Do Not Love the World

If you have a Bible with you, and I hope you do, I want you to turn to
Revelation chapter 17. Again, for those of you who are visiting with us, we are
going through the book of Revelation. We've been doing that for almost a year now,
and we expect when we get to Easter, we will get to the finish line of Revelation.
I wanna thank Pastor Cole for taking us to Isaiah 33 last week and helping us see
that it has been the pattern of God's people throughout redemptive history, that when
they are facing adversity, the remedy has never changed. Fix your eyes on the beauty
of the Redeemer, and that's what Isaiah 33 pointed us to. In fact, as I listened
to that message driving home from Texas last week, I was reminded of the old hymn
that we used to sing when I was growing up, the hymn that said, "I know I will
see in his beauty, the king in whose law I delight, who lovingly guardeth my
footsteps and giveth me song in the night." Some of you know that old hymn, and
that was a great reminder for me last week, and so thank you, Cole, for that. I
was, by the way, in Texas doing a marriage conference at a church in Salina,
Texas, which is north of Dallas, north of Frisco, felt like it was almost to
Oklahoma by the time I had driven all the way out there. It was the trails church
and let me just say if you're ever in Salina, Texas on a Sunday and you're looking
for a place to worship, you would feel very at home. You would feel like you were
at Redeemer. It was very nice to be among brothers and sisters who share our faith
and who worship together as we do. And so it was great to be here. Great to be
there with them, but I miss being here with you. Glad to be back this week. and I
want to dig into this text in Revelation 17, which is a challenging text that we're
going to be going through this morning. And I want to start with this. Who knows
what a meme is? You know the word meme. Okay. You know what that is. Just if you
don't, here's the dictionary definition of a meme. A meme is an image, a video, a
piece of text, typically humorous in nature that is copied and spread rapidly by
Internet users, often with slight variations. There's the official definition of a
meme. And maybe one of the best known memes, one of the most circulated memes in
all of Internet history, which is not that long, is what is known as the distracted
boyfriend meme. Have you seen this picture? So this is the distracted boyfriend meme,
and people have taken this picture, which was taken somewhere in Europe years ago,
and they have added captions to it. So for example, the boyfriend, you have the
caption, "That's me," and then the girl that he's looking at,
the girl next to him is his homework, and then the girl walking by is video games.
So you see how that works? You see the, or there's another one here. This is, the
boy is mom, and next or walking by is the youngest child and next to him is the
older kids and the middle kids, right?
And then I like this one. The boy is my kids and the woman next to him is dinner
I spent two hours making and the girl walking by is a stale Cheeto on the floor,
right? So you're wondering why did this mean come to mind this week?
Well, I think it actually plays into what we're going to see in Revelation chapter
17. If you do this, if you turn the guy into Christians and you turn the woman
walking by into the world and the person next to him is Jesus.
Christians being distracted by the world and Jesus going, "Wait, what?" Revelation 17
introduces us to a new player who is a part of the demonic assault force that is
seeking to do battle against the lamb and against all who belong to him. In fact,
I'm going to take you through kind of an org chart for the operation of the
demonic forces. Stick with me on here. This will take a few minutes, but hopefully
it will help clarify what we're going to see happening in chapter 17. The demonic
battle plan is led by the dragon, the serpent,
the devil himself. He's at the top of the org chart.
And his aim, the goal of his operation is to establish his own kingdom.
The code name for his kingdom is Babylon the Great. And it's named after the
ancient Babylonian civilization that was able to defeat the Jews, God's people,
to destroy Jerusalem and to take the Jews captive. And Satan says, that's my model.
I want to build a kingdom where we can destroy what God has done and where his
people can be enslaved to me. And so Babylon the Great is the name for his
operation, which is to do again in history what happened in Babylon.
