The Dragon Isn’t Above the Law
Sermon Series in Revelation # 39 Revelation 20:1-3
1 Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain.
2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,
3 and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him, so that he might not deceive the nations any longer, until the thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while. [1]
Jesus will orchestrate the Omega of this Creation and declare with absolute finality the destiny of every person.
After the war. After He has changed His blood splattered garments. After He has brought us into His eternal rest. God the Father will reveal a new name by which we will know Jesus.
Today we know Jesus as Redeemer. Jesus is Lord. Jesus is Savior. Jesus is the Lamb and He is a Lion. Jesus is THE Wonderful Counselor. He is Mighty God, Everlasting Father and THE Prince of Peace. Jesus is the Great High Priest. He is the Great Prophet. Jesus is the Great King.
Revelation 19:12 His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. But there will be another name!
The new name of Jesus is already written upon His garments, and it will be revealed by the Father, which will remind us forever of His activity in recreating this universe, casting sin and Sinners into Hell and securing the Saints at the right hand of God the Father in Glory.
And I would like to speak the new name of Jesus, but I don’t know it yet. The saints don’t know it yet. The angels in Heaven don’t know that new name yet. Only Jesus knows what the Father has put into His heart to accomplish for God’s glory and our benefit.
We will call Him Jesus our _________. LOL, all I know is that it will be glorious!
At the end of chapter 19 Jesus removes all influences of the Devil upon this Creation. In Genesis the Devil deceived Adam and Eve with false truths and lies to tempt them to eat of the forbidden fruit.
Since then the Devil has grown a worldwide organism to entice people to sin. He uses Greed and Gluttony, Lust and Pride, Wrath, Envy, and Slothfulness to lure us into sin. The economic network, the political machine, entertainment and media, secularized education and science so called are all impregnated by the Devil to lure us away from God.
God calls this the Beast. Then there’s the False Prophet.
We hear the voice of the False Prophet in peer pressure, the global consensus, group think, political correctness, or the new social norms. People tell us to jump on the band wagon.
The Beast is pushing humanity away from God, and the False Prophet is encouraging people to swallow the lies that the world is feeding them.
These godless influences are orchestrated by the Devil to lead humanity into destruction.
But Jesus at the end of chapter 19 captures the Beast and the False Prophet and throws them into the Lake of Fire. Meaning? At the end of time Jesus will personally declare the eternal punishment of everything against God and Jesus will cast them into the place of eternal torment.
Wow.
So at the end of chapter 19, the Devil will be brought back to square one. He will have no network of evil. The Devil will not have a network of voices that convince people to do evil. Satan will be naked in his own sin. He will be the only target left for God’s judgment.
Then verse 1. After all the other issues have been dealt with, then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain.
We will need to go slowly through these verses.
First, some commentators identify this person as Jesus. I have worked hard not to identify any angel as Jesus. I also do not think this angelic messenger is Jesus.
God told us in Daniel 12:1-2 that Michael the arch-angel will arise to defend God’s people at this last day. Listen to At that time shall arise Michael, the great prince who has charge of your people. And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never has been since there was a nation till that time. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone whose name shall be found written in the book. 2 And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.
The Devil can be defeated by anyone anointed with the Father’s authority.
Jesus said in Revelation 1:17-18 Fear not, I am the first and the last and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades. Jesus has the keys of Hell to imprison the Devil, but He can assign that authority to others who are then enabled to confront the Devil.
Listen to Jude 1:9 But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”
The angel Michael rebuked the Devil in the power and authority of the Lord Jesus. So, as I work this out in my mind, I see the angelic leader of the angelic hosts holding a chain of power and authority from God Himself, with the intent to bind Satan like a rabid dog and lock him inside Hell until the moment of God’s choosing.
There’s some great truths in that first verse.
- God is in control of the Devil. Battles happen when God is good and ready. The Fall in the Garden of Eden was allowed by God. This doesn’t make God the author of evil, but God decides when and where people can choose to sin or influence others to sin.
- Second, if the Devil can be bound by the will of the Father, then you and I already possess that power and authority from the resurrection of Jesus to confront the Devil and lock the power of the Devil out of our life by the authority of God’s inspired and inerrant Word.
- Let’s try it the wrong way.
i. Cancer, you are not from God and you have no hold over my life!
ii. Divorce, you cannot ruin my marriage.
iii. Poverty, go away.
iv. Zit, get off my face!
