The Millennial Kingdom

If you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, turn to Revelation chapter 20.
We are getting near the end. For those of you who are with us for the first time,
we've been going through the book of Revelation for a little over a year now, and
we are in the remaining chapters, the last few chapters of this book describing the
last day, the day when the Lord returns. And Revelation 20 is one of the most
controversial passages of Scripture in all of the Bible. This is an area where
scholars, good men who love the Lord, who believe in the authority and sufficiency
and the infallibility and the heresy of God's Word, they see these verses
differently. And not just slightly differently, they see them in two very different,
or three very different, or four very different, there are very different directions
you can go in when you get to this passage. And I think as I look at this,
the path diverges based on a couple of questions that you face when you get to a
passage like this. And the two questions that send people in different directions are
what in these verses, or for that matter in the whole book of Revelation, what
should we understand as
symbolic or metaphorical and what should we understand as being literal or the plain
meaning of what it says. How you answer that question is going to send you into
very different directions. When you read about something in Revelation, you read about
a dragon and you have to say, "Is that a real dragon or is that a picture of
something else?" And depending on how you answer that is going to take you in two
different directions. Now let me just say everybody who comes to the book of
Revelation recognizes that there are metaphors and symbols in this book. There's
nobody who thinks you need to take it all exactly literally. But the question is
how much do you take symbolically and how much do you take literally? Depending on
how you answer that, you'll wind up in different places. The second question with
Revelation is, as you read the book, should you be seeing these events laid out
sequentially or chronologically? Or do you see them as an art gallery where you're
seeing paintings out of time, visions that may overlap, recapitulation is the word
that I've been using. So you see something here and then it's brought up a few
chapters later, it's not talking about something that happened later, it's talking
about the same event, you're just seeing it from a different angle. Depending on how
you answer that, we'll take you in different directions. If you conclude that the
default for revelation should be to understand these passages literally, unless there's
a compelling reason to understand them metaphorically, that'll take you one direction.
If you conclude, as I have done, that revelation is a different kind of book than
Romans or Ephesians or the Gospel of Luke or the book of Acts. And as you read
it, you ought to interpret many of these things. Metaphors are dominant in this
book. Symbols are dominant. If you come to that conclusion, that will take you in a
different direction. If you see Revelation laid out in chronological order and you
see events following one another. So the seals are opened and then the trumpets are
sounded and then the bowls are poured out, that will take you in one direction. If
you see it as I do, that the seals and the bowls and the trumpets are all
describing the same events from different perspectives, that'll take you in a
different direction. And when we get to Revelation 20, these choices about symbols
and metaphors, or the choices about chronology come into play, because we're reading
in these verses about God binding Satan for a thousand years. That's the big idea
of the verses we're going to look at this morning. Now, is this something that
happens after what happened in chapter 19? Or are we coming back and looking at the
same event from a different perspective? And what does it mean that Satan is bound
and a thousand years? Is that a thousand literal years or is that something else.
So you can see the interpretive challenges that are at play here. Let me just say
at the start that the people who go in different directions are people who love the
Lord and trust God's word and believe in the authority of God's word. I want to
make sure we understand that. And it's okay to go in different directions and we
can do that and we can agree to disagree amicably because these are not primary
issues. Now listen, they're important issues and it's important for us to dig into
it, but they're not primary issues so that good people can be united in Christ and
divided on their interpretation of this passage. That's important for us to
understand. So with that as our preamble, let me read the first six verses in
Revelation chapter 20, we're only going to look at the first three this morning, but
I want to read these first six verses. Let me pray again for our time as we do
that. Father, we need Your help. I need Your help. We need the Spirit to be our
guide and our teacher. And Lord, we know that as we come to these verses that good
and godly people
Seeking the leading of your spirit have come away with different conclusions. So we
understand that that can be the case, and yet we ask that your spirit would speak
to us today and give us wisdom, insight, clarity. But most of all,
Lord, we want to understand from these verses how we should live rightly before You
in response to what we read here this morning. So help us not just to be hearers
of The Word helped us not just to be an intellectual exercise for us, but help us
to be focused today on what your Spirit would say to us through your Word. We ask
it in Jesus' name, amen.
Revelation 20, beginning at verse 1, you follow as I read, "This is God's Word for
God's people." "Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven,
holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain.
And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent who is the devil and Satan,
and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit and shut it and
sealed it over him so that he might not deceive the nations any longer until the
thousand years were ended. After that he must be released for a little while.
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 those who had not worshiped the
beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or on 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 thousand years were ended.
This is the first resurrection. "Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the
first resurrection. Over such the second death has no power, but they will be
priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with him for a thousand years."
