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In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints, you who are given by Jesus the authority to trample over scorpions, snakes, in other words, over the demons, and yet are not to rejoice in this because your names are written in the book of heaven, for you, for us, is given this morning this glorious vision of the throne room of heaven and St. Michael’s glorious removal of the devil and all of the demons from that place, and we want to rejoice in that and consider what it means for us.
But maybe just one little word of preface. It is important for us on St. Michael’s Day to simply remember that there are angels all around us, and not just the good angels but also the fallen angels, the devil and the demons, trying to destroy the, as we sang in that beautiful Melanchthon hymn, trying to destroy family and church and state and overthrow everything that God sets up. But we’re surrounded also by the holy angels who are protecting the Lord’s people and serving the Lord’s church and blessing us according to the Lord’s word and command. God be praised.
Now this is especially important to us when we recognize both the gifts and the danger that we’re in according to Revelation chapter 12. Now I think there’s two big pieces of background information that will help make this text make sense. The first is just the first part of the vision that John is given in Revelation 12. We’ll remember Revelation, the last book of the Holy Scriptures, the fifth book penned by St. John. He was the bishop in Ephesus but was exiled by the emperor to the island of Patmos where he lived in a cave, and when he was worshiping in that cave on a particular day, the Lord Jesus came to him and gave him this marvelous vision, including seven letters that Jesus Himself wrote to His seven churches, and then the picture of the spiritual workings of the church in the midst of the world from the beginning to the end.
And in that beautiful collection of visions comes the pinnacle, the most important of all of those visions in Revelation chapter 12, and it starts at the beginning of the chapter with John seeing in a vision a woman who is pregnant and expecting a child. This woman has a garland around her head of twelve stars, and this woman is a picture of the Old Testament people Israel. And why is she pregnant? Because remember the first promise from the Garden of Eden, when the Lord says to the devil, “I’ll put enmity between you and the woman, and your seed and her seed. He, that seed of the woman, will crush your head, you’ll crush his heel.” And from that moment, all of the… the entire nation of Israel, the entire people of God were like a woman expecting a child to be born. In fact, when Eve has her first child, Cain, she says, “I’ve begotten a man who is the Lord.” She thought that that first child was the fulfillment of that promise. Now he wasn’t. Had to wait for a few millennium for the child to be born, Jesus. But that’s the picture that’s there.
There, in Revelation 12, the woman ready to give birth, and then there’s another vision that says, and there was a dragon with the woman ready to devour the child as soon as it was born. This is a… I mean a really frightful picture, can you imagine? Here’s a woman in travail, ready to give birth, and there waiting for the child to be born is a dragon, this great monster, that’s ready to devour the baby as soon as it’s born. It’s a horrifying picture, but it fails. Now that horrifying picture of the dragon trying to devour the child really gives us the spiritual sense of everything that was happening in the Old Testament and why so many people were coming to try to destroy Israel, why the Pharaoh was trying to kill all the Israelite babies, even Herod who’s trying to kill the children in Bethlehem.
It seems like, I mean just to maybe take a little aside, it seems like ever since the Lord spoke in the garden that the seed of the woman would destroy him, that the devil who hates everyone has a particular hatred and animosity towards babies. He always wants to destroy the children. He always wants to kill the babies. This is the demonic effort, and especially in the Old Testament, trying to destroy the baby so that the Messiah would not come. But his plan fails, he’s caught up into heaven. And it says this, and this is right around Revelation 12, verse 6 or so, he was caught up into heaven, this child who was to rule the world with a rod of iron.
And in that one little phrase, he was born and caught up into heaven, we have the whole of the ministry of Jesus, his birth, his childhood, his growth, his life, his teaching, his miracles, his suffering, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, all of it right there in one little phrase. He was caught up into heaven.
And then our text starts, and here’s the strange thing. It starts like this, that a war broke out in heaven. In other words, and we would think that if there’s anywhere in the world that there’s not war, it would probably be heaven. Like if you want to escape war, you go to heaven, but the text starts with this mystery that a war broke out in heaven, and why? What precipitated that war? This child going into the heavenly throne room.
