Microphone. Wow. So maybe that trim thing that I turned up earlier because we didn’t have enough volume. Now we’ve got plenty of volume. I blame me because I think I was the one who made that change. So it’s plenty loud. There we go. Hopefully this is can you all hear me? I’m pretty loud. So maybe the microphone has got some issues, but I’ll be plenty loud for you.

Hello. It’s good to see you all this morning. If you’re tuning online, I’m glad you’re joining us there. If you’re new or new ish. My name is Aaron Bjorklin. I’m one of the pastors here. And if that is you, then we have a table out in the lobby just for you if you’re new, it’s called the New Here Table.

If you’re new and you’re new here, it’s for you. It’s an opportunity for us to get to know you and for you to get to know South, because our goal here at South is to help people learn to live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus. And we do that at all different levels, at all different stages of our journeys with Jesus.

But if this is a place that you might step into a journey with Jesus like that, then our prayer is that you would do that. Check that out. This morning, I’ll give you a little bit of a sneak peek into a preacher’s mind. So when you’re studying preaching, one of the things they teach you to do is they teach you to start with a funny joke or a funny story or an amazing story or whatever to grab people’s attention.

And so today I don’t think I need to do that because the text itself, I think will grab your attention. Cause when I was assigned to this passage, I read it and I was like, Okay, my attention is perked. So our passage today is Revelation chapter 12, starting in verse one. I’m not going to put the whole text on the screen, so if you have a Bible, I’d encourage you to turn there, or an app, or a phone, or whatever.

Turn there, and you’ll see what I mean in just a moment.

Revelation 12, verse one. A great sign appeared in the heaven, in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and a crown of 12 stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven. An enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his head.

Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all of the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God where she might be taken care of for 1, 260 days. Then war broke out. There’s that. Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and the angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven.

The great dragon was hurled down. The ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray, he was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him. Then I heard a loud voice in heaven saying, Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah for the accuser of our brothers and sisters, the accuser Who accuses them before our God day and night has been hurled down.

They triumphed over him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony. They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. Therefore rejoice, you heavens, and you who dwell in them, but woe to the earth and the sea because the devil has gone down to you. He is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short.

When the dragon saw that he’d been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to places prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times, and half a time. Out of the serpent’s reach, when from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and swept her away with torrent.

But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river, and the dragon had spewed out all of the out of his mouth. Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring, those who keep God’s commandments and hold fast to the testimony about Jesus.

There be dragons. Is your interest perked? I know mine was, but I’m also a little bit Full of fear. So let’s pray. Father God, thank you for this time this morning. I pray that you would help us to understand what your word means for us today. That you would empower these words by your spirit, that we might be a people more in your way with your heart.

Amen and amen. So we’re re entering the series in the book of Revelation. If you haven’t been around for a little while actually, I think you guys could probably turn me down at just a hair. I don’t know. I’m like reverberating in my own head. I don’t know. I’m loud enough, I think. So we’ve been in this series since last fall, actually.

And this is season three. We’re kicking off season three of Revelation. We took a few breaks here and there because let’s be honest, Revelation is a lot to do all at once. But we’re re kicking off the series. Alex was supposed to kick it off last week. But he was very sick, so I’m actually doing that, so I just feel the need to get us all back on the same page.

If you have been tracking with us, Revelation is a wild and crazy book, and if you haven’t been tracking with us, hopefully by the end of this little bit of an introduction, we’ll all be on the same page, because there’s some really important interpretive principles that we need to follow when we approach Revelation.

We learned this from Alex, his first week back in the fall, when we started the book of revelation is he is apocalyptic literature, which does not mean it’s about the end of the world. So you get that the book of revelation is apocalyptic literature. The word apocalyptic we think of as a sort of about the end of the world, but actually that word, it really just means to reveal, to unfold, to uncover something.

Ta da, you pull the sheet off, ta da, that’s what apocalypse means. It has a sort of a word picture to it, and it does not mean it’s about the end of the world. Just by way of reference there’s a couple different ways of approaching Revelation. There’s the historical view, and that is a view that believes that everything that talks, that John talks about in Revelation already happened prior to the year that he wrote it.

