Dennis Tuuri

Behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, “Where is he that is born king of the Jews, for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him?” When Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him. And when he had gathered all the chief priests and scribes of the people together, he demanded of them where Christ should be born.

And they said unto him, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for thus it is written by the prophet, and thou Bethlehem in the land of Judea, art not the least among the princes of Judah. For out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my people Israel. Then Herod, when he had privy called the wise men, inquired of them diligently what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search diligently for the young child.

And when ye have found him, bring me word again that I may come and worship him also.” When they had heard the king, they departed. And lo, the star which they saw in the east went before them till it came and stood over where the young child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy. And they were come into the house. They saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down and worshiped him.

And when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts, gold, and frankincense and myrrh.

Let’s pray. Almighty Father, we thank you for your call to worship this day. We thank you, Father, that we have read through various passages from your Old Testament, from the scriptures of the Old Covenant that commanded worship to be given to you. And we thank you, Father, that as we go through the Bible reading these verses about worship, we come this morning to the Gospel of Matthew.

And we recognize the true worship must be given to you and to your son, Jesus Christ, who died that we might live and have the very lives we have and the spiritual life we have in him to sing forth your praises and worship. Almighty God, we pray then that we would wholeheartedly approach your throne now to give you worship in this day of great jubilation and great joy commemorating the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross in the tomb resurrected and now he sits at your right hand until all things be made evident to be his footstool.

Almighty God, help us to remember that if we do worship you correctly, we are wise. If we bring you gifts, if we bring to you our very lives to be used for your purposes in obedience to your scriptures and the power of the Holy Spirit, you will bless us. We thank you also, Father, for reminding us of the scripture that if we are as Herod and worship you not correctly and feign worship to you together whatever it is that we think we can get out of that for ourselves, we suffer the curses that Herod suffered upon himself.

Help us this day then, Father, to worship you correctly, grateful for the salvation wrought by Jesus Christ, for his shed blood and the atonement for our sins affected thereby, and for his imputed righteousness in which we now come into your presence clothed in his righteousness as it were singing forth your praises. Open our mouths to sing those praises this day and always. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

The Lord hath made known his salvation. His righteousness hath he openly showed in the sight of the heathen. He hath remembered his mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel. All the ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God. Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the earth. Make a loud noise and rejoice and sing praise.

Truly my soul waiteth upon God. He only is my rock. He is my defense. How long will ye imagine mischief against a man? He shall all as a bowing wall shall ye be. They only consult to cast him down from his excellency. They bless with their mouth. My soul wait thou only upon God. He only is my rock. He is my defense. And God is my salvation and my glory. God trust in him at all times. Ye people, pour out your heart before him. Surely men of low degree are vanity. To be laid in the balance, trust not in oppression. To be not. If riches increase, set not your heart thereon. God hath spoken once, that power belongeth unto God.

Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy. Micah 5, verses 5 and 6. And this man shall be the peace when the Assyrian shall come into our land, and when he shall tread in our palaces, then shall we raise against him seven shepherds and eight principal men. And they shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod in the entrances thereof. Thus shall he deliver us from the Assyrian when he cometh into our land, and when he treadeth within our borders.

We’ve got a lot of verses on your outline, and there exists a possibility in God’s providence that we may not get to all the points on the outline today. If not, we’ll pick this up again next week and flow into the next section of Micah as well. They really are connected.

What we’ve come to in the book of Micah, of course, last time we met about two weeks ago was the central text of the book of Micah. Micah pointed forward to the coming of the Messiah. Micah began, you remember, with three chapters of judgment. Judgment poured out against the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom, and then against all the world, because they represented the world. In the first few verses of Micah we read that the judgment comes against all the world. So all the world is judged by God, and the first three chapters describe the judgment specifically upon the covenant peoples of the north and the south.

And then in chapter 4 we have a great turn in the book of Micah, and the point is made that God will, through all this, and as a result of all this, and after this, establish his kingdom. And he will send a chief cornerstone, as it were, who will then become the mountain that fills the whole world. And so that is a picture of great blessing that is developed in chapter 4. The people respond liturgically in chapter 5, verse 4, to that truth and they say, “No matter what happens in history, we will worship our God. We’ll obey him because we know that long-term history is a manifestation of the growth of his kingdom. That kingdom will be initiated, inaugurated in a visible, full sense when Messiah comes.”