Amen. May God bless this reading of his word. The grass withers and the flower
fades. The word of our God will last forever. When we started Revelation back a
year ago, I had people who said to me, "What are you going to do when you get
chapter 20?" I mean, what are you going to do with chapter 20? And my answer to
them was, "I don't know what I'm going to do with chapter 2 yet, so give me some
time. I'll know what I'm going to do with chapter 20 when I get to chapter 20."
That's how I've been going through this. I've had enough trouble figuring out Each
of the chapters going through this and studying this, but I'm at chapter 20 I was
able to get into three verses of it this week. So let me tell you where we are
with those three verses I'm gonna map out where we're going with these three verses
this morning first We're gonna look at the four ways that Bible students have
generally come to interpret These verses specifically the idea of the thousand years,
or the millennium. Because, as I said, what you conclude about the millennial rule
and reign of Jesus will shape how you understand not only this passage, but much of
revelation and this combined with other Old Testament, New Testament passages will
give you an idea of what the Bible is telling us about the day of the Lord. And
I'm going to show you, once I've taken you through the four verses, I'm going to
show you where I land when it comes to my understanding of this thousand -year reign
of Christ, this millennial reign. And I'll show you from Scripture where I also land
when it comes to my understanding of what it means that Satan is bound during that
thousand -year period. And then I'm going to wrap up by affirming some things that
we can all agree on even if we see those two issues differently. So let's look at
the four primary ways that people understand what Revelation 20 is talking about when
it talks about Jesus ruling and reigning for a thousand years together with his
saints. There are four primary ways that this idea is talked about in the Bible or
is understood by Bible scholars. The four words, you may have heard some of these
words, there is the premillennial position, which is sometimes called historic
premillennialism. There is dispensational premillennialism,
which is a subset of the premillennial idea. There is post -millennialism,
and then there is ah -millennialism. So 'pre' means that we are living in the time
before the millennial kingdom, post means we are living in the-- or that Jesus is
going to come after the millennial kingdom. Ah millennial is an ah, is that Greek
prefix that means not. So an ah theist, an atheist, is somebody who's not atheist.
An agnostic is somebody who says, I don't have knowledge. An ah millennialist is
someone who says, I don't think The millennium is a literal thousand -year period of
time. So those are the four views.
Millennium is a thousand years, just making sure we all understand that when we talk
about the millennium. Each of these four views is describing for us how to
understand this thousand -year period, the reign of Christ on earth. And proponents of
all four of these views believe there will be a thousand year reign of Christ on
earth. They see that clearly in the verses we just read, but they differ in their
understanding of what that means and what that's going to look like. And for those
of you who are visually oriented, I've got some charts for you. You've been waiting
for your revelation charts. Here we go. The timeline charts for you. Let's look at
the premillennial view of how the world is going to end and what's going to look
like leading up to the time when Jesus returns. And each of these four views begins
at the same place, the turning point in all of human history, which is the life,
death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. So it all begins there with the cross,
which is the beginning of what's called the church age. After Jesus ascends,
God pours out His Spirit on the church in Acts chapter 2, and the church age is
begun. Everybody agrees that we're now living in the church age.
Premillennialists say that in the chapters we've been reading in Revelation, along
with Old Testament texts, they say there is a seven year period of time that comes
at the end of the church age, where there will be a time of intense persecution.
It's called the time of tribulation. So that's the next thing that a pre -millennial
says is going to happen. After the church age, there will be a seven -year period
of tribulation. And at the end of that seven -year period, Jesus will return to the
earth. Believers in Christ who have died before Jesus returns,
whose souls have been with him in heaven, they will receive their resurrected bodies
and they will come with Christ to the earth when he comes back and they will rule
with him during the Millennial Kingdom. Also during this time Satan will be bound in
a pit chained up like we just read and this will usher in a thousand -year period
the earthly Millennial Kingdom. Jesus is on earth at this point. He is ruling and
reigning. We are ruling, I'd say we saints who have gone before are ruling and
reigning with him. Satan is out of the picture so he cannot deceive or disrupt or
tempt. It is the golden age of the earth, the Millennial Kingdom. It's life on
earth as it was meant to be in the beginning. The population of the earth is
living to honor King Jesus. Now, also on earth at this time, there will be
Christians, people who came to faith during the tribulation period, and they were
still alive when Jesus came. They will live and marry and have children and populate
the earth, living in this millennial kingdom under the reign of King Jesus. And as
time passes, some of those offspring of those people who come to faith,
they will begin to turn away from God. They'll begin to drift. Satan is not in the
picture, but you can still drift without Satan because you have indwelling sin as a
human being. So some of these kids, with their indwelling sin, will follow the
