We'll return to God's word for our scripture reading.
We're reading from Revelation chapter 20, and we're reading the
first 10 verses.
Revelation chapter 20 and beginning at verse one.
Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his
hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain.
And he sees the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil,
and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years and threw him into
the pit and shut it and sealed it over him so that he might not
deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended.
After that, he must be released for a little while.
Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority
to judge was committed.
Also I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony
of Jesus and for the word of God.
And those who had not worshipped the beast or its image
and had not received its mark on their foreheads and or on their
hands.
They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years.
The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years
were ended.
This is the first resurrection.
Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection
over such.
The second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and
of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years.
And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released
from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are
at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them
for battle.
Their number is like the sand of the sea.
And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded
the camp of the saints and the beloved city.
But fire came down from heaven and consumed them.
And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of
fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were.
And they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever.
Amen.
This is the word of God.
I once watched a nature program about beekeepers.
Now, these beekeepers were from southern England, and they were
talking together, spending a lot of time discussing different
hive types, queen excluders, feeding methods, swarm prevention
treatments, and whether one management system was better than
another.
It was a program that was about encouraging the next generation
to take on beekeeping.
Now, I will be honest, I did go back and look this up of what
I've just read there, because I just didn't remember what their
whole conversation was about.
But their conversation was very interesting because their discussion,
although it was worthwhile.
These experienced beekeepers had very strong opinions on their
approaches.
The person hosting the conversation wasn't a beekeeper,
and quite simply asked the question, what's actually going on
here?
Each beekeeper, despite their different methods of how to keep
bees and how to manage their hives, agree on the main point.
They said together that the colony was alive because the queen
is there.
Everything depends on her.
And of course, that's the message that these older beekeepers
wanted to hand on to these younger beekeepers, so that as they
grew, they would receive this wisdom that what was most important
was the queen bee.
Now, I'm not about to give you a sermon on beekeeping, because I've
already admitted I've had to go back and find out some of the
terms that they were talking about.
But it struck.
It has stuck with me as it struck me.
And I've gone back to this illustration time and again, particularly
when it comes on how to preach Revelation 20.
Because this chapter, of all the chapters in John's Revelation,
has generated many discussions among Christians.
Faithful believers throughout the generations have disagreed about
exactly how to understand what this text talks about.
The thousand years.
And those discussions matter and have mattered.
But we don't want theological positions to obscure what the main
message is, to link it in with the illustration I've just given.
John wants us to see the queen bee, if you like, the central reality
that gives life to the whole passage.
And what is that?
Well, that the central reality is Christ reigns, Satan is restrained,
and God's people are secure.
That's what these 10 verses are telling us.
Evil will finally be destroyed.
And if we lose sight of these truths while arguing over the details,
then we've missed what John most wanted us to see.
In my own devotions last month, I came across this comment
that I thought was helpful.
It was helpful for me, particularly as a way to frame how
we're going to think about these 10 verses.
This evening, the writer wrote, and I don't know who the author
was.
The concerns of the modern church aren't trivial, but the danger
is when inessential matters distract from Christianity's beating
heart, Jesus Christ, who saves sinners and gives his life so that
we might live.
I hope that throughout this study in Revelation, I have focused
on on just that.
I have focused on Jesus.
Well, at least that's what I set out to do.
I have my theological interpretation of this book, and
you do too.
For some of you, you will agree with me, and for some of you,
you will not.
But the point of this series is not to argue and fight over who
is right and who is wrong.
That certainly hasn't been my agenda.
Rather this, the living word of Scripture.
Through it, we get a glimpse of what our future reality will be.
And that reality is where Christ is on the throne and death
is defeated.
Sin will be punished, and the redeemed in Christ will be brought
home to heaven.
All theological positions are secondary to this.
And because I haven't preached overtly what I have believed by way
of nuts and bolts and the technicalities, that doesn't mean
that I don't have a conviction about it.
I do.
But the purpose of the pulpit is not for me to persuade you about
what I believe.
The purpose of the preaching in the pulpit is to open God's word
and understand Christ from every page and the salvation that
the Gospel brings.
And I say all this because we will need to talk about why this
passage is so often debated and why all sides involved take such
strong positions.
And although there are four approaches to understanding revelation
as a whole, it's when you come to the issue of the thousand years
or millennium that we focus on three understandings, just really
for the first five or six verses.
Those positions are premillennialism, post millennialism,
and amillennialism.
Let me give you quite literally three minutes of what these
mean.
The first view there on the screen is called premillennialism.
