06/14/2026 – Blank Outline
Revelation 20:7-10
All right, thank you for your singing. If you’ll remain standing, we’re going to read some scripture this morning. This is Revelation chapter 20, verses 7 through 10.
Spoiler alert, if you haven’t read the whole Bible, this is the end of the story. So sorry to spoil it for some of you, but this is some great truths here from Revelation chapter 20. Here’s what the Apostle John writes, when the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, and to gather them for battle.
In number they are like the sand on the seashore. They marched across the breadth of the earth and surrounding the camp of God’s people, the city he loves. But fire came down from heaven and devoured them.
And the devil who deceived them was thrown into the lake of burning sulfur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.
Well, if you have been with us, you’ll know we’re in a series about the promises of God. And we launched this about five weeks ago, thinking about what is it in life that can give us an anchor for the soul, as Hebrews 6:19 says. In this world of turmoil, where can we find something that is steadfast in our lives? And it comes to the promises of God. All of us in life have experienced broken promises.
But the great thing about the promises of God is that God’s promises are trustworthy. Titus 1:2 says, we serve a God who cannot lie. So, every promise in the book will come to fruition.
And when we started to look at these promises, we said there’s some key questions we need to ask. To whom is the promise given? Because not every promise in God’s word is for us. So, we need to understand that context.
We also need to understand, is this a conditional promise or an unconditional promise? In other words, do I have to do something to receive this promise? And so, with that in mind, we’ve looked at so far four different promises. The first one was strength for the weary from Isaiah chapter 40, verse 31. It was really given to the nation of Israel when they were in Babylonian captivity for 70 years.
And God promised them, if you put your hope and trust in me, I will renew your strength. You’ll mount up with wings as eagles. You’ll walk and not be weary.
You’ll run and not faint. Renewed strength. The second promise we looked at was the promise of peace.
And we talked about living in 3D because the Bible talks about three kinds of peace. The first and the most important one is peace with God. That comes when we receive Jesus Christ as our Savior.
Therefore, being justified by faith, we have peace with God. Before that, the Bible says we’re enemies of God. And so that first important step of making our peace treaty with God through the shed blood of Jesus on the cross to pay for our sin debt is the vital step.
But then there’s the peace of God. This is the promise in Philippians 4:6, and 7. It starts out with a command. Do not be anxious about anything.
In other words, it says, stop worrying. Easier said than done when life hits hard. But what are we to do? But in everything, with prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.
We could paraphrase, don’t worry about anything. Pray about everything. Here’s the promise, the peace of God that surpasses understanding.
We’ll fill our hearts, that’s our emotions, our minds in Christ Jesus. I need that promise on a daily basis. I don’t know about you.
So, peace with God, the peace of God. The third promise of living in 3D with peace is peace with others. That’s from Romans chapter 12, verse 16.
It says, as much as lies in you, live at peace with others. It also indicates it’s not always possible to do that, but the Bible gives us some instructions on how to get along with one another and live at peace with one another. We looked at the promise of provision.
Now, God is our provider. A couple of Sundays ago, last Sunday, we looked at the promise of power that God has given us some resources to live the Christian life, not in our own strength, but it was the power of a person, the Holy Spirit who lives within us when we receive Christ as our Savior, the power of prayer. James 5:16 says, the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
We’ve got this wonderful tool called prayer that we can access anytime, 24/7, go right into the presence of the creator of the universe and pray to him. And then lastly, we talked about the power of the prophetic word or the scriptures. This morning, we’re going to think about our last promise, and I hope you’ll be encouraged by this, and it’s the promise of victory, the promise of victory.
Probably the most frequent storyline in literature, movies, and TV is the storyline of good versus evil. It’s found in westerns, it’s found in movies, it’s the theme of many, many books. In fact, one author writes, the good versus evil theme is one of the most enduring universal motifs in storytelling, appearing in literature, film, and television across cultures and eras.
It represents a moral struggle between opposing forces, light and darkness, order and chaos, justice and injustice. It is the most universal storyline in literature and movies. The good guys versus the bad guys.
In the western, it’s the guy with white hat versus the guy with a black hat. But I want you to know this morning that the original storyline of good versus evil comes from where? Guess what? It comes from the Bible. And it’s found very, very early in scripture.
Main truth- For Christians, our ultimate victory has already been won!
And so, here’s our main truth this morning that we want to think about. For Christians, if you know Jesus Christ as your savior, this is our encouragement. Our ultimate victory has already been won.
It’s already been secured for us. And so, the good news is that we’re already on the winning side. So, let’s begin to look at this storyline in the Bible as it unfolds.