Now, why does it cause a war? We need to get one more piece of background story. The throne room of heaven, I don’t know how you imagine it. I imagine it wrong, so it probably doesn’t help me to tell you how I imagine it, but I imagine heaven as like this kind of cloudy, very light, ethereal space, and God is there in the middle as kind of this radiating light. Right? That’s wrong. That’s not what heaven… whenever we get a glimpse of heaven in the Scriptures, that’s not what it looks like at all. Heaven is a throne room, like the throne rooms of the ancient kings where there was a throne there and it was a crowded room full of people. So heaven is a crowded place. The Father and the Son in His right hand, and the Spirit is there, and the angels and the saints are surrounding this throne of God, and a lot of things are happening there. The people are praising God, they’re bringing their petitions before the Lord, the Lord is sending people out from that throne room, but perhaps most importantly, and for sure most importantly for us, that heavenly throne room is also a courtroom.
Now in our own kind of judicial system we’ve divided the powers, you know, so you have the executive and the judicial and the legislative branches of government, you know. That wasn’t how it was in the ancient world, all of those branches of government were combined in one, in the king. So the king was the one who made the laws, executed the laws, and also judged the laws. The king was the judge, like King Solomon, remember? And they come to him, and he’s making all of these judgments, so that the Lord Himself is not only the great king, but also the great judge.
And here’s the picture of heaven that this is working as the background for this particular text is that the Lord is sitting on the throne, and He is making judgments. He is judging people to be righteous or holy. Maybe the clearest picture that we have of this is if you go back to the book of Job. Remember how it was at the beginning of Job? The Lord’s on the throne, and the angels are all gathered there, and the devil himself comes into that throne room? In fact, the name Satan comes exactly from this picture because the word Satan is a Hebrew word for accuser, prosecuting attorney. The devil comes into the heavenly court to prosecute a case against the Lord’s people. That means against you. He did it with Job, remember? The Lord said, “Have you considered my servant Job? He’s righteous.” And the devil says, “Well, he’s only righteous because you’ve given him so much stuff. He’s only righteous because he still has his health.” He’s trying to make this argument and induce the Lord to bring a judgment on Job.
We see the same thing in the book of the prophet Zechariah, where the high priest Joshua is being accused by the devil himself. So here’s the idea, is that in heaven the Lord is sitting on the throne and he’s making judgments and the devil is there arguing a case and the case is against you. Now, this should start out as fairly frightful because you and I have given the devil plenty of evidence to work with. I mean, the devil is a liar, but when he’s trying to argue that you’re a sinner, he doesn’t have to tell lies. He can tell the truth because you are a lawbreaker. So am I. You are a rebel against the Lord and his word. So am I. There is so much to accuse us of our failures, to love and to serve and to bless our neighbor.
And so here’s the picture, and it’s not just a picture. This is the reality, is that in heaven the Lord is there listening to the devil accuse you day and night and bring your sins to bear before the Lord. Now that is the heavenly court into which this child who is to rule the world with a rod of iron, this Jesus enters. And when He enters into this heavenly court, He brings evidence. I suppose you could have a courtroom drama, right? And some guy is being accused and it looks like he’s going to be guilty, and then right at the last minute someone brings in some sort of evidence and says, “I’ve got proof of innocence.” And the judge looks at that evidence and says, “Ha ha, that’s right, you’re acquitted, you’re free to go.”
No, this is really what happens, that Lord Jesus ascends into the heavenly court and says, “I have evidence to present.” But the evidence is not the evidence of your good works, it’s not the evidence of your obedience, it’s not the evidence of your efforts, it’s the evidence of His own blood. He brings that evidence of His suffering, of His sacrifice, of His atoning work, He brings that into heaven. Can you imagine it? I mean, this is such an unbelievable picture. But again, it’s not just a picture, it’s really what happened. The picture of it is in the Old Testament on the Day of Atonement when the high priest would bring the blood into the Holy of Holies and pour it on the Ark of the Covenant. This is the blood that covers the mercy seat, and that was picturing what Jesus Himself would do. He carries His own blood up into heaven, and now whenever the devil makes an accusation against you and me, Jesus just presents the evidence of His sacrifice for you.
The devil says, “Well, Brian’s done this,” and Jesus says, “Well, that sin’s died for.” He also did this, but that sin’s covered. He also did this, but that sin I suffered for already. And every single accusation that the devil tries to bring against you to God the Father, Jesus presents His suffering and death as the evidence for your innocence. And the Lord, God the Father, receives that evidence and acquits you, declares you to be holy and righteous and perfect. He pronounces a heavenly verdict that your sins are forgiven. That everything that you’ve done wrong is forgotten. Satan, that any punishment that you deserve is expelled from his mind and from your future.
