To Hell and Back

Supernatural

So, I guarantee you that in like 15 minutes you will probably ask, “how is this an introduction to the book of Revelation?”

Well its not.

This sermon is giving you a set of glasses in which to read the Bible and see the warfare that is happening in the book of Revelation

So

I want to invite you for a second to look at our world.

Is it only natural? Or is there something supernatural about it? ‘

Now we are at church where we believe that God came down from heaven, lived as both man and God, died, rose from the dead and will come again

That is pretty supernatural!

But we live in a culture that is really, very secular. Especially in America.

We have indicators of a supernatural world all around us. There are indicators that there is this great unseen battle of Good and Evil and sometimes this gets played out very visually in front of us…

The side of evil wants you to believe that satan doesn’t exist and that there is no such thing as evil

There is even an official organization called the Satanic Temple and they want you to believe that they are just a benign organization holding a mirror up to culture

This is from their website:

The Satanic Temple is a non-theistic religious organization founded in 2013. It uses Satanic imagery, humor, and legal tactics to advocate for the separation of church and state, critical thinking, reproductive rights, abolishing corporal punishment in schools, and other causes.It does not believe in a supernatural Satan, but uses the idea of Satan and the public's reaction to the concept as a metaphorical or satirical tool to challenge religious authority and advocate against what it views as injustice.

Do you get it? They are secular…They dont believe in a real satan or anything that is really supernatural…Yeah right!

So Jesus right after speaking to the Pharisees and telling them that the truth will set you free is getting a lot of pushback from some pharisees and Jesus responds by saying this:

John 8:44 ESV

You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

I know that there are many people who think that Satan just doesn't exist…But Jesus was very aware of Satan…Jesus knew he existed

It wasn't a shock to Jesus that evil was around. Jesus had a supernatural worldview…He was not secular

And in our world today…I mean Guys its all around us…

Hollywood is an easy target but …its there:

(Picture) A number of years ago there was a show called Lucifer

(Picture)Last year the singer Sam Smith did basically a satanic Ritual on stage at the Grammys and when he tweeted about it before CBS responded with this tweet

(Picture) The tweet has now been deleted but it says, “we are ready to worship”

Did you know that two weeks after this one of the largest revivals to hit America started in March of last year, it was the Asbury revival

(Picture) Then just this year Amazon Prime is releasing a show that says its just for adults called “Haazbin Hotel” It is a show about how Lucifer was just misunderstood and he loved the world and wanted to give the world the gift of free will.

Honestly I showed this video to my staff and they were shocked by it

Here is the point that I want to start with because I could go on and on with examples just like this.

There is a spiritual battle happening for my allegiance

It is everywhere in our media! and we are seeing it everywhere in our world

It is so prolific and yet we are deceived to believe that our world is really just secular

That this is all just a funny joke

So I want to go down a path with you today that I think will prepare us for the book of Revelation

Because my main point today is that this secular worldview that we have is very new…

That none of the original readers of the bible would at all recognize this idea of a secular worldview.

They had a supernatural worldview

To them Zeus wasn’t just mythology

To them Poseidon wasn’t just a fun story

Hercules wasn't just a really strong guy

Tiamat and Marduk and Ball were not just figments of their imagination, but real gods with real power

If you were to travel all around the world and look at creation myths, all of these places that are separated by water have a sort of serpentine figure that was at the center of their creation myth…Was there mass delusion… Is it just Coincidence?

No, These were rival gods to Yahweh but I want to give you the Origin story for it all today

So lets look at our first verse today

The concept is this and it is found right in the beginning of the 10 commandments

Exodus 20:2–3 ESV

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me.

Notice in these two verses there are three ways that we see the word “God” used here.

First God says I am the LORD: Whenever you see LORD in the Old Testament and it is all capitalized like that, it is YAHWEH, God’s proper name

Then it says, I am the LORD your God and God is capitalized: This is the Hebrew word for God, it is generic, it simply means Spiritual being…So we know here that it is YAHWEH that the author is talking about …And God is capitalized and it comes behind the word Lord

Then it says, You shall have no other gods before me…

So as it turns out the word for god in the Hebrew Bible is kind of confusing.

