God's Storytellers - Revelation 12 Reveals God's People!

Hi, my name is Dave Edgren. One night as I was putting my children to bed, I asked them, "What kind of story would you like tonight?" I have 3 children. My youngest is Rachel, and my next oldest is Michael, and then there's Cyrus. Well, Cyrus was about 7 years old, and he said— or Mikey burst out, "A Bible story!" And Cyrus said, "No, not a Bible story. The Bible's boring." And this actually shocked me because he'd never said this before. And being a bit flustered, I just responded, "Well, Cyrus, what kind of story would you like then?" And he said, "Oh, I don't know, something cool like about dragons and swords and something like that." And I said, "Oh, okay." And my mind started to race and I'm thinking, "What kind of stories could I tell?" And then suddenly I had this idea. I said, "Hey, Cyrus, what about if there was a Bible story about dragons and swords?" And he said, "Oh, well, that would be really cool, but that would never happen because dragons aren't real and the Bible only tells the truth." And I said, "Well, there is actually a story in the Bible about a dragon, and it even has a sword in it." And he said, "Really, Dad?" And I have to be honest with you, I have been known to tell fibs to my children. And so I had to convince them, "Yes, it's true, there really is. There's what's called a prophecy." And you know when Jesus was here, and I explained it to them, when Jesus was here and he told lots of stories that meant other things called parables. Well, before He came and after He left, He told those stories through His prophets and He called them prophecy. But most of them are stories and they're just like parables. And this is one of those prophecies. My kids weren't too sure still and they said, "Well, tell us the story then." And so I said, "Okay, let me get my thoughts together." And I had to think about it because I'd never told this story before as a story. I'd used it in Revelation seminars but never told it as a story. And so I thought to myself and I said, "Okay, look." It starts with a woman, and the woman is really pregnant, and she's standing on the moon. Dad! I said, no, no, no, it's true. It says it in the Bible. She's on the moon. Remember, it's a prophecy. So she's standing on the moon, and she's starting to have her baby. And so she's pushing, and she's doing the breathing, and she's going, oh! And the Bible says she cried out in pain as she was giving birth. Well, as she cried out, the dragon heard her. And the dragon flew out from underneath the earth and he flew towards the moon. And he started flying towards the moon and he was getting closer and closer and the woman was screaming and the dragon was flying and the woman was screaming and the dragon was flying. And then the dragon landed with a thud on the moon. "Poof!" And he skidded to a halt and then he started clawing his way towards the woman. And she was just about to give birth and the baby came out and the woman reached down to catch the baby and the dragon's head— no, 7 heads swung in, 7 huge red heads on 7 long red necks with huge red leathery wings. This dragon was massive. And this red dragon was skidding to a halt, his heads coming in to get the baby because the dragon wanted to kill the baby. And the woman wanted to save the baby, it was her baby, and so she reached down and the dragon was coming in and just as the two were about to connect, a hand came out of heaven. Whoom, and caught the baby and took it up, up, up into the sky. Well, this made the dragon very angry, and so the dragon began to run again, and he clawed his way towards the edge of the moon, and he jumped into the air, and he started flying, flying as fast as he could after that hand. And he flew as fast as he could, and he tried everything to catch up with the hand, but he couldn't catch it. And somehow, between the time of leaving the moon and getting to heaven, the little baby in the hand had grown up. And when the dragon finally landed on the shores of heaven and skidded to a halt, the baby was a grown man and his name was Michael and he stood with a sword and he was the dragon slayer. Well, the dragon's angels landed alongside him and Michael's angels gathered with Michael and there was war in heaven. And so the dragon and Michael began to battle. And the dragon would swoop in with his heads and Michael would parry. The dragon's angels would attack Michael's angels And there was back and forth, back and forth, and every single step took the dragon and his angels one step closer to the edge of heaven until they started falling off. And soon it was just the dragon and Michael, and they were having a great battle in heaven. And the dragon lifted up his 7 heads, and Michael saw his opportunity, and he charged in with his sword and pushed it against the breastplate of the dragon, and the dragon clawed at heaven but couldn't hold on, and he tumbled out of heaven. And spun backwards down, down, down until boom, he landed on the earth. When the dust cleared and he stood up, and put his wings back into joint, the dragon was angry. He couldn't get the baby, he couldn't get heaven, what would he do? And so he looked around and he was amazed, right there in front of him in the desert was the woman, just standing out there in the desert. And so the dragon started to run towards the woman, he knew what he was gonna do, he was gonna I am going to get that woman. And so he ran as fast as he could towards the woman, and the woman saw the dragon coming, and she started