And then the rest of the chapter—chapter 4 goes on to talk about the implications of that for the people of God. They’re changed from a limping outcast into a strong dominion nation, humbled for their sin, repentant for their sin, but then made into a strong nation that then conquers other nations.

Chapter 5 points to the coming of the Messiah itself. And so it is, I think, the critical peak in the book, and it talks about how in Bethlehem—as we read this morning in the book of Matthew—the Messiah would come and would be born to affect all this and to bring it to pass. Then from that great declaration of the birth of the shepherd king in the first four verses of chapter 5 of the book of Micah—the central text—he then talks about the implications of that in terms of the covenant people and in terms of the whole world. And that’s the portion we’ve come to this morning.

It’s important then that we understand a little bit about the phrases that he uses here, specifically the context of what Messiah will accomplish in terms of the covenant people being delivered and saved, and more than that, being victorious over their enemies. This is given in the context of Assyria in verse 6, and also of Nimrod.

“They shall waste the land of Assyria with the sword, and the land of Nimrod.” Now, those are there for a reason. They want us to think through what he’s trying to tell us by talking about Assyria and by throwing in the name of Nimrod, the mighty hunter from the book of Genesis. You see, Assyria stands for more here than just the nation that was then known as Assyria.

Now, remember back a few verses ago, back in chapter 4, they were promised to be delivered from Babylon, and a greater captivity. And that would eventually come to pass. Of course, the Assyrians would be conquered by the Babylonians. The Babylonians would conquer the southern kingdom. They would then be taken off into enslavement. The southern kingdom would have a partial restoration. But so he now returns to the name of Assyria. And so we have in this an indication that he’s not just talking about the nation of Assyria.

Additionally, as I said, throwing in the reference to Nimrod also means there is typological significance to Assyria and to Nimrod. And if we can understand a little bit more about those two entities—the person of Nimrod, the empire that he created, and then the result of that which was Assyria and Babylon—it’ll help us to understand the extent of the victory of Messiah.

You’ve got a picture here. I was thinking of this as we were singing the song that we really have a picture here of a reversal. Of course, the pagan nation of Assyria comes in, treads upon the people of God and upon their land. As a result of that, the reversal is not just deliverance or salvation from being harmed by these people. The reversal clearly pictured in these verses is that the people then go on the offensive and strike at the heart of Assyria. They go into the gates—it doesn’t mean the borders there. It means their stronghold, their palaces, their citadels. That’s what it means in verse 6.

And so salvation here and the deliverance that’s affected by Messiah is not just seen as a release. It’s seen as a total change, creating the people again into a conquering dominion nation, as the earlier verses in chapter 4 indicated. And it’s really a picture to a certain degree of what happened in the garden. Adam sinned in the garden. The serpent came into the garden. The serpent subjugated Adam through the sin that he caused Adam to go into. Adam rebelled ethically against God and fell. And so Adam was removed from the garden.

But because the serpent dared to tread upon the garden of God in that activity, in that rebellion against his creator, God then says that long-term, eventually, his head will be crushed. His power will be brought to no effect. His very empire will be invaded by the seed that was to come of the woman, Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

And so the picture before us is of this great transformation in the world being accomplished through the birth that we just talked about two weeks ago—the birth of the shepherd king in Bethlehem. History moves at God’s command. It wasn’t by accident that the nation of Assyria was dominant in the particular context of Micah’s time. That wasn’t by accident. That was because of God’s express decree. His providence had brought that to pass.

And so, if we can go back—I know we’ve talked a little bit about Assyria at the beginning, I think in the beginning lecture going into this book of Micah and about the historical context of the book of Micah—but it’s good to remind ourselves again of what Assyria was all about, what they were, and the context that Micah was writing to here.