And guess where it starts? Way back in Genesis chapter 3, at the very beginning of creation. And so let me set the context. And if you want to turn your Bibles to Genesis chapter 3, we’re going to be there in just a little bit.
So here is the background of Genesis chapter 3. We know creation, Genesis 1, Genesis 2. God spoke this world into existence. Nine times you read the phrase in Genesis 1, and God said, let there be light. There was light.
He created this world by speaking it into existence. And he forms man out of the dust of the ground. Then he forms Eve.
He places them in the Garden of Eden. And they’re living in a perfect world, in a perfect environment. Adam’s the caretaker of the garden.
And then along comes the storyline in Genesis chapter 2. And Satan comes along and begins to question God’s goodness, questions the Word of God, questions what he said. God gave Adam an even perfect freedom to eat of any tree from the garden except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And we know that that’s what they did.
They ate of that fruit. And all of a sudden, the world has changed. And sin comes into the world.
And death comes into the world. And God begins to pronounce some judgments, some people would call them curses, as a result of sin. All right, now life has changed.
And let’s just look at them in Genesis chapter 3. And then we’re going to get to our key verse there in 15. So, here’s God pronouncing some judgments because of the sin in the garden to the woman, to Eve. He said, I will make your pains in childbearing very severe.
With painful labor you will give birth to children. And all the mothers said, amen. Oh, all of a sudden now, pain in childbirth.
I’ve sat through and watched my wife go through those. And I was clueless when our first son was born, who happens to be here this morning, and like 23 and a half hours of labor. And I snuck out and called my good buddy like; this is really hard.
He already had two children. He’s like, yeah, what’d you think? Yeah, I had no clue. So, there’s pain in childbirth.
That’s the result of the fall. Your desire will be for your husband and he will rule over you. Now you read that in initial reading and it’s like, oh wow, the desire, the woman’s desire is going to be for me.
That’s not what it’s talking about. It’s meaning now there’s going to be a battle of the sexes for control. And while God has given headship to the husband, there’s going to be a battle for control.
And that’s the result of the fall. So now to Adam, verse 17, to Adam he said, here it is, I’m just reading scripture, because you listened to your wife, because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you must not eat from, cursed is the ground because of you, through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It’ll produce thorns and thistles and you will eat the plants of the field.
And so, here’s the curse on man. Now work’s going to be hard. Now gardening’s not going to be as easy because there’s going to be thorns and thistles and weeds and labor and work is going to be much harder now because of the fall.
So work wasn’t given as a result of the fall. God had already given Adam a job, a responsibility, but the result of the fall is now it’s going to be tough. Now it’s going to be harder.
i. The protoevangelium
But what we want to really look at is verses 14 and 15, and let’s just go to the first point in our outline here about the promise of victory. And here’s the first truth. It’s called the protoevangelium.
Now what does that word mean? I had to look it up as well. It’s a theological term. Proto means first, evangelism means gospel, good news.
This is the first good news. This is the first picture and glimpse of the overall storyline of the Bible that is given to us here in Genesis 3:14 and 15. So let me read it and then we’ll try to understand it.
So, here’s the curse on Satan. Back to 14 and 15. So the Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals.
You will crawl on your belly and will eat dust. So, Satan came as a serpent. Now the serpent is going to slither on the ground.
Maybe that indicates, and this is just sanctified speculation, maybe Satan and snakes were upright and had legs and walked. I don’t know. But now you’re going to crawl on your belly.
And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel. So, let’s unpack that because it can be confusing.
What does that verse mean? What does God mean when he says to Satan that he will crush your head and you will strike his heel? Who’s he referring to? So, I’m going to read part of this because this is an explanation from a great website that I use frequently, Got Questions. So, if you have any questions in the Bible, go to gotquestions.org and there’s about 15,000 questions, pretty much any question you would ask. So, I don’t want to promote that too much or you’ll think my job’s not needed.
But here’s what Got Questions has to say. The woman spoken of here is Eve. The perpetual war Satan wages against humanity began in the Garden of Eden.
So, it says, I’m going to put enmity between you and the woman. So, there’s going to be a lifelong battle between good and evil. Paul reminds us of that in Ephesians chapter 6, that your enemy is not flesh and blood, but it’s a spiritual enemy.
It’s against Satan and the forces of darkness. There is an indication of number in Genesis 3:15 that we cannot overlook. The woman’s offspring is denoted by a singular noun translated seed in the King James.
That word is the substantive for singular pronouns translated he and his. So, the seed of the woman is an individual. There was one seed in particular who is to come, the soul tempter will be countered by the soul savior.