It's actually the newest of them.
It teaches that Christ will return before the thousand years,
and after his return, he will establish a reign on earth for a
thousand years before the final judgment and the new creation.
But there are different forms of premillennialism.
Some Christians, particularly within dispensational theology, distinguish
between Christ's coming for his church and his coming with his
church, while others do not.
But they share the conviction that the thousand years is still
a future period to come following Christ's return.
The second view, and there the middle view, is post millennialism.
And it teaches that through the spread of the gospel and the
work of the Holy Spirit, the influence of Christ's kingdom will
grow throughout the world, leading to a prolonged period of
righteousness and peace, often understood as the thousand years.
Christ then returns after this period to bring the final judgment
and the new creation.
The third there is amillennialism.
And although many who hold it feel the name is slightly misleading,
because it does doesn't mean that there is no millennium.
Rather, it understands the thousand years as a symbolic description
of the present age between Christ's first and his second coming.
Christ reigns now from heaven.
Satan's power has been decisively limited by Christ's victory
at the cross.
And believers who die are reigning with Christ.
And this present age will end with Christ's return, the resurrection
of the dead, the judgment of humanity, and the new creation.
And, you know, I'm going to be honest and tell you probably not
one of those is perfect.
And if you hold to one of those, you need to admit that it's
not perfect, because there's going to be little moments, as we'll
see in a particular verse today, that can be upsetting.
And there's one verse that's very hard for me because it does
doesn't fit in with the theological position I come from.
So none of these are perfect.
That's why we're not going to look at one in particular.
Rather, we will look at this pastorally to see what is the one
message that actually unites all three perspectives.
So with this, let's work towards the queen bee, as it were,
the Gospel thread that runs through this passage.
And we're going to look at it in three sections.
First of all, Satan's power is restrained.
Then Christ reigns with his people, and then finally, evil has
an appointed end.
So beginning in verses one to three, we see a description given
to us that Satan's power is restrained.
In verse one, John sees an angel coming down, and in his hand
he sees a key and chains.
And John tells us that the key is for the bottomless pit and a prison,
as it were, into which Satan will be placed.
And in that prison he will be bound by the chains that are in the
other hands of the angel.
And as we go into verses two and three, we see Satan described
as he was.
In Genesis three we have that term, serpent, or as John refers
to him here, that ancient serpent, letting us know that the
devil has been at work from the foundation of the world.
And we're told that he is bound for a period, be it a literal
thousand years, or that being a symbolic number identifying a fixed
time.
But look at what verse three and says, and the purpose of why
he is restrained and imprisoned.
This is he's thrown into the pit and the pit is shut and it's
sealed over the serpent.
Why?
So that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the
thousand years were ended and that he must be released for a little
while.
Now, when you read the text, you notice that it doesn't say, satan
does not deceive anyone.
The point is that the nations are not deceived to the extent that
they wage final war against God's people.
Another way of interpreting this is that the deception relates
to the spread of the gospel.
With the coming of Christ, the gospel now goes to the ends of the
earth.
In the Old Testament, salvation was confined to Israel
only, and the nations of the world were deceived by the Satan
so that they would be deluded to worship false gods.
Well, now the Gospel is believed by all nations.
So give me a nation in the world where there is not a believer,
an indigenous national believer.
You can't, because the Gospel has gone everywhere.
And so Satan no longer deceives the nations as a whole,
as he did in the Old Testament era.
Unbelievers are, yes, still deceived by Satan.
But the deception over all nations that characterize the Old
Testament period is now lifted so that some believe from every tribe,
tongue, people and nation.
In one sense, Satan was bound at the cross and so prevented from
gathering and uniting all nations to oppose the Christ and
his people until the time of the end.
So we can see that in the thousand years Satan's power is restrained
so that the nations are not deceived.
Well, the second aspect of this passage is that Christ reigns
with his people.
And that's there in verses four to six.
And there's one thing that no theological position can deny in
our understanding of revelation.
Because the whole way from chapter one, we have seen that Christ's
people are never defeated.
We've been told that those who die in Christ are alive with him,
and death doesn't interrupt the believer's victory.
And this we see again here in these verses, because John's focus
is now drawn to thrones.
And as we've seen in other places in Revelation, as well as
other portions of Scripture, the throne is a place of authority.
And so those who sit on the thrones are given the responsibility
of authority or of judging.
We're told John also sees martyrs, those beheaded because of
their testimony of Jesus and the Word of God.
And the testimony of Jesus has played a significant role in the
book, as has the Word of God.
