-Have you ever read a story or watched a movie that doesn’t really make sense until you get to the end?

-Mysteries do this really well – all these little hints throughout the story until it brings all of them together in 1 cohesive unit at the end. Knives Out, Glass Onion

-Agatha Christie books/movies do this really well. If you know what you’re looking for the as the story unfolds you can see these events taking place, but if you don’t know the ending you’ll be pretty confused by some of what’s going on.

-God does that with the Bible in what is known as progressive revelation His story progressively unfolds, you see little hints and threads of His bigger plan throughout the book, but you need to read all the way to the end to find out how all those little pieces fit together.

-We’re going to be looking today at the work of the dragon in a specific moment leading up to the Palm Sunday story, and see that what Jesus has done is created a way for us to become wise and whole people, if we trust Him, obey Him, and live the way He’s designed us to. 

READ/PRAY

1. A Woman, a Dragon, and a Child (Revelation 12)

-All sorts of different mythical stories in the 1^st century where gods and goddesses fought against dragons (Egypt, Ugarit, Mesopotamia, Greece, Roman)

-Not saying any of those are true, but God often speaks to His people in ways they can understand. He’s trying to communicate things that are incommunicable at all times. If you’ve ever seen an adult hold a baby you’ve seen this! 

-“A great sign”

-Not seen by anyone else, this is just revealed to John.

-Connects back to Isa. 7:14 “Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.”

-Unfortunately, God isn’t the only one who gives these signs, as we’ll see in just a couple verses.

-“A women”

-Who is this woman? Mary seems to fit here, but we need to take the bigger context, so look down at vs. 17 – most commentators believe this is signifying God’s people, who had been waiting for generations for the Messiah to come

-God’s people as His bride appears throughout Scripture (Isa. 54:5, Hosea, 

Rev. 19:7-9, 21:9)

-“Clothed with the sun, moon under her feet, crown of twelve stars”

-Beautiful and exalted with the brightest star we can see! This woman is astoundingly beautiful! She takes on some of the characteristics used to describe God: Psalm 104:2 “He wraps himself in light as if it were a robe” This woman is closely connected to God, but it also connects us to a story all the way back in:

–Gen. 37:9 – story of Joseph, who eventually did have this take place for Him. But Joseph isn’t the main point of the story, because Jesus is the even better Joseph who allows us to be saved from the famine of sin and death! Getting a little ahead of myself though.

-“She was pregnant”

-Theme throughout OT of Israel suffering labor pains while waiting for the arrival of the Messiah Mic. 4:10 “Writhe and cry out, Daughter Zion, like a woman in labor, for now you will leave the city and camp in the open fields. You will go to Babylon; there you will be rescued; there the Lord will redeem you from the grasp of your enemies!” Everything leading up to Jesus’ arrival could be said to be the pain of childbirth, longing for the arrival of the King. But the woman’s not alone.

-“Another sign: great fiery red dragon”

-seven heads, ten horns, a crown on each head. At first glance this is supposed to be absolutely terrifying! Think of a 7 headed dragon, 3 heads have 2 horns coming out and the rest have 1 horn (horns signify strength, think like a Rhino). Every head has a crown on it. Unfortunately for this dragon (and unknown to Him), his role is to be the butt of God’s master plan. He has literally been created for destruction. While at first glance it looks like the left 2 heads, in reality he’s more like the dragon on the right. 

–Dan. 7:7, 24 – dragon manifests himself in and through human rulers and authorities. Blomberg “Since Satan is not omniscient, and since only God knows the timing of the end, the devil must have an “antichrist” ready in every era, lest that turn out to be the time God has appointed for the consummation of all things.”

-The fact that this dragon has crowns on his head shows that he’s trying to imitate Jesus. When we get to this section again in June, we’ll see that this is the first of the unholy trinity. Satan tries to mimic and destroy God’s perfect plan, but he falls short each and every time. 

-But this story is really a tale as old as time. Think back to the beginning of the Bible: Gen. 3:15 the serpent themes throughout Scripture: Pharoah’s headdress, fiery serpents being sent upon Israel (Num. 21), Goliath’s armor. 

-Are you a part of the army of the serpent or the serpent slayer? There’s a wonderful little book on this titled ‘The Serpent and the Serpent Slayer’ that traces many of these themes throughout the Bible, if you’re interested let me know!

-The violence of the dragon: “tail swept”

-Some say this is the fall of Satan with his fallen angels, Others appeal to Dan. 8:10 calls Israel the stars: which would mean this is the dragon’s hostility toward the people of God. I could be convinced of either option, but the point is the dragon is opposed to the work of God.

-Stood in front of the woman while she’s giving birth.

-Is there ever a time that a woman is more vulnerable than during delivery? I haven’t ever experienced the labor pains myself, but I’ve seen it a number of times now and am very grateful that my wife won’t ever need to experience that again! It takes literally everything out of a woman! 

And then in the midst of that pain and struggle, this dragon positions himself to help deliver the baby straight into his belly! This is grotesque, but a true description of Satan’s goal.

-But also think of what happens when Jesus is born: Matt. 2 – Herod kills all babies, just a Pharoah worked to kill all the Israelite babies in Exodus. The serpent hates people, who are created in the image of God, he is opposed to them from birth to death, Literally the opposite of God.

-I thought this was such a cool point from Micah’s last class on Bible interpretation: a correct interpretation of the text will lead to human flourishing. That is God’s intent for His creation! Becoming everything He’s created us to be, worshipping Him with all we have. Not following the way of the dragon.