to run, and the dragon was running, and the woman was running, and the dragon ran faster, and then the dragon leapt into the air and began to fly to catch the woman. And so the woman jumped in the air and sprouted wings like an eagle, poof, and started to fly. Dad. I said, it's in the Bible. And so the woman was flying, and the dragon was flying, and the dragon took in a huge breath, no, 7 huge breaths, And he shot out— and the kids all said, "Fire?" No, water. He spewed out this huge tidal wave of water, and it was so big that the woman couldn't see over the top of it as she was running, and it was so wide that she couldn't see around it. And so she just ran, and she thought, "No, I'm gonna drown. The water's gonna get me." And the water got closer and closer and closer, and she couldn't see the dragon anymore because of this huge pile of water. And then the ground opened up. Just tore open, whoo, and swallowed the water, and it was gone. Well, the dragon, now that the water was gone and the dust had cleared, he looked and he couldn't see the woman. Because the woman, just as the hand had taken the baby away, the hand had taken the woman and hid her somewhere. And the dragon was really angry now, and he said to himself, "I can't get the baby. I can't get the baby." I can't get heaven. I can't even get that woman. I will, I will, I will get the rest of her children. Okay, kids, that's the end of the story. It's time for bed. Dad, you can't stop there. I said, well, that's the end of the prophecy. That's where it finishes. It's bedtime now. But Dad, and little Rachel, 4 years old, what about the children? I said, what do you mean? She said, the children, Dad, the children, the dragon, the children. What about the children? And then suddenly it hit me why prophecy is given as story. These kids were wrapped. They were right in the middle of it and they couldn't let go of the story. And they said, "What about the children?" And so I said, "Well, you know what? Let me actually—" And I thought, this is what we do in prophecy seminars. "Let me unpack it for you. Let me ask you, all of the things mean something in a prophecy. Everything is symbolic of something else. Who do you think the dragon represents?" And that was easy for the kids. They're like, "The devil, Satan." I said, "Very good." I said, "What about the baby? Who do you think the baby represented that grew up into Michael?" They said, "Jesus?" I said, "Very good. And what about the woman that was standing on the moon that had the baby?" And little Rachel said, "Mary, Mummy of Jesus?" And I said, "Well, that makes sense, doesn't it? Because Mary was Jesus' mum, and the lady that had the baby on the moon was the mom of Jesus, and Mary was in the desert. They ran away from Herod, didn't they, who was controlled by Satan? They ran into the desert, they went to Egypt. But you know, it's even bigger than Mary. It's so big in fact that it's not just about one person that Jesus came from, but it's about a whole group of people called the church. And Jesus came from the church, and he also came for the church. And so that's what the woman represents, is this group of people that are the church. And I said, "So with that in mind that this woman is the church, who do you think the other children are?" And the kids thought about it for a little bit, and then Rachel said, "Us?" And I said, "Yeah." And I said, "You know, what do you think the devil is doing to try to hurt us?" She said, "Making people sick." And one of the boys quipped in with, "Making people mean to each other, making wars, making bad things happen." And you know, they started listing all the things that people list when they say, "Why do bad things happen to good people?" And I was able to tell my children that, you know, the devil doesn't want to hurt us. He doesn't care about us. He wants to hurt God. And he couldn't get Jesus. He couldn't get the church. He couldn't get heaven. So he's going to try to get us because he knows it will hurt God. Well, after that children's story, putting my kids to bed, I went out and I flopped onto the couch and I thought to myself, What just happened? I'm a passionate storyteller, and I tell stories to children all the time, and I had just never thought of using prophecy as stories. I looked through the Bible for another story, a good story. Why had I never seen prophecy as narrative? Why had I never seen it as material for stories to children? When yet nearly all of them are stories, all the prophecies. And as I was sitting on the couch talking it through with my wife, I started getting more and more excited. And I started realizing, I have to be honest with you, I did not know the story of the dragon and the woman. Revelation 12 is what that is. I did not know that story as well as I just told it to you. Because I'd never thought of it as a narrative before, and I'd never looked at the progression of how things went. I'd always just used it, "This proves this, and this proves this, and this is that," and, you know, pairing it up with truths and with realities, but never saying, "Let's just tell the story." And so when I did tell the story, I wanted to know if I told it right. So I sat on the couch and I got out my Bible and I started reading through Revelation 12. And something really struck me. There's more to this story. Yes, it is an awesome narrative, a powerful narrative, but there's these key texts in Revelation 12 that show us something about these children, about these end-time people, this church that will be at the