The Church Builds upon the Enemy's Destruction

And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world — he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him. 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. Therefore, rejoice, O heavens and you who dwell in them! 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!"

(Revelation 12:9-12 ESV)

Most of my job as a preacher is telling you things you already know in ways and from angles that rouse them from their dormancy in your minds and hearts. My job is to remind you of the central truths gathered up and beautifully packaged in the Scriptures. And one of my favorite truths to restate, to remind you of, to bring your attention to, is the truth that our spiritual warfare is not as precarious as many have been led to believe. I have been in circles before where the level of anxiety was so high, and the level of concern about the devil getting the upper hand was so real, that people prayed passionately but pointlessly that the devil would not cancel Christ's church. This new heaven and earth reality of utter defense that has already been won on our behalf has been recently brought to my attention again through one of the most impressive passages in all of Scripture: Revelation 12.

Now, we are too often only half-right in our interpretation of this passage, which means we are half-wrong. We know the dragon has been cast out of heaven, but we nonetheless act as if the dragon is fighting for heaven still. We are engaged in a war but not a war whose outcome is in any way in question, and not a war where our victory or defeat will result in the devil getting himself back into the lofty place from which he has already been cast down. He will not get back in. His time is short. He has a little wrath to spend on the church, and that is it. He will never again have the high ground, and he can't get it back. The fact is, Michael did the job already! Michael fought the dragon and threw him down. You are not Michael. You were never meant to be Michael. I am not Michael. I am not the warrior of Revelation 12 that kicked the dragon out of heaven. That was not me, and it was not you. That was Michael. Our warfare, then, is not his warfare.

But if the great battle has been fought, and the accuser has been cast down, and if our warfare is not Michael's warfare, then what is our warfare? Simply put, our warfare is to build upon the enemy's destruction. It is the consequence, not the cause, of his fall. The dragon fell from heaven and brought warfare to us, and our warfare is the labor of building the kingdom of God upon the battlefield of the enemy's demise. We clear the land, we plant, we build, we cultivate, we raise families, we build households, we disciple children, we start businesses, we learn trades, and we serve in the church, all upon the ground taken in the Michaelic victory. Our warfare is the discipline of building upon the enemy's destruction.

So, what is the devil able to do? He can slander God's people. He can speak evil of God's character. He can accuse the brethren before God day and night — that is, he can lie about us and lie about God. He can offer us counterfeit kingdoms. He can make us grow desperate and think that more desperate are our circumstances than they actually are. And yet though our enemy seeks to broadcast his lies and deception to the church, and though he can do real harm to individuals and families through his lies, he cannot change his situation, he cannot change the outcome, he cannot change the source of victory, and his lies cannot shake the spiritual reality established by Michael's victory. God is doing a work on earth that cannot be stopped by a being that cannot even get into heaven anymore.

So I remind you, church: the goal of our warfare is to build upon the enemy's destruction. We work and we labor on the ground that has already been taken, and we expect success because the Lord has already guaranteed the outcome of that for which we labor. All the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And God says to his people, "I will be with you until all of my commands are accomplished."

- Adam and the elders