Some interpreters, when they read about Babylon the Great in the book of Revelation,
see that as an indication that there will be a rebuilt Babylonian kingdom somewhere
in Iran or Iraq in future times. But I think Babylon in Revelation is a metaphor
for any godless pagan kingdom that is able to successfully overpower and defeat and
enslave God's people. In fact, the people who read Revelation for the first time
when John wrote this in the '90s in AD, they would have seen Rome as a modern day
Babylon because Rome had done what Babylon had done. They had captured God's people,
they were and God's people, they were seeking to annihilate God's people. And that's
been true of different kingdoms throughout the history of the world. There have been
many Babylonians, that's M -I -N -I and M -A -N -Y. There have been many and many
Babylonians throughout history. So the Ottoman Empire was a type of Babylon,
and the French revolutionaries in the 1700s were a type of Babylon seeking to
expunge God from their society. The Soviet Union in the last century was a type of
Babylon and some of you might say well what about the British Empire or what about
even the modern -day America? Are these not Babylonian, these powerful forces on
earth? And keep in mind one of the characteristics of a Babylonian culture, either
old or new, is that one of the goals of the enemy is to displace God or replace
him with pagan idols. And to the extent that this is the case in our country or
in the British Empire, whatever God is being displaced or replaced, there's a
Babylonian spirit that is present in that place. If God's people are being oppressed
or silenced or marginalized, that's one of the goals of a Babylonian culture.
And it's a demonic agenda, so Satan is at the top of it, he wants to overthrow
the kingdom of God, he wants to defeat or enslave or silence God's people and
establish his own kingdom, Babylon the Great, as the seat of power and authority,
with God's influence eliminated. So here in Revelation, as we read about Babylon,
I think that's what the writer is talking about. An ongoing demonic attempt
throughout church history to establish an earthly kingdom with Satan at the top and
God's people under his rule, that's the goal. And he's got a team, he's got a
cabinet And he has enlisted to help him with this, and on his team,
aligned with him, working to advance the goal, is beast number one. And beast number
one represents the forces of civil authority. This first beast is someone who Satan
will raise up, governors, generals, who will use force and coercion to seek to
destroy God's people on earth, seek to destroy the church, seek to marginalize God's
people. Beast number two, who's a part of the cabinet, is the false prophet. He
represents false religion and godless philosophy. So Satan will raise up false
prophets or highly educated philosophers who will lead God's people away from God and
His Word, away from any thinking about Jesus being God in the flesh,
dying and being raised to new life. These priests and philosophers will point people
to other more sophisticated, more enlightened ways of thinking about life in the
universe and what happens when we die and all of that. And then the third member
of the dragon's cabinet, who we're introduced to in Revelation chapter 17 is the
harlot or the prostitute. And if beast number one wants to coerce you and use
government force and authority to turn you from God to reject him and you get you
to pledge your allegiance to Babylon the Great, and if beast number two wants to
persuade you intellectually and rationally to embrace
his worldview and to eliminate any thoughts about God or the Bible from your
thinking, Then this woman in chapter 17, this prostitute, is seeking to allure or
seduce humanity by saying come and join yourself with me, make yourself one with me
and I will give you riches and pleasure that you desire, things that God won't give
you, you will find in me. The point is the attack of the dragon on humanity,
this battle plan involves coercion, persuasion and seduction.
The enemy will use those three approaches to try to lure you away from God,
coercion, persuasion, and seduction. The dragon will employ power,
intellect, and reason, and the lusts of the flesh to attempt to pull us away from
God and his kingdom. So that's the foundation we need as we get into Revelation 17
and are introduced to this third member in the demonic cabinet this prostitute who
we see in Revelation chapter 17. I want to look at the passage we're going to read
through the whole chapter but before we read again let me pray for us Father we
need your spirit to be our teacher this morning. We need the illumination that comes
from your spirit. We are helpless to try to understand your word unless you give us
divine aid. And so we ask for that this morning. Open our eyes that we might see
wonderful things from your word today. And help us not just to be hearers of your
word, but doers. We pray in your name. Amen.
Revelation 17, beginning at verse one. This is the word of God for the people of
God you follow along as I read.
Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me,
"Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many
waters with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality and with
the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk. And he
carried me away in the spirit to a wilderness. And I saw a woman sitting on a
scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns.
The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and jewels and
pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of
her sexual immorality. And on her head was written a name of mystery,
Babylon the Great, mother of prostitutes, and of earth's abominations.
I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs
of Jesus.
When I saw her I marveled greatly, but the angel said to me, "Why do you marvel?
I'll tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast with the seven heads and
the ten horns that carries her. The beast that you saw was and is not and is
about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to destruction. And the dwellers of
the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation
of the world will marvel to see the beast because it was and is not and is to
come. This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains on
which the woman is seated. There are those seven kings, five of whom have fallen,
one is, the other has not yet come, and when he does come, he must remain only a
little while. As for the beast that was and is not,
it is an eighth, but it belongs to the seven, and it goes to destruction.