end times. Here's what it says at the end. There's only 18 verses in Revelation 12. It's just a short chapter, but it finishes in 12:18, but 12:17, just before the finish, says this: Then the dragon was enraged with 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. And so what this verse tells us is the identity of God's end-time people. There's two things that identify them. One is they obey God's commandments. They're passionate about God's law. They know the Ten, they keep the Ten, they honor God by honoring His commandments. But then it says, "They obey God's commandments and hold to the testimony of Jesus." Well, if you look up the word testimony, church folk have a meaning for testimony that basically is telling your Jesus story. What Jesus did in your life when you met Him, or something recent that's happened to you that God has done in your life. But for the vast majority of the people in the world, the word testimony is a courtroom word. It's a word that means, "I saw it from this perspective, this is what I saw." And my testimony is going to be different than your testimony because I was on the other side of the street. So I saw it from a different angle. And so this verse is saying that God's end-time people, they're identified by two things: they obey God's commandments, and they're testifying, or telling their testimony of Jesus, their story of Jesus. Now if we back up and go to verse 11 of Revelation 12, it says this. It tells us how these people became God's people in the first place. How were they saved? If I was to ask you, "How are we saved?" You would probably say, "By grace, through the death of Jesus on the cross." And you would be right. But have a look at this fascinating verse. Revelation 12:11, "They overcame him," that is the devil, "by the blood of the Lamb," that's the blood of Christ, "and by the word of their testimony, they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death." Did you notice the word "and"? They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb. Well, that's Jesus on the cross. Then it says "and." Grace and? Certainly not. But look what it says, "Blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony." What this is actually saying is that if you have been saved by Jesus, if the blood of the Lamb has been something that has washed you, that you've given your heart to Christ, You cannot be quiet. You can't help but tell it. It's not saying, "Okay, you know Jesus died for you, now you have to go tell it." It's, "You cannot help yourself." These people, they're identified by keeping God's commandments and by telling the Jesus story, but they're saved originally because of what Jesus did. And the way you'll know that they know that they were saved is because they're talking about it. Now what's interesting in these two different testimonies in Revelation 12:11 and 12:17, One says testimony of Jesus, the other says their testimony, and it's very different things. The testimony of Jesus is my story of what happened to Jesus. Their testimony or my testimony is my story of what happened to me. And so what happens is these people are saved because of the blood of Jesus and what it did to them. They can't help but tell it. But they're identified because they're keeping God's law and they're telling people the story of Jesus. They're saying, "Let me tell you who Jesus really is. Let me show you this epic story of evil versus good, of a baby born who would die for mankind." And we tell the Jesus story, not just, "It changed my life, but here's how it can change yours too." Now, when we think of the phrase, "the testimony of Jesus," many, many phrases in prophecy have key phrases elsewhere that unlock the meaning. And one of the key phrases for this, our particular key phrase, is Revelation 19:10. And if you look in the New Living, or the New International, the King James, the New King James, they all say the same thing. They say this: "The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy." So we say, "There you go." It says that these people in the end time, they have God's commandments and the testimony of Jesus. So we've taken that, many of us, to mean that that means that there will be a prophet among us. But what's really fascinating, and that's true that there will be the presence of prophecy in God's end-time people, but when you look at the New Living Translation, something really fascinating comes out. They translate it like this: "The essence of prophecy," this is Revelation 19:10, "The essence of prophecy is to give a clear witness for Jesus." Now you could almost say, Those aren't even the same verse. But they are at their heart. The first one says the testimony of Jesus is having the spirit of prophecy. But the second one is saying that the whole reason for prophecy, the essence of prophecy is that it gives a clear witness for Jesus. Why does prophecy come out of the mouth of the prophets? To show people Jesus. And so when we realize that these end-time people are the testifiers. They're the people sharing this clear picture of Jesus. We see that the spirit of prophecy is very active in God's end times people because, yes, they're identified by keeping the law and telling Jesus' testimony, and they're saved by the blood of the Lamb and telling their testimony. We are that spirit of prophecy. God's end time people are telling that story. Now, is this a new idea? Is this something that God just gave to the end time people, or has it been here for a long time? It's interesting when you go back to that law, those