And there was war in Heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels. Revelation 12:7
A card of boxing featured two main events, with world-class boxers participating. The last event was for the heavyweight championship, and the crowd was looking forward to it. Just before it was a middleweight match between two contenders for their championship. That fight was expected to last for more than half an hour, but in the first round, one of the boxers had a lucky punch get through, and the fight was over in less than a minute. Because that fight ended so quickly, the heavyweights were not ready to start their event. So the organizers quickly arranged for two local boxers to get into the ring and put on a fight. It was a bad fight. One was a tall, skinny man with long arms; the other was short and pudgy. For three rounds, as the crowd booed, the tall boxer peppered the chubby boxer with dozens of punches that did no real damage, as the chubby boxer stood and waved his arms in the air. It was a relief to see the strange mismatch come to an end. The fight that is described in our text is also a great mismatch.
The dragon, which is Satan the accuser, has no ability to defeat Michael and those angels that accompany him. At one time, Satan was the most powerful and most beautiful of the angels. At one time, even after his rebellion, he held great power. But if we read a few verses past our text, we will find two great weapons that utterly destroy that old dragon: the blood of Christ and the word of the Christians’ testimony. With these, Michael easily defeats the devil and casts him out. This should remind us that our great enemy who causes us so much grief and trouble has already been defeated. His time of opportunity to oppose God and to torture humanity is short, and will come to a close. It was his temptation of our first parents that brought sin into the world, so he is a longtime enemy. His hatred of God is directed at all that belongs to God, including His people, you and me. He uses what access he has today to accuse us before God, and he uses his access to us to rob us of the joy of our salvation. In his opposition to God, he does all that he can to deprive God of the glory that is rightfully His. Because only Christians are capable of bringing glory to God, we are prime targets of the devil’s devices. He tries to get us to sing the world’s songs instead of anthems of praise and worship to our Lord. He has us mind earthly things rather than the heavenly business of obedience to God and the furtherance of the Gospel. He has us worry and complain instead of trusting our faithful God. And yet, in all of his efforts, the devil is fighting a losing struggle; he cannot possibly win the war, and we should never let him win his little battles with us.
The same power than enables Michael and the angels to throw the dragon out of Heaven is available to us, to throw the dragon out of our lives. -Jim MacIntosh