Who is Like God? by Joshua Palmer
Revelation 12:7-12
Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back, 8but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven. 9And 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. 10And 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. 11And 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. 12Therefore, 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!"
IN NOMINE JESU
Who Is Like God?
Grace be unto you and peace
from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
When
I mention the Book of Revelation, what sorts of images jump to mind? I think of
the Rapture and Tim LaHaye.
That’s right. I was raised a premillenial
dispensationalist. What is that? Well, among other things, we read the book of
Revelation just like it was a newspaper from the future, but in code. We
thought that if we could just crack the code, we could see the earthquakes and
plagues coming and, unlike everybody else, we’d be prepared. Tim LaHaye’s Left Behind books tried to break the
code and show what the events in Revelation might look like if they happened today.
It’s alluring to think you have that kind of secret knowledge. That’s why Left Behind is so popular. The books
morphed into movies and spinoffs. My family even had a Left Behind board game. The tagline of the game was, “Work together
to defeat Carpathia, or face elimination!”
When
I grew up, I discovered that the church had never read Revelation the way I was
reading it, and that the rapture was made up by a handful of influential
radicals in the 1800s. I felt lost. Now how was I supposed to read Revelation?
Revelation became like Pandora’s box to me: filled with weirdness. Better left
untouched. I shared this feeling with a young Martin Luther. When he published
the New Testament in German in 1522, Luther relegated Revelation to the an
appendix. He said that it did not proclaim Christ and so was not worth a
Christian’s time.
Do
you agree? Let me ask you this: When was the last time you did your devotional
reading out of Revelation?
Oddly,
almost a decade after Luther demoted Revelation, he reversed himself and said
he found Christ preached all over the book.
Luther
had found the key, the one I was looking for, too. It wasn’t numerology or Tim
LaHaye. It was Jesus. It’s Jesus who is at the center of Revelation. He’s at
the center of today’s reading, too, even though he’s never named.
In
today’s reading, Revelation 12, we see a battle. A glorious battle, in heaven,
which without John’s book we would never even know about. Imagine: After Jesus’
Resurrection and Ascension the disciples are busy debating in the synagogues
and setting up churches and figuring out contentious questions like, is
circumcision necessary? And meanwhile there is war in heaven.
Verse
7 says, “Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the
dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back.”
Let’s
pause here and get our bearings. Where are we in Revelation’s strange
presentation of our salvation history? If you were to look at the previous
verses of Chapter 12, you’d find God’s people, Israel, according to God’s plan,
bringing forth a Child, Jesus. This is the Christmas story. Not quite like the
one from Matthew or Luke. This is the Christmas story from a cosmic
perspective. A red dragon wants to devour the Child. But the red dragon is
thwarted and the Child joins the Father in heaven. Ok, this is the Ascension.
Then war breaks out in heaven. On one side is the dragon and his angels, and on
the other side is Michael and his angels.
So
who is the dragon we’re talking about? Well, John tells us in the reading. Look
at verse nine, “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent.” He
is the serpent in the Garden of Eden from Genesis 3.
John
goes on and says the dragon is he “who is called the devil and Satan.” Let’s
stop for a minute. Maybe you know that Satan means “accuser” in Hebrew. Guess
what an accuser is called in Greek? Diaboulys, from which we get our word
devil. Diaboulys means “to slander” or “to accuse.” So when John says the
dragon is the Devil and Satan, he is saying he’s “the accuser and the accuser.”
Later, in verse 10, John says he’s “the accuser of our brothers who accuses
them day and night before God.”
So
who is the dragon? He’s the accuser.
You
can see an image of this in Zechariah, Chapter 3. Zechariah, an Old Testament
prophet, has a vision. He sees the high priest for that year whose name is
Joshua. And Joshua is brought before God. Satan is there too “standing at his
right hand to accuse him.” But God says to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you” and
saves Joshua “as a brand plucked from the fire.”
This
is the same Satan who accused Job before God in Job 1. The same Satan who
tempted Eve in the garden, and Jesus in the wilderness, and now, as 1 Peter 5:8
says, roams about like a roaring lion seeking for someone to devour.
He
is looking for you. He is hoping to do to you what he did to Adam and Eve:
deceive you. Look at Revelation 12:9 again. John also calls the dragon “the
deceiver of the whole world.” In John 8:44 Jesus says of Satan “there is no
truth in him. When he lies he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar
and the father of lies.” And he would like to lie to you, if you would listen
to him. He’d like to lure you back, you saints of God. You, who were born the
Devil’s slaves because our parents fell and took us with them, but whom God
bought back by the blood of Jesus. You would consider going back to your old
master when he calls. And he does come calling for you. He has that sweet
alluring voice that pulls on your ear, or your eye, or your heart. Do not
shackle yourselves to him again because he will
be thrown down in the end. He has been cast out of heaven by Michael and we are
assured that he will one day be thrown into the lake of fire.
