Pages

Monday, November 10, 2014

Pastoral Ponderings ~ DEFEATED: The Red Dragon and His Evil Fruit

          Jesus said that a tree will be known by its fruit.[1] If the fruit is evil, the tree is evil. If the fruit looks like murder, rape, violence, hatred, terrorism, it is because the tree is evil.
          Now, when the world appears to be going from bad to worse, just as the Bible described a couple of millennia ago,[2] and those who profess faith in Jesus Christ are a special target of the evil tree, what hope do the righteous have when they are unwilling to use the same murderous violence as the wicked?
          The secret (not really secret) is in the same place the righteous get their righteousness: in Jesus Christ.
          What I mean is that, those who are righteous in God’s eyes, are only righteous through their faith in Christ. The Bible says, “And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.”[3] The apostle Paul declared of himself, “not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.”[4]Those who have faith in Jesus Christ have the righteousness that makes us right with God.
          Our hope comes from the same place as our righteousness, which is Jesus Christ. He created us to be like himself.[5]He came into our sin-cursed world to redeem us out of our sin.[6] All those he redeemed have the promise of eternal life which includes living with him forever.[7] While we wait for that glorious day of living with God forever, we have “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”[8]
          Believers in Jesus Christ have righteousness by faith, we have Christ in us by faith, we have the hope of glory by faith, and so we know that the ugly and evil things taking place in the world will do nothing to diminish what Jesus is preparing for his brothers.
          One of the very special revelations of our hope in Jesus Christ is the amazing picture of Revelation 12. It is a wonderful picture because, at least in part, pictures are sometimes easier to remember than words. Not only that, pictures that are worth a thousand words are a lot easier to carry for those times when we need thousands of words to comfort our hearts.
          Jesus, knowing what his family would go through during these last days, told us about the animosity of the most evil being of all, the red dragon. He is “that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world.”[9] He would try to destroy Jesus, but fail.[10] He would fight against the angels of heaven, and lose.[11]He would be thrown down from heaven because there was no place for him with God.[12]
          The defeat of the red dragon, and the victory of God’s children, is described like this:
 And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God. And they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death.[13]
          The red dragon has been cast down, and the church has “conquered him,” but they have done this only “by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” The blood of the Lamb is all about Jesus’ work of redemption, the new covenant in his blood,[14] and the word of our testimony is all about our connection to this new covenant by faith, by confession of Jesus as Lord, by a personal testimony of experiencing redemption by faith in Jesus Christ.
          However, this conquering of the red dragon has a distinctive characteristic during our time-bound lives. It is that, “they loved not their lives even unto death.” Now, keep this in context. This is not talking about people who do not love life, but people who do not love this inferior earthly life. It is because there is a better life, that eternal life we were speaking of earlier, that Jesus’ brothers do not love their present earthly life so much that they would run from death.
          As brother Paul said, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”[15]He wrote that from prison (yes, the evil tree bore its evil fruit back then as well). If he was released, his life was Christ. If he was to die, he gained an even better experience of life. He did not love his earthly life so much as to fear death, and knew that his death from this earthly life would give him the life he longed for, to be forever with the Lord.
          This conquering view of the troubles of this earthly life was also expressed in this way, “But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.”[16]Do you see that? Those who shrink back from death because they do not trust Jesus are destroyed, while those who have faith preserve their souls no matter what is done to them in this earthly lifetime.
          Now we have a bittersweet reality. The sweet is that the red dragon has been cast down in defeat. The shout of joy is, “Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them!”[17]
          However, guess where Satan has been thrown down to? You guessed it, the earth. And so we have this bitter warning, “But woe to you, O earth and sea, for the devil has come down to you in great wrath, because he knows that his time is short!”[18] While time sometimes appears to carry on forever, in the spiritual realm, the red dragon knows his time is short. There is a lake of fire waiting for him, prepared for him,[19] and he knows he cannot avoid it. So, because he is evil-hearted, he will carry out as much evil against humanity in general, and Jesus’ brothers in particular, venting his wrath against God who has defeated him.
          This explains what we see in our world. Satan works through those who serve him to vent his wrath. He knows his times is short. He knows he has lost. He knows there is no place for him in heaven. He knows there is much-deserved judgment awaiting him. His wicked tree is bearing much wicked fruit.
          How do we look at the church, since the red dragon is so intent on destroying it. We see videos of awful atrocities against Christians, including murders by the hundreds. Does this deny that Jesus’ brothers have conquered by his blood, and by their testimony? Not at all.
          One of my favorite thousand-words-in-one-image is described in this beautiful picture.
Now I watched when the Lamb opened one of the seven seals, and I heard one of the four living creatures say with a voice like thunder, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a white horse! And its rider had a bow, and a crown was given to him, and he came out conquering, and to conquer.[20]
          This is an easy to remember picture of the church that goes out “conquering, and to conquer” through the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. This is the church that is “more than conquerors through him who loved us.”[21] These are the heirs of the promise that, “everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”[22]
          Which brings us back to the wonderful reality that those who have righteousness by faith in Jesus Christ also have hope by faith in Jesus Christ. There is no hope for an earthly life that is free of the wicked tree and its fruit. But there is hope of eternal life where we will be just like Jesus when we see him as he is.[23] It will be in heaven, where the red dragon has forever lost his place. It is the one life worth dying for.

© 2014 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, Canada, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.)




[1] Luke 6:43-45
[2] II Timothy 3:13
[3] Romans 4:5
[4] Philippians 3:9
[5] Genesis 1:26-27; John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:16
[6] Isaiah 44:22; Ephesians 1:7; Hebrews 9:15
[7] John 3:16; John 14:1-6; Revelation 21:1-4
[8] Colossians 1:27
[9] Revelation 12:9
[10] Revelation 12:1-6
[11] Revelation 12:7-9
[12] Revelation 12:9
[13] Revelation 12:10-11
[14] Luke 22:20
[15] Philippians 1:21
[16] Hebrews 10:39
[17] Revelation 12:12
[18] Revelation 12:12
[19] Matthew 25:41
[20] Revelation 6:1-2
[21] Romans 8:37
[22] I John 5:4
[23] I John 3:1-2

No comments:

Post a Comment