Series: Revelation: The Best is Yet to Come

Title: “What to do when you feel defeated”

Scripture: Revelation 12

(Main commentary helps listed at the end)

Two weeks ago: “Why and When Does God Protect His People?”

This week: “What to do when you feel defeated”

Opening story:

Ultimate High school tournament—we won our first game. We lost our second. And third. And fourth...

Q: What do you do when you feel defeated?

My Bottom line:

God protects his people against all satanic opposition and his people proclaim the good news that the kingdom of God is near until it’s here. He does this as he keeps his salvation promises to his people.

Remember we just left Rev 11:15

This is not your parents Christmas story!

Rev 12:1-17 Outline

I. Epic enmity between the Seed and the Serpent. (1-6)

• Jesus is the “snake crusher” (Gen 3:15)

• Gen 3:15 is the proto-evangelia”

• “Can you imagine anything more vulnerable than a woman laboring to give birth? Women in labor are com[pletely occupied with giving birth. They are not thinking about defending themselves. They cannot strategize about how to escape from danger. They are focused on one thing: giving birth. The process of giving birth is a colossal struggle for life. The whole of a woman’s mental energy, emotional strength, and bodily power are focused on what seems impossible and is nothing short of miraculous. A human being is about to come into the world out of her body, and the baby seems bigger than the birth canal. It looks impossible. It is a miracle of frantic human determination and astonishing divine design.

“Can you imagine anything more frightening or threatening than a huge dragon? Let me suggest a way to make a dragon even more dreadful: give it seven heads. Now put a horn on each head, and three of the heads have two horns; so there are seven heads and ten horns.

“Put the two images together and you have a powerful drama. A pregnant woman is in the process of giving birth, and she is threatened by a massive dragon who wants to eat her baby the moment he is born. She cannot run. She cannot hide. What hope does she have?

“Do you want to heighten the desperation and urgency of the situation? The child about to be born, sure to be eaten by the dragon, is the world’s last hope. This is an epic pageant of intense, in protected goodness confronted with a shocking evil that looks powerful, inevitable, devastating.” - Jim Hamilton, p. 245

II. Cross defeats the accuser. (7-12)

• Heavenly war

• Angel names

  • Michael = Who is like God

  • Lucifer = I will be like God

III. On the wings of an eagle. (13-17)

Illustrations:

“The Seed” vs “The Serpent” (Gen 3:15)

Note rise in anti-semitism in our nation in the last week. (Cases essentially doubled)

Dragon from the Hobbit (Smaug) scenes

Delivering baby stories: Watching your wife deliver a baby (whether by C-section or more naturally) is a distressing experience of a distressing experience. Not sure there is a more vulnerable position for a woman than right before giving birth.

High school ultimate tournament stories