And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal
power, but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour together with the
beast. These are of one mind, and they hand over their power and authority to the
beast.
Then I will make war on the lamb, excuse me, they will make war on the lamb,
and the lamb will conquer them, for He is Lord of lords and King of kings, and
those with Him are called and chosen and faithful. The angel said to me,
"The waters that you saw, where the prostitute is seated, are peoples and multitudes
and nations and languages, and the ten horns that you saw, they and the beast will
hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked and devour her flesh and
burn her up with fire, for God has put it into their hearts to carry out his
purpose by being of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast until
the words of God are fulfilled. And the woman that you saw is the great city that
has dominion over the kings of the earth. Amen. May God bless this reading of his
word. The grass withers and the flower fades, the Word of God will last forever. So
I see three main sections in this chapter. If this was a symphony,
these would be the three movements that I see in this chapter. Verses one through
six describe for us the harlot or the prostitute who is revealed in this chapter.
Verses seven through fourteen give us other elements of the vision that John is
seeing revealed. These are other mysteries that are being disclosed. And then verses
15 through 18, we have the destruction of the harlot. Once her usefulness is ended,
she is destroyed, and all who have been seduced by her face that same destruction.
And the context for this actually goes back to the previous chapter where we were a
couple of weeks ago. Back in chapter 16, in fact, look back there. When the seventh
bowl of God's wrath is poured out on the earth in verse 17. When that happens,
and God says it is done, then in verse 19 it says the great city was split into
three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the
great to make her drain the cup of wine, a cup of the wine of the fury of his
wrath. Again, Babylon the great is a reference to nations and governments and
institutions that are aligned against God and His people. And so in verse 19 of
chapter 16, when the Bible says it is done and this final bowl of wrath is poured
out on Babylon the Great and it's split into three parts, all of the nations that
are aligned against God are being judged by God in that time. And chapter 16 is
not the first time we've seen a reference to Babylon the Great. You go back to
chapter 14, and we're in a section of Revelation where we're getting an overview of
redemptive history. And in verse 8 of chapter 14, it says,
another angel, a second, followed saying, fallen, fallen is Babylon the great, she
who made nations drink the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality. So we've
seen Babylon referenced back in chapter 14, then again in chapter 16. Now in chapter
17 what's happening is that John is getting a zoom in. He's saying we've already
talked about what is coming for Babylon the Great And how God will judge Babylon
the Great, but I'm going to zoom in and take you back and show you in two
chapters How this will happen we're going to see the apocalyptic destruction of
Babylon in the in the last Days and it begins with John getting this vision of a
woman seated on many waters in chapter one of verse 17 and we don't have to guess
what that means because down in verse 15 it tells us the many waters are where the
prostitute is seated are the peoples and multitudes and nations and languages. So
this is a woman whose influence covers the whole earth that her job It is to lure
and entice people away from God with the promise that if they will just connect
themselves to her, join themselves with her, they'll experience great pleasure, great
satisfaction, and she's everywhere. She's over the whole earth. Her influence is over
all the earth. Verse two tells us the kings of the earth, those who hold power
throughout the earth, they have already fallen for her seduction. They've already
aligned themselves with her. And the reference there to sexual immorality in this
chapter is really a reference to spiritual idolatry, spiritual adultery that precedes
sexual immorality. In fact, throughout the Bible, throughout the Old Testament, we see
that when immorality, sexual immorality is often a metaphor for spiritual adultery.
If you know the book of Hosea in the Old Testament where God tells Hosea the
prophet to join himself to a prostitute and to marry her. It's designed by God to
be a living parable of the spiritual adultery that is taking place in the nation of
Israel and how those who are called to him have left him. And that's what I think
is being described in verse 2. The kings of the earth, ultimately the dwellers of
the earth, which is all human beings have forsaken the God who has created them,
the God who loves them, and they have joined themselves to this woman, to the
harlot, to the world, thinking that her ways will make them happy when God's ways
won't. They're described here as being drunk on the wine of adultery and immorality.
And let me pause here for just a minute and ask you to think about this this
morning. Whenever we see a reference to sexual immorality in the Bible, whether it's
in our culture or something that we're wrestling within our own lives, behind every
act of sexual immorality is spiritual adultery. Sexual immorality springs out of
spiritual adultery. Before you ever act on any sexual immoral impulses.