Ten Commandments, you can find them in two places in the Old Testament. There's Exodus 20 and there's Deuteronomy 5. Moses, when he records it in Deuteronomy 5, he finishes by saying that God actually spoke the commandments out loud and the people heard it and it was this booming voice and it was petrifying, it was scary. And so the people came to Moses and they said, "Moses, can you please ask God not to do that anymore?" They said, "Not to do what?" "Not to speak to us." "You don't want God to speak to you?" "Well, we do, we do, but we want Him to talk to you and then you tell us." And so Moses went to God and he said, "This is a strange request from the people, but your thundering voice scared them. And so they would like to know if you could speak to me and then I will speak to them." And God said, "Okay." He said, "Yes, I'll do that on one condition." And you find that condition in the next chapter. Deuteronomy 6, and this is what God says, "Yes, I will speak through my prophets. I will speak through a mediator. I will let someone stand in between me and mankind on one condition." And here's the condition: "Love the Lord." He said, "Go tell the people this. Here's what they have to do. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts." Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols to your hands. Bind them to your foreheads. Let them be in your actions and in your thoughts. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates. What God says is, "Okay, I will speak to you through the prophets on one condition. You don't let people just go and talk to the prophet to find out what God's all about." You tell them who Jesus is to you. You tell them who God is to you. Parents, tell your children, "As you rise and as you sit down, as you are going, wherever you're going, tell your children about me. Tell your children the stories of God's people." And from the very beginning of receiving the law, God gave them the commission to go and tell the story. And it's interesting as you look at so many people in Scripture that as they develop in their obedience to God's law, that they really take ownership of this idea of being God's ambassadors, being God's storytellers, his testifiers. And we see it beautifully in the life of John the Baptist. John the Baptist comes to the Jordan River and he yells out to the people. He says this: As it is written in the book of the words of Isaiah the prophet, a voice of one calling in the desert, Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him. When people heard this idea, prepare the way for the Lord, they knew what that meant. They, back then when a king was coming, they didn't have nice roads everywhere like we do now, 'cause nobody, hardly anybody anyway, had a chariot or had a wagon. They all either walked or had a horse if they were wealthy. And so when the king was coming, a herald would come and say, prepare ye the way for the king, he's coming. They would move the rocks out of the way, they would smooth places out so that there would be a road from one village to the next. And so when John came and said, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight paths for him," people knew that this meant someone great was coming. And so John had said, "I have read it in Isaiah, I have put it into my mind, and now I'm speaking it to you." And John testified about Jesus and who he was. And then Jesus came, and Jesus spent 3.5 years leading his disciples, and as he left, He gave some parting words. And his words would hearken back to what John the Baptist had said and the way that John the Baptist had owned his identity as the testifier for Jesus. And, you know, about 3 weeks after the dragon story, at bedtime with my kids, we'd been talking at tea this night about what are you gonna be when you grow up? And as I was tucking the kids into bed that night, tucking Mikey in and I said, "Shoo, let's pray together, Mikey." So we prayed and then he opened his eyes after prayer and he said, "Dad, I know what I'm gonna do when I grow up." And I said, "You do, Mikey?" 5 years old and he's got it all figured out. So I said, "What are you gonna do when you grow up, Mikey?" And he said, "I'm gonna kill the devil." I said, "You're gonna what?" He said, "I'm gonna kill the devil." And I said, "How are you gonna kill the devil?" He said, "Well, I guess I'll have to get some metal and melt it and make a sword and I'll poke him in the tummy." And I said, you know, my first thought was, as a pastor, I should tell him Jesus did this for us. Jesus died on the cross. He conquered the devil, sin, Satan. It's all over. But I was too fascinated by the mind of this little person. I wanted to know why. And so I said, "Mikey, you know, there's 6 billion people alive on the planet, and there's millions and billions more before that, and there's many that will be afterwards. What makes you think that you're the one person in all of eternity, the one human Who's gonna kill the devil? And Mikey looked at me like I was missing something, like something I had just not understood, something quite important. And he said, "Dad, I am Michael." And I did what you probably just did, I laughed. I said, "That is amazing." 