Revelation 12:1-2

And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars:

And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.

Revelation 12 is a remarkable chapter. Right away John starts speaking of greatness. There is a great wonder in verse 1, a great dragon in verse 3, a great wrath in verse 12, and a great eagle in verse 14. But what blesses me most is that in this chapter we are also given great insight into our Enemy and the way God overrules him.

John first sees a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and a crown of twelve stars upon her head. She is with child, crying out in travail, ready to bring forth the promised Son.

Now through the years people have offered all kinds of ideas about who this woman might be. Some say it is Mary. But that does not fit well, because the picture here is larger than Mary alone, and the scene John is shown reaches far beyond the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. Others have tried to make the woman the church. But that cannot be right either, because the church did not bring forth Christ. Christ brought forth the church. As Eve came from the side of Adam, so the church was brought forth through the pierced side of the Last Adam, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The only view that really fits both the context and the theology of Scripture is Israel.

I think that becomes clear when you let the Bible interpret itself. The sun, moon, and stars take us back to Genesis 37, where Joseph dreamed of the sun and moon and eleven stars bowing down. That dream was plainly connected to Israel and the tribes that would come from Jacob. So when John uses that same imagery here, he is pointing us back to that family, that nation, that covenant line.

And that makes perfect sense, because it is Israel who brought forth the Messiah according to the flesh. Jesus came from the tribe of Judah. He came through the people of promise. He came through the nation God had set apart for His redemptive plan.

That matters because Revelation 12 is not just giving us a symbol to admire. It is showing us that the old conflict has always been centered on God’s plan through Israel to bring forth His Son into the world. The Enemy hated that plan from the beginning. He hated the line through which Messiah would come. He hated the promise that a ruler would arise. And that hatred explains so much of the warfare we see unfold in this chapter.

Do not miss this. The woman is not random. The child is not random. History is not random. God had a people, God gave a promise, and in the fullness of time God brought forth His Son.

That is why Satan rages so fiercely in this chapter. He is always striking at the line of promise. But he cannot stop what God has spoken. The child will be born. The King will come. The plan will stand.

And that is still true tonight. The world looks chaotic at times. The Enemy seems violent and relentless. But God is not scrambling. He is not adjusting His plan on the fly. What He promised in Genesis, what He pictured in Israel, and what He fulfilled in Christ stands secure.

The woman is Israel.
The child is Christ.
The promise is certain.

And once again we are reminded that the story never belonged to the dragon. It has always belonged to the Lamb.