And so we come to Advent. The word “Advent” is the English version of the Latin word “Adventus,” which is in turn a word Translated from the Greek world Parousia.” Taken literally they all mean “coming.” In Western Churches this has traditionally been a time where there emphasis is on waiting and preparation as we recall the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the West Advent has largely become a matter of Aesthetics and contemplation accompanied by certain traditions. And of course both Aesthetics and contemplation, as well as Traditions are important in the life of the Church and the individual believer.
In Church History Advent was a time when new Christians would prepare themselves for their coming Baptism which was held during the January feast of Epiphany. As such Christians, who were to be baptized during Epiphany spent the 40 days of Advent in penance, prayer and fasting to prepare to be clothed with Christ in Baptism.
Our customs for Advent are all rather sentimental. We have our Advent calendars and open the little boxes everyday to read the Scripture verse. We have our various Nativity scenes that we unpack every Advent with the Shepherds, and Three Wisemen, and with one Donkey and one Cow, plus a few hanging Angels over the little framed barn house. We have the lighting of Advent Candles in Church and the Advent decorations in our Churches and I am not opposed to any of that. In point of fact I think these Traditions provide a positive good UNLESS it is forgotten that Advent is also a time to remind ourselves that the Advent of the Lord Christ was the coming of D. Day for all those who oppose the Reign and Rule of the Lord Christ. Advent is not merely about
“Away in the Manger,
No crib for a bed
The little Lord Jesus
Lay down His sweet head.”
It is not merely about a sentimentalized Jesus. It is also about the rightful heir to the throne being born and the subsequent attempts made upon His life in order to try and keep Him coming into His rightful inheritance. It is about the intent of the Great God to incarnate Himself in order to remove all the false pretenders to the Cosmic throne. It is betrayal, battle and bloodshed. It is about apparent defeat followed by certain irresistible victory. It is about the Lord Christ putting His feet upon the neck of His enemies as the Great Triumphant Sovereign overall.
It is about, in the words of the “Dream of the Rood,”
the young hero (who was God Almighty)
Got ready, resolute and strong in heart.
…the warrior embraced the cross
Advent is God’s invasion campaign to finish what He had promised to do in Genesis 3 when He promised the battle that would result as a consequence of His intent to reverse the Fall. Speaking to the Serpent God said,
15 I will put enmity (hatred — warfare) between you and the woman,
and between your offspring[e] and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
During this Advent season we want to begin with examining the Advent that is Invasion. We could look @ Genesis 3 for that which we just quoted but let’s return to the passage read this morning.
A great and wondrous 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. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His 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 he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter…And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. 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. (vv. 1-5, 7-9)
Philip Yancey, in his book, “The Jesus I Never Knew,” writes, I have never seen this version of the story on a Christmas card. Yet it is the truer story, the rest of the picture of what was going on that fateful night. Yancey calls the coming of Christ, “a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s seat of evil.”
This is why earlier we referred to the Advent of Christ as D-Day.
Yancey continues,
“It is almost beyond my comprehension too, and yet I accept this notion is the key to understanding Christmas and is, in fact, the touchstone of my faith. As a Christian I believe we live in parallel worlds. One world consists of hills and lakes and barns and politicians and shepherds watching their flocks by night. The other consists of angels and sinister forces and the whole spiritual realm. The child is born, the woman escapes and the story continues as we find in Revelation 12:17
Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to make war against the rest of her offspring – those who obey God’s commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus. (Rev. 12:17)
You see, Advent is a time that pronounces God’s storming of the beaches, as it were, to reclaim, that which is rightly His. But inasmuch as we belong to the Great King we ourselves are caught up in this Warfare. God’s fulfillment of His word in OT prophecy means war and Advent means the coming of War with the coming of the Christ child.
We turn to the Revelation 12 text now, and while most of the rest of the message will concentrate on the Warfare of Christ and His victory we must keep in mind that His Warfare was anticipatory of His people continuance in that same Warfare. In the words of David Chilton from his book, “Days of Vengeance,”
“The Dragon is fighting a losing battle, for he has already been defeated at the Cross and at the Tomb. There is not a square inch of ground in heaven or on earth, or under the earth where there is peace between the Serpent and the seed of the Woman, and Christ has already won overwhelmingly, on every front. Ever since Christ’s ascension, world history has been a mopping up operation. The Church militant, so long as she is the Church obedient, will be the Church Triumphant as well.”
