The Child and The Dragon

If you’ve never considered the dragon at Christmas, you’re missing how John presents the birth of Christ in the apocalyptic book of Revelation. Revelation 12 looks at Christ’s incarnation of Jesus from a global, cosmic perspective. The dragon becomes a central part of the Christmas story, as it depicts one of the purposes of the incarnation — the defeat of Satan. “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).  The dragon bears the title of "ancient serpent” (Revelation 12:9, 20:2) calling to mind the time when he devoured Adam and Eve in the garden, tempting them to disbelieve the Word of God and disobey God’s command. From that time Satan has engaged in war to prevent the fulfillment of God’s promise that the seed of the woman would crush his own head. What the dragon could not prevent was the birth of a champion-king dragon slayer — “the name by which he is called is The Word of God” (Revelation 19:13). This is the one of whom John said in John 1:14 “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Listen to the following sermon to discover the meaning of Revelation 12 as we consider the sign of the woman, the sign of the dragon, the male child, God’s power to preserve, and the dragon’s defeat.