desires of the flesh. They will turn away, fall away from Christ, which will lead
them to a final judgment day at the end of the thousand years with the great day
of the Lord, this day of judgment. Leading up to that final judgment day,
Satan will be unbound for a short period of time. He'll be released from bondage
for one last gasp. He and the beast and the false prophet and the kings of the
earth will be deceived, as we've read about in Revelation, which will lead to a
final battle that we've also read about, the battle of Armageddon, where the And
rulers of the world come against the people of God. This will culminate in that
battle which ends in the day of judgment. And all who have ever lived will now be
resurrected to face final judgment. The righteous will be brought into the eternal
kingdom. They will go and be with Jesus forever in eternity. The wicked will face
eternal judgment. Okay? You see the timeline laid out? This is the pre -millennial
understanding of how the world is going to come to an end. And there's a lot more
we could say about it, but that's the rough timeline pre -millennialists follow in
terms of what the Bible has to say about the last day, which just so you know,
that's the word eschatology. You may have heard that word. Eschatology means the last
things, a study of the last things. So this is the eschatological view of the pre
-millennialist. We're using a lot of multi -syllabic words, big theological words this
morning, but you're smart people, you can follow this, okay? Now the second view,
which is actually kind of a fairly recent modification of the first view, is what's
called dispensational premillennialism. And this is the view that in the United States
over the last 150 years has been the most widely accepted view of what's happening
during the end times. And that's due in large measure to the first study Bible that
was ever released, about 125 years ago, a study Bible called the Schofield Study
Bible. C .I. Schofield, the Bible scholar, put notes in the Bible. First time you
had not just the Bible text, but commentary notes right alongside of it. He was a
premillennial dispensationalist, or a pre -millennialists, and he included his
interpretation of revelation in his study notes, and people who read it and were
confused jumped down to the study notes and said, "Ah, that helps." So we had a
lot of people who, through that understanding, started to drift, they started to
embrace the idea of dispensational pre -millennialism. It also became the dominant view
of Dallas Theological Seminary, the Moody Bible Institute. In later years,
master's, seminary, master's, college, these have been institutions that have embraced
this and said this is the right way for us to understand what the Bible's talking
about, not just in Revelation, but other places. And again, like every other view,
it starts with the church age, but the event that takes place before the time of
tribulation happens on the earth, there is an event in dispensational premillennialism
before the first day of judgment comes, it's a day when the church is removed from
the earth. You've probably heard of the rapture, the church being caught up to be
with Jesus in heaven. So that's the next thing that they see happening. The final
Antichrist emerges on the world scene. Everything we've read about in Revelation 6
through 17, begins to take place during this time of tribulation. The church is
removed, and then the seven years of tribulation come in with the Antichrist and the
false prophet and the beast all having gone there. The church is with Jesus in
heaven, but what happens on earth during this tribulation period is there's a revival
among Jews. God begins to re -engage the Jews,
they begin to, they look on him whom they have pierced and mourned for him as for
an only son. There's a revival. When we read about the 144 ,000 from the tribes of
Israel, these are those who embraced the gospel during the tribulation period, which
leads to this revival and this tribulation culminates in, in persecution of the
church and in great tension, which brings us to a place at the end of the
tribulation period, a place where Jesus returns. Now remember he came in the clouds,
drew the church up to himself. Now he and the Christians come back on this day of
first judgment. Satan is bound during this time, and that leads into the thousand
-year reign of Christ, which is happening on the earth, the millennium period.
So that's similar to then what happens with traditional premillennialism. And that
then leads up to the Battle of Armageddon. It leads up to Satan being unbounded at
the end of the age, and it ushers in the eternal state, the new heavens and the
new earth for the faithful and judgment for the wicked. So It's very similar to
what we saw previously, but you have this seven -year period of tribulation happening
before where the church is removed, and then they come back and you go into the
time of the Monial Kingdom.
Now a lot of you may look at this and say, "That's what I've always heard is
going to happen, and that's what I believe is going to happen." And I know that's
the case, because some of you have come to me during this study and said, "No,
that's not how I understand that." And again, that's fine. I hope we're all humbled
enough to say that these are challenging texts and not everybody's can understand
them the same way. And that's okay. Both of these two views,
both historic pre -millennialism and dispensational pre -millennialism would tend to say
when you read Revelation and these passages you should default toward a more literal
understanding of the text, and you should see chronology a little more formally as
you read through it. So they come to the path and say, "I'm going to read these
verses as literal, more often than metaphorical, and I'm going to look at this and
see it laid out in more of a chronological view." Here's the third view,
post -millennialism. It begins with the church age, but for the post -millennial,
they see the millennial kingdom beginning to kind of morph out of the church age.
