In the sermon 'Satan Bound' by Scott Brown, the focus is on Revelation 20 and the binding of Satan for a thousand years. Brown emphasizes that this chapter is one of the most significant and controversial in Revelation, dealing with the authority of Jesus Christ over Satan and the eventual judgment of all souls. The sermon interprets the Millennium not as a literal thousand-year reign but as a symbolic representation of the church age, during which Satan's powers are constrained. Brown discusses the spiritual implications of Satan's binding, indicating that while Satan is still active, his ability to deceive and destroy is limited. The sermon also emphasizes the importance of understanding biblical symbols, the authority of Jesus, and the protection granted to believers through God's intervention. Brown encourages believers to recognize their freedom from Satan's enslavement and to rejoice in the spiritual protection and salvation offered by God. The sermon concludes with a call to action for those who have not yet committed to following Christ, highlighting the urgency of doing so before the final judgment.

Please have your Bibles open to Revelation chapter 1. I'll just be reading the first three verses of Revelation chapter 20. This is the beginning of several sessions on this great chapter. This is the inerrant, all-sufficient, holy, sweeter-than-honey Word of God. Verse 1, Revelation 1 or Revelation 21.

Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit, and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years. And he cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. Let's pray.

Oh Father, I pray that you would come and equip your saints, your children, that you would mature us, that you would give us realistic views of the world that we live in and the world to come, that you would come oh Lord and confirm your word to our hearts today and move us Lord move us from One position to another in our relationship with you closer to you in every way. Amen Please be seated This is perhaps one of the weightiest sections in Revelation. It speaks of the works of the devil on the earth and also the great white throne of judgment. It begins really with the binding of Satan and this thousand year binding in the first three verses. Then in verses four through six you have the reign of the saints in heaven.

And then you find in verses seven through 10, Satan's last gasp and being cast into the lake of fire. And then finally, the great white throne of judgment in verses 11 through 15. I encourage you to read this entire section, it's absolutely stunning. The focus of this chapter is a throne. A throne is a symbol of authority, it's associated with keys, which is also a symbol of authority.

Thrones are mentioned 62 times in the Bible, 47 of them are in Revelation. And of course, in this chapter, Thrones are mentioned twice. And they're always mentioned in Revelation as heavenly thrones. Everyone will stand before a throne. It's hard to preach these first three verses without jumping to the entire context because this stands together in its context.

God will judge every soul whom he created. And I pray that we have that as a sense of awareness as we go through this chapter. As you'll notice, I won't focus on everything even in the first three verses but have kind of a laser beam focus. But this is the most controversial text in the book of Revelation. At the same time, the points are clear.

They are both thrilling and sobering and terrifying at the same time. And you know, these final chapters of Revelation are the crescendo of the book. Joe Beke writing about chapter 20, he calls it the summing up of the symphony the symphony of what's written in the first 19 chapters and of course the central message of chapter 20 is the victory of Jesus Christ over all of his enemies in the final judgment and also in the in the restraint of the devil the binding of Satan and so this this chapter and particularly the verses that I'm focusing on this morning, focus on how God deals with the devil. And first, he constrains him for 1, 000 years, and then he casts him into the lake of fire. And so Satan is a central figure in redemptive history.

And here in chapter 20, I believe we find the whole history of Satan's activities in the world. It's his career path since the resurrection. And in this passage he's given four names. I don't know if you noticed that. The dragon, that indicates his brutality through earthly authorities.

And then he's given that name the Serpent of Old, he's a crooked deceiver. He's given the name the Devil, he's a malignant liar. He's given the name Satan, which indicates that he's an adversarial accuser and a slanderer of the brethren. This is his work, this is his life. Now, if you have a outline in front of you, I've spoken about the focus of the chapter.

The timeframe of the chapter is, you know, when did this binding happen? When was he cast into the bottomless pit? We'll talk more about the bottomless pit later on. But In Revelation 20, Satan is bound for a thousand years. It's called the Millennium.

Gregory Beale explains it like this. The Millennium is inaugurated during the church age as God limits Satan's deceptive powers and as deceased Christians are vindicated by raining in heaven. The millennium is concluded by a resurgence of Satan's deceptive assault against the church and the final judgment. So why is this important? It's not important for the controversy.

But it's important for every person who's following Jesus Christ and who is not following Jesus Christ. If you're following Jesus Christ it's telling you that greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. It's telling you that Satan is not ravaging his church. I don't think he's ravaging this church. I don't think he's tearing you limb from limb.