'Cause you know what had happened? He had heard the dragon story and for 3 weeks he had been saying to himself, "Michael meets the dragon, Michael has the sword, Michael pokes the dragon, the dragon falls out of heaven, Michael—" "Dragonslayer." "Michael, me. I'm Michael." He had his job description cut out for him, and he was making plans of how to do it. And that night as I went and sat on the couch, I thought to myself, "Isn't the power of story amazing? God knew what He was doing when He gave prophecy, because He said, 'I will help people to see themselves in my plan, and they will see themselves so well, it will be as if I'm saying their name.'" And Mikey, Michael, just happened to have his name right there in the text, and so he literally saw himself in God's plan. And do you know, God does have each and every one of us in his plan. And Revelation gives a very clear picture of what that plan is, that we are God's storytellers. We are his testifiers. We tell our story of what he did in our lives. We tell the story of what Jesus did and who Jesus was. And so after Jesus had been here with his disciples for those 3 and a half years, he gave them what we call the Great Commission. And as we read it, we see hints, reminders of the old Deuteronomy 6 thing of where He said, "Speak to them as they go and as they come." Let's read it. Matthew 28:18-20, "Then Jesus came to them and said, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, go.'" It's interesting that word "go" is literally "as you are going." And it really ties in beautifully with the Deuteronomy thing of impress them on your children, talk about them when you sit at home or when when you walk along the road, when you lie down or when you get up, "As you are going." And so Jesus says to His disciples, "Therefore, as you are going, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Jesus actually says to His disciples, and to us through them by them writing this down. Here's what my end-time people will be about. My end-time people will have at their very heart my story. And they will go and they will tell people this story as they are going. As they are going out a door, as they are coming back in a door, as they are sitting on a chair, they will relate these things to Jesus. You know, kids are pretty cluey with this stuff. If you say to a kid, you know, Jesus said, "I am like a door." How could Jesus be like a door? A kid will say, "Because you can go through Him into heaven." You say, "Oh, yeah, good." You say, "How is Jesus like a chair?" And they'll say, "Because you can rest in Him, and because when you sit down in Jesus' lap, He holds you and you can trust Him." Yeah, good. And you know, this is what Jesus asks His disciples to do and asked His Old Testament people to do all along. Talk about Me. Tell My story. Reveal who I am through your story. Tell what God has done through history, what he's done through Jesus, what he's done through the disciples, what he's done through you. Tell your story to your children because nothing, nothing in the world can have the power to connect people to Jesus as your story can. Because you know what? Your story cannot be wrong. You can say, "This is what the Bible means," and people say, "Yeah, yeah, but so-and-so says it means something different." But if you say, This is what happened to me, and you tell your story, your testimony. They hear it from your lips, and they see it in your life, and they hear your experience, and they realize this is real. This really means something to these people and to this person. You know, just as Jesus was about to go back to heaven, his final words are recorded in Acts 1:8, and he says this: He's talking to his disciples and he's told them to go to the upper room to pray, to wait for the Holy Spirit to come, and then he tells them what will happen. "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." And what Jesus was actually doing in this statement is he was drawing a map of their world. He was saying, in Jerusalem, which is where they were, in your hometown, in your suburb, or in your city, or your region, in your state, in your country, and to the whole world. Jesus was painting a picture. This is how the world will know. It will know because you have told the story at home to the little one next to you. You've told the story at the bus stop to the person sitting next to you. You've told the story of what Jesus did to you, the blood of the Lamb did to your life and changed you. I once was lost but now I'm found. You'll be telling that to people, and you'll also be telling them who Jesus is, what happened when Jesus was here on earth, and how Jesus gave his life, his one and only Son God gave so that we could live. You'll be telling the story, and you'll show that this is why God's law is so important. Not because we need a list of things to do to keep us busy in life, but because these things reveal the very character of God. And as we keep the law, and as we share Jesus' story, and as we share our story, the world will be drawn to him. Jesus said that we will draw all men to him as we tell our story. And so I would challenge you, tell your story. Tell your Jesus story. Tell the law to people in a way that doesn't sound like a to-do list, but sounds like a liberating list of love. I would invite you now to close your eyes and to have a prayer with me in conclusion. Dear Lord, we thank you for this special time that we've had together where we could consider your word. And we've seen ourselves in it, Lord. We've seen our names in your book. And we have seen our mission, our purpose. And our purpose is to tell others about you, to connect them through us to you. Fill us, Lord. Fill us with the desire to do so and the ability to touch others with our story so that they might meet you and one day walk on golden streets in your kingdom. In your name, amen.