As the church takes the gospel to the world, over time they say the gospel is
going to penetrate hearts. People are going to turn to Christ. Both individuals and
institutions on earth are going to have a Christ honoring perspective of the world.
They're going to be transformed and our world is going to get better and better
until Christ rules and reigns over the earth today through the influence of the
church. He doesn't come back literally and rule. He rules and reigns through his
church as king of the church, but we are the ones who take the gospel, the gospel
transformed, transforms and the world gets better and better and better. That's why
you see things getting bigger here on the timeline. In this view,
that thousand years reign of Christ may be seen as literal or figurative. It's gonna
happen, but is it a literal thousand years or is it just a long period of time?
Different post -millennialists argue over whether they think it's an actual thousand
years or just an extended period of time. And in this view, Jesus does not return
to earth physically, he rules through his church, and in this view the world keeps
getting better and better. When we pray, "Thy kingdom come, I will be done on earth
as it is in heaven," that's what's going to happen during the millennial time. And
it culminates when Jesus returns to carry out final judgment, new heavens and the
new earth, for believers and The wicked are judged and condemned.
So the same conclusion that everybody else has, once Jesus returns and judgment is
pronounced, the saints go to be with him, and the unbelievers go to judgment.
So that's the post -millennial view. The final view is called Amillennialism,
again, "Ah," it's no literal thousand -year reign of Christ on earth. So it begins
with the church age. The Amillenials, just like everybody else, say we're living in
the church age. Here's the difference. The Amillenials say the church age is the
same as the Millennium. So they say we're not only just living in the church age,
we're living in the Millennial Kingdom right now. This is from the time of the
ascension, the establishment of the church, until Jesus comes back. That's the
millennial kingdom. We're in it today. Jesus is not here physically. He doesn't have
a body on earth, but through you and me, the church is advancing. He is ruling and
reigning in your heart. He is your King. You are living as a member of His
kingdom. His kingdom has come. It's here. And anyone today can come into the
kingdom, come under the reign of King Jesus, here on earth today, you can join the
millennial kingdom by pledging your life to Jesus. So in the amillennial view, the
church age and the millennium are the same period of time, and the time of
tribulation that's talked about in the Bible is the same as the millennium and the
church age. So it's right there. Now you see the line getting darker because
amillennialists believe that the world's going to get worse and worse and worse.
Unlike the post -millennialists, it's not going to get better and better, it's going
to get worse and worse. The kingdom is going to be established, the church age is
going to happen, but persecution is going to intensify and it will culminate on the
final day of the Lord when the Lord returns to judge again the living and the dead
and those who love him will go with him into the new heavens and the new earth,
and the others will go to eternal damnation. Amill and Ilse believe,
by the way, that Satan is bound during the church age. So we've got these. Satan
has been bound during the church age. We'll talk more about that in a minute. I'll
explain what they mean by that. Just before the Second Coming of Christ, Satan is
released. That's when the Antichrist, The final Antichrist will emerge in world
history, that's when the Battle of Armageddon, which they see primarily as a
spiritual battle, not a military battle, that's when that will take place and there
will be a general resurrection. So this battle of Armageddon that they see taking
place here is an intense clash of world views, the Kingdom of Darkness and the
Kingdom of Light clashing against one another and the forces of evil seeking to
persecute the church in the midst of that, Jesus comes, he wins that battle, and
the dead are resurrected, and they have their eternal life, their eternal destinies.
Those are the four views. I hope that brings some clarity. I told you that Dallas
Seminary and Moody and Masters College and Seminary primarily hold the second view.