Then there’s the there’s the preterist view that, that thinks that all of the things that Revelation talks about took place before 70 AD. And then there’s the futurist view. And most of us might be familiar with that view, that’s the view that everything in this book is about stuff that’s going to happen at the end of the world.

And then there’s the eclectic view. By the way, the Futurist View, that’s the left behind series, right? That’s actually a minority amongst conservative scholars today. That’s not likely the thing. But we at South both Pastor Alex and myself tend to hold an eclectic view, meaning it depends on the passage.

Sometimes there’s things that definitely, clearly hint towards things of the future, and then there’s all, obviously, things in this passage that refer to ancient Rome, and the time that Jesus, or that John was writing this to the churches in Asia that he was writing to. There’s a few little details for us, but I think Alex gave us an illustration his very first week that was really helpful for me, so I’m going to reuse it because I try and steal all his best stuff.

He told this illustration about this video game Zelda. Anyone familiar with Zelda? Zelda, in Zelda you have a main mission, right? And you’re trying to rescue the princess or something? I’ve literally never played Zelda, so I have no idea what’s going on with Zelda, but there’s some main mission, right?

And then along your mission, you have side quests that you can pursue, right? I don’t know, getting like healing powers or something, anyone? I have no idea. I’ve never played. But there’s side quests and there’s a main mission. And Alex challenged us to make sure that we stay on the main mission. He said this.

The mission of revelation is Jesus revealed. So when Jesus walked the earth, he came as a humble personality who showed up as a physical being as a human being, and he walked this earth sort of unassuming, shockingly unassuming. The book of Revelation reveals Jesus as the cosmic King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the one who rules over all the principalities and powers.

So that’s what it’s revealing about his character. This book is showing the other side of Jesus, right? So the big mission of Revelation is to reveal, is Jesus revealed as he really is Lord of all creation, present with his people. And side quests? Are when and what’s up with this and what’s up with that and how and all of those sorts of things and like, when is this all going to happen?

Those are side quests. And so we don’t have time today to address all of the side quests. I promise you that I would take me four or five hours just to unpack what I know about this passage. And I know very little we’re just gonna have to fly through it. If you have a question about this passage, if you’re interested in a side quest, they’re actually powerful side quests, because they might lead you and give you resources to understand the big vision, but if you have questions, you can go to redcouchtheology.

com, submit your questions there, and then this week we’ll try and go a little bit deeper into some of the fun little side quests that Revelation 12 has for us. Are we on the same page? This was Alex’s final challenge for us before we dive into Revelation 12. He says this, don’t miss Jesus in the midst of his own revelation.

So our goal today is to not miss Jesus in his own revelation. So let’s dive in to Revelation 12. It begins here. A great sign appeared in heaven and a woman clothed with a son. With the moon under her feet and the crown of 12 stars on her head, she was pregnant. So we have this character. We’re gonna have to, we are going to ask, have to ask her a few who questions and what’s going on here questions in order to get after what’s this passage for.

So who is this woman? And down here in verse four, there’s multiple references to this woman. So who is she? Most scholars believe this is Israel, and I wish I could go into a ton of details of why they believe that. I’ll just give you the 30, 000 foot view if you’re curious about that. Side quest, we’ll talk about it in the podcast.

Most scholars believe that it can’t be Mary because she sprouts wings she does all sorts of crazy stuff, she’s flying around, floating around, there’s all sorts of stuff like that. Some scholars believe it’s the church, and I think that there’s some flavor of that. Here, and I’m actually quite comfortable sort of including both Israel and the church, but mostly this image here, and I could give you some textual references in the podcast is this is a nation that gives birth to the Messiah.

That’s the idea here. So it’s Israel that sort of is being talked about here. Moving on, there’s another character here. She gives birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. Psalm 2. That’s a reference, a direct quotation from Psalm two and her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.