So, the scripture says he, refers first to Christ, will crush your head, Satan, and you, Satan, will strike his heel. Also, Genesis 3:15 speaks of the seed of a woman rather than the seed of man. That’s a little unusual.
When we think of seed, we would obviously think of male. The unusual wording indicates that the woman’s offspring would not have an earthly father. In that case, the protoevangelium is certainly fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
The enmity spoken of in Genesis 3:15 is ultimately between Satan and Christ. Satan bruised the heel of the Savior when Jesus was crucified. But the story doesn’t end there.
On the third day, Jesus rose from the dead. In doing so, he crushed the power of Satan’s sin and death. He crushed the serpent’s head.
Jesus is the seed of the woman who has won the victory over the tempter and enemy of mankind. So here Genesis 3:15 lays out very early the first gospel. Satan, you are going to strike the heel of Jesus.
He’s going to suffer a blow. And that happened on the cross. And Satan thought he had won.
But guess what? Jesus, you’re going to crush his head and you’re going to have ultimate victory. So, would you rather suffer a blow to the heel or a blow to the head? Well, a blow to the head can be fatal. And that’s the picture here of the first gospel presentation, the protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15. And so Romans 16:20, the apostle Paul writes, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
And there’s a time coming, and we read about it in our scripture reading, Revelation chapter 20, where Satan’s destiny is doomed and settled. And in the meantime, he’s trying to do as much damage as he can. So, this battle between good and evil plays itself out all through scripture.
You begin to see it in the Old Testament, the story of Esther, where the story of Esther is that there’s a man who wants to destroy the entire race of Jewish people. And we know that the promised seed, the promised Messiah, is to come through what? The line of Abraham. And so, if you wipe out all the Jews, then there’s no Messiah.
And you read the story of Esther and you realize the sovereignty of God and the providence of God. And Queen Esther is a Jew. And now Queen Esther is facing a decision that could cost her life.
And she speaks up and she says, if you’re going to kill all the Jews, you’re also going to have to kill the queen. And the whole script is flipped. And rather than killing all the Jews, you read the book of Esther, the person that came up with this plot ends up dying.
But Esther says, maybe God has put me in this position as queen for such a time as this. And so, Esther bravely spoke up and saved the Jewish nation. And I forget the name of the holiday, but the Orthodox Jews celebrate this holiday every year, the story of Esther.
How about move to the New Testament? Jesus is born and King Herod hears about this king that’s been born in Bethlehem. And he gives a proclamation and he gives a command and an edict. I want you to kill every baby boy in the Bethlehem in the vicinity that is two years old and under.
Put them to death. Now who’s behind all this to try to stop the Messiah from coming? It’s Satan. It’s this battle between good and evil.
And we know that Joseph and Mary were warmed in a dream, so they leave Bethlehem and they go down to Egypt and God protects them. And I can’t imagine the pain that those families in Bethlehem of young boys went through. So that’s the first picture of the gospel.
ii. The promise fulfilled
It’s in Genesis 3:15. So let’s look at the promise fulfilled. And we don’t have to spend much time on this because here’s this promise in Genesis 3:15. And it’s spoken of all throughout the Old Testament. Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14, behold, a virgin will conceive and will bear a son.
His name will be called Emmanuel, God with us. Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6, this is all 700 years before Jesus came. The prophet Isaiah talks about a child being born, a son given.
He’ll be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace, the greatness of his government and peace there shall be no end. Isaiah 53 gives us the picture that this Messiah is going to be a suffering, Messiah. He’s going to have to come first and suffer pain and go to the cross.
And eventually he’s going to come back as king. Now the Jewish nation, a lot of people misunderstood that when the Messiah was born, they thought he was going to come and deliver them from Roman oppression. And that’s not the purpose of why he came the first time.
And so, there’s all these promises that the Messiah is going to come, the one who’ll be the rescuer, the one who will be the deliverer, the one who will be our Savior. In fact, his very name that was given to be given to him, Matthew chapter 1 verse 21, she will give birth to a son, you are to give his name Jesus, because what he will save his people from their sins. And so, the end of the Old Testament, there’s 400 silent years where there’s no prophet speaking.
Imagine that, 400 years where there’s no revelation, there’s no message from God. And finally, after 400 years, John the Baptist comes on the scene, the forerunner of the Messiah. John the Baptist is born and then Jesus arrives and he sees Jesus and he says in John 1:29, behold the Lamb of God.