Now, history—and that’s what we’re talking about—the historical reality of Assyria and the historical reality of Nimrod. History is not just a recitation of dates, events, times, and what people’s habits were. History is a story of God’s movement throughout the creation, manifesting his glory in the world, demonstrating his righteousness, his judgment against sin, his mercy to those who are his elect called community, his great love and compassion that led him to send his son Jesus Christ to die for their sins. History is about that movement. What Christ accomplished is not some sort of part of history. It is essentially all of history, and all of history manifests that.

Throughout history, we see two groups, two communities, two peoples as it were, moving and fighting and battling throughout history. Those two communities are communities not based upon race as we so often think of today—communities being based upon race. They’re not based upon economic status. Ultimately, those communities are based upon faith, presuppositions, belief systems, worldviews. And the two communities that are talked about throughout the history of man as given in the Old Testament and then also as verified by secular historians as well—those two communities are communities that move by faith. One by faith in God and the other faith in man, faith in man’s collective efforts.

To understand a people then we must understand first their religion. Now in our day and age the fact that religion motivates a people is not particularly readily apparent. We’re in—one of the reasons for that is that we’re in a movement or a transition from one religious system to another religious system. We’re in movement away from Christianity, and that should be quite obvious to all of us by now, that there’s movement toward a new orthodoxy, a new established religion. And so as that movement occurs historically here in our lifetime, specifically as it takes on a great deal of emphasis and thrust, you see the manifestations of that in the world around us.

I was listening to a tape and Sam Blumenfeld said that in Rhode Island the judges ruled that it’s illegal for the children to recite the preamble to the Constitution of the state because that preamble includes a reference to a Creator. See the terms “In God we trust” in our coins and our bills. The term “one nation under God”—these are anachronisms. The only reason they’re still there is they’re seen as anachronisms, useless sort of thing that simply indicate a cultural manifestation of what people believe.

But make no mistake about it, the trend will continue. Those words will also be eliminated. “Under God” will be eliminated from the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God we trust” will certainly be eliminated from our coin. Save a revival. Save a turning. But the point is that it may not be obvious sometimes in the history of a particular country, right in the middle of a turning point, that religion is what motivates people. But it becomes more and more obvious, and it’s becoming more and more obvious to all of us hopefully.

Now when we look at a historical sweep at a large section of history, things are a lot more obvious. Additionally, nations at one time were not usually so—were not usually so double-minded or so obtuse about their religious origins.

The biblical evidences we’ve talked about before for Assyria’s religion. Remember we talked about how Rav the Revika came to Hezekiah and said at the walls of Jerusalem, “You know, hey, your god can’t save you. We’ve conquered all these other gods, all these other nations. Submit to us.” And what Assyria would do is it would bring in all other nations, all other religions under themselves. They were the great organizer as it were of all religions and all states.

Nimrod, of course—the reference to Nimrod strikes us, brings us back to the historical account of who Nimrod was. Nimrod was a historical entity. He was the great-grandson of Noah. He was the son of Cush and the grandson of Ham. And Ham of course was Noah’s son. And so he was in that lineage, and this is all of course after the flood.

Nimrod created an empire. He was a mighty hunter, he was a tremendous warrior as it were, great strength, great following. And Nimrod established a society that produced the Tower of Babel. Specifically he then established cities as well—Babel of course—and later that which he established became the empires of Assyria and later Babylonia. Those two terms—we’ll talk about a little bit later but their correlation—usually refer to the same actual historical geographical set of occurrences, set of people: Babylonia and Nineveh, or Nineveh being the capital of Assyria.

Assyria and Babylonia—we’ll talk about in a couple of minutes, later their differences—but essentially they’re the same groups of people. They both had their heritage in Nimrod and what he accomplished, or attempted to accomplish, at the Tower of Babel. The Tower of Babel was a religious rejection of God in terms of the development of history of two separate communities. It was the community that rejected God and tried to achieve peace and order in the world through man’s efforts apart from God.