There are other seminaries. In fact, most of the Baptist seminaries have a mix of
different views among their faculty. Reform seminary tends to be made up of post
-millennialists or amillennialists, so they have that mix in there. And pre -millennial
advocates would include authors, Bible teachers like John MacArthur or Chuck Swindoll
or David Jeremiah, Charles Ryrie, scholars like Michael Black and Robert Thomas are
those who would hold that, and you can get, I think we've got books, so like the
pre -millennial, these are some books you may have seen from different writers writing
and explaining the pre -millennial position. Historic pre -millennialists have been,
that view has been argued by, been argued for by theologians like Greg Bloomberg,
at the Blomberg, isn't it? Greg Blomberg, Jim Hamilton, Reginald Kimbrough, these are
men who have argued for that view. The post -millennial view has been advanced by
scholars like Greg Bonson, Ken Gentry, R .C. Sproul, Doug Wilson, these are prominent
post -millennialists, and the omillennial position, people like Sam Storms, Kim
Riddlebarger, who's a Lutheran pastor, G .K. Beale, Matt Chandler has a video series
on this, Kevin D. Young argues of the omillennial position. If you really want to
dig in and find out how these views interact. There's a YouTube video that's two
hours long where John Piper has a roundtable conversation with Jim Hamilton arguing
for the premillennial view, Sam Storms arguing for the amillennial view, and Doug
Wilson arguing for the post -millennial view. It's a scintillating two hours that if
you're interested to dig in, it's there. So those are the views, and I know it
felt a little bit like we've been in a seminary classroom going through this, but I
think it's good for us to understand the divergence and how this happens and how
people see the world ending differently. And I know some of you are looking,
you know, I'm not sure where I am. I think I'm a pan -millennial. Have you heard
that? I'm a pan -millennial. Pan -millennial means it's all going to pan out in the
end, right? That's how a lot of people view that. And if you're a "Pan millennial,
you're right, it will all pan out in the end." I mean, that's true, and that's, I
have bets out on whether I'm gonna be buying a steak dinner for my friends in
heaven because my end time view was right, or whether they're gonna buy the steak
dinner for me in heaven because their end time view was right, we'll all settle up
when we get there, it will all pan out in the end, but we shouldn't use that as
an excuse. We shouldn't say, well, I'm pan millennial, Therefore, I don't have to
wrestle with this. Therefore, I don't have to really think about this. Therefore, I
can put revelation away and not have to pay any attention to it. Now, all scripture
is inspired and profitable. It's here for you to study and to wrestle with and to
dig into and to try to make sense of and to challenge yourself. I'm doing that
regularly. I'm reading the views of others where I would go, that's not how I see
it, but I wanna understand how you got there and I wanna pressure test my own
thinking on this. I think that's a healthy spiritual exercise for us to go through.
God's given us these pictures of the end times and these details for a reason.
We shouldn't just say, "Well, I'm not smart enough to understand all of this." No,
you are smart enough, and you can get smarter if you'll dig into it. So with that
foundation laid, let me tell you what I think, how we should Again, the idea of
the thousand year reign of Christ, why I believe what I believe. I think what John
is seeing here in these two visions in Revelation 1 through 6,
the two visions that talk about the millennial kingdom of Christ, is a picture of
Jesus building his kingdom on earth during the church age. So I gravitate toward the
millennial view in how I see this. I don't see the thousand years as a literal
thousand years. I don't see this as a future reality. I see it as a present
reality. I don't think that the Bible is talking. I have come to the conclusion
I've come to. There are three reasons I've come to it. First is in the previous 19
chapters that we have read. As I said, Revelation, we read differently than other
books of the Bible. It's presenting literal truth in a way that is highly symbolic,
poetic, metaphorical, a series of visions. There's a lot of symbolism at play here.
So when I get to a thousand years, I'm thinking, "Is that a symbol like these
other symbols? If not, why would I say this is literal when so much of what I've
read has been symbolic?" There's no other book in the Bible that has dragons and
harlots and beasts with ten horns and seven heads and living creatures who look like
a lion and ox, the face of a man and an eagle with eyes in the front and in the
back and with six wings each. There's no other book that has bowls of wrath being
poured out. Jesus with a sword coming out of his mouth with a beast and a false
prophet who have unclean spirits that look like frogs coming out of their mouth.
We've read all of these. You don't find them anywhere else. So when I read that, I
go, "Boy, there's a lot of symbol and metaphor here. So because of the nature of
this book, I'm inclined to see a lot of these phrases,
things like the Thousand Year Reign of Christ, as being metaphorical rather than
being literal." There's a second reason why I come to that conclusion. This is the
context for this first thousand years that we're reading about.
So when you read the passage we just read, in verse 1, "An angel comes down from
heaven holding a key." Here's a question. Is this an angel coming holding an actual
key in his hand? A key that locks or unlocks a bottomless pit?
And is this angel holding an actual chain in his hand along with the actual key to
an actual bottomless pit? And does he seize an actual dragon who is Satan?
Does he actually grab hold of a dragon who is the Satan in dragon form? I read
this and I go, "This sounds to me like a picture that's supposed to be symbolizing
something. I don't think there's really going to be a day when an angel with a key
comes and opens a bottomless pit and throws a dragon in it and seals it up. I
think that's supposed to be a picture of something that creates a reality,
that's a literal reality, but it's not going to look exactly like that. So if I'm
reading that passage and I go, "Yeah, that sounds like it's describing something
figurative," and then we get to a thousand years, why would I say, "Oh, but that
thousand years, that's literal." In the context of this passage, which is highly
symbolic, why would I default to literal for a thousand years? Did you know that
these six verses in the Bible are the only place where the millennium is talked
about, where the thousand years are referenced? You hear a lot about the millennial
kingdom. Six verses in Revelation 20 are the only place it's mentioned. But there
are three other verses in the Bible that use the phrase a thousand years.