So who is this woman’s offspring? First we see it’s a reference to Jesus. We know this because that’s a direct quotation of Psalm two and Psalm two is one of the most clear. prophecies of the Messiah. If you go back, you can study that. All throughout history, scholars have recognized Psalm 2 as being a prophetic psalm that references Jesus, and Jesus himself identifies with this psalm.

We know that at least the son is referring to Jesus, but there’s some more offspring beyond the son. Look at verse 17. Then the dragon was enraged at the woman and went off to wage war against the rest of her offspring. Those who keep God’s commands and hold fast to their testimony about Jesus.

So we know who the rest of the offspring are. It’s anyone who holds fast to God’s commands and hold, and holds fast to the testimony about Jesus. So that’s followers of Jesus who hold fast to his testimony and try and obey him. Maybe perhaps we could say it this way. It’s people who try and live in the way of Jesus with the heart of Jesus.

It’s us. And it’s the original Christians who are reading this book. So here you go. The woman’s son is Jesus, and the rest of her offspring are all who seek his way. That’s us. Alright, I will warn you, there’s a lot of sort of background information I need to give you, but I promise you, if you hang with me, there’s some really important lessons for us today in 2025.

But there’s another character here, in case you hadn’t noticed on the first reading. Verse 3, I’m gonna jump down to verse 3. Then another sign appeared in heaven, an enormous red dragon with seven heads, 10 horns and seven crowns on his head. And then he goes down here. The dragon stood in front of the woman and was about to get, who was about to give birth so that he might devour her child the moment he was born.

What or who is this dragon? What is going, there’s dragons really well actually. I’m going to spend a chunk of our time trying to prove to you that the Dragon of Revelation isn’t the first one in the Bible. Actually, if you were to read in the original languages, you would see dragons everywhere. There’s dragons all over the scriptures.

And so I’m going to need to make a case for that because some of you might be going, Really? Because I know the first time I was told that I was like, We’ll see, prove it. And so I’m going to try to give you some proof. And I think it’s really important because once we see how the image of the dragon unfolds in scripture, then we’ll have much more clarity about who this dragon is and how it relates to Jesus as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

All right. Are we on board? We’re tracking. Okay. Let’s dive in. So the first time we see a reference to a dragon light creature is actually in Genesis chapter one. This is day five of creation. All right, verse 20, it says this, and God said, let the waters team with living creatures. So water creatures, right?

And then the let birds fly above the earth and the vault of the sky. And then God created some more water creatures. So God created great creatures of the sea. Tananim in the Hebrew. And Tananim has been translated sea monsters. Sea serpents. Sea creatures, monsters of the sea. This is all appropriate interpretation and translations of this in the NIV.

It just happens to use sea creatures. Okay, there’s one Hebrew word, and we don’t, we can’t quite make a conclusion from this verse that this might be a dragon, but let’s move on. Genesis chapter three. Now the serpent, Nahash. was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, do not, or did God really say, you must not eat it from the tree in the garden?

So we know the serpent, right? The serpent sort of figure in the fall of man shows up on the scene and we learned from later passages, and I’m not going to have time to go through all of them, that this word, Nahash, Serpent can be translated serpent. It can be translated like fire breather.

It can be translated a several different ways, but it carries with it an idea of this like sort of venomous maniacal creature, a sentient chaos creature. All right, moving on, fast forward to Psalm 104. So there’s two words to give us, and then there the ships go to and fro, and the leviathan, have you ever read this in the Bible?

Leviathan, which you formed to frolic. This shows up all over the place as well. So there’s three words that might hint at dragon like language. But here’s the doozy, Isaiah 27 uses all three of them synonymously in one section. In that day, the Lord will punish with his sword, his fierce, great, powerful, the Leviathan or Leviathan that glides the Nahash, the Leviathan that coils Nahash.

He will say to the Tananim, monsters of the sea. So he’s using them all interchangeably, back and forth. And here’s what is fascinating. For us, we’re like, okay, now if I were to make a stronger case and go through all the rest of the verses that use these three words, you’d start to see there’s all the creatures that are referenced with these words have this sort of maniacal, chaotic, disorder kind of energy about them.