Ok,
we asked, “who is the dragon?” and now we have to ask, “who is Michael?” What
do we know about him? We can start with his name. It means either “Who is like
God?” or “He who is like God.”
In
Revelation 12 he is shown leading the armies of God’s angels. You see this in a
lot of Christian art: Michael as the commander of the armies of the Lord.
If
we back up a bit in the Bible we meet Michael in Jude 9. Jude is not a book we
read very often probably but it holds a clue to figuring out who Michael is. In
verse nine Jude writes, “But when the archangel Michael contending with the
devil was disputing about the body of Moses he did not presume to pronounce a
blasphemous judgment but said, ‘The Lord rebuke you.’”
The
first thing we notice is that Michael is called an archangel. Tradition assigns
that term to other angels, but this is the only time it is used in Scripture.
This is apparently a title and simply means “lord of angels.”
Second
we notice that Michael is again contending with the devil – this time over the
body of Moses. This is the back-story to Deuteronomy 34. Maybe you remember it.
Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. He died outside of it and God
buried him so that his body was hidden. Perhaps the devil wanted to instigate
some sort of idolatry with Moses’ body. We don’t know. All we know is that
Michael defeated him in that combat.
In
Jude, Michael said to the devil “The Lord rebuke you.” Where have we heard that
before? It’s the exact phrase God uses to chastise Satan when he accuses Joshua
in Zechariah 3, the passage we looked at earlier. Isn’t that curious?
Michael
also shows up in our Old Testament reading. In Daniel 10, Michael rescues an
angel from the prince of Persia. In Daniel 12, Daniel is told that Michael will
rise at the time of greatest trouble. Here he is again fighting the forces of
the devil on behalf of God’s people. He is called “one of the chief princes”
and “the great prince who has charge of your people.”
Those
are all the places in the Bible where Michael is named. But he shows up in at
least one other place. It’s in the book of Joshua. Joshua was getting ready to
take Jericho. He was outside the camp and he met a man with a drawn sword in
his hand. Joshua challenges him. “Are you for us or for our adversaries?” he
asks. In response the stranger replies, “No; but I am the commander of the army
of the LORD.” That’s Michael’s title remember? Commander of the armies of the
Lord. When Joshua hears this he falls down and worships him.
Which
is weird. Because we don’t worship angels. That’s forbidden.
My
contention is that the reason Joshua worships the commander of the armies of
the Lord is because that commander is none other than Jesus. Who is it that
commands the angels as arch-angel? Jesus. Who is it that defeats our enemy the
devil? Jesus. Who is like God – the
meaning of Michael’s name? Jesus.
Jaroslav
Pelikan, the great church historian, wrote that when, long ago, everyone else
wanted to deny Christ’s divinity Rome held on to it… and then lost Him in a
cloud of saints. The Lutheran reformers saw the truth of this. They cleared out
the saints’ days that crowded the Church calendar and clouded out Jesus from
the view of the people. But they left us Michaelmas. And look. The colors on
the altar are white. Who remembers the other white festivals? They are the
great Christological feasts: Easter, Christmas, Epiphany. And The Festival of
St. Michael and All Angels.
I’m
not alone in coming to the conclusion that Michael is Jesus. Luther did too.
Still, you can disagree. A recent edition of the Lutheran Witness carried an article saying Michael is only an
angel. This is an example of true adiaphora – a matter of Christian freedom.
And
in the end, whether you think Michael is Jesus or not, it doesn’t really change
the Good News for you. Through Michael or as Michael, Jesus has defeated Satan,
our accuser.
That’s
what this passage is all about. And that has consequences for you. Look at how
Jesus puts it in the gospel reading. When the seventy disciples come back they
are excited. “Even the demons are subject to us in your name!” they cry. Jesus
says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you
authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the
enemy and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that
the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in
heaven."
Satan’s
fall is not all we celebrate. We celebrate that our names are written in
heaven.
It
is true Satan still roams this earth. He knows that his time is short. He is
like a man falling, flailing about, desperately grabbing at something, anything
that might save him. Be wary of him. But you need not fear him. Remember the
words of the great voice in our Revelation reading, “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!”
So
rejoice. Not only that Satan is thrown down, but rejoice that you have been
given the blood of the Lamb. Right here at this table. Rejoice that you are
given the Word of testimony the Word of God. Rejoice, and as pastor will say in
just a moment, “sing with the angels and archangels and all the company of
heaven, holy, holy, holy! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!
Hosanna in the highest!”
And the peace of God which
surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ
Jesus.
SOLI DEO GLORIA