-The woman gave birth to a Son (notice the capital letter and the description of this son)

–Psalm 2:9 – this is all about the ways the dragon looks to usurp God’s authority, the ways he uses nations and kings to do his bidding and fight against the chosen one, but nothing he can do will thwart God’s plan. What looks like certain destruction for the Son (giving birth into the open throat of the dragon) becomes the means by which the dragon is defeated.

-John then skips over every other event in Jesus’ life (we’ll see him talk about those next week in Rev. 5) and goes straight to his ascension. 

-“The woman fled into the wilderness”

-“The wilderness represents life in the present age” Tom Schreiner

–Hos. 2:14 wilderness is a theme in the history of God’s people: leaving Egypt (God’s provision), Jesus’ ministry. So even as the dragon is waging war against God and His people, God will protect and preserve a faithful people who will serve God instead of the dragon.

-But what does that look like, practically, for life today? How do ensure we’re following the Lamb instead of the dragon? Let’s look at a story from John that sets the stage for the triumphal entry. 

• A Dragon, a Disciple, and a Messiah (John 12)

–John 13:2

-Some context: Lazarus had just been raised from the dead, Jesus’ notoriety was rising and Lazarus kept spreading the news about what Jesus had done to him. 

-Seems that Lazarus and his sisters were good friends of Jesus. 

-Also coming to the end of Jesus’ ministry & life. This serves as the beginning of the end, is a day before Palm Sunday and leads into the triumphal entry. But as we read it, I want us to notice a couple throwaway comments that John says to give us some background about Judas. 

READ

-All throughout the Gospels the reader is forced to deal with the question: “how do YOU respond to Jesus?” That’s part of the reason they’re so powerful, they draw you into the story and force you to respond.

-Read a story this week of someone who gave a NT to an unbeliever who had  no history with the Bible. He said the stories at the beginning were super repetitive, the middle made no sense, but he really like the science fiction at the end. Yes it is repetitive, but they each have a different goal.

-Lazarus is eating with everyone, Martha is serving everyone, and in comes Mary! How grateful do you think this family would have been? Lazarus had died, had been raised back to life, how would you respond? Wouldn’t some kind of priceless gift have been appropriate?

-“A pound of perfume” a Roman pound is like 12 oz so think a soda can size that gets dumped over Jesus. 

-The best of the best, this isn’t a knock-off, hasn’t been watered down, this is the perfect specimen of perfume, worth a year’s wages. This could have been a family heirloom that had been passed down for generations. Wealth is viewed differently in different times of history, we tend to think only about money, but there wasn’t a common currency or global trade market to track, so items were used as a retirement account.

-This perfume would have followed Jesus everywhere he went for days. Think about that – as Jesus was led to his death this smell would have been accompanying Him, reminding Him of this night of joyful celebration with His closest friends.

-Then who does the focus turn to? Judas, the betrayer. 

-John gives us some back story here about Judas’ character. 

-I’m guessing you, like me, have had this exact conversation before. Anytime you spend money, someone’s going to ask you if you considered the poor children in Africa. Yes, I have no way of getting to them, I do support children all over the globe, and I still needed a car to get around, house to live in, etc. That was a much more effective argument when I was 16 years old!

-Look at vs. 6: Judas stole from the funds. Funds received from people supporting Jesus and His ministry. Have you ever considered how few people in the Bible would pass a background check to serve at church? David was an adulterer murderer, Moses was a stuttering murderer, Peter was an impulsive and seemingly angry man, Judas was a thief liar and betrayer, Paul was a master at finding Christians and killing them. Would any of you trust your kids to those men? No! Apart from Jesus at work in them. Jesus would have known exactly what Judas was doing, He would have known the ulterior motives Judas had for being in charge of the money-bag, but he allowed Judas that opportunity.

-Jesus gives us the freedom and opportunity to choose. Ultimately He knows what we’ll choose, but He will still allow us to be tested to learn that He’s the only thing we need. Yet just like Judas, we so often miss it. We give into the temptation, we refuse to stand strong, we don’t acknowledge that Jesus is all we need.

-Jesus’ response has a tendency to be very misunderstood. 

-Doesn’t mean don’t care about the poor because they’ll always be poor, nor does it contradict Jesus’ other teachings about always looking to care for the poor and marginalized, but just as He tells us that our love for our family must seem to be like hate compared to our love for Him, so our devotion to Him must take precedent even over and above acts of compassion. 

-“Acts of devotion and acts of compassion for the poor are not mutually exclusive.” (Colin Kruse)

-I think this is what James means when he talks about faith without works being dead. Our worship must lead to a transformed life, otherwise our worship is pointless. 

-I was listening to a podcast this week: “The reason is that when you dive deep into biblical wisdom…you start to see the reality that according to the Bible, wisdom is about becoming a certain kind of person, not necessarily knowing what sort of rules to follow. So there’s, there’s always this inward direction with wisdom, wisdom is always kind of pushing toward the heart. And it’s always trying to create certain kinds of people.”

-What we see when we look at these 2 passages is the temptation to become a certain kind of person: one that follows the way of the dragon, or one that follows in the way of the Lamb. One leads to life, and one leads to death. One leads to joyful celebration, and one leads to sorrowful mourning. And every one of us has a choice as to which of these 2 characters we’re going to follow and emulate.