Satan has been restrained. And you're drinking in the blessings of his kingdom. And he's not tearing you apart. He's not destroying your life he's rebuilding your life and that's because Satan is bound God is restraining the work of the devil during this age, not just in your life, but also in the life of the unbeliever. God even restrains the work of the devil in the life of the unbeliever.

Think of what it would be like if the devil had free reign in the unbeliever's life. So if you're a Christian, I think this passage teaches us that you're not a slave, you're not Satan's slave anymore. And I just want you to glory in what God has done. Look around the room. Satan is not savaging the people in this church.

He might be tempting, but he's not destroying your life. What a what a blessing that is. I'm so grateful for that. You do have remaining sin. I have remaining sin, but it's not wrecking you.

And you're not being run rough shod by the devil and No one can pluck you out of God's hand and he will never leave you or forsake you He's destroyed the works of the devil. He's disarmed him praise the Lord I'm so glad In Romans 929 Isaiah is quoted With these words unless the Lord of sabbath had left us a seed we would have become like Sodom and we would have been made like Gomorrah. If it weren't the seed of the kingdom of heaven growing in the hearts of his people. You'd be like Sodom, you'd be like Gomorrah. And you're not, praise the Lord.

The context of the chapter, the scenes I believe are parallel with chapters one through 19. This is a restatement of events that have happened but from a different angle. This is another picture. The camera is positioned in another place to see another shot of what's going on, a different view of the world. And so you have this stream of history from a snapshot, really from beginning to end in this chapter, in the entire chapter.

And so the whole chapter explains God's dealing with Satan and also how he will deal with him and how he will deal with those who are sitting on the fence or running away from him. You know when we get to the end of this chapter, you'll just see how tragic it is to sit on the fence, to keep delaying, to keep yourself from following Jesus Christ and confessing him as your Lord and your Savior. And you'll find that they thought they could wait but then there was no more time and there was no more waiting. It was over. You know they didn't care so much but now they have only one thing to look at and that is a great white throne.

Everything else is fled away and there's only a throne, a great white throne. So it's a very remarkable chapter. This chapter paints the story of Christian history since the coming of Christ. And I think it paints a picture of Christ's coming breaking the power of Death and sin and of Satan at the resurrection and that's followed by a season where Satan is loosed on the earth And that is followed by a season of the second coming of Jesus Christ. So that's where we are.

So what's the millennium? That's the big question. You know, there are people who make your position on eschatology a test of faith or a test of fellowship, that's a mistake. These are really hard things to understand and many godly people hold different positions. I've held different positions during my lifetime.

So we're gonna continue to interpret chapter 20 the way that I've interpreted it all along the way. A thousand years is mentioned six times in verses two through seven. And so, you know, someone called the millennium that thousand years of peace that everybody argues about. And, I don't believe that my preaching, this position on the millennium will grant me greater rewards in heaven. I don't think that I'll face the Lord and he'll say, wow, Scott, you got the millennium right.

That isn't gonna happen. There are three views of the Millennium. I've written them down just briefly in your outlines. You can look at them just for sake of time. I'll let those brief descriptions stand.

Gregory Beale calls the view all millennialism, inaugurated millennialism, because it's really, a millennium means no millennium, but that's really not what a millennialist say. There is a millennium, it's figurative. It's a figurative period of a thousand, figured by a thousand years. Joel Beeke speaks of it like this. This view held by most reformed Christians teaches that the millennium is not a future earthly kingdom, rather the millennium is a symbolic description of the spiritual kingdom of God that is now present ever since Pentecost in the church's missionary advance and heavenly reign.

Even as the church suffers persecution and waits for Christ's return on Judgment Day. The term Amillennialism is not an accurate description of this view because the prefix ah means no, as in no millennium. Amillennialists do believe in a millennium. The position might better be called inaugurated millennialism because we believe that the millennium has already been inaugurated. Thus, inaugurated Millennialism means, believes that the millennium is not an exact period of a thousand years, but is really a symbolic description of the entire gospel age until Christ returns on the clouds.

So there you have it, inaugurated millennialism. Now, we want to return to the principles of interpretation that are stated really in the very first three verses in the book of Revelation, that first, this is a revelation of Jesus Christ look for the power and glory and authority of Jesus Christ he's it's on every page that's what you should focus on you might be out to be able to figure out matters of timing and things like that but you can see the glorious authority of Jesus. And then secondly, it's a book of symbols. And of course, these symbols are pulled from the Old Testament. There are over 400 Old Testament allusions and symbols.