So in the, but let me make one sort of final case that there are dragons in the Bible. Between the 3rd and the 1st century, the Septuagint was written. So the Septuagint, let me tell you about the Septuagint, we’re getting like seminary education here this morning. So the Septuagint, between the 3rd and the 1st century was written, it was a translation from the Hebrew text into Greek.

So the people of God, when Greek started to become the main language in the area, Followers of God do what followers of God do. They translated their holy scriptures into the common language. And that’s the Septuagint. And one of the things that’s fascinating about the Septuagint is we start to get to get a little bit of a snapshot of what ancient translators thought about their own language.

Because they had to take a Hebrew word and find an equivalent Greek word to translate it into. Can you guess what the Greek word is that they use to translate all three of those words most of the time? Drakon. It’s where we get the word dragon. And it’s the same word that the Greek mythology used for dragons.

So when an ancient translator and an ancient person read these passages, they saw dragons everywhere. Interesting, isn’t it? So what’s up with these dragons? There be dragons So some of what’s going on is in the ancient mind There’s these creatures that live out in this chaos space. The sea represents chaos in the Hebrew mind the sea represents disorder and chaos and scary things and that was true for all ancient peoples because when they ancient map makers used this language, that’s an Chartered territory, there’ll be dragons.

That’s where the term there’ll be dragons came from. Is they just we don’t know what’s there, probably dragons. Like the unknown, chaos, disorder, confusion, doubt, there’ll be dragons. So this is what’s going on in an ancient mind around dragons. Now when we hear dragons, we think, ah, it’s for kids tales or fairy tales or things like that, right?

Maybe this guy, how to train your dragon, or perhaps this guy, this fun little guy. Or how about game of thrones or the house of dragons? What’s up with human beings and dragons? We’re obsessed with them and we might write them off as cute or funny or childish, but if you actually go back in history, there are dragons in almost every ancient civilization.

In their creation accounts, in their lore, what is going on with these dragons and what do they represent? I’m going to make the case that the dragon, dragons are an ancient meme. You know what a meme is? Not this kind of meme actually, but actually where we get the word meme, these are funny. And I think they have some influence on society.

They may become a little famous and you pass them around with friends and stuff like that. Hahahahaha. No, I’m talking about something where we got the idea of the word meme is actually these ideas that have the power to influence society Richard Middleton said it this way all ancient cultures subscribe to a concept of mimesis That’s where we get the word meme from mimesis or mimetic ideas It’s the notion that for human sociopolitical life to achieve its best and highest form, societies must replicate the divine pattern that the gods enact in primordial times.

Okay, that’s like big philosophy language. So let me translate it. What he’s saying is there are ideas in the world. That are so palpable and they have images around them that have actually shaped the way societies form their stories that start to shape whole cultures and whole movements of people. This is mimesis.

This is mimetic language. So you can go tell your friends at work. You know what? Have you ever heard of mimesis or mimetic? Anyway but it’s, this is what dragons are in ancient times. And I think. It’s still true today. We don’t even know how intertwined the idea of dragons are in our own psychology. I might be losing you now, but hang with me for just a few more minutes.

Let me just give you a few examples. This is Tiamat, an ancient, from ancient Mesopotamia, this sort of sea creature. It’s got scales. It’s from the creation of Count of from ancient Mesopotamia. These are all over the place. So I’m going to make this case, the dragon is a meme image that has profound meaning in the Bible.

So what in the world does this meme mean? Because, let’s be honest, we weren’t even necessarily sure we believed in dragons when we walked in here this morning. But there’s something going on. And why does John leverage this ancient sort of primordial thought process In human beings, when he’s talking about these various things.

I think we get some insight in, in another relationship text. This passage alludes to another ancient text in the book of Daniel. And I think we’ll get some insight from Daniel. What’s going on with these dragons. Daniel chapter 7, hang with me. I know this is a lot of details, but we’ll get to where it affects us in just a moment.

Daniel said, In my vision at the night, I looked, and there before me were four winds of the heavens churning up the great sea. Sea, we have an environment that represents chaos in the ancient mind. And four great beasts come out of chaos. Each different from the other, and they came up from the sea. So we have these chaos creatures that come up out of the sea.

