Revelation 18

Revelation 18, Come Out of Her

A new world emerges:

The gospel story & the trajectory of the entire Bible:

I fell like in order to understand what is happening in the book of Revelation this week we kind of need to tell the story of the entire bible.

There are two defining events in the book of Genesis that will echo thorough the rest of scripture until the last pages of the Bible.

Creation and the Fall

& Babylon

Creation and the Fall

Out of sheer love and desire for relationship, God made this world and put humans in it to oversee God’s good creation and to rule it with him.

This is the purpose of humanity, to steward the world in partnership with a Holy God. To be fruitful and multiply

man was meant to live not only in harmony and community with the animals but with other humans

and then we all know the story…

The deception…Hey…Pssst….Eat from this tree and you will be more like God…

Well Adam and Eve were made in God’s image they couldn’t be more like him…they already were…

So Adam and Eve listened to the deception and because they gave their attention to a lie…Because they knew it was wrong and did it anyway, humanity became fallen…They were banished from the Garden…Banished from God’s presence…

Banished from Community with God at the center

Tower of Babel

Well Fast forward a few chapters in Genesis and you get the complete anthesis of the garden

There is one verse that matters so much here

Genesis 11:4 ESV

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

Did you catch that…Let us make a name for ourselves!

Instead of Eden where it was human community centered around the Lord, this is human community centered around itself …

So the story line of the whole bible becomes a battle between kingdoms

Babel…Which is the story of human power, human centered, human justice, human values

And you have the story of Israel: You have Abraham who had a miracle child…And Israel was the people who had their lives organized around the Lord.

And all through the bible there are echos that God will restore Eden and that all the Babels of the world will fall…

It is these two kingdoms, the kingdom of this world vs the kingdom of God

It is the way it has always been in the Bible…

And the point of the gospel is to shout out to the kingdom of this world and say the kingdom of God wants you!

Jesus essentially raises up a group of people to go into all the Babylons of the world and to invite them into a new kingdom, the Kingdom of God

Last week we looked at this woman who was the personification of Rome…She worshiped the beast and got her power form it…and of course she was consumed by the beast

In other words….what she thought was giving her true life and power was actually demanding her life from her.

John is trying to remind the church…Be careful…You live in Rome…which is another Babylon…It wants to consume you!

you will be judged based on what you tie your life to…

Be Ware of community based on humanity rather than based on God

John wants to remind the church that they are called to be faithful witnesses to Babylon…that all is not lost, Jesus wants to save Babylon too!

So, flip with me to revelation 18…And I want to say before I read this and break this down…there is no other way to really speak honestly about this text without speaking honestly about the culture in which we live…

So chapter 18 is organized into sections so that is how we will break it down today

Revelation 18:1–8 ESV

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory. 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.” Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. 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. 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.”

What John is saying is look…Babylon is falling, it is always falling!

He calls the city a “Haunt” For wild animals…

First century Romans has a view of the wilderness as wild space…they saw the city as something that was like the glory of the achievements of men…Aristotle famously said, well before this, “Man is by nature a political animal”

He wasn’t exactly talking about politics…he was saying, “Man is by nature a polis inhabiting creature” In other words man is rational because he builds and lives in cities and depends on other men and women to survive…

So, this was a big deal…See John is trying to remind the church that man’s best attempt to rule themselves and organize themselves absent from the redemptive power of Jesus, absent from the holy spirit, end in ruin

DID you catch that? Man’s best attempt at ruling himself absent of Jesus and his redemptive power ends in Ruin…

Man’s attempt at a city is a far cry from the garden community that God had originally planted in Eden…

This is what the best of the Human vision achieves…without a savior, in the absence of being built on Jesus, all of human community breaks down.

This is what John is trying to show…that evil eventually will collapse under its own weight

And here is the deal: That principle is always true…

Some of you might ask when is this?

It was true of Babel…It was True of Egypt, It was true of Assyria, it was true of Babylon and Rome…It is true in every system that is men’s desire to rule himself devoid of Jesus…Its true of us now…It is just one of those big truths of scripture

Redemptive community (the community of Jesus) Lasts

And Babylon falls

And I think this is really important…

Revelation 18:7 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.’

It is A city of arrogance…’..>She glorifies herself….I sit as a queen…I am not a widow” even though she is clearly defeated

Babylon, even in its final days, even when it is burning, Babylon will never admit defeat! Babylon will always be deceptive

-”actually we are in our best days!”

So what does John tell the church?

Revelation 18:4 ESV

Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues;

God commands his people to “come out of her” which echos all the old testament prophets…Run away! By tying your life to Babylon you tie your life to her sin!

he is saying to the church…That steamy love affair you are having with the empire…

You have to stop now…

You have to come out of that life!

See Babylon is just the default way of life…And really you dont even notice it, its all around you!

