The Millennium Rev, 20:1-7
Revelation 20:1-7 · Vern Peterman · Nov 17, 2002
Revelation (2001-03), No. 53
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262249598099

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We'll be turning to Revelation 20, verses 1-7. This last week we started off on the first three verses of that, and our reason for selecting that is just looking at the topic of Satan, Satan's history, and this point that we read about here in the Millennium where Satan is actually bound and set aside during that period of time. And so what we want to do this morning is continue in the same context, but go through verse seven.

And rather than what we typically do, where we go verse by verse explaining each phrase, this introduces the subject of the Millennial Kingdom. And frankly, the way it stands out is this section of Revelation will reveal something that no other section of Scripture reveals. But at the same time, there's lots of information about this Millennial Kingdom that's revealed previously in Scripture that we'll be touching on substantially here. So we'll be kind of taking a sweep through the spectrum of teaching in Scripture about this Millennial Kingdom.

One step at a time though, okay? Now, in chapter 19 of Revelation, we talked about Christ's coming to earth, His second coming. And we'll kind of look at the big picture here shortly. But I have this picture in front of us here. and right underneath the bottom of the end you see this spot. Well, you can see it up there now. There's a spire, and that spire is kind of the top or the peak of the Mount of Olives.

Now, this area up there is where the Lord, according to Zechariah 14.4, where the Lord Himself will come down and touch the earth. Interestingly enough, Although it speaks of the Messiah, it actually says there that God himself will come down upon this place.

He will come into Jerusalem from that point, and then what you see there is the Dome of the Rock, the gold dome near the center. What you see is the Dome of the Rock will have, by that time, been replaced by the temple that had been built during the Tribulation period.

And we'll be taking a closer look because even that temple will not be the temple for the millennium. So we'll take a look at that in a bit. So anyway, this picture in front of you is a very momentous, pivotal area where we'll see the Lord come in His second coming. We'll see a temple rebuilt twice from this point we stand here. And this moment that we're talking about could be as soon as seven years from this day. This may be our last church service.

That would be neat, wouldn't it? So anyway, as we look at this here, I'll use this word millennium, and it's good to ask the question, what's Vern talking about? Let's just make sure we're all on the same page. It's from this Latin word for a thousand. It's the phrase that's been used based on this passage that we're looking at here.

It's the word that's been used to describe this thousand year period of time where Christ will reign over all the earth from Jerusalem, over Israel and over the entire earth. He will be, as promised to David, let me count now, three thousand years ago roughly, as promised to David, he will be sitting on David's throne. He will reign over the house and the throne and the kingdom of David. And this figure of a thousand comes from being repeated not just once, but six times in this one passage. We see that one thousand years showing up.

It's the only place in scripture where it gives the duration of the Messiah's reign. The only place, but it says it six times as if to say, don't miss this. Verse after verse after verse gives it. This Revelation chapter 20 first three verses that we read last week and looked at in more detail and Ray read for us again this morning.

Here you see a couple of places where this phrase thousand years comes up. And this obviously in these first three verses deals specifically with Satan as we talked about last week. He'll be bound up during this time of the millennium. He'll be out of the picture and unable to impact anything. The next thing we see in verses four through seven, and we'll be looking again at some more detail on this next week, but the next thing we see is this phrase, a thousand years, just keeps coming back, keeps coming back and reinforced verse after verse after verse there. And interestingly enough, we'll see that at the end, Satan is released at the end of this time of the millennium, for a short period of time.

Again, we'll go into that in more detail next week. Let's look at the big picture here, because I don't want to just start talking about times and have us lose track of where we're at. On the left end there, we've got the first coming. In Christ's first coming, this is where we were identified with him. In his death, in his burial, His resurrection, His ascension, and His seeding. We are identified with Him in the historical context in His first coming. Then after that, you see the church age.

That's the time where we are in now. There is nothing that is stopping, in terms of what the Lord has revealed, there is nothing that is stopping the Lord from saying, okay, now is the time. There's nothing even stopping the Lord from saying, okay, this service is done. Even halfway through. The Lord could come and take us that soon. Because the next step is the rapture. That is the taking up of the church.

Those who have believed during this church age. Whether they have died during that time or whether they are alive now. Then after that will be this tribulation period. We've gone through revelation. four through nineteen talking about the tribulation period and yet when you look at the big picture here it's a period of just seven years that is put here between the church age and the millennium and then Christ's second coming will be the event where he comes with his angels and with us those who believe to earth and he will be simply speaking out and the judgments will be done.