And just like us, Daniel’s What in the world is going on here? And fortunately for Daniel, he had someone he could ask. And he gets an answer. I approached one of those standing there and asked him, What in the world is the meaning of this? So he told me and gave me the interpretation of these things.

These four great beasts, or monsters, or dragons, or whatever you want to call them, are four kings that will rise up from the earth. So he associates this angelic creature that tells Daniel what these are. He associates them with some political kings, some political powers. And we know from other texts in the scriptures that these powers, these kings showed up on the scene and they abused their power.

And they were very aggressive nations and they. Caused chaos in the world for human thriving. In Daniel’s day, the dragon creatures are people who start to embody chaos bringers. When human beings go off the path of what God has for them, they become sort of representatives of the dragon.

The dragon, the snake, the life, and the beast equals individuals, leaders, and nations that cause destruction to God’s good plan. And there is, you could make the case that there is this spiritual realm where there’s dragons, the serpent, Satan in our text in Revelation, we hear that Satan is personified as a dragon.

But we also find all throughout the scriptures, human beings and nation states referred to with the same Tananim, Nachash, and Leviathan a language in the Bible. For example, other texts that the Bible talks of in dragon language. Pharaoh, Israel, when Israel starts sacrificing their own children to false gods, God calls them dragon like.

You’re aligning with the dragon when you do that kind of stuff. In other words, you’re disordering the world. You’re creating chaos in humanity, Babylon, Assyria, the king of Israel, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So when I was preparing this message, I was I used the Bible Project quite a bit because they do a whole study on the dragon.

If you’re interested in that, I would highly recommend that because they go deep. Seven or eight episodes in their podcast series on just the dragon and the Bible. But during Tim Mackey, who’s the main scholar there, during his explanation of the book of Revelation, he shows this image. This is the an image he uses in the book of Revelation to talk about the martyrdom.

This is a Roman soldier martyring a Christian, but look at the shadow on the wall. I thought this was really helpful. Because, what’s the dragon? Who is this dragon? It might be you. And it might be me. When we bring disorder and destruction into the world, when we abuse our own power and our own authority, When we take matters into our own hands and we try and use our influence to get our way and our kingdom to grow in the world, we are behaving, we are aligning with the dragon.

The dragon represents a chaos monster that tries to pull creation. Into disorder, the dragon represents a chaos monster. It’s anything in the world, anyone in the world, any spiritual being in God’s created order that tries to take his shalom, his plan for humanity, his good design for human beings and to drag them back into chaos and disorder and destruction and pain.

This is what the dragon represents. So think about this church. If you don’t remember, Revelation was written to seven churches who were suffering under the hand of Rome. They were facing martyrdom and all sorts of things. So to them, when they’re reading this, what are they putting in their minds? They immediately think of Rome or the rulers of Rome.

So the dragon is Rome, right? But also in these letters to the churches, John warns them about these false teachers that say that come into the church there within the church family saying, you know what? But we don’t need to be that serious about our faith. We don’t need to actually do all those things because we’re going to get killed if we do.

So let’s just like claim Jesus and do the things of the world. These are the false teachers. And I think John is making the case that they are behaving like a dragon because they are not advocating for the way of Jesus fully. So dragons are false teachers. Dragons are those who cave to the systems of this world.

And so there might be dragons in this room. If you are not pursuing Jesus way, you are by default pursuing the way of the dragon. And that’s a little scary because the scriptures describe that kind of behavior as a seven headed red dragon. It’s that terrifying for human experience. So the great theologian Dwight Schrute said this, wow, amazing, isn’t it?

No other animal on earth could do this. Maybe beavers, but not like this. He’s sitting on the pile of trash. And looking across this almost never ending thing at a dump. Human beings. But it’s funny. Maybe beavers, but it’s funny. But here’s the deal. I think he’s on to something because God put into humans unique powers amongst the rest of the created order.