We see it coming again, time and again.
And authority is given to those who suffered for Jesus sake,
who gave their lives because of the word of the Gospel.
And so what John is saying here is the entire church viewed
as a martyred church, as those who have given their lives for Jesus
Christ.
Isn't that what we do?
We give away the old sinful nature into which we were born, and
we put on the new cloak, as it were, the new garments that are clean
and perfect, because we are in Christ.
So yes, we are the Church of all ages who have had to change.
We've been given new lives in Jesus.
And so John now sees that those who are martyred have been
martyred and are now vindicated by God through their physical
resurrection.
Verse 5 continues to speak of resurrection when it says the rest
of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were
ended.
This is the first resurrection.
Now, all three millennial theologies view this part of the
text of the resurrection of the dead very differently.
But verse five tells us that the rest of the dead do not come
to life until the thousand years have ended.
So if only martyrs come to life in verse four, the remainder
of the dead includes all unbelievers and all other believers.
But if verse four refers to all believers, then the rest of the
dead refers only to unbelievers.
Well, what this does tell us is that there is a resurrection of
the dead.
From our perspective, we perhaps take this for granted as
we are 2000 years on from John's original audience.
But resurrection in Jesus Christ was a completely new concept
for them.
They didn't fully understand it because they're still living in
the first or indeed second generation of those who have died
in faith.
And that's why Paul writes as he does in First Corinthians 15:20,
23.
But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead the first fruits
of those who have fallen asleep.
For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection
of the dead.
For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made
alive, but each in his own order.
Christ the first fruits.
Then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ.
So here we have Paul writing to assure the Christian believers
that death is not the end, that all of this talk about resurrection
is true and it is to be believed.
So whichever millennial view you take, there is one guarantee,
and that is the resurrection of the dead.
However, we interpret and understand a first resurrection being
spiritual or physical, as well as a second resurrection being spiritual
or physical.
And so we have the knowledge that resurrection is true.
But resurrection is only for those who believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ.
And that's the key.
Resurrection unto eternal life is only in Christ.
And almost by way of an aside, John assures his hearers and his
readers that their faith in Christ is well placed because of
this promised resurrection unto eternal life.
Because he says in verse six, blessed and holy is the one who shares
in the first resurrection.
Over such, the second death has no power, but they will be priests
of God and of Christ and And they will reign with him for a thousand
years.
So those who experience the first resurrection will avoid the
lake of fire.
Instead, participants in the first resurrection will be priests
of both God and Christ.
And the picture of believers as priests mediating God's blessing
has been present since the the beginning of this book.
Believers are priest kings, like Adam was in the garden.
And so they will reign with Christ for 1000 years.
This is the image that we're given, where it began in verse four,
looking at the thrones and who's on them, the authority to reign
and to judge.
So we see that it is a position that is given to believers,
priest kings as Adam was in the garden.
For is that not what the new heaven and the new Earth is?
It's Eden restored.
Haven't we seen glimpses of Eden restored throughout the story
of the Old Testament?
In the tabernacle and its design and the imagery of bearing
Eden in its embroidery to the temple, to its size and shape and
its fixtures and its fittings, pointing once again to the sense
of Eden and in Christ, the promise of a new heaven, a new earth.
Where the old is gone, the new has come.
And we will know that new Eden forever.
This is who God's people will be as they reign with him forever.
So Satan's power is restricted.
Christ reigns with his people.
And thirdly, from verses 7 to 10, we see that evil has an appointed
end.
And this is good News.
In verse 7 we read that the thousand years comes to an end.
And at that point Satan is released from the bottomless pit.
And verse eight tells us what he will do after his release.
And so he will come out to deceive the nations that are at the
four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle.
Their number is like the sand of the sea.
I'm old enough to remember back to the year 2000 and we have
the Bush administration.
And you'll remember that at the time of the Iraq war, the invasion
of Iraq, there was this talk about Gog and Magog.
And taking these Old Testament terms, and now revealed to us in
Revelation to be used as one of the rationales as to why to invade
Iraq, it was finally doing away with a so called Gog and Magog.
Well, Gog and Magog do not come from Iraq, certainly as we know
it today in Ezekiel chapter 38 and 39, the nations that are attacking
Israel at that point are called Gog and Magog.
There Gog is a mysterious and monstrous king, unlike any other
of human nature.
While Magog is the name of his land or his territory.
Together they represent the ultimate hostile forces of the world
that are against God's people.