See God saw allegiance to Babylon as adultery…

So, imagine if you will today…You go to Nugget just to get your groceries and there is someone outside checking that you have pledged allegiance to America so you can buy your food…

This is what happened in Rome…the supermarket of the day was called the “agora” In order to buy and sell in the markets, you had to show that you gave tribute to Cesar…

And imagine what must have been going through the minds of the church that was reading John’s revelation…

Imagine them reading the part of the mark of the beast…about getting a mark on your right hand…and these people are walking into the “agora” with a bag of coins in their right hand…bearing the image of Cesar…

I think what John was trying to tell them is this is the way that the empire brands you! Don’t but into her lies…come out of her!...

What is interesting is God always calls us out of the place where we are not supposed to be, before he shows us what’s next…

Abram: go to the land I will show you

Moses: lead my people out of slavery

Jesus: Repent, Come out of her

And he does the same thing in Revelation because in just a couple of chapters, God will show John, that he has a way better city for these people…he has a way better plan for them, but they just have to break the allure of the empire in their lives…

Let’s keep moving through the text

Verse 8: And john says that Babylon is consumed in a day and it will burn…Probably a reminder that in just 64ad, Rome burned, and the Christians were blamed and persecuted in a massive way

And the text says that Babylon will fall in a day…Again, this is not a statistic but a symbol…For centuries Rome’s sin was eating away at her and weakening its base…and in August of 410, Alaric and his hordes of Goths pillaged Rome and it laid waste…the empire fell in a week…

Now I’m not saying this is a specific prophesy of John, rather this is the pattern of most human kingdoms based on human expressions of power…

Nineveh fell…Israel fell….Babylon fell quickly, the Persian empire fell

John’s point…Babylon will always fall…Don’t tie your fate to it…

Three Laments

And there is this interesting thing that happens: There are three Laments sung over the fall of Babylon

Lament 1: The other Babylons

Revelation 18:9–10 ESV

And the kings of the earth, who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her, will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. They will stand far off, in fear of her torment, and say, “Alas! Alas! You great city, you mighty city, Babylon! For in a single hour your judgment has come.”

The nations stand off and at a distance and they weep! They don’t dare come close because they know that their fate is tied to Babylon…

And they weep because that was their ally

That was their trading partner…

They lament not because Babylon is falling but because it affects them!

That’s our economy!

They know their judgment will be coming soon

Lament 2: The merchants of the Earth

But by in large, the biggest group that laments are the merchants of the earth…

Revelation 18:11–17 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. “The fruit for which your soul longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your splendors are lost to you, never to be found again!” The merchants of these wares, who gained wealth from her, will stand far off, in fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud, “Alas, alas, for the great city that was clothed in fine linen, in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels, and with pearls! For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.” And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off

And when you closely read verse 11-17 again and more closely you begin to see some stuff that just gives us pause…

I think what John is trying to say here…Is that when Babylon falls…losing political power is hard…Losing prestige is hard…

But what will be devastating, is when the inhabitants lose economic power…

See the merchants are the engine that drives Rome!

What we have to understand is the extent that Rome lived extravagantly…and what John seems to be hinting at by comparing these two worlds all through revelation is that there is a dark side of wealth…

Now not all the time, but in the case of Rome, they were so wealthy due to trade policies that were totally inequitable towards its providences…

Rome had a cheap labor reserve.

Rome kept many of its providence’s poor as to depend on the kingdom more…

And the emperors of Rome lived in lavish wealth…

Its recorded that the emperor Vitellius wasted the equivalent of what would be $20 million dollars on extravagant foods…

”Delicacies like peacocks’ brains and nightingale tongues”

Because wine was one of the most profitable products, every available field was planted with vineyards…Rome could import grain cheaply but make a killing on wine…

Consequently, the rich, landowners made a ton of money, but the poor were faced with paying higher prices for grain…they couldn’t meet their basic needs…

John talks about the merchants who import gold and silver and precious stones lamenting…that their trade was all gone…

But on the other side of that, the mines where they got these precious materials in Spain were mined with slave labor, the slave minors rarely lived more than two years in these brutal conditions….

A few of my favorites in this list are

citron wood or citrus wood and ivory…

a citron wood table in Rome, was considered the height of luxury…It was wood imported from North Africa and a craftsman would make it into a table…These things were so sought after that they would pay more for a table than they would for a large estate! It just goes to show the backwards economy that favored the rich.

Then Ivory…

Unless you’re an archeologist you probably have never heard of the Syrian Elephant, which was hunted to extension for its ivory tusks…

See ether point that John or the angel is trying to make is Rome’s Lust for wealth was so pervasive that they did not care who they hurt to get it…

Whether it was humans or creation

There were ancient writers who critiqued Rome because they were so willing to enslave the world to achieve luxury

There is this second load of goods talked about

Revelation 18:13 ESV

cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, and slaves, that is, human souls.