You have already committed spiritual apostasy. You have already become unfaithful to
the God who loves you. Sexual immorality is first and foremost a behavioral issue,
or is not first and foremost a behavioral issue. It's a belief issue.
Just let that sink in for a second. When you are acting sexually immorally, it's
not so much a behavior issue issue you're dealing with as a belief issue. You
believe that God's ways will not bring you fulfillment, joy,
and satisfaction, and you believe that the desires of your flesh, if you will simply
indulge them, even though God has said don't, you believe you know better than God.
You are believing what's wrong about you and you're believing what's wrong about him.
You believe you are wiser than him and that your ways are right and his ways are
wrong. So before you ever act on a sexual immorality, you've already believed the
wrong thing. This was one of the primary areas in our day where we have become
like Babylon. This whole area of sexual immorality and sexual sin, we are very
Babylonian in our culture and how we think about this. There was a survey done a
couple of years ago, 2023, they asked people in the US, do you believe there is a
God? And 73 % of people in the United States said, yes, I believe there's a God.
But you go back a couple of years before that in 2020, a Pew research study asked
people who say, I'm a Christian, I believe in God. No, they were Christians. They
asked them, do you believe that casual sex between consenting adults who are not in
a committed relationship is morally acceptable. And 50 % of professing Christians said
they think it's morally acceptable to have a casual sexual relationship outside of a
committed relationship.
That's Babylonian thinking that's in the professing church.
And Then the majority of those who profess to follow Christ have embraced sexual
immorality. They've already shown that they don't believe what the Bible says is
true. They've been lured and enticed by a spirit that is the spirit of this
prostitute in Revelation chapter 17. But again, the immorality itself is a symptom of
a deeper issue. The spiritual rebellion against God has already happened when the
sexual immorality emerges, which should lead each of us to be asking ourselves this
question. Am I prone to be enticed by the charms of this world, whatever they might
be, in the area of sexuality? Or in the area of money and stuff,
a love for money and stuff. In fact, part of the description of this woman in
Revelation 17 is that she is luxuriously dressed, she's got a lot of jewelry on,
she's drinking from a golden chalice, she's living the good life. It's not just
sexual immorality, it's materialism. She is representing a life of luxury,
a quest for pleasure. It's not just sexual immorality that can lure us away from
God. Money, wealth, fancy clothes, nice cars, prestige, power.
The list is long.
The quest for pleasure,
let me just say that the Bible is not against pleasure. The Bible says the path to
pleasure is the path that God puts you on. If you try to pursue pleasure apart
from God, it will take you to destruction. But the Bible says in the Psalms that
in God's presence there are pleasures evermore. The path that will ultimately take
you to the kind of pleasure for which you're so long is the path toward God,
not the path toward your own indulgence of the flesh. But just like Adam and Eve
in the garden. We have a tendency to see what looks good to us. Go with that.
That looks desirable. I might be interested in that. That'll bring me pleasure, only
to find that it doesn't bring lasting pleasure. It may bring momentary pleasure, but
in the end, it's a path that leads to death.
So it may be that this morning, as you're sitting here, you need to confess to God
that you've been looking for joy, and delight, and pleasure in the wrong place;
that you have been enticed or lured away by an enemy of your soul who wants, he
doesn't care about you or your joy. All he cares about is unplugging you from God,
getting you away from God. His only goal is to separate you from God,
and if he can lure you with riches, or if he can lure you with sexual immorality,
or if he can coerce you, or if he can argue with you, whatever he can do to get
you to disconnect yourself from God, that's his strategy. Reject the kingdom of God,
align yourself with Babylon the Great, and that's where you'll find hope in this
life. That's what he's aiming for. According to this passage, the great Dragon,
Satan has this ally, this woman we're reading about, whose number one goal is to
seduce you. And that's why all of us have to, every day, put on spiritual armor.
We have to, we're in the middle of a spiritual battlefield where we are facing the
attacks of the evil one. We have to be armored up. We have to be ready for what
we're gonna face, 'cause this can happen to anyone. If you're sitting here this
morning thinking, "Well, I don't think I'll ever be seduced by that." Let him who
thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. That's what the Bible says. You have to
be on guard, vigilant in defense of your own soul.