Two of them are in the Old Testament. Psalm 90 verse 4, "For a thousand years in
your sight are as, but as yesterday when it is passed, or as a watch in the
night." I read that, and I think he's not talking about an actual thousand years.
He's just saying, "A long time is just like an overnight for you, God." Ecclesiastes
6 -6, "Even though he should live a thousand years twice over,
yet enjoy no good, do not all go to the one place." Again,
I read that, he's not talking about somebody living a thousand years twice over,
he's using that metaphorically. Second Peter 3 .8, "Do not overlook this one fact,
beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as
one day." Now, I read all three of those, and I go, none of those is talking
about the thousand years in a literal sense. It's using a thousand years as a
metaphor for a long period of time, longer than you might imagine.
The only other references to a thousand years outside the book of Revelation use it
metaphorically. When we get to Revelation 20, I think we ought to take the other
uses of Scripture and say, "Doesn't that illuminate how we understand it in
Revelation 20?" Now, some will say, "Why isn't John just more precise?
If he doesn't mean a thousand years, why doesn't he just say a myriad or a long
time? Why does he put a specific number on it?" Well, he could have used a myriad,
but the fact is this was a common metaphor for a long time as the Bible evidences.
So the fact that there's this common metaphor does not force us to believe it's an
actual thousand years. There are symbolic numbers throughout the book of Revelation.
Seven is a symbolic number. Four is a symbolic number. We've gone through number
symbolism throughout this. So I think this thousand years is a symbolic number as
well. Now some would say, "Well, okay, so you're saying it's not a literal thousand
years, it's a long period of time, And you're saying we're living in the Millennial
Kingdom today? You're looking at this world and saying, this is the Millennial
Kingdom? Man, you have got a pretty low -grade view of what the Millennial Kingdom
is going to look like. And you look around and go, this is Christ's ruling and
reigning on the earth? Doesn't look like he's doing very well, to which I would say
two things. First of all, Jesus regularly talked about his first advent as the
inauguration of the kingdom of God. When he came the first time in Matthew 3,
first red letters in your Bible, the first thing Matthew records Jesus saying is,
"The kingdom of God is at hand." That doesn't mean the kingdom of God is coming
several thousand years from now. In Matthew 10, when Jesus sent his disciples out to
evangelize, He said, "Tell these people, the kingdom of God is at hand." Matthew 12,
he said, "The kingdom of God has come upon you." Jesus coming inaugurated the
kingdom of God. Jesus is saying, "I'm here, the kingdom's here." And you might look
and say, "It doesn't look like much of a kingdom to me." And I'd say, "Well, you
know what, his first followers were expecting a different kind of kingdom as well,
And they were expecting a different king as well, but Jesus said, "That's not the
kingdom the way you expected." Which takes me to the second reason why I'm inclined
to think that we're living in the kingdom age. When Jesus was on trial before
Pilate, Pilate pressed him about whether he was a king or not.
Pilate wanted to know, is this somebody who's trying to lead a rebellion against
Rome? Are you a king who's going to raise up an army and try to defeat Rome. So
he said, "Are you a king?" And what did Jesus say? Jesus said, "My kingdom is not
of this world." If my kingdom were of this world, my servant, and by the way, not
of this world does not mean it's not happening in this world. It means that my
kingdom does not take on the characteristics of kingdoms in this world. If you're
expecting my kingdom to look like the kingdoms of the earth, you're looking for the
wrong thing. My kingdom is not like the kingdoms of this world. If my kingdom were
like the kingdoms of this world, my servants would have been fighting that I might
not be delivered to the Jews. That's not how my kingdom works. My kingdom is not
from the world. Pilate said to him, so you are a king. Jesus said, you say that
I'm a king. For this purpose I was born, and for purpose I have come into the
world to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my
voice. Pilate said to him, "What is truth?" Now here's what I think Jesus is
saying. You're looking for a military kingdom. My kingdom is a truth kingdom. You're
looking for a kingdom where military might and power rules and reigns. My kingdom is
a kingdom where truth rules and reigns and where things get converted. Pilate's
response when Pilate says, "What is truth?" Pilate's scoffing at him. Jesus is
saying, "I've got a truth kingdom." Pilate's going, "I've got soldiers. "I'll put my
soldiers up against your truth, "and my soldiers are gonna win the battle every
time." Jesus is saying, "No, they're not." In fact, Jesus would say, "How long did
Rome last?" How long has the truth lasted? The kingdom of God continues after
Afterworldly kingdoms built on power crumble. I believe the millennial kingdom that
we're living in today, as I see it, is a kingdom where the truth of God is
powerful against the lives of the enemy and where we see that power penetrating
cultures all over the world. We saw last week the sword coming out of Jesus' mouth,
a picture of the weapon of God being the proclamation of Jesus. That's the weapon
he uses. When Jesus says to Pilate, "I came to bear witness to the truth," and
Pilate says, "What is truth?" Jesus is saying, "Truth will beat soldiers every time."