For example The word is: Elohim and it just means spiritual being

So if God says I am the Lord your God what he is saying is I am the Spiritual Being Yahweh..It is my personal name. The God above all other gods

Then God says. Don’t have any other Elohim before me…In English we read god’s…

Did you ever notice that right in the beginning of the 10 commandments God acknowledges the existence of other god’s?

No no one wants to admit this because they think to say what I just said somehow threatens the trinity and it doesn't at all.

But what God is saying right in the beginning of the 10 commandments is, there is a spiritual battle for your allegiance, I am almighty God who has saved you, do not give your worship. your allegiance over to the other spiritual beings.

With our 21st century American glasses we read this as…Dont treat money as a god…dont treat relationships as little gods…we look at this and immediately translate it in such a way that the word god’s are material and not personal

But we have to remember that the second commandment is to not make idols that represents gods...

So we sometimes read the first command as to not have idols but there is its own command for that,

Yahweh was concerned for his people who came out of a land where all these other gods were worshiped, that they be faithful to him.

But what you have to understand is that we live under an intellectual system called enlightenment and rationalism

So we have a tendency to immediately edit the Bible through our own worldview

Therefore before we even blink when we read the Bible we take out the supernatural parts…

It is like a micro level computation that happens in your head so fast that it is hard to even catch…

Under this intellectual system we take the words gods and we make it a material object rather than what the text actually says it is. A spiritual being

what we have to realize is that the first readers of the Bible would have never made that mistake.

When God told the Israelites not to have any other god’s before them, they would have understood that God was saying, dont worship the other spiritual beings…They actually exist!

The point is that in order to really read and understand the bible we need understand the world of the early Jews…we need to get into their heads and out of our own heads…

And I come across this all the time: when I was doing the exodus sermon series last year, I read a scholar who is doing work talking about the burning bush who said…well there is volcanic activity here so the burning bush might have been here

As if Moses is so stupid that he couldn't tell the difference between a volcano and a bush that was burning up with the angel of the Lord in it.

Even scholars fall into this trap of reading the bible and trying to find a natural explanation to the supernatural!

Under enlightenment, there is a move to say nothing can be supernatural! Its just not rational

And what it does is that it cloaks or hides all the supernatural things that happen around us all the time.

So I have an easy question to ask you that I want you to go home and think about. It is just a basic question that will help you settle on whether or not we live in a supernatural world

Is reality secular?

Well do you pray?

Has God shown up in your life?

Do you believe in Jesus?

Do you believe in the resurrection as a historical event?

I mean if your answer is yes to any of these then reality must not be secular and then there is something deeper happening in our world.

Something supernatural!

So what is that ?

So when God says Don’t have any other god’s before me…

who is he talking about?

The Fallen Watchers

Genesis 6:1–4 ESV

When man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took as their wives any they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not abide in man forever, for he is flesh: his days shall be 120 years.” The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterward, when the sons of God came in to the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown.

Now I know that this is an obscure text…and… We might naturally assume that odd things in the Bible are too peripheral to matter.

But we can look back to this text right here and this is the origin story for the other gods

These are the other gods or other Elohim that Yahweh warns us about in the 10 commandments

That is a group God’s divine council, rebelled against god and decided to make creation over in its image rather than in God’s image

See this is the idea that the divine beings in heaven are having children with the daughters of men and then they are now creating a new group of people over in their own image

And I know some of you are probably thinking, Pastor its 2024, no one believes in this now

But what I want you to see is that this is not an obscure passage that means we can just pass it over and hope for the best when we read the Bible

This is the origin story of spiritual warfare. This is really impotrant when it comes to the new testament and ultimately the book of Revelation because this is the beginnings of the battle between good and Evil, Satan and Jesus

So one of the things that we fail to notice is that while this story may seem odd to us, it was such a normal story to the ancients, that there is an entire psalm that looks forward to the day of judgment for these fallen Elohim who rebelled against God

Because in the supernatural worldview, people on earth understood that there was always something happening in the unseen realm something that they couldn't necessary see:

Psalm 82 ESV

A Psalm of Asaph. God has taken his place in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment: “How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked? Selah Give justice to the weak and the fatherless; maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.” They have neither knowledge nor understanding, they walk about in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are shaken. I said, “You are gods, sons of the Most High, all of you; nevertheless, like men you shall die, and fall like any prince.” Arise, O God, judge the earth; for you shall inherit all the nations!