And so the biblical evidences that these two terms when God gives us—to him in Micah 5, verse 6, specifically in verse 6—these relate to people who were motivated by a religious drive. That drive was a rejection of Jehovah God and attempt to subsume anybody that affirmed that under their God, to claim that their God was stronger than Jehovah God, and so to subject religions to themselves. And Nimrod was an outright rebellion of course, and of course Assyria was also. But their origins, their great founder as it were, Assyria’s, was Nimrod and his rejection of God at the Tower of Babel.

Now there are archaeological evidences that also talk about the religions of these two peoples. We’ve talked about these before, but I think it’d be good just to review them a little bit. In world history notes, R.J. Rushdoony talks about a couple of the inscriptions found by Assyrian kings and what they perceive their role in society and in history as. Now, by the way, just parenthetically here, Assyria’s reality and the great prominence given throughout the book of 2 Kings, 2 Chronicles, throughout the history of the northern and southern kingdoms in the scriptures, was really doubted by many people and threw a lot of doubt upon the scriptures because there was no historical record of Assyria for all intents and purposes.

And yet in the last 50 or 100 years tremendous archaeological finds—and as a result, we know that those archaeological finds, as all archaeological, true archaeological finds will do, confirm what the Bible had to say. But here’s a couple of inscriptions of kings of Assyria to give you an idea of what they believed in.

Shamaneser said this: “I am Shamaneser, the legitimate king, the king of the world, the king without rival, the great dragon. That only power within the four rims of the earth, overlord of all princes, who has smashed all his enemies as if they were earthenware, the strong man, unsparing, who shows no mercy in battle.” And the term translated there as “great dragon” could also be translated “large snake.”

So the king of Assyria affirmed to himself the title of great dragon, large snake—the strong man as it were. And of course, these are specific biblical references to Satan. And they were references of course that the culture of Israel understood and knew about, and as well of course the culture of Assyria would as well. They were from a common lineage back to the flood of course in Noah and then through Nimrod.

Another king said the following. Adad-Nirari, Assyrian ruler, 810 to 783 BC, spoke of his rule as shepherding and said he was the plant of life. The Assyrians believed that the state and its rulers were the tree of life for the people. And so he saw himself as the civil ruler of Assyria, as the great plant of life from which all other life springs. It’s a claim to be God, that’s what it is here. And when it claims to be God, it accepts the lie of Satan. And so the Assyrian rulers were self-consciously then, to a degree, then worshiping Satan and promoting his perspective in life.

By the way, Rushdoony talks about the fact that the snake that we see on medical seals today—that snake was in Greece known as Asclepius. I’m probably not saying that right, but the point was it was the instructing snake. The snake that would give instruction to the healer. And of course the snake that brought instruction into the garden was of course the devil.

Now the point of this is that Assyria manifested its religion by conquering other religions. Its religion was to assert its preeminence over God as the great dragon. It was identified with Satan. And consequently, of course, since Assyria was a military state, and since Assyria promoted the head of the civil state, as we just read from the one man being the plant of life, and the civil state claiming to be the great dragon, it affirmed the head of the civil state as God over all of life.

Now, this is not too far afield from what we’re moving toward in this country and particularly in the Soviet Union today, where man is only understood in relationship to the state. Man only has understanding or validity in relationship to the state. Assyria brought religious syncretism under the state in all that they were attempting to do. All that was for the ordering of the universe. Assyria saw not order in the universe that had been disordered through the fall. Assyria rather saw chaos in the world that would only be brought about through the ordering of the state.

Now today in America, we have increasingly the bureaucratic state trying to control all that’s around us. There’s a rejection of God’s order, God’s providence. And as a result, there’s an attempt on the part of the civil state to reorder what’s in life around us. And that’s why you see the growing number of regulations, laws, bureaucratic rules, administrative rules, etc. It’s an attempt to order the chaos that’s out there under the civil state, just like Assyria.

But that’s also—I said before that there were two groups of people coming forth from the garden. There were people that were the elect community of God who understood that man’s problem is not his environment. Man’s problem is his sin, his ethical rebellion against God. And that sin had to be atoned for by a Messiah to come. And on the basis of that, man had to be regenerated. And that’s the only way to bring about peace on earth.

