In this sermon, Greg provides a defense for the existence of an evil intelligence, a being named Satan, and explains how Revelation conveys that he is the source and cause of all the violence, evil and destruction in the world. Through this, Greg argues that God has often been blamed for what Satan has actually done.
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The Ancient Serpent
• Greg Boyd
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Greg opens the sermon by offering two preliminary points about the book of Revelation. First, the worldview of Revelation is very different from the worldview that is common today. It is crucial to understand that this book, as well as the entire New Testament, assumes that there is demonic opposition to the kind of life that God has for us. Today’s worldview does not give much room for such an idea. Therefore, many are skeptical about any talk regarding Satan and demons, as they merely view it as mythological.
The second preliminary point is that Revelation is like a symphony, where there are reoccurring musical motifs that reverberate throughout the composition. The recurrence of these motifs fosters a sense of anticipation as they evolve. Usually, one or more of these motifs have a climatic expression at some point in the symphony. The minor expressions anticipate or echo the major expression. This is how Revelation operates.
One of the dominant themes is the ancient serpent, what Greg calls a transcendent evil intelligence. The climactic expression of this serpent is found in Revelation 12, and there are anticipatory expressions about the serpent that lead up to it.
In this sermon, Greg shows four different ways that this climatic unveiling of the dragon is anticipated in the previous chapters. The first one is found in the seven letters in chapters 3 and 4. Two of the three letters warn about not being deceived, which echoes the motif of the deception of Eve by Satan in Genesis 3.
Secondly, in Revelation 5 we read about the throne room where there is a problem in that no one could open the scroll of God’s truth. It is sealed, which symbolizes the fact that the truth is hidden. The question asked is “Who is worthy?” This is a subtle allusion to the temptation narrative in Genesis 3 where Satan questions God’s worth. Here we see him asking the same thing.
Third, it is said that Satan swept aside one third of the stars. Numbers have a message in Revelation. The signature of God is three, but the signature of the serpent is one third. One third as a sign of the ancient dragon, is a “three” wannabe. Tonstad writes, “A third is not a reference to quantity or a probing for what and where and when or how much. Instead, it is a marker of agency, and an answer to the question, Who?” It is crucial to know the signature so that we do not confuse God and Satan.
Finally, we find other indications in chapters leading up to chapter 12 that show that the symbolic disasters in Revelation are from the dragon, not the lamb. We see this in Revelation 8:10-11 and Revelation 9:1-2, 11.
We must never forget that we live in a war zone. This is not the space for a vacation mindset. This battle is one of truth versus deception. We must wake up to the reality of how our culture tries to dupe us with lies. We swim in an ocean of deception and the reality of truth, as conveyed by Revelation, calls us to see how we give into this deception.
Hide Extended SummaryTopics: Satan, Spiritual Warfare
Sermon Series: The Wrath of the Lamb
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The MuseCast: October 8
Focus Scripture:
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Revelation 12:3-4, 7-12
Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth… Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent, called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God, day and night, has been hurled down. They triumphed over him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.
"Thank you all the way from Oregon. I deeply appreciate being shepherded by Pastor Greg and everyone else on the panels. You are a rare find in the church nowadays. Tackling tough questions with humility and a kingdom perspective. It has been life changing for me in such tumultuous times."
– Heather, from Oregon