- What might be the right way for us to lock the power of Satan out of our life?
i. Homosexuality, you will not gain space in my imagination, in my lust or desires to warp my appetites as a man. God says that anything outside of monogamy is an abomination and I have faith in Christ as the Savior of my soul and He has released me from those bonds of sin that I might serve Jesus. My heart, my mind and my soul are slaves to righteousness and I cry out to the Father for pure desires. Lord Jesus sustain me with a steadfast spirit to pursue holiness in the fear of God.
So, every time you feel tempted to step outside of God’s commandments, you pray something like that and quote a few appropriate verses, and trust God to keep you straight.
How else might we lock the power of Satan out of our life?
ii. How about this: “Spirit of Anger, you are not from God.
What is the Bottomless Pit? In Revelation 9 the angel who blows the seventh trumpet opens the bottomless pit that all sorts of vile things might erupt upon mankind.
The Greek word means the abyss which means: without bounds, the pit, or the immeasurable depth. As Heaven is immeasurable in it’s blessedness, so Hell is immeasurable in it’s terrors, pain and suffering.
The bottomless pit seems to be the same meaning as the Greek word for Hell in 2 Peter 2:4 God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment.
These same angels are also mentioned in Jude 6 for having abandoned their own home.
All I can say for sure is that in Hell, or the Bottomless Pit, occupants will never be able to get their footing. They will feel the terror of being cast away from God forever. They will never be blessed with a thud, they will never find a place to rest away from God.
There is no rest for the wicked. Loneliness will only be out measured by the darkness. And residents will never get their footing to attempt a counter attack against God’s just decisions that placed them there.
They will never know if things are about to get worse. It’s like the guy falling from a building who has a heart attack on the way down. Impact would be a welcome relief to cancel out all their fears. There’s fear of the unknown as the Damned fall further and further into damnation.
You get the picture? And this isn’t the more terrorizing Lake of Fire that includes the overwhelming fear of drowning which is so anxiety producing that no one can withstand being water tortured. All humanities greatest fears become real in the Lake of Fire. The worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.
Who doesn’t have a fear of being eaten alive very slowly, or being burned to death. Yet all of these tangible experiences of God’s curse pale in comparison to the greatest human fear of standing in the presence of the thrice Holy God Almighty.
2 And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent We read that long Responsive Reading about the Fall because this label the ancient serpent turns our minds back to the earliest period of human history that God has preserved for our instruction, that passage in Genesis which speaks of the Serpent who deceived Adam and Eve.
And who is this ancient serpent? He is the Devil. He is Satan. He is the Dragon, Lucifer, the Angel of Light. The Accuser of the Brethren. Our Adversary. He is Beelzebub, the Father of Lies, that Man of Sin, a Murderer, a Roaring Lion, a Thief, the Prince of the Power of the Air, the God of this Age.
And Jesus has overcome the Serpent. Jesus has struck a blow to his head which will lead to his death. Jesus holds the keys of Death and Hell. Jesus has absorbed the sting of grave. Jesus holds absolute victory over death.
Keys signify authority and power. Jesus holds all the cards. He has all the power to bring this world, the Angels, Humanity and this Creation into final judgment.
And Jesus will enjoy His victory.
And Jesus gives us equal share in all these victories. All the blessings of Christ’s victories are ours in the Gospel.
So, Michael grabs Hells chain and makes a bee line to the dark place where the Devil hides. He seizes the Dragon. It’s like the ending of a good Disney movie. The Dragon is defeated and put down, down, down.
He is bound for a thousand years.
Friends, I grew up a Baptist Dispensationalist, and now I am a confused Reformed Preterest/Premillenial/Amillenialist.
Is the 1,000 years symbolic of the work of the Cross to bind Satan from leading believers into faithlessness? Should we feel the power of Jesus that for a little while the Devil is loosed, but the power of the Resurrection was like a 1,000 year imprisonment?
Is there a commencement of a 1,000 years that begins at the Second Coming of Christ and one more final rebellion before the Great White Throne Judgment?
I am convinced, that we will be able to map it out as well as Jews mapped out the First Coming of Jesus. Meaning, every theory has holes. Every great teacher is mistaken somehow.
The point of these verse are to leave us with great confidence in God’s power to bring the Devil under the judgment of His Law.
No one is above the law. Sons, you are not above God’s law. Make sure your sins will find you out. Sweetheart, the sins we leave unconfessed in our hearts will make us ugly, dirty and perverted.
We cannot run from God. We cannot escape His strong hand. The arm of the Law reaches every corner of this world, of the next world, into the darkness and the secret hiding places of Satan himself, and brings all to make an account of the deeds that we have done in the body, whether they be good or bad.
Friends, Seek Jesus today. Cast out your sins. Run to Jesus. He will lift you up and crown you with His love and righteousness forever more. Amen.