Maybe not in the short term, but they will ultimately win. Here's my point.
I think the Bible is telling us that the kingdom of God has come is here. It's a
kingdom where truth defeats lies and ultimately defeats the father of lies. Jesus is
ruling and reigning in the hearts of his people right now through the church. The
kingdom exists. King Jesus is ruling over his church on earth and the church is
growing and expanding in the midst of a world where intense persecution is going to
be increasing. And we might look around like John's original readers did,
and say, "It looks to me like the other side is winning the war. It doesn't look
like this millennial kingdom is very threatening." And I would say, "Kingdom's rise
and kingdoms fall, but the gates of hell will not prevail against God's church." So
I think the kingdom being talked about in Revelation 20 is the kingdom of God on
earth in the church age in our day right now, And that that thousand -year number
is a symbolic number that means for a long period of time, which it's been. It's
been more than a thousand years since Jesus made this proclamation.
Okay, if this is the Millennial Kingdom, then here's the question. What's this about
the binding of Satan? Are you suggesting him? I'm suggesting that Satan is bound
right now. Well, I think the key to understanding this is to look at What verse 3
says, which it says that Satan was bound for this purpose so that he might not
deceive the nations any longer until the thousand years were ended. I don't think
Revelation 20 is telling us that Satan will be bound in a straight jacket during
the time of the millennial kingdom, unable to do anything, locked away in a pit
where he has no influence over the world. I think it's telling us that during the
church age, Satan is not going to be able to deceive the nations as he was able
to do before Jesus came and brought in the kingdom. Follow me here. Prior to the
resurrection and ascension of Jesus, how many nations on the face of the earth
followed the God of Israel? How many nations swore their allegiance to Yahweh?
How many were there other than Israel before Jesus came? What's the answer? Zero.
Of course, this was God's plan that salvation would come through Israel, that He
confined His work there, but there was more going on there. Satan was at work
during the time before Jesus came, blinding the minds of the others.
He was at work.
The worship of Yahweh did not expand beyond Israel because Satan was active deceiving
the nations so that even when the Jews would have victory over others,
when the Egyptians saw the power of God on display, rather than Pharaoh going,
"Your God is more powerful, we should worship Him," they got angry and continued to
worship their idols. All of them, every one of them, because they were blinded to
the Gospel, they were blinded to Yahweh by Satan. The first 2 ,000 years from
Abraham to Jesus, Satan was able to deceive the nations and keep them from coming
to Yahweh and worshiping Him. But when Jesus defeated Satan on the cross and in the
resurrection, He bound that aspect of his deceptive work He bound him from being
able to deceive the nations and then he sent the the apostles out to the nations
and what happened People started believing Jesus Gentiles started coming to faith
There were cities and nations where the gospel started to invade and all of a
sudden people who had ignored Yahweh forever started to embrace Yahweh because Satan's
ability to deceive the nations was now bound unlike it had been prior to the cross.
When Jesus took our sins on himself on the cross, when he paid the debt that we
owe for our sins, when he was raised to life on the third day, here's what
Colossians 2 says, "He to the rulers and authorities at the cross and in the
resurrection. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by
triumphing over them. Jesus defeated Satan and bound him.
Across the empty tomb, what was defeated there in the work of Satan was his ability
to deceive the nations. In Acts chapter 14, We won't look at this, but Paul says,
"In the past, God let all nations go their own way." Satan was deceiving them and
God let the deception happen. In Acts 17, in Athens, Paul says, "The times of
ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all people everywhere to repent." The
blinding of the nations, that work of Satan happened before the cross, after the
cross, God bound Satan from being able to do that. Let me give you a couple of
key verses for this. Mark 3, 27. No one,
this is Jesus speaking, no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods
unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
Now, that's a
And Jesus is saying when he came the first time, he entered Satan's house.
This was Satan's domain. Satan is the God of this world. Jesus came to plunder
Satan's domain. But before he could do that, he had to bind the strong man.
And by the way, the only person who can bind a strong man is a stronger man.
Jesus is stronger, mightier, greater as he than he who is in the world. He binds
the strong man and then he's able to plunder his house. That verse is telling us
exactly what the binding of Satan looks like in our day and how the blinding of
the world is now bound when Satan is bound. And check this out. Talking about his
coming death and resurrection in John chapter 12, Jesus says, "Now is the judgment
of the world, and now will the ruler of this world be cast out.
