Revelation 20:4-6

April 25, 2021

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 19:15 in the audio file.

Series: Just Conquer #55

Introduction

The study of the end times is not just a study of prophecies but of promises. The result of such study is not just (hopefully) a more detailed accuracy about what is going to happen but a deepened hope in what God is going to cause to happen. He is a God of promises, a God of hope, and He is always faithful to His Word.

From the beginning of our study in the book of Revelation I have maintained that the major “problem” with Revelation, if it really should be called a problem, is that all the things John saw and wrote about have not happened exactly the way that John saw and wrote about. All of the approaches to the Apocalypse wrestle with this fact and propose different ways of handling it.

But this is a larger problem than the descriptions and promises found in the last book of the Bible. There were many promises in the Old Testament that were fulfilled when Christ came, but not all of them. Jesus Himself taught about some things that have not happened yet, and this is a feature not a bug in the Bible. In this dispensation we live by faith not by sight. However much God’s Word provides understanding, the point is that we should believe whatever God says. Learn the lessons He teaches, including the lesson of leaning on Him and not our own understanding. He is faithful.

God has given a lot of revelation about His reign on earth. He is sovereign by nature, cannot be anything but sovereign, and this is more certain than a triangle having three sides. God rules, has ruled, and will rule. Before He ascended Jesus said that all authority had been given to Him by the Father (Matthew 28:18), and He sits at the Father’s right hand (Hebrews 12:2). This God who rules is the God who reveals the His rule will be embodied on earth, and “the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:9). God promised such a kingdom to Abram (Genesis 17:1-8), that would come through Judah (Genesis 49:8-10), as a son of David (2 Samuel 7:12-16). There would be a King to rule over all the earth from His throne in Jerusalem.

This has not happened yet.

That reality has been variously explained, and there are two broad categories of explanation. It is happening, but in a spiritual sense, or it will happen more than in this spiritual sense.

If we are going to give ourselves to serve this God, if we are going to follow the commands of Christ, if we are not going to be ashamed of Him and His words, if we are going to refuse compromise with the world, if we are going to suffer as those who believe in Him without seeing Him, we ought to give full attention to what He says about what He’s going to do. It is not an overstatement to call His promises an issue of life or death.

Last Lord’s Day we considered John’s vision about the binding of the devil for a thousand years (Revelation 20:1-3). While it is supernatural, it is not fanciful or fictional. The purpose and duration of Satan’s time in the pit relates to this next paragraph (20:4-6) which views the thousand years without the devil’s deceiving work among the nations.

There are significant interpretive questions about these three verses. There is significant disagreement, with downstream implications, about the interpretation of these verses. Let’s reread them and see what promises there are to be celebrated.

> Then I saw thrones, and seated on them were those to whom the authority to judge was committed. Also, I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshipped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years. The rest of the dead did not come to life until the [...]