The Woman and the Dragon

Revelation 12, The Biggest Loser

The Story of Apollos

Not far from where John was writing the book of Revelation on Patmos was the island Delos.

Delos was sacred to the Greek people because they claimed that it was the birthplace of the god Apollo.

But see while Apollo’s mother Leto was pregnant, she had to flee from the Dragon python because the dragon wanted to kill Apollo, after all, Apollo was a new son of Zeus. And as the story goes, when Leto got to the island, the god Poseidon hid the entire thing under the water…Then after A

pollo was born, he waited 4 days and then he went and killed the dragon python…

So, if you were a first century person…You’d know this story…If there was screen printing back then, you’d be wearing the Apollo battle t-shirt and to entertain yourselves kids would reenact the battle where Apollo won…

So, do you get it? This was a massive cultural narrative…In the same way that Star Wars is today…in the same way that Lord of the Rings is…in the same way that Harry Potter is….The culture knew this story! Everyone in the first century knows this story…Everyone knew the dragon was destined to die

See the reason why this mythology was so important was because the Romans emperors used this myth for political advantage

The Emperor ‘s of the day made good use of this story!

The woman would have been seen as the goddess of heaven, Roma

Who had this child who would bring light and peace into the world

Augustus proclaimed that he was the new Apollo and that his administration was the golden age of Rome

Nero made statues of himself and Apollo together, he put them on his coins where he was shown to have beams of light coming out of his head…this was Apollo’s trademark.

So, this story is key to the very foundations of the country because every emperor identifies their power with it.

So, shocker. the main characters in this myth is the woman, the child and the dragon

And in what we are about to read, the main characters are the woman…the child and the dragon….

See what John is doing to taking the cultural story and helping the church to see where you will fit!

So, before we get to revelation 12, we need to look at Psalm 2

So, flip with me there for a minute

Psalm 2

1 Why do the nations conspire

and the peoples plot in vain?

2 The kings of the earth rise up

and the rulers band together

against the Lord and against his anointed, saying,

3 “Let us break their chains

and throw off their shackles.”

4 The One enthroned in heaven laughs;

the Lord scoffs at them.

5 He rebukes them in his anger

and terrifies them in his wrath, saying,

6 “I have installed my king

on Zion, my holy mountain.”

7 I will proclaim the Lord’s decree:

He said to me, “You are my son;

today I have become your father.

8 Ask me,

and I will make the nations your inheritance,

the ends of the earth your possession.

9 You will break them with a rod of iron;

you will dash them to pieces like pottery.”

10 Therefore, you kings, be wise;

be warned, you rulers of the earth.

11 Serve the Lord with fear

and celebrate his rule with trembling.

12 Kiss his son, or he will be angry

and your way will lead to your destruction,

for his wrath can flare up in a moment.

Blessed are all who take refuge in him.

So, what this Psalm is saying is that the world is chaos and evil…but there is one who will rule with God’s righteousness…

That the rulers of this world try and rule with the best they’ve got but they can’t rule like Jesus can. So, God is raising up a people who like this psalm says, take refuge in the true king! He rules with an iron scepter…he will eventually break through all this evil stuff.,.

Kind of like the call in the book of Revelation so far, to form our lives around the lamb, because we know who is truly in charge…

So, keep Psalm 2 in your mind…Keep the story of Apollo and the dragon in mind…

and before we read revelation 12 today

I’m just going to tell you who the characters are:

Woman: In some ways: Mary but also Israel and the church today

Python the dragon: Is Satan, the embodiment of evil & Chaos

The son or Apollo: Is Jesus, the one who will rule with an iron scepter right?

Revelation 12:1-17

A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. 3 Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. 4 Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

7 Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. 8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

10 Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:

“Now have come the salvation and the power

and the kingdom of our God,

and the authority of his Messiah.

For the accuser of our brothers and sisters,

who accuses them before our God day and night,

has been hurled down.

11 They triumphed over him

by the blood of the Lamb

and by the word of their testimony;

they did not love their lives so much

as to shrink from death.

12 Therefore rejoice, you heavens

and you who dwell in them!

But woe to the earth and the sea,

because the devil has gone down to you!

He is filled with fury,

because he knows that his time is short.”

13 When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach. 15 Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent. 16 But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth. 17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

Do you get that this is an exact repackaging of the Apollo Myth?

Why? 2 reasons

1. John wanted to explain what God was up to in defeating evil…

2. But not only that…Embedded deeply into the book of revelation is this question…

Who will you follow…The lamb or the dragon? Babylon or the Kingdom of God…

In almost every single text John is signaling the church to center their lives on the lamb!

So why tell this story now in this book? I mean it is really the story of the victory of Jesus in entering the world…

But in the previous chapter you hear verses like the kingdom of God has now become the kingdom of this earth and heaven has opened up…

But then the original audience wakes up in the morning and looks at Rome and say…but wait nothing changed…

So here John is trying to say…you don’t get it…everything changed…Evil is going away…and he tells them this using this myth about Apollo that has been around forever

And I think that one of the central convictions of this text is that,evil is real in our world…

It’s not just bad ideas or bad decisions…

Evil is real, and the dragon is behind it!

And that dragon is the devil or Satan

9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.