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
Now is the ruler of this world to be cast out.
Jesus, in his death and resurrection, defeats Satan,
and as he's lifted up, the blinding of the nations is removed and all men are now
drawn to him. Now Satan is clearly not bound or cast out in an absolute sense.
The Bible tells us that. But his ability to deceive the nations has been removed
and the gospel has been unleashed. Paul understood this, it's why when he was
writing to Timothy, as a prisoner in 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy 2,
he said, "I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal, but the Word of God is
not bound. It's been unbound. It's going everywhere. Satan is bound during the
Millennial Kingdom. The Word of God is unbound, unleashed." Now listen,
there are men who have been very influential in my life, who I respect, who have
helped shape the way I see the Bible, who disagree with what I've just taught you.
So John MacArthur and R .C. Sproul not only disagree with one another about what to
do with this, but they would both disagree with me.
But what's important here is less what we disagree on and more what all of us
would agree on. So While we're free to say, "I don't read that the same way you
read that," here are the things that we all ought to be affirming that are the
important things for us to take away this morning. Jesus is coming back physically,
bodily, literally. His feet will land on the earth. He will return suddenly,
visibly, bodily, physically, and all people who have ever lived will stand before him
and will face judgment from him. Charges will be read and the verdict based on
those charges will be clear. The evidence will be incontrovertible and all men will
stand condemned in judgment before Jesus. You and me, we will stand before God.
Charges will be read and it will be clear that we deserve eternal hell for how we
have lived our lives. But Jesus in that moment will step forward. He will step down
from being the judge and will step forward and he will be our advocate who will
stand forth and say not this one, this one's penalty has been paid. I paid for it.
He's coming with me.
That's going to happen for those who have turned to him and said, "I give my life
to you." On that day, when the charges will be read for all of us and all of us
will be found guilty and deserving of hell, those who have turned to Jesus will
have him step forward as an advocate and say, "Not this one. He's coming with me.
She's coming with me."
Is that you?
Will Jesus do that for you? Do you have a confidence that on that day when those
charges are read you can look to him and he'll say I got you?
Do you know that you belong to him?
Your view of the binding of Satan or the Millennial Kingdom will not matter in that
moment. Not that it's unimportant. It is important. It's revealed in Scripture. We
should deal with it. But it's not what's going to determine things on that day.
What will determine things is where do you stand with Jesus? Do you stand away from
Him or do you stand with Him? Are you united with Him? Is He your King, your
Lord, your Master, your Savior?
Whether the Kingdom is going on now or coming later, whether it's an that period of
time or a little, literal thousand years, whether Jesus will one day be present in
body ruling on the earth for a millennial kingdom or he's the head of his church
today ruling through us, whether the binding of Satan looks different than I've
described it to you, we can all agree he's coming, judgment is coming. And you
remember the charts we started with? They all started with the same thing, the
church age, and they all ended the same thing. So the pre -millennialists, this is
how they see it all ending. Judgment, new heavens, new earth, eternal judgment. What
about the judgment, new earth, new heaven? What about the next group? Judgment, new
earth, new heaven. What about the amaliyah? Judgment, new earth. It's all the same
at the end. The stuff before that? We should dig in and try to understand that.
But this is what matters at the end. A day of judgment and one of two eternal
destinies. Do you know which one is yours? If you hear this morning you're saying,
"I don't know.
I don't know that I have the confidence that on that day Jesus will step forward."
I would say, "Have you surrendered to Him? Have you said, 'I want you to be the
Lord, the master, the ruler, the king of my life? I want to follow you. I want to
obey you. I trust you to save me on that day? No one else will save me.
I pledge myself to you.
If you haven't, you can do that right now this morning. And by the way, if you
have friends and family members who haven't, it's the most urgent thing we can tell
them, that they need to be ready for that day. The only way to be ready is to
embrace the gospel, embrace Jesus, surrender to God, give your life to him.
Pray with me, Father.
Thank you for your word, even the hard parts. Thank you for your spirit who guides
us. Thank you for the unity of the spirit so that even when we come away with
different understandings of these passages, we can love and honor and respect one
another. We can sharpen iron with one another. We can try to understand these
confusing things, but Lord, thank You that there are parts of this story that are
incontrovertible, that we can embrace,
that we can know,
and thank You that one day justice will come, and thank You that justice has been
paid for us in the death of Your Son,
that on the cross As Jesus died, your wrath was satisfied, every sin on Him was
laid, and here in the power of Christ we stand.
Lord, I pray for any here who don't have that confidence that they will stand with
You on that last day.
I pray that You would turn their heart to You this morning, that they would
surrender their lives to You,
and that they could say, "I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back."
We pray it in your name. Amen.