(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.)
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Who is like God? Many Old Testament names, both of people and places, are actually confessions about who God is or what God has done in a certain place. If you see a name of a place or a person in the Old Testament that ends with the letters E-L, then it’s a confession or a statement or a question about God, about what he has done, about who he is.
Names like Peniel, Bethel, Ezekiel, Daniel, or Michael, or as we would say, Michael. Michael is how we say this name, the name that means who is like God. Revelation 12 describes bold foolishness in the face of this great named archangel, bold foolishness that took place in the desires of many of God’s angels, led by one in particular, that great dragon, that serpent of old called the devil and Satan.
We heard what he did and we heard what his intentions are still to do. He stepped up in a rebellious attempt to answer the question of Michael’s name, Satan himself desiring to be like God, as it is written in Isaiah 14. How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning, how you are cut down to the ground, you who weakened the nations.
For you have said in your heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will also sit on the mount of the congregation on the farthest sides of the north.
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds. I will be like the most high. Yet you shall be brought down to the lowest depths of the pit, along with majestic, awesome, and at times terrifying symbolic glimpses into the truth of God and his reign in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
Revelation blesses us with knowledge to help us understand the reality in which we live, the reality in which we die. In his commentary and exhortation on the feast of Saint Michael and all angels, Reverend Dr. Pius Parch explains that even to even have an angel with the name Michael, to have an angel named who is like God itself draws forth the idea of battle and war, that there is contention being had, that there is an evil one seeking to make himself God, a war in the spiritual world, in the heavenly places, the places that do not exempt us, places with a war with which we are all a part, whether we want to be a part or not. For what is being fought for isn’t the pride of a demonic heart alone, but the eternal destiny of the souls of men, yours included.
Pay great attention, dear Christian, for all who claim to be Christian are at war with the devil, the world, and your sinful nature. No, we need not be physically strong or even theologically astute in intellect to fight and to fight well in this war, for we all fight and overcome by the same mighty weapons. Did you hear that? Mighty ones given by God, the blood of the lamb that we ourselves drink unto life for the forgiveness of sins, the very testimony that we speak and confess, yea, even directly in the face of demonic hordes as they try to thwart God’s will in our lives.
Christ the Lord has redeemed me by the shedding of the blood. What a great confession this shall be. Always upon the lip, it will not falter.
For Christ has been victorious, and he reigns victorious now, yet the war rages on. Demons shriek when you confess this, when you think this, when you live by this fact, that Christ the Lord has redeemed me, a poor miserable sinner, by his shed blood. There is much in that little one sentence, beloved.
Parsh explains that this real cosmic war in which this testimony that we uphold, that we cling to, even within and without, that this war takes four phases. Revelation 12 alludes to the first phase, as the apocalyptic book is a gift to the church for her to look at past, present, and future, to look at such times with clear, faithful eyes in the very lamb of God, in repentance, and also in encouragement. We know not what led up to the war in heaven, what in the world Satan was thinking, taking on God, but we do know that he was a murderer from the beginning, and that our dear Lord himself calls him the father of lies, lies that were alluring enough for him to gather other angels into his cohort, onto his side, turning them into demons in their opposition to the Most High.
That Michael and angels then fought with him, as was pleasing to the Lord for them to do, to fulfill their office as mighty messengers bearing the testimony of God’s holiness in their very persons and in their very name. But the evil ones did not prevail in that war, nor was place found for them in heaven any longer. Thus the second phase, as it’s setting upon the earth, where Satan and his demons were cast down to, the dragon carried his war with God to the great battlefield of the human mind and heart.
It isn’t out there. It isn’t even in hurricanes. The great war is within, within the mind and the heart of those that Christ has died for.
He has come to the battlefield of that place, leading Eve into sin and Adam through her. He became a strong man, Satan did, hoarding up men’s souls as they fell captive to damnable lies. Thousands of years this phase lasted, this second phase.
The devil in his vain pride must have thought that he was winning as many continued to turn away from God into the desires of their own heart, following after false God, not only mammon but others, seeking their will above their gracious saviors. That ancient fool must have surely thought most of all that he was winning when the Son of God was crucified, when the Son of Man breathed the breath of death on the cross, not knowing that it was there that the stronger man, Jesus himself, was plundering his goods by bestowing life through death. On Golgotha they clashed and Satan lost, have no doubt, beloved.
He lost just as Christ predicted his atoning sacrifice would do to him in John 12 when he said that now is the judgment of this world, now the ruler of this world will be cast out. Thus the third phase begun with the birth of the New Testament church. Those who now who are blessed to be able to look back on such a blessed tree upon which our Savior hung, to look back firmly established by the eternal victory that we his bride look upon as our crucified King, our victorious King.
This is where we find ourselves in this church age, in this third phase of the war, upon the earth where the great dragon was cast with his angels and though defeated on that holy hill he wages fierce war against the victor’s bride. How might she prevail? How might she endure? How might she stand against such a fierce foe that is literally hell-bent on our destruction? Does it even matter? Does this matter to us? I believe is the bigger question because the greater danger lies not in the ferocity of our foes. One little word can fell him.
You belong to Christ, the creator of all things, the redeemer of your soul. So if the danger lies not in the ferocity of Satan, that great serpent of old, it most certainly then lies in our lack of taking these things seriously, of taking this life seriously with how war in the spiritual places, in the heavenly places, truly affects life here in the physical, in the scene. How we view this and take this seriously of living as if there isn’t a spiritual war is dangerous.
A spiritual war that goes on for our very souls in every second of every day, that goes on in every thought, in every action of every day, this war rages on. We need not worry. We need not fret.
We are not to grow anxious over the reality that Satan seeks our demise or that he is relentless in coming after us here. Do not worry. You’ve heard this.
Be anxious for nothing, nothing. Not even a mighty angel who would be able to head to head, certainly overpower and destroy you to a certain extent. But what if death does come even by Satan’s hands? In whose hands do you rest? Who is the victor in which the church now rests, celebrates, yes, even has peace in this age? Even as Satan roams about as a roaring lion, we have peace.
We have strength in God, our Savior. We do have peace because that fourth and final phase shall come. It shall come when morning dawns.
It shall be the final clash. As it said in Revelation 2010, the result of it will be that the devil who deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are, and they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. The war is won, the victor and the victory sure.
So when we consider Saint Michael and all the angels who keep watch over us night and day at our dear Savior’s power and bidding, we ask again as the archangel’s name does, who is like God? But then again, is it a question? Or is that holy angel’s name a bold statement given even for us on this feast day to remember what he and all the angels do for us, to trust in, to know that there is no other like the Lord, a clear truth that we are wisely to consider truly in all our days now and forever? In Jesus’ name.
(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai.)
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