And the reason Christians don't understand revel the symbols and revelations because they haven't become very familiar with their Old Testaments and So you have these pictures and symbols the numbers are symbolic So why why if we would say that seven is the number of perfection, three is the number of God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, who is, who was and is to come. Why is it that the number four is figurative, but now when we get to 1, 000, it's literal. So I'm gonna continue interpreting the numbers as figurative numbers. Joel Beeke says, we should understand the millennium, not as a future golden age, but as the whole gospel era. So as you read as you read chapter 20 you'll see what John saw and what you see what he saw is that Jesus Christ is reigning and he's ruling he has authority over the devil.

Now it's interesting, you know, when you listen to sermons or read books from the various perspectives of the millennium, You'll find that the things that are often said about the millennium are not listed here. They're not here at all. And I just want to encourage us to look at the words that are here. There's nothing about a golden age of peace in this chapter. There's nothing about the saints ruling on earth.

It's not mentioned. The language doesn't speak of these things. You know, Throughout this series, I've tried to make it my business to listen to various views, men who hold various views on this. And this week, I was reading, I was listening to a man who was one of my favorite preachers in my teens, and he was a premillennialist in Southern California. And I love his preaching, frankly.

But he was preaching on Revelation 20 and he said that the millennium is the time when the earth is restored to paradise. It's a return to Eden. He says there's no more war. There's universal peace on the earth. He's preaching out of Revelation 20.

None of this is in Revelation 20. He says there's no miscarriages. There'll be no more diseases. We'll have renewed longevity in the millennium. There'll be no more hurricanes, no more polar ice caps.

I'm just quoting it from the sermon. Is there anything like that in Revelation chapter 20? What we do find is the binding of Satan in the first three verses. Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

And he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, so that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand years were finished. But after these things he must be released for a little while. So this is a new vision. Then I saw, this is another another one of John's pictures. It's another snapshot.

It's more pictorial theology. And This is in the seventh cycle, the seventh section in Revelation. Last week we went back through and walked through the seven sections. This section begins in chapter 19 to the end of the book. And you have this angel from heaven with a key.

It's a key to the bottomless pit. A key in the Bible is always a symbol of authority. It's not a literal key, it is a symbol of authority. This is an angelic being given authority over the devil into the bottomless pit, to the Abusa in Greek. And you have this angel, one of God's angels, God's holy angels, having authority over the bottomless pit, symbolized by this key.

Now it's interesting, if you go to Revelation chapter nine, don't turn there now, but there's a demonic angel who has authority in the bottomless pit. And his name is Abaddon in Hebrew and Apollyon in Greek. And the angel of the bottomless pit in Revelation chapter nine. And listen to what it says about this angel, this dark demonic angel, Verse 11, and they had as king over them, this is the demons in this realm called the bottomless pit. It's, I believe it's a realm.

And they had as king over them the demons the angel of the bottomless pit whose name in Hebrew is a badin But in Greek he has the name of a Polly on I think the bottomless pit is Symbolism for a place of the confinement of the wicked They dwell there and they go and come from there in the Bible. There's much to say about that, but the way I understand this is that the demons are under a state of divine confinement and they're chained. Here you have he had and a great chain in his hand. The chain is in his hand. And of course, is this a literal chain?

Do you chain spiritual beings? It's a figure. It's anthropomorphic language. It's human language to help us to understand what's happening. It's not really what it looks like.

It's what it is like. Just like in chapter one in describing Jesus. He has a sword coming out of his mouth. It's not what he looks like, it's what he is like. And it's the same thing here.

This chain is what it's like. It's like he's chained. And he is chained under the authority of this angel. And it's a picture of the limitation of the devil. He's not completely destroyed.

He's not completely nullified. He's chained. He's curbed. His influence is hindered in the world. Perhaps it could be compared to a crime boss in prison.

He still makes things happen on the outside. He can still get what he wants. He can still move the troops, but he's limited. Not like what he used to be when he was free to go do his deeds. He can still get things done, but not in every sense that he was able, because he's chained, because he's imprisoned.

He can't destroy all of God's work in the world. And he hasn't, That's pretty obvious. He didn't destroy it in your life. Praise the Lord. Remember Pilgrim's Progress?

Christian is making his way to the beautiful palace. About 500 feet away, he sees two lions, and he's terrified of the lions, and he stops, and he realizes that in order to get to the beautiful palace, he's going to have to walk right between those two lions and he's already seen two other guys run the other way Because of the lions they turned back he remembered timorous and mistrust they turned back because they were afraid of the lions But the lions were chained and he couldn't see the chains. But the lions were chained, chained. And that's a picture of what we have with the devil here. They are chained for their final destination.

So Satan is chained. He is held back. He is limited in mobility. It says here that this angel laid hold of the dragon, laid hold of the dragon, and there's a very interesting word that that John uses here, croteo, to have power over. In other words, from a Greek dictionary, to be strong, to rule, to take control, to hold, to seize, to be stronger than.