So here God is actually judging the other what we would translate as gods or spiritual beings because of their injustice in ruling over the nations

So God himself has a divine counsel. Other Elohim that he uses to govern the world

If some of you are on the fence about God having a divine counsel, you just dont need to look any further than the story of Christmas:

Luke 2:13–14 ESV

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”

A multitude of heavenly host? Who is that? Well that is the divine beings that are loyal to Yahweh…And they are praising God because the heavenly rescue plan is underway! Once humans are redeemed by Jesus then they will be made over again into his image! …

So in Psalm 82, God calls all the Elohim together to judge them for their corrupt rule of the nations

This is spiritual warfare too. These corrupt Elohim know their days are numbered and that God will inherit the whole earth

So again why do I tell you all of this?

Because as the story of scripture moves forward we get closer and close to a point where good and evil are going to clash..

Especially in the New Testament!

Now I don’t know if any of you have ever asked this question

Why are there only stories of demons being cast out in the New Testament and not the Old Testament?

The word demon is in the old testament text three times and all the times it is there it refers to people sacrificing to demons not to demons possessing and oppressing people

So why is it all the sudden that there is such a flurry of spiritual warfare happing in Jesus ministry?

And what are the origins of demons?

Now this might sound wild to you. but first century people had other books available to them

These books in Christian Academia are called second temple resources

These are books that are written during the second temple, if you want to get an idea of when that was, Solomon built the first one…It was destroyed during the Babylonian exile…

The second temple books were written when the Jews returned from exile and rebuilt the temple.

These books are not scripture but what they did at that time is give kind of like Rabbinic commentary on Scripture…These books are so impotrant that they are actually used by New Testament authors, the book of Enoch is quoted multiple times in the New Testament even in the book of Revelation…

and the way that commentary worked back then is that they would say…Ok this whole story of the Nephilim is 4 verses long …And we have had oral tradition floating around about this story so let’s tell that story

So because these books are not the bible I am uncomfortable saying that its true but I have no problem saying that I believe to the biblical authors they believed it to be true and they used these books as though they were true

Ok so getting back to the point. There are books called 1 Jubilees and Enoch and they all say the same thing, that the impure spirits are

The Book of Enoch or 1 Enoch: Translation (Chapter XV)

8. And now, the giants, who are produced from the spirits and flesh, shall be called evil spirits upon the earth, …11. And the spirits of the giants afflict, oppress, destroy, attack, do battle, and work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble: they take no food, ⌜but nevertheless hunger and thirst, and cause offences. 12. And these spirits shall rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded ⌜from them.

I know this sounds wile but, here is what I am telling you: When Matthew, Mark, Luke & John were writing about the evil spirits everyone around them would have gone back to the book of Enoch and Genesis 6…Spiritual rebellion against God…

First century people believe that these evil spirits were the disembodied spirits of dead Nephilim. And what is crazy is the amount of sources that we have that prove this!

But what I want you to see is that it all follows this same sort of pattern.

When Jesus comes in the flesh the supernatural world flairs up. Evil is trying to stop it…Because they know that if Jesus is successful then they are doomed!

The same spiritual rebellion that produced Satan and his legions in the beginning is rearing back up to try and stop Jesus and his mission…

There is a kingdom of Darkness that wants to stop Jesus and his mission

If you are on mission with Jesus: That same kingdom of darkness wants to stop you

But you have nothing to fear because Jesus conquered that kingdom……

What is crazy to me is just as I showed you in the beginning of this sermon, the kingdom of darkness is becoming more visible in popular culture

So lets Recap

God has a divine counsel of other spiritual beings

A portion of this divine counsel rebells against God

They come to earth and create their own race made in their own image

And a whole bunch of evil spirits are on the loose now because of all of this

There is a very little taught on doctrine that literally ties all of this together

But we have this theology that Jesus is victorious because of the cross…. Well thats true but there is more to it than that

There is also the doctrine of Jesus in Hell…

I know everything today sound a little crazy, but look at the Apostles creed with me for a minute…

Apostles Creed

I believe in God the Father almighty,  Creator of heaven and earth.  And in Jesus Christ, His only Son,  our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary,  suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended into hell; the third day  He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sits at  the right hand of God the Father  almighty, from thence He shall come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints,  the forgiveness of sins,  the resurrection of the body  and life everlasting. Amen.