The rejection of the absence of peace was not seen as an environmental fault by God’s covenant community, but rather as an ethical problem that they had engaged in. Well, Assyria and Nimrod attempted to change man’s environment. They were not primarily concerned with man’s heart, as it were, his soul. They said that man’s problem is the environment, the conditions that surround him. That’s why we don’t have peace. And if you look throughout history, you’ll see groups affirming one or the other. The way to achieve peace in the world is either through the regeneration of men in Jesus Christ or is to change the environment of the surroundings of man.

Assyria, Nimrod, and the references here in Micah 5 clearly indicate that they were part of that satanic realm that attempts to change the environment of man, to create a Tower of Babel, to create a bureaucratic state, to create regulations, laws and rules governing all aspects of life, and therefore bring order out of the universe.

Now we mentioned before that a central element of this as well was the idea of terror. Assyria believing that all things came forward out of chaos—as many people believe today—believe that chaos is what produces order. And so occasionally you need terror, you need chaos to reorder man and his life. And again, there the historical references to Assyria’s terror are many and manifold. I’ll just read a few.

In the annals of Ashurbanipal we read: “The inhabitants of Sidon and Ushu and Tyre and the rest of the cities, as many as had sided with them and plotted evil. They—in other words, the generals—destroyed with weapons, both small and great, and left not a man in them. They hung their corpses on gibbets, stripped off their skins, and therewith covered the wall of the city.” He also wrote of a captive king: “By the command of the great gods, my lords, I put a dog chain on him, and set them to watch in a cage.” He said, “Of one, Tiglath-Pileser the first said of one of his conquests, I made their blood to flow over all the ravines and high places of mountains. I cut off their heads and piled them up at the walls of their cities like heaps of grain. Shamaneser II said of the conquest of Erodi and Nini, ‘A pyramid of heads in front of his city I erected. Their young men and women I burned in a bonfire.’”

It goes on and on and on. That’s how the Assyrians would conquer through terror primarily. They’d make this big pyramid of heads of conquered people. And that was, of course, one thing that it did—was to subdue the people and to make them cowardly and not want to resist them.

But ultimately as a religious faith on their part, that chaos, terror producing chaos in the people, produces the great ordering of society under the civil ruler. And so terrorism today of course has to be understood in that same light. We have a Mardi Gras festival down in New Orleans. Why do we have that? Anybody know? The point is that one day out of the year all laws removed, chaos ensues. And the idea is that if you do that, that will provide ordering for the rest of the year.

So the Assyrians and that goes right back to Assyria. Their terror tactics goes back to Nimrod and his Tower of Babel. Terror is seen to produce order under the civil state, under the religion that says the head of the civil state is God incarnate, God walking on the face of the earth. And we move increasingly toward that in our day today.

Now the point of all this is that these things, as I said, don’t happen by accident. Assyria and Nimrod are historical references given to us to help us understand the victory that would come in Messiah is not limited to a particular people. It should be rather obvious, rather, it extends to the religion that those people engaged in and specifically extends to the head of that religion, the leader of that horde as it were, the great dragon, the serpent of old in the garden, the devil.

So Satan is the one that’s talked about through Assyria and through Nimrod. And when the text tells us that Messiah will lead his people victoriously against Assyria and Nimrod, it is telling us by specific devices of using a term that he knows won’t apply to the time of the return from captivity—because Babylon had replaced Assyria at that time—he uses that device, and he also uses a device of calling in Nimrod, who was the head of all these other satanic agencies of Assyria and Babylon, etc.—the source of all that as it were—and his projection of the Tower of Babel and attempt to fight against God, to say that we are God on earth and we can order all things under us. By those specific devices, he wants us to understand that Messiah’s victory is not over a specific historical entity. It is over the great dragon, Satan, in all his manifestations.

By the way, Babylon of course had the same roots as Assyria in Nimrod. Babylon was the priestly state as Assyria was the military state. What Assyria did was attempt to convert people militarily and pretty well into the civil state under that way. Babylon emphasized the priestly side of it. Same real problem though, and the same following the same God, and the same basic intent to subjugate all peoples under the civil state of Babylon, but they approached it in a more overtly religious fashion.