It seems like every month I'm reading about a new Christian leader who has fallen
to sexual immorality. These are Christian leaders who have been teaching the Bible
for years and they get lured away by the seduction of Babylon.
And if I think that couldn't happen to me, I'm a fool.
So we have to take this seriously.
Before we move on to the next section, let me just point out in verse 3 here that
this Scarlet Beast that this woman is sitting on is full of blasphemous names, has
seven heads and 10 horns. This is a reference back to Daniel chapter seven where
there is the fourth beast. And the fourth beast in Daniel chapter seven with the 10
horns is almost universally understood as being the Roman Empire. So when we see
this beast in Revelation, it's a reference to Rome in John's day, I believe.
And the woman is sitting on the beast and they're all aligned together with the
dragon and he has co -opted the Roman Empire for his purposes. And we should know
that while Rome is in view here, it's not just Rome. It's any empire that aligns
itself with the dragon and follows that direction. And verse five tells us that this
woman on her forehead was written the name of mystery, Babel on the Great, Mother
of Prostitutes, and of the Earth's abominations. A mystery is something that was once
hidden that is now being disclosed. So what's being disclosed here is the identity.
It's how the Roman Empire, which a lot of people were looking at and saying, "The
Roman Empire is a good thing. It's promoting peace and stability throughout the
region. There's economic prosperity at the hands of Rome. There's order in the
empire, Rome is a good thing." And John is telling us that we're seeing the mystery
revealed that it was not as good a thing as it appeared to be at first blush. And
verse six says, "This woman is finding her delight in the martyrdom of those who
belong to Jesus." She can't get enough of seeing the followers of Jesus put to
death.
That brings her joy and delight to see that. Stamp them out because they're a
threat to her and to her power.
So that's the description of the harlot in the first part of this chapter, which
takes us to the second movement here in Revelation, the revelation of other
mysteries. And I'm not going to spend a lot of time trying to explain to you in
these verses, verses 7 through 14 about the seven heads or the seven mountains or
the seven kings and how all of this fits together. And the reason I'm not gonna
spend a lot of time trying to explain that to you this morning is because I have
looked at what a lot of different commentators say about this passage and they don't
have any idea. And I don't either, okay? In fact, I was greatly comforted when I
read this from Tom Schreiner about this passage. Tom Schreiner, by the way, has
forgotten more about the book of Revelation than I know about it, okay? He's a
really smart dude when it comes to Revelation. Here's what he says about these
verses. We come now to some of the most difficult verses in the entire book.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to know for certain how we should interpret them.
Interpreters have torn out their hair, trying to unravel what John tells us here. I
felt much better when I read that from Dr. Schreiner. And even though I don't have
much hair to tear out, I was feeling that. So there's a bunch of this in here
that if you're going, "Well, wait, what are the seven kings and how do the seven
mountains, how does all of that fit together?" I'm just going to say I could
speculate with you, give you some guesses. I'll tell you the stuff that I'm pretty
sure of from this section rather than telling you the stuff that I don't know much
about. One of the things I'm pretty sure of is what we see in verse 9. "This
calls for a mind with wisdom. I am pretty sure that this calls for a mind with
wisdom. Now, I don't think what John is saying here is that you have to be really
smart to try to interpret these verses because wisdom is different than intelligence.
He's not saying this calls for a mind with intelligence or even this calls for a
mind with understanding. He's saying this calls for a mind with wisdom. Wisdom, the
Greek word used here, the word Sophia, right? This is a word that we,
it's one of the words in the, according to the Complete Word Study Dictionary means
this. Skill in the affairs of life, practical wisdom, wise management as shown in
forming the best plans and selecting the best means according to, including the idea
of sound judgment and good sense. Wisdom is skill in how to live every day.
It's how to take what you know and apply it to the challenges of life. And I
think what verse nine is telling us, for those who are in the middle of this
Babylonian onslaught against the people of God, it's going to require wisdom to know
how to live rightly before God in a world that is coming against you.
And how to resist the lure and the temptation and the seduction from the prostitute.