In turning to Revelation 12 we are mindful that we pivot to a distinct change in Revelation. Whereas 1-12 is concerned with the viewpoint from the throne of the King of heaven who avenges His people and conquers His enemies, Chapter 12-22 reveals the Church in conflict with infernal and worldly principalities but who triumphs over her enemies and then appears the wife of the Lamb.
As we read Revelation we keep in mind that Revelation is Apocalyptic literature. It is not History though it touches History. It is not Poetry, though there is poetry in it. It is Apocalyptic literature and that means a great amount of symbolism, most of which is drawn from the Old Testament. Indeed there is no understanding Revelation without knowing your Old Testaments.
The Church is seen in Revelation 12 as being a Woman clothed with the Sun … (vs.1)
This woman adorned in celestial apparel we believe is the Church as a whole, and Mary as considered individually. The idea of a Woman as being an image for the Church is everywhere seen in Scripture. Sometimes in a flattering way and sometimes in a not so flattering way. This imagery of Woman as Church is something that would have made an immediate connection in the minds of the recipient of this letter for this is the language of the Scripture which they knew so well.
(Cmp. Isaiah 26; 49-50; 54; 66; Jer. 3-4; Lamentations 1; Ezekial 16; Hosea 1-4; Micah 4)
Like a pregnant woman
who writhes and cries out in her pangs
when she is near to giving birth,
so were we because of you, O Lord;
____________
Woman forgetting her nursing child
___________
Micah 4 — Daughter of Zion
__________
So here you have this Woman celestially clothed. I believe the thrust of all this celestially clothing is just to communicate how glorious this Woman is. In the Song of Solomon the Bride is spoken of in a similar vein,
Who is this who looks down like the dawn,
beautiful as the moon, bright as the sun,
awesome as an army with banners?”
And this Woman is with Child.
That all this is published in Heaven I take as a way to communicate that it was done openly for all to see and is consistent with the language that the Lord used when speaking to Ahaz about this self same sigh,
10 Again the Lord spoke to Ahaz, 11 “Ask a sign of the Lord your God; let it be deep as Sheol or high as heaven.”
Well, here is this “high as heaven” sign that Ahaz refused to ask for and it is in connection to the sign that the Lord God eventually gave to Ahaz … the sign that the virgin would be with child.
The fact that all this is pointed towards the Church as Institution and Mary as individual is apparent in vs. 2.
John is giving us a insight into the Cosmic battle going on that was played out with the birth of the Lord Christ.
And Mary, the Individual Woman here, who stands collectively for the Church, is bringing forth the child who will crush the serpent’s head, just as David prefigured all this in severing the head of Goliath from his serpent scaled armored body. Mary is the embodiment of a Church who through the centuries had birthed deliverers who were themselves types of the anti-type real thing … the Lord Christ. This Woman as sign is ultimately Mary but penultimately she is the Church giving birth to delieverers. She is Eve giving birth to Seth, Sarah giving birth to Isaac, Rebekkah giving birth to Jacob, Rachel giving birth to Benjamin, Jochabed giving birth to Moses, and Hannah giving birth to Samuel.
The Old Testament Church was a church laboring and in pain to give birth to the Messiah and the Messianic age and now that this Messiah comes there is the Dragon present to seek to destroy this Deliverer. The Seven heads and ten horns is consistent with the language used in the book of Daniel to describe world Empires that oppose the Kingdom of God.
The idea of the Dragon as Satan is well known theme in Scripture, but as the Woman has both a collective and individual meaning so the Dragon is individually Satan but collectively all the World Empires that have sought to snuff out the Church and the Messiah. Whether referring to Daniel’s 4 Empires that the Kingdom of God destroys (Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greeks, Romans) or the referring to Egypt’s Empire long before that sought to destroy the Holy Seed, or whether it is Herod’s desire for securing Empire to kill the male deliverer, the Dragon is Satan individually but also Empires collectively who seek to be God walking on the Earth. The Dragon is the animating force behind every attempt of God’s enemies to crush God’s people.
It is interesting what we see when we combine OT History with this motif of the Church giving birth to deliverers as combined with God’s enemies both individually and as Empire seeking to crush this Church in labor and pain which ends with the Individuals and World Empires having their heads crushed.