I am not one that thinks that Satan is hiding behind every bush…I don’t think we ought to give power to forces of Satan by attributing everything to him…

But we have to realize that Satan is behind all evil and his influence is found everywhere in our world…

This is what John was trying to say to the church…Listen, Yes Jesus is victorious…but evil needs to still go away…and why not just take Evil out in one swoop of gods hand? Right? Just kick evil out? Because I think one of the key messages of revelation is that you overcome evil by choosing the lamb…

See If God just takes evil out of the world entirely, we lose our sense of free will and choice!

Therefore, it takes a long time for evil to be fully pushed out…and one day Jesus will come back and eradicate it all but until then…

We need to understand that Evil is real, so what do we do?

Ephesians 6:11-12

Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

You see how the early writers of the Bible were trying to warn us that evil is real…It isn’t something that we make up…

And I think the greatest trick of Satan really is to get the church to think that he is a nominal force in life…but really this text in revelation reminds us that he has great power…and that we need stand firm against his schemes

So many times, we think that when it comes to Evil, that were not in the line of fire…But John is reminding the church…Satan is losing the battle, he is the biggest loser…and he doesn’t like that

So, Satan goes after that which is most near and dear to Jesus, his followers

17 Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring—those who keep God’s commands and hold fast their testimony about Jesus.

Evil becomes more and more personified in daily life….I mean you see this right…

But the more that sin is embedded into our culture the more people become destroyed…

Lives are ruined by the chaos that the dragon brings…

The evil of drugs

The evil of pornography

The evil of hate

The evil of greed

The evil of pride…

The evil of laziness

The evil of apathy

And we see this right… and so many times this evil is codified and ratified by the law that it just becomes a part of ordinary life…

Revelation 12 invites us to take a step back and ask what is evil in this world

But there is something amazing about what this text teaches us about evil…

Revelation 12:6,8

6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.

So, Revelation 6 says there is a place for the woman…who is the woman? US! Israel…Mary, the church…The woman is the bride of Christ…it is Mary and all of the people of God…so what God is saying is that there is protection for us…there is safety for us in Christ…

John is the same author who Recorded the words of Jesus when he said that he was going to the father to prepare a place for us! See WE HAVE A PLACE! For the people who choose the lamb, we have a place!

But…

8 But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven

Something that this verse does is it reminds the church that there is no place for evil around the throne room of God…

And there is no place for evil in our lives!

There is no place for evil in life with the lamb!

In fact, it tells us that evil is losing rapidly…even though at times it may appear as if it is wining, this chapter ends with this dragon losing its place in heaven and then not even being able to attack its target!

Chapter 12 continually reminds the church that this dragon, is merely a parody of God and we are going to see that even more in chapter 13…

It has 10 horns…which is 3 more than the lamb…and a complete number and horns are a sign of power…so right at the beginning of chapter 12 we see that evil has a lot of power and strength…but it’s all a parody of the real thing…we find in verse 8 that the devil even though he has 10 horns is not strong enough and he is cast out!

For the rest of the book we are dealing with evil that has no place in God’s restored creation!

The dragons on his way out,

God has taken his place away!!!!

don’t give him a place in your life

One if the things that we need to ask is

Do we allow evil to capture our imaginations?

We don’t want evil to capture the imagination of our kids!

So how do we do this? My wife and I were talking about our kids the other day…and we were saying you know…they’re kind of greedy…they want everything now, and they don’t want to wait and their ungrateful…

And they are the greatest kids ever we love them…and most of this comes with the territory of having a 3, 5 and almost 7-year-old…Their brains are not even close to being fully formed…so I get it…

And we try and teach them to be generous…We are trying to show them that it is good to give and fun to do it…that there is joy in helping others! See we are trying to embed the lamb on their hearts so that when evil choices come their way, they won’t even give it the time of day! But with everything that is out there in the world, we can’t shelter them from evil…I mean I want to, believe me, but I can’t…And they will make mistakes….

So, we have to teach them discernment between good and evil! We have to teach them to hear from God so that their imaginations are not captured by evil things…

But we are grappling with this question and we are not really sure what to do about it…How do we make sure evil doesn’t capture their minds? How do we live in such a way that our kids want to follow our footsteps?

Who defeats evil and how?

11 They triumphed over him

by the blood of the Lamb

and by the word of their testimony;

they did not love their lives so much

as to shrink from death.

Who is the “they” in this passage?

Originally, we hear that Michael the archangel kicks Satan out of heaven….but who is “they”

Most commentators say here that the “They” here is you…is the church…we can triumph…we can have victory over darkness

Before we learned that we are God’s witnesses and God intends to use us to bring the world to repentance…But when we live our lives centered around the lamb, we also contribute toward the victory over Satan…

Because by our testimony: people repent from evil and come to know Jesus

Because of those who were martyred people came to know Jesus…

Response:

So today I have two responses…

1. Maybe you’re here and you’ve thought that evil was always this figurative abstract sort of deal…and you’ve just allowed it to creep in…and now there is some sort of evil that your mind is just captured by….I want to invite you some time during worship…To simply confess that to the lord…To repent and to ask Jesus to keep you from that

Secondly…

I think the reality is that John tells this story about the dragon the woman and the baby to say who will you stand with?

Who will you be formed by?

The Emperor or Jesus?

Babylon or the kingdom of God?

Evil or Good?

I think the great reality is that

-If we are formed around the lamb, we will do what the lamb does…

-If we reject the lamb then we will do what the accuser does…

what does your life reveal about who you worship?

Let’s pray