When you are being coerced or tempted to reject your faith and get with the
program, you're gonna need wisdom to know how to respond and how to live and how
to be faithful in the midst of all of that. One of Jesus' parables, the parable of
the righteous shrewd manager,
it says in Luke chapter 16, you can go back and read, we won't turn there now,
but this is a guy who just gets fired from his job and he realizes he doesn't
have much time so he goes and tries to settle the books with other people and the
guy who is firing him commends him for getting some of, it's kind of a weird
parable to try to interpret, but Jesus interprets it for us by saying the children
of this age are more shrewd than the children of light.
To walk, we walk by faith for sure, but we have to walk with wisdom. We have to
walk shrewdly. We have to, where we lack wisdom, we need to ask God for wisdom. If
any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God. He gives it freely. We have to grow
in wisdom and in grace. And we have to remember that the beginning of wisdom,
According to the book of Proverbs is what? The fear of the Lord. If you want to
grow in wisdom, the starting place for that is a healthy respect and reverence for
God. You can't acquire wisdom. You can't walk in wisdom unless that's the beginning
point. So when the writer of Revelation says, "This requires wisdom," he's saying,
"This requires At the baseline a healthy fear of God and reverence for him and the
wisdom that comes from that So beast number one is going to try to force you with
coercion to follow the Babylonian agenda Beast number two is going to try to
Intellectually persuade you to follow him and the woman here in Revelation 17 is
going to try to seduce you And you're going to have to be wise to know how to
deal with all three of those. How do you deal with version? How do you deal with
intellectual persuasion? How do you deal with the seduction that comes so that you
can maintain a faithful walk with the Lord?
Here's the other thing I'm sure of in this section. Look at verse 14. "They will
make war on the Lamb, the kings of the earth, aligned with the prostitute,
and the Lamb will conquer them." I'm sure of that, for he is Lord of lords and
king of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful." In the midst
of the pressure we're going to face, the pressure that will grow in the last days
before Jesus comes, the pressure to abandon our faith, and you'll hear people say,
"You need to be on the right side of history." You've heard that, right? In the
midst of that, as the saying goes, "We need to Remember that the Lamb will one day
be victorious. You want to be on the right side of history? Be on the Lamb's side.
Because when history is completed, that's where victory is found.
And those who are on the right side of history are those who are called and chosen
and faithful. Those are three good gospel words, called and chosen and faithful.
Let me explain what those three words are talking about here. When it says that we
are called, it means that God has called you to himself. And the Bible talks about
two different kinds of calling. Two different ways that God calls people.
The first call is what theologians call the general call or the universal call.
This is where Jesus says, "If anyone is thirsty, Let him come to me and drink."
That's a universal call. Anyone.
All you who are weary and heavy laden come to me, Jesus says, "I'll give you
rest." That call goes out. It's universal. No one, no one can come and Jesus says,
"I didn't mean you." It's a universal call. But there's a second kind of calling
that the Bible talks about. and theologians call this the efficacious call. This is
the kind of call that the apostle Paul had happened to him on the road to
Damascus. He was going to Damascus to persecute Christians and Jesus shows up and
says, "Why are you persecuting me?" And he says, "Who are you? "I'm Jesus who
you're persecuting." And he calls Paul away from where he was going and puts him on
a new path. That's the efficacious call. The general call is, you're welcome to
come. The efficacious call is where God comes and says, no, you're coming with me.
And people will hear that and they'll say, well, now wait. Are you saying with this
efficacious call, like Paul on the road to Damascus, that if God calls you in that
way, you don't have a choice? You have to follow Jesus and I say well no you have
a choice but when Jesus reveals himself to you and when you experience his amazing
grace in your life nobody says no thank you I'll go the other way you have that
choice but no if I came to you this morning and said I'm gonna give you a choice
I'm gonna give everyone here you get a new car and you get your choice you can
either have a hundred and $5 ,000 Range Rover, brand new, here are the keys, or you
could have an imitation Hot Wheels that I picked up at the dollar store, okay? You
have a choice. You might say, well, that's no choice. Yes, it's a choice. Who's
gonna pick the Hot Wheel? Nobody, because when you see this, you go, what's that?
When you see who Jesus is, when the blinders fall off your eyes, you have a choice
to walk away, nobody does. That's the power of the efficacious call. The other
question people will say, "Well, why doesn't God call everybody so that they will
all follow Him?" And the first answer to that is there's nobody on earth who wants
to come to Jesus who's excluded. You understand that? There's nobody walking around
who says, "Gee, I wish Jesus would call me and God says, "No, I'm not picking
you." If you want to come to Jesus, it's because God has changed your heart to
want to come to Jesus. And this is where people get tripped up and they say, "But
why doesn't God call everyone to follow him?" It doesn't sound fair to say he calls
some and not everyone. Well, did you know the Bible answers that question directly?