And here the terms in Revelation designate all the kingdoms
of the world that are bent on attacking the people of God.
Such an attack is due to Satan's deception, for fighting against
the people of God is futile.
John here echoes Ezekiel who says that in the last days Gog and
others will move against Israel like storm clouds, while the
people of God will be secure and unconcerned.
So according to John, these mysterious nations represent the
anti God forces conspiring against the people of God.
And haven't we seen this already?
Haven't we seen this set Megiddo or Armageddon?
Haven't we seen these forces try and rally themselves and root
God's people to destruction?
And have they succeeded?
Absolutely not.
And will they succeed here?
No.
Because Satan gathers the nations countless as the sands of
the seashore, because he has been released and will have influence
over these nations trying to think of a final battle against God's
people.
Verse 9 tells us of their battle plan as they gather themselves
around God's people trying to encircle them.
But they will not conquer.
For as soon as they are in position we are told that fire came
down from heaven and consumed them there.
In verse nine, evil thinks it will win, but it doesn't have a chance
before it can strike.
Its day is ended and the armies of evil are consumed by fire.
And verse 10 goes on to assure us of this by detailing.
And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of
fire and sulfur while the beast and the false prophet were.
And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
And isn't this a welcome report for us?
Isn't this our glorious hope?
The Satan is defeated and can no longer deceive humankind with
his lies.
This unholy trinity are together forever, but not in a place
that they would desire.
The devil who incited the last battle and deceived the peoples of
the world to participate in the battle against God and the peoples.
And the Lamb is cast into the lake of fire along with the beast
and the false prophet.
There they will be tormented forever.
No wonder John has heard the rejoicing in heaven in chapter 19.
For reading these words, we too need to cry Hallelujah that evil
will come to an end.
And so we come to the end of these ten verses.
Wherever you fit in your theological millennial view.
I believe, and I've tried and worked hard to see how we can come
together to look at what is the center of this text, whether
it's understanding a literal 1000 years or a symbolic one, we
have this truth before us in each interpretation that Christ reigns
with his people.
Satan's power is restrained, and evil has an appointed end.
And so, as we come to the end of this passage, we have looked at
that thousand years and the defeat of the evil one.
And Revelation 20 isn't meant to leave us arguing about a timetable.
It's meant to leave us trusting in our king.
Christ reigns today, even when the world seems out of control.
Satan is real, and his work is real and his demonic forces are real,
but he is restrained.
Although restrained, we mustn't think that he is inactive,
for he is.
Because Peter says in 1st Peter 5, 8, be sober minded.
Be watchful, be on your guard.
Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion
seeking someone to devour.
We must resist him, and we must stand firm in the faith.
God's people may suffer, but we are never abandoned.
And not even death can separate us from our Savior.
One day, the devil's work will finally end.
Evil will be judged for what it is forever.
And Christ's kingdom will be seen in all its glory.
So whatever tomorrow brings, let us leave here with confidence,
perseverance, and hope, because Jesus Christ has won the
victory.
He reigns today, and he will reign forever.
And this is our invitation to trust in him this night and to trust
in him forever, so that we will know the blessing of salvation.
We will know our eternal home in heaven.
And there's perhaps no better way to finish than with the words
of Paul in Romans 16:20, where he says, the God of peace will soon
crush Satan under your feet.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
However these things play out, be it a thousand years that are literal,
or be they literally symbolic in a period of time, the reality
is we each need a Savior.
For it is only the Savior who will win, because it is the Savior
who will defeat sin and evil.
And it is only the redeemed who have trust in the Savior who
will cry, hallelujah.
Salvation belongs to our God.
You see, we have a Redeemer.
He has given his life for us, and it is to him we're to look, so
that we will trust him, regardless of how we will interpret
all of the ins and outs, nuts and bolts of these 10 verses.
Rather, we will look to him as the one who is victorious, who in
fact gives us the glorious hope that we so desperately need,
that we can only find in our Savior, Jesus.
So may he be to you this night who you need him to be, your Savior,
your Lord, your confidence of the victory in the end, and your
sure entry into eternity in heaven.
Let us pray.
Our Father God for this.
Your word, a word that can so easily divide us.
We ask that you will help us to look at what is the central thread.
You will help us to look for the message of the Gospel.
You will help us to see what assurances we can have as your people
here and now, so that we can share these with others that while
there is still time, they too will come to saving faith in Jesus.
So Father, help us to respond well this night and with all your
people, cry hallelujah, for the victory is won, and it's in Jesus
name we pray.
Amen.
Sam.