Revelation18

Introduction

We are offered grace for new lives that withstand eternity itself.

This is a difficult chapter.

It starts with power without end

Avarice without end

accumulation without end.

We aquire and aquire until we topple. Much of the lives that Rev 18 talks about and sometimes even our lives when we find ourselves within our consumer culture. It is like a giant game of jenga.

Pick jenga pieces put them on top

We pick and pick and pick until something topples.

The problem we have with our current consumer culture is that we don’t realize we are piling higher and higher and not so that we can have better lives but so that someone can can benefit from our accumulation.

I'm questioning the solvency of our solutions. Is there anything that can actually long-term solve the way in which we've chosen to solve humanities skills.

That accumulation is suffocating. We don’t recognize it in the moment, but we often don’t until it’s too late.

Revelation 18 is all about collapse. It is about life outside of Christ.

It is life that is attempting to exist outside of God

And then succeeds in separating itself from God.

And then collapses under it’s own weight.

The sermon this morning will do just that. Because of the content of Rev 18 we will begin with the ground floor and we will watch how humanity builds and builds. And then we will show it toppling.

But while it does topple, we still see grace offered. Not grace to rebuild but grace to be a part of something new built.

Humanities last stand. Living without grace

Revelation 18:2–3 ESV

And he called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast. For all nations have drunk the wine of the passion of her sexual immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxurious living.”

Here we have Babylon. An Empire, a mechanism that manipulates humanity for it’s own means.

Babylon, for the writer of this book and the churches involved is Rome. Babylon for us is meant to reveal any other empire in the world. A structure or a form or beurocratic organism or even a technology.

This is an idea that theological Jacques Ellul calls technique.

He says that necessity determines and dominates society. We default to attempting to find the best technique and it ends up ruining us.

It becomes too large. We become controlled by the forces of the city. We try to manipulate but we get twisted within it

This is not theoretical. We get involved in things that we think we have control over and instead we find that they have control of us.

Look at this Christmas season. It feels like we are in control but we will find that we are at the whim and whimsy of every advertisers multi million dollar budget.

We not only get mixed up but we build on top of it. We take a last stand and say to God and others, my will be done.

When we do that we build higher and higher until it can’t hold itself.

The human world is not built for humans

Michael Sacasas

We have these ideas that are good but then we put our own spin on them and we pile higher and higher.

Wizard of Id. Golden Rule. Whoever has the gold makes the rules.

That is the world we live in. This is the world that will topple because it is too top heavy. Babylon lives by this rule. And it cannot sustain itself forever.

My will be done. Living without direction

We hear from the woman, from Babylon and from Rome. We hear from the voice that wants everything for itself and nothing from God.

The Tower of Babel (Gen 11)

The city is a self sustaining gathering. It has gathered itself and accumulated itself and because it feels like it has done all the work it rejects any other gathering. It will refuse every other invitation (142 MOTC)

This is what Rev 18 details

Revelation 18:7–8 ESV

As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, since in her heart she says, ‘I sit as a queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.’ For this reason her plagues will come in a single day, death and mourning and famine, and she will be burned up with fire; for mighty is the Lord God who has judged her.”

Look at how the queen holds herself. What she thinks. The world around her is crumbling. Its’s crumbling at her own doing and work and she makes a commitment

She says she is a queen and no widow. She will not mourn. she holds on, she doesn’t repent or reflect.

And as she sits there alone, all those who once sat with her leave her.

We use until the use is gone. And once the use is gone there is a temptation to lose all sense of value. All the things that were once full of value and beauty are now just piles of collections.

If we just accumulate and accumulate we will lose the value of that which we are accumulating.

Look at this list of things that people would buy from babylon.

Revelation 18:11–13 ESV

And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, all kinds of scented wood, all kinds of articles of ivory, all kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls.

This list is not just things people would need like flour, wheat, cattle and sheep.

But then we see things like chariots, not just horses. All kinds of purple cloth and silk. Scented wood and ivory.

And then lastly slaves. But look how it is described: Human souls.

When we just live lives that accumulate we lose sense of humanity. We treat people like products. We quickly slip into a transactive life.

A transactive life

An accumulitive life just piles and piles and piles.

Holocaust museum. Pictures of one community of polish jews. Overheard someone say as they looked at the overlay. This is what we should do in our living room.

That is the highest form of neoliberal coercion I have seen. To be in the holocaust museum seeing pictures of people who were killed in genocide and think that this is the layout we want for our living room. Everything is only about consumer and self optimization

And it becomes too heavy.

A World too Heavy. The middle will collapse by it’s own weight. Living without support

Revelation 18:6 ESV

Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed.

If we just keep accumulating and accumulating we will eventually have to deal with all of our piles. WE will have to deal with the consequences of our actions.

When we only say my will be done, eventually we get that. We get what we want.

We end up getting what we eventually want. We get back what and how we act. It is a sense of retribution.

But it’s not retributive. Because retribution states that you get back how you acted. But there is no direction in retribution.

Here we have direction. We are called out. We are called to not participate in the schemes of babylon. While we are in the world we are not of the world. We live in it but do not engage with the way the world operates.

We are called out because the middle cannot sustain

We are called out because what is piling up can never offer life. When we depend on ourselves and our accumulations there will never be life within ourselves or life in our collections.

Life comes from somewhere else.

Church depends on other things to produce life. Nothing in the created order produces life on its own. The big problem is when we act like we do

We do not produce our own life. We find it on someone else. On something else we depend on.

Christ doesn’t just offer to give us better ways of living, He offers us new life

A crowd that is trying to find life on it’s own will always be seeking and will be miserable becuase of it. Because of that the crowd is always seeking and looking. It cannot find itself.

And out of the silent planet ransom is attempting to detail what humanity is like on earth, and the aliens conclude that they're trying to be a little rulers themselves, little gods, in such a way that it would be like, as if they were trying to lift themselves by pulling on their own hair.

We need someone to lift us out.

In every place where people have tried to pull themselves out of thier own technique Christ has offered compassion.

And it is the compassion of Christ that allows us to see our great need. He invites us into Himself by offering new life.

He gives the bread of life

In John 6 there is a crowd that is following JEsus and they are hungry. Jesus feeds them and they come back because they want more food. They aquire and aquire.

Jesus at that point, in the frenzy of wanting more, offers them something different.

John 6:35–37 ESV

Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.

Jesus offers Himself as the bread of life.

Out of the frenzy, out of acquiring.

To be given something in which we will not thirst or hunger.

To be offered life itself.

Some of us have been trying to sustain ourselves off of the memories of crusty bread.

Maybe we have been Christians a long time and we remember that Christ has fed us. And we have trusted Him for salvation.

But Christ has given us life in such a way that we don’t have to frenzy anymore. We don’t have to live life trying to make life.

It has been offered. It has been given to us.

We may need to repent and trust Christ again for life. Maybe you need to go to that place you have been trying to find life from. And ask it if it will actually give life. Then ask Jesus the same question. It is a good day to trust Him again.

And for anyone who has not put thier trust in Christ. You have trusted the life of the Jenga. Or maybe finding life feels a bit like trying to pull yourself up by your own hair.

Christ offers life. He gave His life so that we could find ours. The invitation is to trust Him for eternal life, not for life that will eventually topple.