The Woes of Evil – 18

I would rather learn from others’ mistakes than from my own. What about you?

“We have a great need to see evil for what it is.”[1] “As we study John’s vision and observe the armies of darkness battling in the future, we can better understand how similar spirits of wickedness try to torment us today.”[2] As we look to the future, we need to let it affect us today.

Revelation 9

God is sovereign over evil. God allows evil, and uses evil for good purposes, but he doesn’t cause evil. We will see this more throughout this message, but it is true throughout the Bible, it is true throughout the world, and it is true in your life.

Revelation 9:1-5

This passage refers to Satan and his actions.[3] The statement in verse 1 is similar to Luke 10:18 where Jesus says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” Danny Akin says about this, “Lucifer, the star of the morning, son of the dawn (Is 14:12), the anointed cherub (Ezek 28:14), was cast out to God’s presence and heaven’s glory when sin was found in his heart. Now as we move toward history’s climax, he is allowed a diabolical freedom on the earth that he was previously denied.”[4] Since Satan is so prominent here and going forward, we need to see some things about him. He’s been mischaracterized over the years. He’s seen as this big red man will horns and a pitchfork who rules over hell and is in a back-and-forth battle with God since the beginning. That’s not reality.

Satan is not all-powerful. God has to give him the key to the bottomless pit, just like God had to allow him permission to afflict Job (Job 1:12). God dictates what Satan and other demons are allowed to do and not to do. There is a limitation on what they can do. They can torment, but they can’t kill. And we see in these passage a limitation on their time—five months.

“The normal life span of a locust was approximately from May to September, or five months.”[5] These locusts that come out from the abyss[6] are likely demons. And they flood the earth, causing harm, tormenting mankind “spiritually, physically, and in every other way conceivable.”[7]

Satan is not to be followed. If you don’t follow God, you follow Satan. That sounds harsh, but it’s biblical. When the Apostle Peter was saying he won’t let Jesus be killed, Jesus shouted at him, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Matt 16:23). Jesus says earlier, “Whoever is not with me is against me” (Matt 12:30).

Satan inflicts those without the mark of God on their foreheads. I love how Jim Hamilton explains this:

“Back in 7:3 it was the servants of God who were sealed, and we see in the letters to the seven churches in chapters 2, 3 the kinds of things the servants of God suffer. But no matter how bad it gets, when the scorpion-like locusts show up, you want to be among the servants of God! You want to have the seal of God on your forehead. Satan will try to counterfeit this seal with the number of the beast, and he’ll try to make life miserable for those who don’t have the mark of the beast (13:16-18). Revelation shows us that we definitely want the seal of God on our forehead, not the mark of the beast. God makes the servants of Satan miserable in chapter 9, and Satan makes the servants of God miserable in chapters 2, 3. God will comfort and sustain his servants, but Satan will only abuse and abhor his. You don’t want to serve Satan.”[8]

We need to see the woes of evil and its harsh judgments in order to fuel our fight against those evils now.

Revelation 9:6

Can you imagine being tortured so severely that you seek to die but can’t? Listen to how John MacArthur paints a picture of the magnitude of what will happen.

“So intense will be the torment inflicted on unbelievers that in those days (the five months of v. 5) men will seek death and will not find it; they will long to die, and death flees from them. All hope is gone; there will be no tomorrow. The earth people have loved and worshiped will have been utterly devastated, the land ravaged by earthquakes, f