As a result of that, Babylon, for instance, used two techniques specifically that we’re familiar with today. Babylon used the technique of debt enslavement. Babylon would enslave a people through debt before they would conquer them. They understood the religious significance of debt, and they understood how debt demoralizes and corrupts the people. And so they would loan great amounts of money to a society before they would conquer them.

Additionally, it was from Babylon that we have the modern day practice of astrology. There is one small difference: although most people involved in astrology today believe that it’s just some sort of superstition, it’s not. Babylon developed astrology for the purpose of saying, as we said before, their faith was that it’s the environment that must be understood in order to change our world around us. Man’s part isn’t the problem. The environment is. The stars are part of that environment. The celestial beings are part of that environment, the celestial manifestations that is.

And so astrology was a science to try to understand the environment, the total environment, even more than we do, to achieve peace and prosperity. And so when you see astrology today, don’t miss the point that its roots are the same roots as the EPA actions, for instance, or OSHA. The attempt is to create order and peace and prosperity of the land through bureaucratic rule, through controlling the environment primarily, not through focusing upon regeneration of men.

The central theme that characterized Assyria and Babylon through their forefather of course Nimrod was an attempt to create a one world order based upon a changed environment. How shall peace and order in the world come? Through the state, through bureaucratic control, through militaristic oversight and direction, through conquering other nations and their religions under the great civil state.

There are two communities as we said—two peoples. And the critical difference in them is: how do we change? How do we bring about peace on earth? Regeneration of men or change in the environment?

Okay. So what we find, if we understand the historical context of Assyria and Nimrod, is that these passages assert that the birth of the shepherd king would accomplish a reversal not just affecting a particular historical people but affecting a change in this war that goes on throughout the Old Covenant between the people of righteousness and the people of Satan, the society of Satan on the one hand and the City of God. That’s the great battle that’s characterized throughout the Old Testament.

And what Micah 5 tells us is that battle is fought and won with the coming of the Messiah, with his incarnation, with his birth, with his work on the cross, with his resurrection and his ascension. And so the Old Testament points clearly to the first advent of Jesus Christ as the definitive change to this entire battle that continues in the Old Covenant.

And so things have changed as a result of that. And Micah 5 then goes into how the people will turn then and begin to become a conquering people and will no longer be in a state of tension with the ungodly forces because Messiah has come and brought victory to them.

Okay, this obviously points to the deliverance that would be wrought in and through Messiah. As we said before, these things take place in the last days. And we took great pains to point out that the last days refer to the first coming of Jesus Christ, the days in which we now live. What do we find then in the New Testament?

As we come to the New Testament manifestation of all this, we find the same thing. We find that the great dragon characterized here by Assyria and Nimrod is defeated by Messiah, Messiah as Micah tells us it would be. And I want to look at some indications of that.

First of all, Messiah defeats the great dragon of Satan by plundering the house, by robbing Satan’s house as it were. Now, Zechariah 13:2 says that in Messiah’s day, it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of Hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land, and they shall no more be remembered. And also, I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.

The prophecies of the Old Testament that depicted the victory of the shepherd king over the great dragon said that part of that victory would be the removal of unclean spirit from the land. And indeed Jesus Christ came and accomplished that. In Mark 1:27 we read, “And they were all amazed and so much that they questioned among themselves saying, What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority commandeth he even the unclean spirits and they do obey him.”

Matthew 12:28 says, “But if I cast out devils by the spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come unto you. Or else, how can one enter into the strong man’s house and spoil his goods, except he first bind the strong man and then he will spoil his house?”

Strong man. Remember that reference in the king of Assyria’s inscription to himself—the strong man is what he called himself, identifying himself with Satan. Jesus says that he came to affect what Zechariah 13:2-3 says he was going to do, which is to remove the unclean spirit and to have authority over them. And so Jesus Christ comes robbing Satan’s house, plundering his goods, as it were, casting his hordes, his followers out of the land of his people. Jesus affects the loss of authority and power. He ends Satan’s full-blown reign as it were. And we see many indications of that in the scriptures.