By his very word they will be carried out and executed. Then follows the millennium, this thousand year reign of Christ. That's what we're referring to when we talk about the millennium or the millennial kingdom. We're going to use that phrase or those words this morning. After that will be the rolling over, continuing of that kingdom into eternity.

This Millennial Kingdom is also Earth's last hurrah. This Heaven and this Earth will have finished up its purpose in that, and we'll get to that before very long here. Everything on this planet will be gone. This is a culmination of the purposes that God has set in place. Question, what will be the conditions during the millennium? What's it going to be like?

What we find is this specific passage in Revelation gives the detail of a thousand years that no other passage does. But the details about the millennium have been given long ago. And a great many of those details come actually out of the Old Testament, and so we'll be giving reference to a lot of Old Testament passages here. Why out of the Old Testament? The reason being that, as we'll see further on here, the Millennium is the culmination of promises to the Jews. Therefore, in the Old Testament, written to and by the Jews, is where we'll find those promises talking about the conditions during the Millennium, which will be radically different from the conditions that we see now.

Let's take a look at some of these individually. One of them. All wars will cease as the world unifies under the reign of the true king. There's lots of effort to, you know, let's try to get this worked out and that worked out. And we've got for decades now, you know, the United Nations is supposed to help resolve a lot of these things.

And yet what ends up happening is human beings don't seem to be able to arrive at it, do they? They just don't seem to be able to get there. There are even major movements towards world peace, and yet the truth is wars just keep going on and on and on and on. And one will get settled down, supposedly, and another one stirs up.

It's interesting, we don't hear much about them, but there are those who track world conflicts, and at any one time it seems like there's three or four dozen wars of some magnitude going on at any one time. And we hardly hear about most of them. But a great many battles are taking place at various places, and most of it never hits our headlines, much less the third page. There will be peace because the Messiah will reign. He is the Prince of Peace.

And real interesting, Bethlehem. It's the House of Bread. The name before It was changed slightly from the Canaanite name Bethlehem and that was the house of the God of War. Very slight change. And so here's the Prince of Peace born in this place that was dedicated to the God of War.

Isn't that amazing? A phenomenal change. Now, let's look at the next one. Joy. We're soon going to hear the song Joy to the World The Lord has come. That's what this is really about. Joy to the world, the Lord has come. Let earth receive her king. Well, guess what? That's going to be the millennium, not now. This isn't the kingdom now. The kingdom is this millennial time that's upcoming. That's what joy to the world is about. You listen to the words of the song, and looking ahead to that king. That's the king they're looking for in that song. there will be joy come to the whole world at the reign of the Messiah.

Lots of reasons. We'll look at more of them. Holiness. This will be a holy kingdom. We've got all sorts of kingdoms on the earth and an awful lot of them, it's real easy to say, boy, that's not a holy kingdom. Real easy to arrive at that conclusion. But here there will be Holiness will be the very character of Christ's kingdom and reign on the earth. It will be holy because His presence will be here and He is by character and nature holy. The land, the city, the temple, everything that is an expression in His kingdom will be holy. The next thing is the glory of God because of God's presence the glory of God will be manifest. Now, what's the glory of God? It's the essential radiance of who He is. Who He is.

One of the screens we had up here when we were first opening was just a verse out of a couple chapters ahead where there will be no day or night. There will be no such thing. No need for it. Why? Because the very glory of God will be all that's needed to light up all there is.

The very glory of God will be expressed during this kingdom of Christ on the earth. Justice and righteousness. And why justice and righteousness? Because justice and righteousness are God's very character. It's not that the Lord brings justice and righteousness. Justice and righteousness are who He is. He's going to mete out perfect justice.

One of the things that a lot of us have seen is if you deal with the legal system that we have, certainly we need something. But a lot of times you look at it and you say, well, I'm not quite happy with the results, you know, the way it came out. And this will be a time when we'll say, no, perfect justice was done every time. Every time. No disappointments. It may not be exactly what each person wants, but the reality is it will be just.

Now, one point to make as we look at this justice and righteousness, the character of justice and righteousness regarding this kingdom comes from the Lord himself. Human beings, and we'll touch on this subject in a bit, human beings will still have a sinful nature.

Knowledge. Now, of course, we've got knowledge now. I'm not talking about just knowing stuff. This is spiritual knowledge. In truth, one of the great difficulties, spiritually, is people not having knowledge. People being unaware. People not knowing what's true. The character of this millennial kingdom, which will be that knowledge will be part and parcel. with the very character of the Messiah's reign. Spiritual knowledge. What you need to know spiritually. There will be understanding.

Not just information. Get the difference? Not just information, but understanding. Then just physical things. No sickness or deformity. One of the things that Helmut prayed for earlier is, you know, people with this or that particular problem. That will be gone. Off the scene.