I remember reading it for the first time In Romans chapter 9, when I turned there
and said, "Okay, finally I'm going to get the answer I'm looking for." Here's the
passage, "What shall we say then?" Romans 9 .14, "Is there injustice on God's part?"
Because it sure sounds like it. He calls some, but not everybody, sounds like
injustice. The writer says, "By no means." He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on
whom I'll have mercy. I'll have compassion on whom I'll have compassion." So it
depends not on human will or exertion but on God who has mercy. The call is first
of all a merciful call and who is the one who can decide on whom he will have
mercy? It's God. You say well isn't God obligated to give mercy to everyone? Well
why would he be obligated to show mercy to anyone? But then it goes on a few
verses later you will say to me then why does he still find fault? How can anyone
resist his will? I've had that question And the answer is, who are you, O man, to
answer back to God?
In other words, when you say it doesn't seem fair, God says, so are you telling me
that you know better what's fair and right than I do? Are you telling me that your
standard of rightness and justice and fairness is higher than mine and I need to
conform to your standard, or might it be that you need to just put your hand over
your mouth and say, God knows what he's doing, I'm gonna trust him. Now,
I will tell you that I don't always like that answer,
but when I don't like it, there's a little D. I just go, I need to shut up. God
is God, I am not, he knows what he's doing, I trust him, and the stuff that I
can't understand or that doesn't make sense to me, I just go, I think he probably
knows better than I do. I'll leave it there. So when we talk about people being
the called, that's what the Bible's talking about. And then it's called and chosen,
those two go together. We've really seen how they come together. But look at the
last word on that list, called, chosen, and faithful. Those who are called and
chosen are those who will remain faithful.
And the reason that those who are called and chosen will remain faithful is because
he who began a good work in you is faithful to complete it. You will remain
faithful because God is the source of your faithfulness. Not only does he call you
and choose you, he is the one who empowers your faithfulness. You will be faithful
to him because he's faithful to you. You will stumble,
keep this in mind. Faithful doesn't mean you never stumble. Faithfulness means that
when you stumble, you get up and go in the right direction again. So when you
stumble, he forgives. When you stumble, he restores. He is faithful and just to
forgive your sin and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. You remain faithful
because he's faithful to you. Think about Peter. Was Peter always faithful?
No. On the night Jesus was betrayed, Peter denies him three times. He got squishy
later in life about the gospel and Paul had to come and rebuke him 'cause he was
getting the gospel wrong. Peter had lapses just like you and I have lapses. Thank
God for Peter. And for his example, was Peter faithful to the end? Indeed he was.
Did he lapse here and there? We all do. But he was faithful because God is
faithful with those who he calls and those who he chooses.
Remember, there was one time when Jesus was preaching and it says,
I think this is John chapter 6 where it says, "And many people departed when they
heard this." Jesus looks at his disciples and he says to them, "I guess you're
going to quit on me too." And Peter at that point says, Where else can we go you
alone have the words of eternal life? That's faithfulness. I don't any place else to
go You alone have the words of eternal life the point here is as the return of
Jesus draws closer Opposition against Christianity is going to intensify the temptation
to give in and give up is going to be real The lure of the world is strong But
we need to remember how this all ends. The Lamb is victorious. Jesus' victory isn't
going to happen in the future. It's already happened on the cross and at the empty
tomb. His victory in the future is assured by the victory that's already happened.
We don't know who's gonna be victorious at nine o 'clock tonight. And I'm not
wearing green to try to show some allegiance to anything this morning. All right.