Let’s turn to Revelation 12. Revelation the 12th chapter. “There appeared a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of 12 stars. And she, being with child, cried, prevailing in birth, and pain to be delivered. And there appeared another wonder in heaven. And behold, a great red dragon, the great dragon we’ve been talking about here, having seven heads and 10 horns, and seven crowns upon his head.

And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them down to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman, which was ready to be delivered for to devour her child as soon as it were born.”

Now, in that verse 4, that third part of the stars of heaven, some commentators take to mean a substantial number of angels that were fought with Satan, that were taken with Satan in his rebellion. It’s hard to say if that’s… I don’t think I’m not sure if that’s the case. It’s just to indicate the size of Satan’s power at this point in time. But we have this great dragon able to sweep a third of the stars of heaven out of their course as it were, and he then casts him to the ground. And then it’s this dragon that stands before the woman and attempt to devour the child.

And you know, we just read—you know, it’s in God’s providence that these things come to pass. But we just read this morning the call to worship from Matthew 2. And what we’ve been doing, what I’ve been doing, is going through Old Testament passages relative to worship and just going through them as they go through the Bible. And in God’s providence, we came this morning to Matthew 2. But Matthew 2 tells us what is going on here. Herod, Satan, possessing Herod as it were, attempts to kill the child, the child Jesus Christ. He attempts to devour that child as soon as it’s born.

But it goes on to say in verse 5, “She brought forth a manchild who was to rule all nations with the rod of iron”—obviously Jesus Christ. “And her child was caught up unto God and to his throne.” And so we see there that, you know, Satan doesn’t even get a chance as it were, immediately upon Satan’s birth, or upon Christ’s birth rather, there’s indication that he ascends to the throne of the Father.

And so the point is that Satan has no control and no ability to stop what has been accomplished in the incarnation—that Mary had a womb filled with the incarnation of Jesus Christ—and that Satan has no power to stop what is going to occur then, even though he tries to of course.

“And the woman fled into the wilderness where she hath a place prepared of God that they should feed her there 1,260 days. And there was war in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. And the dragon fought and his angels and prevailed not. Neither was their place found anymore in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out. That old serpent called the devil and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world. He was cast out into the earth, and the angels were cast out with him.”

Now, this is not talking about Satan only being in heaven until the coming of Jesus Christ, and then Satan coming to earth. We know that’s not the case. We know that Satan is present, for instance, in his torments of Job. We know that Satan is evident—his powers and authority are evident in the world in a very manifest way, for instance, during the time of the Messiah. But the point is this: what the scriptures are telling us here is you have this great dragon in heaven who exercises great authority, able to take a third of the stars and sweep them to the earth, its angels, whatever it is, great authority.

But upon the coming and the work of Jesus Christ, his birth, his ascension to the Father, Satan is cast out of heaven. He’s cast out of a position of having authority to create problems for people in the sense that he did before the coming of Jesus Christ.

Now, we read about Assyria and we see correlations to the faith of Assyria and the faith of Babylon to Russia and to the United States today. That’s an interesting parallel. But, you know, there’s really no parallel for the things that we just read about Assyria in terms of their wickedness and their evil that they perpetrated in the earth. Even the Soviet Union is a much more civilized society when compared to Assyria.

What I’m trying to point out here is that historically prior to the coming of Jesus Christ, you had a terrible situation on earth. You had whole nations deceived by Satan.

Well, the point is Revelation 12 gives us a picture of the ending of Satan’s full-blown reign, a diminishing of his powers upon the earth. The great dragon is cast out by the coming of Messiah. And indeed, in John 12:31, Jesus said, “Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out, and I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”

Jesus said that now, he said, when I am here now, when I complete my work, that’ll be the casting out of the prince of this world. That’ll be the reduction of his authority to deceive people and to create problems upon the earth, not the removal of it. We’ll talk about that in a couple of minutes, but there’s been a tremendous change with the advent of Jesus Christ.

Micah 5 pointed to that change. Jesus Christ taught that change. John wrote in Revelation 12 about that change to encourage the saints. And he said, “Now that Christ has come, the dragon has been swept out of his position of authority in heaven, as it were, swept down to earth with reduced authority.”