21 But Jael the wife of Heber took a tent peg, and took a hammer in her hand. Then she went softly to him (Sisera) and drove the peg into his temple until it went down into the ground while he was lying fast asleep from weariness. So he died.
52 And Abimelech came to the tower and fought against it and drew near to the door of the tower to burn it with fire. 53 And a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head and crushed his skull.
5:1 When the Philistines captured the ark of God, they brought it from Ebenezer to Ashdod. 2 Then the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it into the house of Dagon and set it up beside Dagon. 3 And when the people of Ashdod rose early the next day, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord. So they took Dagon and put him back in his place. 4 But when they rose early on the next morning, behold, Dagon had fallen face downward on the ground before the ark of the Lord, and the head of Dagon and both his hands were lying cut off on the threshold. Only the trunk of Dagon was left to him.
David & Goliath, Sheba the son of Birchi,
Psalm 68:21 But God will strike the heads of his enemies,
the hairy crown of him who walks in his guilty ways.
Habakkuk 3:13 You went out for the salvation of your people,
for the salvation of your anointed.
You crushed the head of the house of the wicked,
laying him bare from thigh to neck.
Next St. John tells us about the Dragon’s tail. In the words of Farrer, we need to understand this not as astronomy but as Theology.
In Rev. 1:20 John has already associated with Angels with Stars.
The Dragon sweeps 1/3 of the Angels down from the heavens joining in Lucifer’s rebellion. This is consistent with what we find in the NT.
II Peter 2:4 For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell[a]and committed them to chains[b] of gloomy darkness to be kept until the judgment;
Jude 66 And the angels who did not stay within their own position of authority, but left their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains under gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day—
The fact that the 2 are saved for every three that falls is in harmony with the idea that Christ, as God’s firstborn, receives a double portion.
17 but he shall acknowledge the firstborn … by giving him a double portion of all that he has, for he is the firstfruits of his strength. The right of the firstborn is his.
So, we have this Dragon waiting to devour the son of the Woman. This time the Dragon “waiting to devour” the seed is Herod the megalomaniac. Herod’s devouring lust, as the pseudo King of Jews, is seen in his slaughter of the innocent. Another attempt to snuff out, God’s invasion to reclaim His own.
The fact that this is seen as invasion by John and is about displacement of usurpers to the throne in favor of the rightful heir to the throne is seen in the next verse.
5 She gave birth to a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne,
The Church, in Mary, gives birth to the long expected child, who has come to, not only displace the servants of the Dragon, but also to crush the heads of those Dragon Representatives who will not accede to the Crown Rights of the legitimate King.
In explaining this John goes back to the OT.
Psalm 2:7 I will tell of the decree:
The Lord said to me, “You are my Son;
today I have begotten you.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage,
and the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You shall break[b] them with a rod of iron
and dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.”
Here in vs. 4 St. John collapses the redemptive work of Christ into the incarnation and ascension. The point here is not to bypass the Cross and the Resurrection (those have been mentioned earlier). The point here is to accentuate the failure of the Dragon to consume the Son and the corresponding success of the Son to bridle and rule the Dragon.
John follows the pattern of Psalm 2 where we go from Birth to Victory over the Nations. We learn from this that the goal of the incarnation — the Humility of Christ, was the Ascension — the Exaltation of Christ.
Here we have the inspiration of every successful Western fairy tale. The rightful is King displaced by a usurper. The long rule of tyranny by this wicked usurper King and his line is supported by necromancy and black magic. We see the arising of the rightful King from a line long since thought obliterated. The contest between the seemingly over-matched and overwhelmed true King and his vagabond and unimpressive people — all supported by prophecies of long dead oracles and desert prophets. Victory finally snatched when defeat was thought certain.The enthronement of the True King to rule over His rightful domain and the witness of all the Cosmos to former enemies either kissing the Son or perishing in their way.
Vs, 17,
“Alone of all the Creed, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator.”
Words cannot express how great a change was wrought when the city
that no longer needed the sun as its light was erected. For its light
is Christ.
And He shall reign forever and ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I love this sermon – certainly peace hope and love but you rightly point out that the greater story is a battle between good and evil and Jesus is the ultimate warrior in this fight. His taking flesh is rightly viewed as an massive affront to the enemy.