Secured for God's Glory (2)

Revelation 12:2 ESV

2 She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

Have you ever heard the saying, “So and so is as stubborn as a mule!”? We’ve all heard that before; it means that someone is so stubborn that it is literally impossible to change their mind. That it’s almost in their nature to be stubborn and never change their mind, even when they know that it’s going to hurt them to stay the way that they are.

That saying reminds me of an experience that a lady once shared with me. She told me that when she was 8 years old, she kept asking her parents to get her a horse, but at that time, they couldn’t afford to get one.

But she said that there was a man who lived down the road from her who had a mule, and this man told her father that if he could get the mule to leave his house and come down to their house, then they could have him.

I mean, it wasn’t a horse, it was a mule, but it was pretty close to being a horse, so she told me that she was really excited to go down the road to the neighbor’s house and get her new mule.

So, she and her father set out down the road to do just that, to get her, her mule. But when they got there, they couldn’t get that mule to move for anything in the world. They tried everything that they could, but that mule was so stubborn that he wouldn’t move an inch. So, unfortunately, she had to go home without the mule.

Well, she told me that her parents eventually bought her a horse when she was 12 years old, but had that mule not been so stubborn, she could have been riding four years earlier.

But it is in the nature of a mule to be stubborn. You don’t have to teach it to be stubborn, it just is. In fact, it would be out of the ordinary if a mule was not stubborn, that is something that you would have to teach a mule. And because being stubborn is something that is in a mule’s nature, mules can’t help but be stubborn.

As we continue this morning in our series that we just started last week concerning Revelation, chapter 12, verses 1-6, we will look at the stubborn character of one, who like a mule has stubbornness as a natural character trait, but who, unlike the mule, will not and in fact cannot change his stubborn character, even if one were to try to somehow teach him. That one who I speak of who has a stubborn character that cannot change is Satan.

Many people have asked and I myself have asked on numerous occasions why Satan does what he does? Why does he oppose God? And furthermore, the Scriptures tell us that God will eventually defeat Satan, so, knowing this, why does he stay opposed to God?

Some say that Satan stays opposed to God because he does not know that God will defeat him. But Satan certainly knows this, he knows the Bible better than we do, and if we know that he will eventually be defeated then he certainly knows it too.

Some people will also say that even though Satan knows that the Bible says that he is going to be defeated by God, he doesn’t quite believe that that will actually happen.

But I think that the devil is well aware that God is more powerful than he is, and he is also well aware that the Bible is absolutely correct in everything that it says. So, I think that he knows for certain and believes fully that he will inevitably be fully and finally defeated by God.

So, if he knows what the Bible says and if he believes what the Bible says, why does he still do what he does?

And one day as I was pondering this question, it came to me. Satan fights against God, knowing that he is going to eventually lose against God and be eternally banished to the Lake of Fire because he hates God.

It is in his nature to hate God, even though it doesn’t make any sense for him to hate God and fight against God. It is not something that he can stop doing, for it is all that he knows and therefore, because of his nature, hating and opposing God is all that he can do, even though hating and opposing God makes no sense.

And because Satan hates God, he then hates everything about God, especially the pinnacle of God’s creation, humanity, created in God’s own image. There is nothing in creation that Satan could hate more than us because we are made in God’s very image. And there is no part of humanity that he hates more than God’s elect, those whom He has chosen to be the heirs of salvation.

God loves all of His creation, but He loves those whom He has chosen to save with a peculiar love, a deeper love than He does anything else. And because of this, the ones whom Satan attacks more fiercely than anyone else are us, those who are saved by God.

We first read of this battle made manifest back in the third chapter of the book of Genesis. There we read of the serpent tempting Adam and Eve, their yielding to the temptation, and God’s pronouncement that there would eventually come One from the woman Who would crush the serpent’s head.

That One Whom God spoke of was the Messiah. It will be He Who ultimately seals the devil’s fate. And God said that the Messiah would be the One through Whom His people would obtain their salvation.

And because God had revealed to His people that sooner or later, He would bring forth the Messiah Who would save them and defeat evil once and for all, they looked to Him and waited for Him with longing and expectation.

Concerning the people of God and their longing for the Messiah, our reading describes as a pregnant woman.

In our reading last week, in verse 1, we discussed how the woman spoken of in that verse was representative of the people of God, the Bride of Christ.