Do you ever think, Okay where did this come from and what does that mean?

So first Jesus says this:

Matthew 12:40 ESV

For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

Ok so Jesus says…He is going to spend three nights in the heart of the earth…In other words he is going to die…And the heart of the earth is a reference to Sheol in Hebrew, the place of the dead…So you have to understand in the Jewish mind that when Jesus says he is going to spend three nights in the heart of the earth, that is hell!

Then Paul Says this:

Ephesians 4:8–10 ESV

Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high he led a host of captives, and he gave gifts to men.” (In saying, “He ascended,” what does it mean but that he had also descended into the lower regions, the earth? He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things.)

And now finally Peter says this…Talking about Jesus: …

1 Peter 3:18–22 ESV

For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him.

Many people just skip over this passage as just too weird but I hope you see in a second here that it is just so key today

It makes no sense contextually for Peter to be teaching that the wicked have a second chance

Especially since in his letter he encouraged the righteous to persevere and to endure suffering

Martin Luther wrote about this text that he had to confess, it was just to perplexing and that he didn't understand it

Commentator Dr. Richard Schreiner says this

1, 2 Peter, Jude (2) Christ’s Suffering as the Pathway to Exaltation (3:18–22)

the majority view among scholars today is that the text describes Christ’s proclamation of victory and judgment over the evil angels. These evil angels, according to Gen 6:1–4, had sexual relations with women and were imprisoned because of their sin. The point of the passage, then, is not that Christ descended into hell but, as in 3:22, his victory over evil angelic powers.

So here is my point…Like I said in the beginning of this message that we sometimes assume that things are just too odd or peripheral to matter.

But in the whole Bible there is not just the story line of how humanity rebelled in the garden and redeemed on the cross

There is another story line that runs parallel to this story of Spiritual Beings that were in God’s Divine Council rebelling against God, they have run amuck on the earth and they are defeated on the cross and Jesus dies, and he goes to hell and proclaims victory over them!

then you might be wondering how and why Peter links this all to Baptism

Early church tradition links your baptism with the overcoming of the dark powers

Because in baptism the symbology is that you die in the waters and you defeat the darkness and you walk out as a new creation

So if I were to paraphrase what is happening here

Jesus dies on good Friday, he descends into hell and those there are rebellious spirits, not just people who had never heard about Jesus

These are the rebels of heaven

and He says…Hey I know you think that you won because I am dead…But I am actually here to take the keys to this place and proclaim total victory

Jesus proclaimed victory over evil because they are staying in Hell and He is going to take his own life back up again.

See you are not getting out of here! But I AM! Because I am going to take my life back up again!

And Peter connected this with Baptism because what he is saying is your baptism means that not only you defeated death but you are now aligned with Jesus in Doing so…

One more note on this then I have just one more Bible verse and I’ll finish talking

The word Death for these first century people was both a concept and a person

Mot was the god of death and in the Hebrew mind, the god of death ruled the underworld

The god of death held the keys to death and consumed everything.

and what do we find out in Revelation 1:18

Revelation 1:18 ESV

and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.

Basically what Jesus is saying here is, I died, I went to hell and I took the keys! Not only did I defeat evil but the evil powers have nothing on me!

Because Jesus does this he has the power to break every chain that hell has over you.

When we follow Jesus, when we are surrendering our lives to him we are following the one who defeated evil

The one whom “all Authority” was given to

We dont follow a weak and ineffectual God, but the one to overcome death…The one that went to Hell and took the keys!

There are only two ways to Go!

You can leave and go about your day and believe that this is all hocus pocus and its not really real….

But to do that helps to camouflage evil in our world, and it allows evil to have a foothold in your life!

And the other way to go is to give yourself over to the one who actually holds the keys to death..The one who defeated it all!

The one who squashed all rebellion

Because Jesus holds the keys

He has real power in your life

Response:

Maybe there is an area where evil has a foothold in your life

Maybe you are quick to anger

Maybe you struggle with hating people

Maybe you struggle with talking poorly about others

Maybe you struggle with lust and pornography

Maybe you struggle with just having any love in you

I believe that Jesus wants to do work in you today because he holds the keys to all of these things and wants to break any power that evil has over you

Jesus holds the keys to hell and death

But does he hold the keys to your life?