In verse 35, here’s the Lamb of God that’s going to take away the sin of the world. And that Old Testament sacrificial system of constantly offering a lamb as a covering for our sins, this is going to be a once and for all sacrifice, never needed to be repeated again. And so, the promise of victory was fulfilled when Jesus came.
iii. The victory proclamation
And very briefly this morning, I want to get to our third point, and it’s the victory proclamation, the victory proclaimed, because as I said, our ultimate victory has already been won. John chapter 19, let’s read it, verses 28 and through 30. Some of you are happy for the rain that’s falling.
Here’s Jesus. He’s on the cross. He spoke seven times.
Thank you, Lord. Let me read the passage here. Later, knowing that everything had now been finished and so that scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, I’m thirsty.
A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of a hyssop plant and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. When he had received the drink, Jesus said, translated in English here, but the Aramaic proclamation, and it says he said it in a loud voice. He made a victory cry.
He said, Tetelestai, it is finished. The sacrifice has been paid. It was a declaration of victory.
And three days later, Jesus conquered sin and death and the grave and rose again, and the victory had been secured. Well, this morning, we want to think about three or four applications for our lives. What does this mean? How should it affect our lives, June 14, 2026? The fact that if you put your faith in Jesus, you’re on the winning side.
iv. The practical application- because our ultimate victory has been won…
Victory has already been won, so let’s look at four truths here, and then we’ll wrap this up. Here’s the first one. Because our ultimate victory has been won through what Jesus did in conquering sin, death, and the grave.
1. I can experience peace in the midst of turmoil
Because our ultimate victory has been won, I can experience peace in the midst of turmoil and life in a fallen world. Because the ultimate victory has been won, I can experience peace in this crazy world in which we live. In all that’s going on politically in our world, in all that’s going on over in the Middle East, and all that’s going on in our individual lives and the challenges, we can experience peace even in the midst of turmoil because our ultimate victory has been won.
And Jesus said in John 16:33, in this world you will have trouble. He warned us then. He said, hey, we live in a fallen world.
We live in a sinful world, and you will have trouble. But then the second part of the verse says, but take heart because I have overcome the world. And so, no matter what you’re facing today in life circumstances, whether it’s a physical challenge, a relationship challenge, an economic challenge, we can put one word on it, and it’s called the word temporary.
It was Mark Lowry who said his most favorite verse in all the Bible is, and it came to pass. It came to pass. And so, we can have peace in the midst of turmoil.
We can go through difficulty and pain because we know that God has a purpose, and that ultimately the victory has been won. The victory’s been won. Book of First Peter, the whole theme written to believers who were left their homeland because of persecution, the whole theme is pain with a purpose, pain with a purpose.
Here’s how Moses played this out in his life. You know the story Moses ends up in Pharaoh’s household in Egypt, and in Hebrews 11 it says, by faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He could have exercised all these privileges as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but he made a choice.
He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. So, Moses made a conscious choice. Yeah, life’s going to be more painful, but I’m going to choose to do things God’s way.
2. I can focus my life on the external not the temporal
And so, we can experience peace even in the midst of tribulation. Here’s the second one. Because our ultimate victory has been won, I can focus my life on the eternal, not the temporal.
I can focus my life on the eternal, not the temporal. Randy Alcorn in his book, The Treasure Principle, puts it this way. Are you living for the dot, which is our brief time here on the planet? Or are you living for the line? And the line represents what? Eternity.
Where is your focus? Where are your priorities? So, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 6, do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, where thieves break in and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. So, Jesus says, I want you to live with eternal values in view.
There are only three things that are going to last forever. Maybe there’s a fourth one, but I’ve only come up with three. God’s eternal.
God’s word is eternal. And the souls of people are eternal. And so, here’s the story of, in Luke chapter 12, when Jesus was teaching and somebody came up and said, hey, can you settle an argument? Our family’s arguing over an inheritance.
Imagine, imagine that. And Jesus tells a story about a man who lived for today and just lived for material things. And now he’s all set to enjoy his life.
Take life easy. I’m going to eat and drink and just enjoy the fruits of my labor. And he’s called a fool because God says, tonight your soul is going to be required of you.
And who shall these things be? So, so is it the same truth about a person who is rich in this world, but isn’t rich toward God. And so, we need to live for eternity. It’s amazing how quickly life can change in a moment.
I follow a little bit of NASCAR with Kyle Busch, NASCAR driver that passed away a couple of weeks ago, was sick, sepsis sent in, sepsis set in, and Kyle Busch went out into eternity at the age of 46. A few months prior to that, Greg Biffle, successful NASCAR driver and his family were on a plane and going to make a visit somewhere. And that plane never made it.