What John is doing is that he is showcasing the oppression that Rome brings through its trade policies all over the world…John was talking about west and east before now these places that they would get these goods from the north and the south.

It’s almost as if to say, Babylon has oppressed the world from north to south to east to west…They went as far north as Britain and as far south as south Africa.

And what does this all end with? The oppression of human beings…

Often times when unwanted children were born, they would be found and sold into slavery. These children were raised to be slaves and sold into foreign lands.

When Rome would go conqure a place often times the most valuable thing they took out of that place was the people…Its like the bible is saying when these empire oppress people through slavery they are actually just eating people up…

It is the Anti-Eden

And the irony is the people who are so sad are the ones profiting off the backs of the slaves and children…

Lament 3: The shipping industry

Revelation 18:17–19 ESV

For in a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste.” And all shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors and all whose trade is on the sea, stood far off and cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning, “What city was like the great city?” And they threw dust on their heads as they wept and mourned, crying out, “Alas, alas, for the great city where all who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth! For in a single hour she has been laid waste.

The shipping industry laments because their fait is tied to Babylon too…

But what I love about this text is when we see the three lament over what Babylon used to be…

This makes me think of the old Thomas Jefferson quote:

“A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take everything you have”

and that is exactly what happened with Rome…It gave so many people everything…But when it fell…Everything is taken

That Babylon has fallen…We turn back to heaven and we see that what looks horrible is actually a victory

But heaven rejoices…

Its a long way from Eden! This human community lives at the expense of one another!

Revelation 18:20–24 ESV

Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for you against her!” Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more; and the sound of harpists and musicians, of flute players and trumpeters, will be heard in you no more, and a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more, and the sound of the mill will be heard in you no more, and the light of a lamp will shine in you no more, and the voice of bridegroom and bride will be heard in you no more, for your merchants were the great ones of the earth, and all nations were deceived by your sorcery. And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints, and of all who have been slain on earth.”

Babylon Falls, The world Laments but Heaven Rejoice and says…this is actually a good thing!

Because in God’s judgment he sets the world right again…In his Judgment he frees the oppressed and takes down the oppressor…

And then this happens

The church would have instantly understood what this was all about…

Jeremiah was to write the judgment of the real Babylon on a scroll tie it to a millstone and throw it into the Euphrates to show the finality of God’s judgment

Jeremiah 51:63–64 ESV

When you finish reading this book, tie a stone to it and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates, and say, ‘Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more, because of the disaster that I am bringing upon her, and they shall become exhausted.’ ” Thus far are the words of Jeremiah.

Really what we have read today is a passage about how the kingdom of God eventually wins and Babylon collaposes over it’s own weight

And in Revelation we have heard this message before, it is not new at all.

Revelation is taking us to the end of all things

and what it is saying is a new world is coming

Eden

You belong to a different kingdom (2 Corinthians 5:17, Philippians 3:20)

I started this sermon with talking about Eden vs Babel

In Eden no one lived at the expense of others

In Babel, you have to step on one another to get ahead…

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

Philippians 3:20 ESV

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ,

The idea is that If you are following Jesus at one point you died to yourself and a new person was born.

It is no longer you, but Christ living in you

Babylon is all around you and you have to live in it, lets face it, we all do!

The text in revelation says “Come out of her!”

God’s desire is for the redemption of people who have tied their lives to Babylon (2 Peter 3:9-13)

2 Peter 3:9–13 ESV

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

You may read revelation 18 and think…HAHA Babylon is getting its due! They were bad for so long now they are getting their punishment!

But we can’t ever forget that God sent a rescue mission to Ninivah…its called the book of Jonah…

And that God has a rescue mission for the people of Babylon! It is you!

Yes eventually all the Babylon’s of the world will Fall…But Jesus came with a plan of redemption for the whole world and the most amazing thing is you see agents of Babylon coming to Jesus for salvation…

The Centurion who asked Jesus to heal his daughter…The roman guard who fell at Jesus’ feet on the cross and said, surely this man is the son of God!

You are God’s plan, you are God’s agent to go into Babylon and to show them that a different world is possible

That is actually our next fill-in

Show Babylon that Eden is possible (Titus 2)

The book of Titus all of chapter 2 is about living out the gospel and it ends by saying, in doing all of this you make the gospel attractive

Do you know that your job is to show the world that Eden is in fact possible

Because when

how does this look?

Forgive instantly

Season your speech with salt

Give far more than you take

Babylon isn’t fallen yet…And every moment that you have is time to show Babylon who Jesus is

Live on mission to Babylon (Matthew 28:18-20)

Literally the great commission is to go into all nations!

Yes the human based system of power and oppression is all going away at one point and I think the question is…

Who is going to go with it kicking and screaming?

and who is rejoicing that the lamb is coming