Now, this week, at the very beginning of verse 2, we read concerning this woman, that:

Revelation 12:2a ESV

2a She was pregnant

Now, like I said last week, all kinds of people have all kinds of different opinions about what this means, but I believe that this is in reference to God’s elect people before Jesus came, longing for the Messiah to come and save them, just as a pregnant woman longs for the day when her baby is born and she can finally hold him.

But this “pregnancy” was not without complications and pain, as the next part of this verse tells us that she was:

Revelation 12:2b ESV

2b crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth.

Now, like I said, the pregnancy spoken of here is in reference to God’s elect people longing for God’s Messiah to come and save them.

And like I also said, Satan hates humanity in general, but he especially hates God’s elect portion of humanity, those who are saved. And because he hates those who are saved more than any other portion of humanity, he then persecutes God’s elect people more than any other people.

Like I said, Satan knew that sooner or later, he was going to be defeated by God’s Messiah, God Himself had said that it would be the case, and so he knew that there was no stopping this from happening, but that didn’t stop him from making it as difficult as ever for God’s Messiah to come into this world.

Like I said a minute ago, God had revealed that the Messiah would come into this world through the woman whom Satan had deceived. Now obviously Eve had died longed before the Messiah came, so God didn’t literally mean that Eve herself would give birth to the Messiah, but He meant that through the godly line of Eve, the Messiah would come.

And while this would come through the godly line of Eve, there was also an ungodly line; and the original head of that ungodly line was a man named Cain. While the original head of the godly line was Cain’s brother, Abel.

Now, the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis tells us that Cain, the head of the ungodly line killed his brother Abel, the head of the godly line. Thus, Satan surely looked on in perverse glee as he saw the elect of God being on the receiving end of the most violent persecution.

But that was not the end of the godly line. In fact, God eventually came to a man named Abraham and told him that it would be through his line that the Messiah would come.

And several hundred years after Abraham had passed on from this world, his descendants found themselves in Egypt, toiling under the heavy burden of their slavedrivers.

And in time, the awful decree of Pharaoh came to the people; every Hebrew baby boy who was born was to be thrown into the Nile River, and over in the second chapter of Exodus, we read that the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery, and they cried out for help.

Once again, Satan looked on in perverse glee as it seemed as though evil was prevailing on the earth.

Now, while God had made it plain that His Messiah would come through the line of Abraham, in time, He narrowed it down even further when He said that the Messiah would come through the line of King David.

But not even King David was without persecution. We read of how after God had made it plain that He had anointed David as king in the place of King Saul, Saul jealously and obsessively hunted David down, seeking to put an end to him and thus thwart God’s plan.

While on the run from Saul, we read of David’s words in Psalm 22 when he said: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.”

It seemed like David was a dead man walking, that Saul had his number, and that both he and any hope of him having any kind of descendants after him would soon be annihilated.

Once more, Satan gleefully rejoiced at the persecution leveled against God’s people.

Yet David lived, reigned as king, and had many descendants proceed forth from him. But many years later, the people of God found themselves in another dire situation.

In the book of Esther, the Persian Empire was the dominant empire in the world as the majority of the population of the known world lived within the bounds of the empire, including the majority of Jewish people living in the world at this time.

Well, a certain man named Haman established a personal beef against the Jewish people living in the empire at that time and even talked the emperor into issuing a decree that stated that every Jew found within the bounds of the empire was to be put to death.

Once the news of this decree was discovered, it is written in the fourth chapter of Esther that: “in every province, wherever the king's command and his decree reached, there was great mourning among the Jews, with fasting and weeping and lamenting, and many of them lay in sackcloth and ashes.”

Once again, Satan surely celebrated at the thought of the potential harm that was going to come to God’s people… but even in the midst of all of this, the people of God were persevered, and the messianic hope was kept alive.

What we repeatedly and progressively see in all of these historic examples is what is written in our reading, the woman, the people of God, were crying out in birth pains, in utter agony as God’s purposes were slowly, miraculously, and gloriously being realized.

But what we also see repeatedly and progressively in all of these historic examples is God overcoming through His people. It is not God’s people who overcome and win, but God Who overcomes and wins through them.

And thus, we continually see the perseverance of God’s people against the obstacles and trials that they face in this life as God ensures that against all odds, the salvation of His elect remains intact and secure.

And today, as we approach the recognition of the Savior, the Messiah coming into the world, we know that God has not changed a bit. He promised, and it was done.

And as He has promised us today, His modern elect people that we will indeed persevere unto the end, we know that He will indeed fulfill His promise and against all odds, keep our salvation intact and bring us home to Him.

Beloved, rest secure in your God-given security.

Amen?