He laid hold of him. And then it says that he was bound. He was bound. And my understanding of this is that as a result of Christ's death and resurrection, the devil's powers have been constrained. He is roaming about as a roaring lion but he cannot do everything he wants to do.

In Colossians chapter 1 verse 13 we read that he has no authority over Christians. In St. Corinthians 2 15, we learn that Christ disarmed the powers and principalities, and he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it, in the resurrection. In 1 John 3, 8, we learn that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. In Hebrews 2, 14, we learn that through death, he might destroy him who had the power of death, that is the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject of bondage.

In Matthew 12, 29, the Lord Jesus himself gives an illustration of binding the strong man. How can one enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man? Then he will plunder his house. He's talking about binding and plundering the devil. That's what Jesus Christ did.

So whatever binding means, it has to include these other things. In 1 Peter 321, we learned that the resurrection, at the resurrection, the powers and the principalities were subjugated to Christ. They were made subject to him. In Revelation 12, nine, they were thrown down. You know, what does it mean to be bound?

Well somebody gave the illustration of a zoo. You have these wild animals behind cages in the zoo and they can roar, they can prance around, but they can't get to you. You know, I remember about a decade after communism fell in Romania, my son and I were in Romania and I was preaching in churches in Romania. And one of the guys took us to a zoo in Romania. Now, Romania was a very, very poor country.

Their zoos reflected it. The barriers in the zoos reflected it as well. And so there was this huge lion behind this, it was just a chain link fence. It was like a basketball court chain link fence. And the man said, you know, if you limp in front of the lion, you can get him to roar.

And we experimented with that. But I think Satan is bound a little bit like a lion is bound in a zoo. He can only go as far as he's permitted to go. The devil cannot keep people from being saved. The devil cannot close borders for the gospel.

The devil cannot keep people from the blessings of God. Now the devil, he might strike back. He is active, but he's not free. You know, I thought about this, you know, a while back, somebody killed a snake on our property and they chopped his head off. They thought it was poisonous, but it wasn't a poisonous snake.

But, so several hours later, I just heard about it. Several hours later, I went down there and I reached down to pick, I was gonna get, I needed to get rid of the snake, dispose of the carcass. And I reached down to his tail, and the minute I touched his tail, that headless snake turned around and struck at me. He scared me to death, even though I knew he didn't have a head. But Satan is a little bit like that.

He might strike you, but his venom, because of the cross, can't do what it would have done. So he's active, he keeps striking, but he's lost much of his power. That's why we put on the whole armor of God to resist the schemes of the devil. And so the purpose of Christ's resurrection power is really to demonstrate Jesus Christ's authority over the devil so that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the powers and principalities, Ephesians 3, 8. God is belittling the powers and principalities in the life of the Christian.

When you love your neighbor, when you love your spouse, your children, when you walk with the Lord, when you obey him, the powers and principalities are being belittled. Joe Beeke says Satan's binding implies two things. First, the devil can no longer keep the Gentiles in spiritual darkness outside of Israel. Second, he cannot destroy the church. He was defeated at the cross.

Paganism has been constrained in the world. How about the United States of America? 250 years ago, Indians were running around this land, eating one another, attacking one another. When was the last time a state attacked a state? It was a long time ago.

These things don't happen. I think it's because of the power of the gospel in the lives of people, because of the presence of the church of Jesus Christ. It's not like it was. Satan's activity is constrained. It's not gone, but it's constrained.

Now what can the devil do? Well here are 12 things the devil can do. The devil can lie to you. John 8 44. Second, the devil can outwit you.

Second, Corinthians 2 11. Third, the devil is prowling and is seeking the vulnerable. 1st Peter 5 8. Fourth, the devil concoct schemes, but the Christian can stand against them, Ephesians 6, 11. Fifth, the devil is at work in the sons of disobedience, Ephesians 5, 22.

Sixth, the devil blinds the eyes of the unbeliever. 2nd Corinthians 4.4. Seventh, the devil disguises and poses and masquerades as an angel of light. 2nd Corinthians 11, 13, 15. Eighth, the devil comes in sheep's clothing, Matthew 715.

Ninth, the devil teaches doctrines of demons, 1 Timothy 4.1. Tenth, the devil can do signs and wonders, 2 Thessalonians 2.9. 11th, Satan devours the word of God in the souls of those who hear the gospel. That's in the parable of the soils in Mark chapter four, one through nine. And 12th, like Job, God may allow Satan to sift you like wheat.

Luke 22, 31. However, Satan is chained. Satan is bound. For how long? Well, this says it's a thousand years.

