conquered in another final way on the day that God has decided! Soldier up, men!

I leave you with the words of the apostle Paul found in Ephesians 6.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly, as I ought to speak.

By His grace and for His glory,

Pastor Joshua Kirstine

Disciples Church