Human beings have unique powers to either bring order and beauty and the goodness and the way of Jesus into this world. Or we can take those same powers and bring Disorder and destruction and pain and sorrow into the world. This is our choice as human beings. And so we, no other animal on earth can do that.

You don’t see dogs rising up and then trying to figure out how to raise an army and then build guns and weapons and nuclear it’s just even the smartest of animals cannot create as much disorder as human beings can. We can actually become so terrifying that we can destroy the world itself.

We can become dragons. How can we slay the dragon? How do we slay this dragon? And I think Revelation 12 gives us some insight into that. Look with me at Revelation starting in verse 10.

Check this out. How do we slay the dragon? Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, the dragon type people or spirits, the accuser of the brothers and sisters who accuses them before God day and night has been hurled down.

They triumph over him by what? By the blood of the lamb and by the word of his, of their testimony. They did not love their lives so much as to shrink back from death. Now let me read that again in a more literal translation. They triumph over him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their martyrdom.

That’s the word there. Testimony is martyrdom. They triumph over the dragon by the death of Jesus and their own death. So these people, these churches, as they were facing literal martyrdom in Rome, they triumph because they’re not afraid of death. And the dragons only. Weapon of warfare is actually the fear of death, the fear of not having enough, the fear of not having enough control and on and off.

Our fears are what the dragon craves on because it makes human beings do crazy stuff. We harm others, we abuse others, we break relationships with others, we Do idol worship, all sorts of crazy things that human beings all driven by a desire to keep control and keep power and order our own worlds. And when we surrender to that, we surrender to death and say nothing, not even death can touch me.

Then we can start making decisions like real human beings, like Jesus did, who came and loved all the way to the point of death. And the dragon’s I don’t know how to fight this. Because all I do is feed on fear. And so these Christians, they defeat the dragon in their day of Rome by saying, Rome, you can’t touch me.

You might take my life, but I belong to Jesus.

So in the early 1930s, a dragon figure rose to the scene.

As Hitler started to rise to power and accumulate influence based upon what? Really good words. Influence because he spoke really well with passion and with power and with authority and with strength. And he rose and he accumulated such a mass of energy that he started to embody the dragon that slays human beings.

And over those early years, he started off normal. And then as time went on, he started to unfold his plan that he thought that some human beings were literally real humans and other human beings were not fully humans. This is dragon behavior people. And Hitler went off the rails and he murdered thousands, millions of people.

And you have a little figure, this is Witold Blenky. He’s a Polish soldier. And when, early in the 1930s, he heard about what was going on, they started noticing these camps that people were being shipped to, and he volunteered to go to Auschwitz. And to be captured on purpose so that he could figure out what was actually going on there.

And so he could try and send messages out and see if there was any way he could overthrow them. He went into the belly of the dragon and he tried to figure it out. And he was abused. And he got messages out, and part of the reason the the allied troops knew what was going on in Auschwitz was because of this man, who said, you know what, fear, I don’t care, because, as a follower of Jesus, he said I have to figure out and I have to fight for justice, and I, and with maybe a little fear and trepidation, he goes into the face of fear.

Here’s our invitation, church. We can either become agents of the dragon or agents of the lamb. We can become agents of the dragon or agents of the lamb. This is the choice that we have. God has given human beings a terrifying power. We can bring order, we can bring disorder. And I don’t know about you, but I want to figure out how do I make sure that I’m an agent of the Lamb.

And the way to do that is death. The way to do that is to pursue, not my agenda, but the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. The way to do that is to pursue, not my kingdom, but the King of Kings and His kingdom. And in order to pursue God’s kingdom, the only way to do that is to die to my own. To die to self.

We can become agents of the dragon or agents of the slain lamb. So the dragon is defeated by death. By Christ’s and by our own.

The dragon is defeated by death. He cannot defeat death. But Jesus can.

Now, what does we’re not facing martyrdom like they are. Or we told blankie did. So what does this mean for us in 2025? Most of us aren’t being faced with martyrdom. So how do we die to self? And what does dying to self actually mean anyway? What does death to self really mean for you? Cause here’s my fear.