And I've been saying a thousand years is like the number seven, it's like the number four in the book of Revelation and it's it's used number thousand one thousand is used figure figuratively all over the Bible in Deuteronomy 7 9 a thousand generations is referring to an infinite period of time. In Psalm 50 verse 10, he owns the cattle on a thousand hills, indicating that he's got his cattle, he's got his money everywhere. In Joshua 23 10, one man will chase a thousand, referring to the favor that God shows his people in battle. It's not exactly a thousand, it's a figurative number. In Psalm 90 verse 4, Moses speaks of, for a thousand years in your sight or like yesterday when it is passed like a watch in the night in Psalm 91 7 a thousand may fall at your side and 10, 000 at your right hand but it shall not come near you.

In 2 Peter 3, 8, one day is as a thousand years. In Revelation 5, 11, there are 10 thousands of 10 thousands and thousands of thousands. These are not exact numbers. The word thousand, I don't believe, is ever used literally in the Bible. But somehow, we think it might be here.

And you can see why. But the key is a figurative of authority. A chain is a figure of constraint. A serpent is a figure. A dragon is a figure.

A seal. A thousand years is a figure. God jerks the chain. And in verse three, we see that he's not only constrained for a thousand years, which I believe is the church age since the resurrection. It's a picture of a long period of time from the resurrection to the second coming.

But then he's cast into the bottomless pit. And cast him into the bottomless pit and shut him up and set a seal on him so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. Now this I think this is a recapitulation of Revelation 17 8 and then also Revelation 11 7 it's a very similar picture and he is shut up that means that he is confined you know, some people have illustrated this like, you know, he's thrown in a pit and a lid is put on him. That's not what this says. It doesn't say that a lid is put on.

There's this language that gives flexibility to his movements and things like that. He set a seal on him. The theological dictionary of the New Testament defines seals this way. The legal significance of seals. What is a seal?

The seal served as a legal protection and guarantee in many ways, especially in relation to property. All objects suitable for sealing could be marked as the property of the owner in this way. Don't think of it as a hatch that's shut and tight. Think of it as a constraint and ownership in the way that a seal marks an entity. And It's very clear what this seal is all about.

It's very clear. So that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished. That's the constraint. He cannot deceive the nations until this period of time is finished. And I think that this means that No nation can stop the spread of the gospel.

They can't be so deceptive that people can't be saved. And truth can spread, and it can spread all over the world just as it has, and just as it will continue until Jesus Christ comes. There are people from every tribe and tongue and nation that have come to him and will come to him because Satan is chained. Isn't that a wonderful thing? There's hope for the world in the chaining of the devil, in the sealing him in the bottomless pit.

But after these things, he must be released for a little while. We'll talk about that in some detail when we come back to this passage. We'll deal with some of the more, some of the other passages of scripture here in these first three verses and and beyond but I wanted to focus on this matter of this thousand years and the figurative nature of of what we find here and also I wanted I wanted I wanted us together to rejoice at the protection that God has established. By his authority, he has kept the devil from ravaging and savaging your life. And he's kept this church.

It's not a perfect church, but it is a protected church. It's a church where progress is being made, where the works of the devil have been constrained. As we move on in this passage, we'll encounter a great white throne. And at that great white throne, there'll be no more time. There'll be nothing more to learn, no more questions to ask, and it will all be over.

And so I hope a passage like this, if you've been sitting on a fence, that this would cause you to jump off that fence and run to Jesus Christ and say, Lord Jesus Christ, save my soul, I want to follow you. I wanna be your disciple. I don't want the world anymore. I want you. Say that before the great white throne judgment.

Say that before you die. I have a friend who might be within hours or a couple of days of dying and I saw him yesterday. I so pray that his soul will be kept by God. The consequences are so grave. Earlier in the service Ash read Hebrews 2.3, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

Oh, it's such a great salvation. Think about it. Think of what Jesus Christ has done for you, for your soul. Isn't it amazing? God is so good in the salvation of sinners and God is so good in the salvation of sinners.

And God is so good in the constraining of the devil and holding him back so that he would not tear us all limb from limb. And he also wouldn't tear the unbelievers limb from limb so that there would be a time for them to repent. Praise the Lord. If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.

For the scripture says whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written in it. Would you pray with me? Father, I pray that these blessings would fall Abundantly on all of our souls that you would keep us from the evil one that you would Give us such a heart to follow you. We thank you that you have held back the devil in such a way.

And now, oh Lord, help us to put on the full armor of God to resist everything that he throws. Lord, I'm so thankful to be able to be here in this church today and to see and feel and rejoice in how you've protected your people. My people, your people, our people. Amen.