Along with that, and it sure makes sense in parallel, long life. We read in the Old Testament and the early chapters of Genesis about these long, long lifetimes. And what we're going to see during this millennial period, during this millennium, Is long life returning again? An example that we have is if a person dies at the age of 100, they'll say, well, he kind of died young.

So a real change from our current time, huh? Another is economic prosperity. Certainly the Lord will do a lot of things to change the way economies are run. But some of those examples is all the things that we have to kind of support the bottom end of the economic ladder. All those things will be unnecessary. Furthermore, think about this. If you aren't having to put all kinds of money into warfare and battle, where does that go? It goes back into useful things within the economy, right?

So that's one aspect of it. All the military budget gets redirected into things that are not Preparing in the event you need to cause destruction essentially, okay Another aspect of it now all of a sudden all the health issues are no longer Something to have to contend with so it's real interesting.

You've had some radical changes from the way our economies run now So this is this is something that it's described in again and again and again in the Old Testament. And we see some of these passages here. Not just once or twice, but a number of places. The other point to be made is God is present. Why? Because Christ is present. One of the words that you'll hear over this next month or so, you will hear Christ be called Immanuel. Right? And what does Immanuel mean? God with us. That's what it's looking forward to. God with us.

One of the charts that we looked at early on in the book of Revelation is all the different names that are given to the Lord and they're applied to God in the Old Testament, like first and the last, the beginning and the end. Those are of Jehovah. And now we see in the book of Revelation those are applied to Jesus Christ. He is God with us.

God with us. God will be present. This is something that the Jews had not seen for many, many centuries. God with us. Global godly worship. Not only will the Jews be worshiping their Messiah, but the Gentiles also will be brought in. And the Gentiles will come to Israel, to Jerusalem, and they'll be approaching the Lord during this time as well. the whole world will be involved in this godly worship. Now, another aspect of this time, as part of the worship, is the Millennial Temple.

Now, when you think of it, in Biblical history there have been two temples. The first one is the one that Solomon built, and Nebuchadnezzar did away with it. The second one is the one that was built after the Jews came back from the Babylonian exile, And that was embellished, if you will, by Herod. Herod the Great. And that's the temple, the second temple that Christ and the apostles saw and walked in.

That was destroyed in 70 AD when the Romans came in and demolished the temple. There has been an empty sense of the Jewish temple. Right now, as we saw in our earlier picture, was the Dome of the Rock. during the tribulation period will be a third temple that will be built, but it will be violated by the Antichrist.

And now what we see here, this is kind of a plan view of the Millennial Temple, and you may not be able to see it, so I'll point it out. The dimensions are one mile on each side. We're talking big, okay? This is huge, and this is going to take up a whole lot more than what we call the Temple Mount today. The Temple Mount, by comparison, is tiny compared to what this is going to be. This is going to be massive. The arrow you see off to the right, that points to the east. That points towards the Mount of Olives off that direction to give you some sense of orientation. Where do we get this description? That's Ezekiel 40-48.

Those chapters describe the Millennial Temple. And it is, by any comparison, massive. It is no longer a temple just for the Jews. It is a temple that has now international, global, worldwide significance. So now you have this much larger temple, a huge temple.

And you've got to ask a question. You say, wait a minute. You've got a temple. Are there going to be sacrifices in it? The answer is yes. And then you say, why? I thought Jesus did it all. These will be memorial sacrifices. Memorial sacrifices. Looking back on what the Lord has done. Not in anticipation, but in remembrance.

One of the questions we've got to ask is, what is the purpose of this millennium? Why are we having this millennium? And why now? After all, you've got the tribulation, the world is a wreck. Why not just kind of hit the reset button right then? And do it all over right then. Here's why, and we've got several reasons.

Here's the first one. One is God has made unconditional covenants with Israel. God has made these covenants with Israel, and so for every promise made, there will be a promise kept. What we find is these covenants that God made with Israel will each of them find their culmination and final resolution, God's answer, if you will, in the millennium period. So that's why it's a promise kept.

That's one reason. So let's take a walk through each of these covenants, not that we're going to go through all the detail, but just to kind of keep them in our focus here. First one here is the Abrahamic Covenant. And that one shows up several different passages in Genesis. It seems like about every other chapter or so, the Lord said, hey Abraham, I want to make sure you have this in your focus here. And he laid out detail to Abraham about the promises he was making. The key elements, the land, the seed, and the blessing.

And the focus here, Romans 9.4, basically it's to the Israelites that these covenants were made. It's focused on them.