This is so marvelous. It’s almost too hard to believe if the Lord wouldn’t have written it for us and given us this vision. So here’s what happens. So it’s in this courtroom that Jesus brings His evidence and this is why the war breaks out in heaven. Because, now, all of that accusing work that the devil was doing before, which was fine, is now completely out of order. He has no place. Paul says it like this, “there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” because as the devil keeps bringing up your sin, he’s saying that the Lord’s work on the cross was of no effect. So, finally, not only are all of the accusations of the devil not accepted into court, but the devil himself is declared to be out of order. And everything that he says, out of order.
And he is to be removed from that place. Now I think it’s amazing that Jesus Himself could have booted the devil out of heaven, but He doesn’t even do it Himself. He looks over to Saint Michael, who is acting like the bailiff of the heavenly courtroom, him and says, “Why don’t you remove him?” So Michael and his angels fought, and the dragon and his angels fought, but there was no place found for him in heaven any longer, and he was cast out, and a third of the angels went with him, so that the devil is removed from the heavenly court. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If God has justified you, who will condemn you? Your sins are forgiven. That’s the heavenly verdict.
But then what happens? The devil is cast down to earth, and while his voice is no longer authorized to be spoken in heaven, he does run around here speaking his voice, mouthing off all the time. And he does it not in the heavenly court, but in the courtroom of your own conscience. So the devil comes yapping, and he wants to remind you of sins that he’s not authorized to remind God about. He wants to show you things that you’ve done wrong, which he’s not authorized to show God. And he wants to try to make the case in your own heart and in your own conscience that you are guilty and condemned. That’s how it goes. And that’s the spiritual battle that we’re all in. And he’s angry about it because he knows that his time is short, so he’s ferocious.
Now, the text says, “woe to those” – they rejoice in heaven because the devil is gone, but woe to those on the earth and the sea because the devil has come down to you in great wrath, but we are not to be afraid, and it tells us why, that we now have all that we need to overcome the devil, and in fact, the text lists three things. If you don’t get anything else, I want you to pay attention to this, okay, so tune back in for a minute. Three things that we have to hold on to, three ways that we overcome the devil in this life, and it just lists them: first, the word of the testimony, second, the blood of the Lamb, and third, not loving your life unto death.
We do not overcome the devil by our own efforts and prayers and whatever else it is. We overcome the devil by the gifts that the Lord Jesus gives to us. And those gifts are His word and His blood and fearlessness of death. I don’t know if I’ve done this in front of you guys. I think I might have. I have for a couple of years been calling what we do here on Sunday morning the Word and the Blood from Revelation 12. What happens at St. Paul Lutheran Church, Austin, Texas on Sunday morning? The Word and the Blood happens. The Word of the testimony and the blood of the Lamb. The preaching and hearing of God’s Word and the eating and drinking of His body and His blood. That’s what we do on Sunday morning, and why do we do it? Because it’s through these two things that the devil himself is overcome, you see.
Through these things, the Lord sets us free from the fear of death. Through these things, the Lord gives us an innocent conscience. Through these things, the devil who is cast out of heaven is cast out of our own hearts, you see. And that the same, the same evidence that Jesus carried into heaven itself to show to God the Father, He puts on the altar for you to eat and drink. For you eat compramands now, welcomed into the fellowship of this altar today. The same blood that testifies, that was shed on the cross, and that testifies of your innocence in heaven is what is in the cup for you to drink today with this promise that your sins are forgiven. And why is that promise in the blood that your sins are forgiven? Because it’s the word that’s spoken in heaven.
So that when you hear those words spoken by one of your pastors here, “I forgive you all your sins,” or when you hear that word spoken when the chalice is being poured onto your lips for the forgiveness of sins, you are hearing the verdict of the Heavenly Father who has received the suffering of Christ for you and now gives this to you in the blood and the Word. And by this the devil is overcome. It’s true that the devil is angry. It’s true that the devil wants to convince you that all of your sins mean that you will be condemned by the heavenly court. But it is truer that Christ died for sinners, that Christ is risen, that He has ascended into heaven with the gift of His blood, and that He is here with us now so that this is, this place is a little reflection of the heavenly court where the devil is removed and where the saints rejoice that Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again.
So come to the altar and tamper with the evidence. Eat the body crucified for you. Drink the blood poured out for you, for the forgiveness of all of your sins, and rejoice in a good conscience until you also and I are in this heavenly court forever. May God grant it for Christ’s sake, amen, and the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord, amen.