It's just the shirt I picked We don't know who's gonna win chiefs or eagles don't
know But we know that Jesus will be victorious on the last day because he's already
won. We just sang it He's already won
Which brings us to the final portion in this chapter we're looking at that describes
the destruction of the harlot, the woman, although as we'll see next week, while the
harlot may be gone, the spirit of the harlot continues, spiritual adultery continues
throughout Babylon into the final hour. I'll just note for you in these final verses
what John sees. Look at verse 16. He says, "The ten horns that you saw," these ten
horns, by the way, are symbolic of the ten rulers who have aligned themselves with
the beast, and that's just all human Rulers who have aligned themselves with the
beast these ten horns that you saw they and the beast will hate the prostitute Will
make her desolate and naked and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire you
would think They would be loyal. She's a part of the cabinet She's a part of the
brain trust. They're on the same team But when they're done with her they're done
You've heard people say if you walk with the wise you will be wise? Did you know
that's in the Bible? That's in Proverbs 13 -20. Walk with the wise and you will be
wise. You know what the second half of the verse is? The companion of fools will
suffer harm.
All of us need to hear this, but students, if you're in here just listen to me
for a second. Wisdom about your companions, your friends, who you hang around with,
who your running mates are going to be will determine whether you become wise or
whether you're destroyed.
If you expect your ungodly friends to be loyal to you,
to be your running mate, to have your back and not to do you any harm, why would
you think ungodly people would act that way toward you? Why would you think your
ungodly companions would look out for anyone other than themselves.
This harlot who was attached to the beast and the dragon, as soon as they were
done with her, they devoured her. They were done.
And last thing we'll note here in verse 17, what they did, God put in their hearts
to do. Now again, that sounds wrong, doesn't it? Did God put evil intent in the
hearts of these kings to destroy the harlot? That's why verse 16 comes first.
They did it of their own free will. It's clear from verse 16 that the evil
performed by the kings and the beasts was their idea. They were not coerced into
doing something they didn't already want to do. And we see this kind of tension
other places in scripture. So in Acts chapter two, it talks about those who
crucified They, they did it of their own free will and they were predestined to do
it. Same thing in Acts chapter 4, what God had foreordained these evil people did
on their own. Again, I'll let Dr. Schreiner clarify this for us. He says,
"God's plans and, God plans and charts out all that occurs, but the authentic
choices of human beings are also affirmed. The beast and the Kings do what they
want to do. They carry out the desires of their hearts, but ultimately what God has
determined will be fulfilled. How human responsibility and divine sovereignty come
together is a mystery to us, but within the providence of God, he has ordained
whatsoever comes to pass, and the evil he cannot be held accountable for because
it's in the hearts of men to do that evil. And the harlot may be done. Babylon is
still standing. We'll see next week how the fall of Babylon happens,
what occurs here, but I want to end with this. John, the apostle who is seeing
these visions and recording this revelation, I think this is the last thing he
wrote, Revelation. I think it was written sometime in the mid -90s, A .D.,
sometime between '92 and '96 while he's on the island of Patmos. I think everything
else he wrote came before it. The Gospel of John, he wrote before this. The three
letters that we have, 1st John, 2nd John, 3rd John, were all written before this.
So before he saw this vision of this woman in Revelation 17, John wrote,
in fact, before he saw, can we put the distracted boyfriend back up here? Before he
saw this, that Christians should not be seduced by the world but should follow
Jesus. Here's what he wrote in 1 John 2. In fact, some of you may need to
memorize these verses. Hide them in your heart as you face the temptations we're
going to face in the world. Do not love the world.
Say that just those five words with me. Do not love the world or the things in
the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes,
the pride of life, is not from the Father, but it's from the world, and the world
is passing away along with its desires.
Now think about that, the sinful, carnal, fleshly desires that you're tempted to give
into today, they will pass away, one day there will be no more carnal desires. I
can't wait for that day. It goes on to say, "The world is passing away along with
its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever." Let's make that our
aim. Pray with me. Father, we confess to you that We come to this text recognizing
the richness of it, understanding only a portion of it. But Lord, I trust that what
you've intended for us to see in these verses has been what we've talked about here
this morning.
Lord, we also confess that it is easy for us to become distracted, to be tempted,
to be lured away by the things of this world. Help us to turn our eyes upon Jesus
and look full in his wonderful face.
That the things of this world would become strangely dim in the light of his glory
and grace. Lord I pray this morning for anyone who's here who all of this may be
new to them or confusing to them, but they recognize that they're not following you,
they're following their own desires, their own passions, they're ultimately following
the kingdom of Babylon instead of the kingdom of God. "Lord, I pray that You would
pierce their hearts and help them to see their need for You, the need for a
turnaround in their lives, and that You would awaken them to the truth of the
gospel that they would hear your call this morning and that they would follow you.
I ask it in your name. Amen.