One of the things that Christians can get easily confused is starting to blur the distinction between the promises to Israel and those given to the Church. And notice both the Old Testament, as you read through it, And now here even Paul, in the New Testament, zeroes in. It's to the Israelites that those promises were made, not transferable to the church. The Lord has his own relationship with us, and it's different from Israel's. The next thing we see is the land covenant. This is kind of the next extension of, and a logical consequence of, the promises already made to Abraham.

It shows up in the end of Deuteronomy. And what this does is it gives further specifics to Israel with regards to this land, which in Deuteronomy, the Jews were just about to go into, correct? So he's getting specific with them, giving them some details on, here's how it's going to happen. Now here's the interesting thing, when you get into the Millennial Kingdom, I'm going to show you a map next that may shock you. So I'm glad you're sitting down. Because what you're going to see is what was promised to Israel is much, much bigger than the area of land that they have now.

Here's what's promised to Israel. You see at the north end, you see Damascus there in the middle? You're well into Syria. You're well into, uh-oh, Iraq. How about that? You're well into, all the way down to the bottom corner there, you're well down into Kuwait. On the other end, you're getting into Egypt.

We're talking a much more substantial area of land than what Israel has now. What Israel has now is just the areas to the west of, you know, Galilee and the Dead Sea. A huge expansion of their territory as we look into this millennium time. And as you look in the book of Ezekiel, he describes, here is the area that each tribe gets. And he spells it out, including what towns that includes in some cases, and lines that out, and even widens out the area around Jerusalem that is specifically dedicated for holy purposes.

It's neat. It's amazing. But this is not just something that is sort of a Johnny-come-lately idea, As a matter of fact, it's interesting. The United Nations has declared that Zionism is racism. Guess what? Zionism is exactly what God had in mind. It's what God promised. It's not racism. It's what God promised. And that will, even though the promise was made about 4,000 years ago, that will be fulfilled. It's one of the promises kept.

The next one is the Davidic Covenant. And the three elements of that are a house, a throne, and a kingdom. What we looked at is God promised this house, throne, and kingdom to David. A couple of different passages, 1 Chronicles 17, 3-15, and 2 Samuel 7, 12-16, both passages, David, of your house, and of your throne, and of your kingdom, there's going to be no end.

It won't be terminated and truncated. It'll continue on. This promise was confirmed a thousand years later, and it's interesting, we're coming up on the Christmas season, but when you look at that promise that was made to Mary, there is more detail about this Davidic covenant than there is about the very time in which Mary would live. Look, the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Okay, so far so good. The next thing, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.

Okay, so far so good. Verse 31, what I just read, and behold, that's the first coming, isn't it? Isn't it? That's just his first coming. Now look at the detail given to the second coming in the promise to Mary. This must have blown Mary's circuits to hear this. But what it is is a reaffirmation of the covenant given to her ancestor, David. Thousand years earlier. That's what it is.

Look at this verse 32 He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, okay And he will reign over the house of Jacob. Okay, that's Israel forever and his kingdom will have no end house a throne in the kingdom those three elements the same thing promised to David and The Lord reaffirms in speaking to Mary, this little peasant girl in this little backwards town called Nazareth, the same promise is affirmed to her. And that's exactly what we're seeing ahead here in this millennial kingdom. We have this Christmas time and typically the focus is on what?

The first coming, right? Which is absolutely essential. We wouldn't be gathering here without it. But the truth is The majority of what was stated had to do with the time yet to come. And I hope it's seven years from now. Alright. And then the last one there, and this is the New Covenant, and we want to reinforce, these are promises made to Israel.

The New Covenant, this covenant specifically says in Jeremiah 31, it was made with Israel and Judah. Remember there was the Northern Kingdom and the Southern Kingdom. together, this is the nation of Israel, the Jews, and it's intended to be implemented in the Millennial Kingdom, this coming time ahead. So those four covenants, this being the fourth one, those four covenants were all given specifically to the Jews and intended for them. In this Jeremiah 31 passage, look how it comes off.

In verse 33, For this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and will be their God, and they shall be my people." Now notice, this is not for Christians, because it's law. But the difference is, the law rather than being, here's a tablet of stone, here, live by it, instead will be on their hearts. That will be the difference. Now, there's more to these covenants that we can cover right now.

And fortunately, about nine years ago, Hal put together a chart, and I think Sue did a lot to kind of do a bit of smithing on it. And we've got copies of it on the cabinet on the exit door to the right. So if you want to pick up copies of that and look at some more detail, feel free to do so. There's some real good references, and I think the graphics are helpful. I don't expect you to read and study this much more to try to copy it all in the short moment we have here.