Friday, there was a church in Virginia that was celebrating their 20th anniversary. They had a huge tent set up, an outdoor service. There were like 900 people there.
The weather was getting a little challenging. And so, the pastor got up and he was just about to say, we need to make our ways to the car because the weather was getting bad. And just then a huge gust of wind took up this huge tent that had been professionally put in with huge stakes in the ground, lifted that up.
And as it blew off those metal stakes, unfortunately hit some of the people that were there. 20 people injured and one part of that church family went home to be with the Lord instantly that day. And so, the importance of knowing our eternal destiny and living for eternity.
3. I no longer need to fear death
All right, here’s number three and it gets better because of ultimate victory has already been won. Here’s the third truth. Because the ultimate victory has already been won, I no longer need to fear death.
Don’t need to fear death anymore. The process of death, maybe in our humanness, but we no longer need to fear death. That’s why Jesus came.
Hebrews 2:14, since we have flesh and blood, Jesus shared in our humanity so that by his death, he might break the power of him who holds the power of death that is the devil and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. And so, Hebrews says, Jesus came so that we no longer have to fear what? Death and dying. Paul calls it our ultimate enemy in 1st Corinthians 15.
Our ultimate enemy is death. And Jesus came. If you know Jesus, your savior, you no longer have to fear death.
Pastor and author Tim Keller, who I believe is in the presence of the Lord in the last year or so, made this statement. All death can do to Christians is to make their life infinitely better. All death can do to Christians is to make their life infinitely better.
So, Dr. Erwin Lutzer writes in his book, Vanishing the Power of Death, Conquering Your Greatest Fear. Let me read this quote here. Every year in the United States, about 3.3 million people die.
Divide that number by 365, and you’ll discover that approximately 6,400 people in the United States die every day. He goes on to write, death comes to all of us, rich and poor, famed and unsung. No matter how powerful or celebrated we may be, we cannot escape the fact of dying.
It is said that the great Louis XIV of France would not allow the word death to be uttered in his presence. Louis reigned for 72 years, longer than any other European monarch. He built the glittering palace of Versailles, but on September 1st, 1715, he discovered what all of us must, that death cannot be wished out of existence.
And so, Jesus has come so that we no longer have to fear death. And Paul writes about that in the great resurrection chapter in 1st Corinthians chapter 15. I’m sure you’re familiar with it, but let me just read some great, great words from 1st Corinthians 15, the resurrection chapter.
It says, for the perishable must clothe itself of imperishable, the mortal with immortality. And when that has happened, then the saying that is written will come true. Death has been swallowed up in victory.
And then the apostle Paul writes in verse 55, almost like he’s shaking his fists at death. Where, oh death, is your victory? Where, oh death, is your sting? But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through the Lord Jesus Christ. And so, Jesus conquered sin, Satan, death, and the grave, and we don’t have to fear death as a believer.
4. I live with hope in a future resurrection and reunion
Here’s the last one that should encourage our hearts because the ultimate victory has been won. Number four, I can live with hope in a future resurrection and reunion. I can live with hope in a future resurrection and reunion.
And so, this is the great comforting truth of 1st Thessalonians 4, that section there where Paul had ministered to the church at Thessalonica, people had come to know Christ, there was a church that was established there. And then some of their loved ones were dying and they had some questions like, what’s going to happen to them? And are they going to miss the second coming of Christ? And so, Paul explains in 1st Thessalonians 4:13 through 18, the rapture, that Christ is going to return someday. And it’s called the meeting in the air.
Christ returns and what happens? The trumpet will sound and the dead in Christ, those that have died in Jesus, are going to be raised. They come out of their grave. There’s going to be a meeting in the air.
And it says, then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. There’s going to be a resurrection and there’s going to be a reunion. And so, the great encouragement for us is that for family and friends who have gone on before us, who have put their faith in Jesus as their Savior, Paul says, don’t grieve like those that have no hope.
Yes, we’re going to grieve and we’re going to sorrow. But guess what? We have hope because we will see those loved ones again someday. Those were the closing words that my dad said as we stood around my mom’s casket in 1981.
And they’re getting ready to close the casket and usher the casket into Emanuel Baptist Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana for her funeral service. And as our family was standing there and the casket was going to be closed, I’ll always remember my dad’s last words. We will see her again someday.
This is not the end because we have hope. We have victory in Jesus. I hope you know him as your Savior.
I hope that gives you encouragement that the ultimate victory has been won. We’re on the winning side. Praise God for that.
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