I talked to some counselors within our community this week because here’s my fear. If you’re wired, if you’re wiring here today is to be a person who just serves and gives and not, no you pick where you want to go to lunch or I’ll just work harder and I’ll serve and give and give.

Maybe you’re hearing this message, you’re like, yep, that’s what I thought. Stay the course. I’m right on target. The way of Jesus is my way. I will just become a doormat for the rest of my life. And actually, I don’t think that’s, What I’m saying, I don’t think that’s the invitation for Jesus, because I think that is actually potentially, and I don’t know this, I’m not a counselor, and I would encourage you if this resonates with you to see a counselor and process this for some of us, the way we wield control and we find some sort of order in our world is to say when I was a child, if I appeased my mom or my dad, then I got, things went a little bit better for me.

So it was your way of controlling the situation. And those are deep wounds and deep rhythms and deep habits. And I don’t want to enforce those because actually maybe dying to self for you is to see a counselor and figure out how to say no to someone. And that would be way more painful and way more difficult for you than to just say yes to everyone all the time, forever.

And then there’s others of us in the room with, where we grew up and we learned that the only way to stay in control, to make sure our kingdom was okay, was to always get our way, to have all our ducks in a row, to be perfect all the time, to have our calendar lined out, to say the right things, to do the right things, to on and on.

It was our way of controlling and dying to self is to say, I’m not going to use those tools anymore. Instead, I’m going to trust Jesus and I’m going to say not my way sometimes. And frankly, I don’t even know what it means for you. Because those are deep, dark, dragon places within each one of us as human beings that I can’t figure out for each of you.

But dying to self isn’t just doing what other people want always. I don’t know where this lands for you. But, at South, we have a few counselors on southfellowship. org And you can meet with someone and just say, I want to figure some of this stuff out. What does it mean to die to self in a healthy Jesus like way?

Because Jesus had this ability to be firmly clear of who he is, who he was. This is his boundaries. I’m not doing this. I’m not going beyond this point. But then there was also this part of him who says, Fearlessly, I can face the cross. Now, that is a kind of showing up as a human being that’s not just caving to everyone, is it?

Instead, it’s a way that he showed up to change the entire course of human history. And that’s what we gotta figure out how to do as a church. There be dragons. But the blood of the lamb, but by the blood of the lamb, We are dragon slayers. When we choose to say, I’m gonna do the hard work to figure this out, I’m gonna invite the worship team up cause I can’t tell you what the answer looks like for you.

We’re gonna sing this song and it’s gonna give us some time to process in Jesus presence of what it, what do I need to die to? Cause imagine church with me, imagine for a moment that in this room we become a church. Or maybe you’re a dad and you have teen kids and you’re just blowing up at them all the time.

And you just have rage that’s steaming under the surface. And you say, you know what? I can’t be a dragon in my home anymore. I’m gonna do the work. I’m gonna go see a counselor and say, where is all this rage coming from? I’m gonna see a pastor. I’m gonna pray. I’m gonna go on a silent retreat. I don’t know what you need to do.

You’re saying, I refuse to be an agent of the dragon in my home. Or maybe for you, I described your story before and you just appease everyone around you and your own existence, your own personality is shriveling up smaller and smaller, but inside you’re growing in bitterness because everyone is asking and asking you have nothing left to give.

And so for you, you’re saying, I refuse to be an agent of the dragon because I’m letting. I’m letting this eat me alive and my bitterness is going to spill over one day and then I’m going to really hurt someone. So I’m going to do the work and I’m going to figure out how to draw boundaries around my own existence so that I can become a true agent of the lamb.

I don’t know what it means for you. But as they sing this song, there’s going to be a prayer team that’s going to come up here. And if you want to process with them, go for it. If not, I’m just going to, they’re just going to sing over us. And I want you to do some serious work with Jesus. Because we need to be people that slay dragons.

And the only way we can do that is to go the way of the cross, not the way of our own power. We don’t wield weapons of warfare. We don’t wield weapons of our own strength and our own power. We must wield the weapon of dying to self. Ask him what that means for you. Let’s sing.