As we look at these covenants though, the covenants are just one reason why the millennium. What's the purpose of this? It's promises made and promises kept. Because what did we say last week? God's the promise keeper. God's the promise keeper. There's other purposes for the millennium. Reward for the saints.

We'll be looking at that over the next couple of weeks here. So I won't go into detail on that now. The next one is to redeem creation from the curse. That's one we will go into here shortly. And then the next thing is to reaffirm and to demonstrate the total depravity of man. Let's look at each of those last items in turn. We read in Genesis 3 about how mankind fell, okay? And Romans 8, 19-22 spells out how creation is being held under, if you will, by this curse that impacts all of creation.

It impacts the way animals interact with each other. It impacts even the things that we see. It's one of the reasons why, no matter what we do, we never seem to quite get the environment cleaned up. We clean up one mess and create another. And yet, one of the things that will happen during this millennial period is there will be a great lifting of all the different things in nature that now curse it, that now cause death and destruction. And it will be a return to a time very much Eden-like. Now here's another aspect of it that I think is fascinating. Animals, from every appearance here, animals that are now carnivorous will revert, probably as much like the times in Eden, will revert back to herbivores. How about that?

Because what you see, the wolf will dwell with the lamb. The leopard will lie down with the young goat. The calf and the young lion and the fatling together. The boy will lead them. How about that? The cow also and the bear will graze. We're talking major biological change. Major change. This is not incidental change. Major biological change. The lion will eat straw like the ox. How about that? Amazing changes. Huge biological and ecological changes during that time.

Now, the next thing, however, will be just affirming and demonstrating the depravity of man. One of the things we've talked about is the Christian has three enemies, right? The world, the flesh, and the devil, or Satan. Those three enemies. You think about it, during the Millennial Kingdom, we just looked at last week, Satan will be bound. So there's one of the three enemies taken out of the way, right? Now, since the world will be replaced by Christ's kingdom, There's two enemies out of the way.

What's left? It's the flesh. It's the sinful nature will basically be all that's left. So think about this. An ideal environment. A perfect government. No Satan. No world. But you've still got the sinful nature. And what will happen is man's sinful nature will still be expressed but limited in its expression, but still be evident. And one of the things we'll see is at the very end, when Satan is released for a short period of time, the rebellious, sinful nature of man springs back instantly after a thousand years of perfection. A perfect world, and yet the sinful nature of man, maintained through that thousand years, comes to full expression instantly.

That will demonstrate man's character. What will we be doing? Well, one thing Paul writes to the Thessalonians, and he's trying to correct what somebody has upset them with, saying, well, the Lord's come already. By the way, there's people who are Christians now telling people that. So be careful. There's folks out there upsetting folks anyway.

But one of the things he tells them here in 1 Thessalonians 4.17, he says, so we will always be with the Lord. Now, one thing is clear.

During this millennium time, We're going to be with the Lord, right? We'll always be with the Lord. We will be with the Lord. It's not like the Lord is saying, well, you guys have a great time up here in heaven. I'm going to be gone for a thousand years. I'll see ya. No. We're going to be with the Lord. That's one point.

The next thing is there will be an opportunity, and this verse applies to not just church-age believers, but others, but reigning with the Lord. during this time. We will be with the Lord, we will reign with Him. Even positionally now, we are seated with Him. The elders, as we read in the heavenly scenes in Revelation, are on thrones. There will be a reigning with Him, as well as being with Him.

And then we look at Ephesians 2, and this to me is a powerful passage. We like to look at this being seated with Him as the fifth, if you will, of the identification truths. But verse 7 in Ephesians 2, right after that, basically says it's going to take eternity for the Lord to reveal all that He has and all that He is. Isn't that something? It's going to take eternity. And it says, in the ages to come. And the Millennial Kingdom is known in Scripture as the next age. That's the next age to come after this one.

So it will be a time in which the Lord, during that time, will reveal His marvelous grace to us. So we will be there, and frankly there's all kinds of details about what will happen during then that, in spite of what we've looked at this morning, we still don't know. The Lord has said that you'll see. You'll see. Because it's going to be the first of many ages. where the Lord will reveal his character and what he has for us and those marvelous blessings that he's already blessed us with. Okay?

Let's pray. Lord, we give you thanks and praise as we look ahead to this time. It's a time when we will be with you. Could be before this decade is out. And Lord, it's a time when We will reign with you in glorified bodies. It will be a time when those of Israel will be reigning on earth with you.

And Lord, we just are so thankful for the marvelous riches that we have in you, the blessings that we have in you. And we give you praise, Lord. And we look ahead to that time when you will be the earth's king. You will be the king of the kingdom. And we give you thanks for that. the hope, the certain hope that we have in you. In Jesus' name, Amen.