Colossians 2:15 says that Jesus spoiled principalities and powers. He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.

Mary’s Magnificat—the great reversal that we’ve talked about and we wrote about in the last issue of line upon line—the great reversal in economics, in religion, in understanding and knowledge and in the political realm effected by Messiah. All these things come about because the transformation that’s occurred in terms of the authority of Satan being diminished and reduced here and the authority of Jesus Christ being exerted by his ascension to the throne of the Father.

Jesus Christ, Messiah has come. He’s struck into the heart of the beast. He’s reduced his authority. And one way that he’s reduced that authority is by redeeming the guilty people, by taking away the accusation that Satan had against people.

Turn to Zechariah 3:1-5. Zechariah the 3rd chapter, verses 1-5. We’ll just read the first couple of verses I think. “And he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord and Satan standing at his right hand to resist him.” And actually the word there means to accuse him. “And the Lord said unto Satan, ‘The Lord rebuked thee, oh Satan. Even the Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee. Is not this a brand plucked out of the fire?’”

Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments and stood before the angel. And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, “Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, ‘Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.’”

Now the point here is that Satan is pictured here as accusing the people of God and specifically Joshua here, and the restoration that was to be accomplished after the subjection to Babylon. Satan is the accuser of the saints. Other scriptures tell us that same thing. But you see, until the great coming of Jesus Christ and his effectual work in the holy temple of heaven, Satan’s accusation had a basis. Okay?

Satan’s accusations were based upon the fact that this man is guilty. And Satan could then accuse those people and exercise authority over people. But Jesus Christ’s coming provided the full redemption that the Old Testament sacrificial system pointed toward. And while the Old Testament sacrificial system was of course important, it of course pointed to the effectual work not of the animals but of Jesus Christ himself, the Passover lamb who would be slain for the sins of the world.

Well, when Jesus died, he redeemed people. He redeemed them. He bought them for service to God. He paid the price as it were of their bondage and of their curse by taking upon himself the sins of the world and by taking upon himself our sins. And so Jesus redeems the guilty people. And the guilty ones were those who were accused by Satan and held in bondage by Satan through fear of death, death being the result of their sin.

And Jesus, by paying the price for that and by redeeming people from the curse of the law, by becoming a curse, says then that he has translated us out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. Right?

On the basis of that, 2 Timothy 1:10, but well let’s see—start in verse 9. “2 Timothy 1:9 who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling and not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began but is now made manifest by the appearing of our savior Jesus Christ who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”

Colossians 1:13 “who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear son in whom we have redemption through his blood and the forgiveness of sins. It’s redemption is the basis for the translation that Christ has accomplished for his people out of the realm of darkness into the kingdom of light, out of Satan’s city as it were into God’s holy kingdom, out of obedience to the great dragon and under his authority with him accusing us, being delivered from that by the redemption effected by Jesus Christ’s death and the shedding of his blood making atonement for our sins into holiness and righteousness.

And so there’s a tremendous correlation here between what Christ accomplished on the cross for sinners and the result of that then being the diminishing of Satan’s power by the redeeming of the guilty ones that Satan was the accuser of.

Jesus has destroyed the works of Satan. 1 John 3:8, “He that committeth sin is of the devil. For the devil sinneth from the beginning, for this purpose, the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. That he might destroy the works of the devil.”

Jesus Christ is what Micah 5 points to. And Micah 5 says that Jesus doesn’t just accomplish salvation for his people in terms of a good conscience before God. He says, “No, more than that, Jesus Christ penetrates into the heart of the beast, exercises victory over the great dragon, brings his people out from there, from his authority, reduces his authority from heaven to earth as it were. Satan is cast out of heaven.

Remember when Jesus sent the 70 out and he said, ‘I saw Satan falling from heaven.’ He didn’t mean right then at that moment Satan was falling as a physical entity from heaven. What he was saying was that the authority that you’re exercising is my authority. And my authority means that Satan’s authority is gone, reduced, diminished. He’s brought low. He no longer has the authority that he had prior to the coming of Jesus Christ.”