Sermon Tone Analysis

INTRODUCTION:

This past week we had our VBS and it was absolutely wonderful.

One of the thing we learned in VBS this past week is that our creator God is a creative God.

Created.

Designed.

Empowered!

Because we are made in God’s image we too are endowed with creativity and invited to leverage that creativity for the glory of God and the worship of his name.

Unfortunately, when sin entered into this world that image of God was marred and distorted.

Instead of using our creativity to display God and declare his glory we began to use it to develop our own gods made in our own image.

We fashioned those false gods to serve us instead of submitting ourselves to serve the true God.

John Calvin said that the human heart is now like an idol making factory.

Thousands of years later, that idolatry and its effects have only grown.

The examples are obvious and the consequences are devastating.

Corrupt Church

And it’s not just the unbelieving world “out there” that has the problem.

Even within the church we see a growing worldliness.

There’s no clear distinction between those who belong to the Lord and those who belong to this world.

It’s one of the reasons we have so little influence when it comes to our culture and so little power when it comes to our witness.

We have become just as sexually immoral, just as materialistic, and just as self-centered as those who do not know God.

We spend money the same way, parent the same way, get divorced at the same rates, and on and on we could go.

Brothers and sisters this should not be!

We are called to be different.

We should embrace our weirdness and live it out to the glory of God.

Scripture encourages us,

1 John 2:15–17a

15 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.

16 For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s possessions—is not from the Father, but is from the world.

17 And the world with its lust is passing away...

This passage is 1 John is a succinct summary of Revelation 17-18.

In it we learn that Gods toleration of our spiritual adultery is TEMPORARY.

In Isaiah 42:8 the Lord says “I am the Lord.

That is my name, and I will not give my glory to another or my praise to idols.”

That’s the heart of our text today in Revelation 17. There’s coming an end to false religion.

This world system that attempts to draw people away from Christ and the Gospel will eventually meet its demise.

To describe that battle and demise, John presents false religion as a scarlet woman riding upon a beast.

The beast is the antichrist and both he and this false religion were first mentioned in Revelation 13.

Each are related to the historical city of Babylon.

A Babylonian mother and a Babylonian monster.

Today we’re going to look at the nature and pull of false religion and in the coming weeks we will see how Christ will one day defeat it.

Reviewing Revelation

Before we look at our text we need to situate it in its context.

Revelation 17:1 opens with one of the seven angels who held the seven bowls of God’s wrath coming up to John to have a conversation.

Who are these angels and what are these bowls and why are they talking to some guy named John?

John is a disciple of Jesus, eyewitness to the resurrection and author of this book of the Bible.

He was arrested and jailed on this island called Patmos and the book of Revelation is a journal of a series of visions he was given to describe the days leading up to the return of Christ.

These seven bowls of God’s wrath are the climax to a series of 21 judgments that God unleashes in the book of Revelation:

seven seals (Rev 6), seven trumpets (Rev 8-9) and seven bowls (Rev 15-16).

Our last series dealt with these seven bowls of God’s wrath.

My take is that these bowls describe a world wide judgment by God, (carried out by Jesus on the earth) that prepares the world for a new heavens and a new earth headed up by Jesus himself.

Just like the seals had a parenthetical expansion in chapter 7 and the trumpets a parenthetical expansion in chapters 10-11, you might think of Revelation 17-19 as a parenthetical expansion of the events described in Revelation 15-16.

This section ends with the worldly system of idolatry destroyed and Jesus Christ recognized and worshipped as the true King of Kings and Lord of Lords to the glory of God the Father.

Revelation 17 (CSB)

1 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and spoke with me: “Come, I will show you the judgment of the notorious prostitute who is seated on many waters.

2 The kings of the earth committed sexual immorality with her, and those who live on the earth became drunk on the wine of her sexual immorality.” 3 Then he carried me away in the Spirit to a wilderness.

I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns.

4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, jewels, and pearls.

She had a golden cup in her hand filled with everything detestable and with the impurities of her prostitution.

5 On her forehead was written a name, a mystery: Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and of the Detestable Things of the Earth.

6 Then I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the witnesses to Jesus.

When I saw her, I was greatly astonished.

IDENTIFYING BABYLON

We’ve said before that Revelation is a symbolic and apocalyptic book but no where is that more true than in Revelation 17!

The first time I read this chapter I thought to myself - this is why they tell you not to read the last book first!

Revelation 17 is about a great prostitute, a harlot.

In Old and New Testaments the idea of adultery is not just physical but spiritual.

Playing the harlot doesn’t just equate to physical adultery but also to spiritual adultery.

The woman/city in Rev 17 is the epitome and physical embodiment of spiritual adultery.

False religion.

The world system.

That which sets itself up in opposition to and replacement of the one true God.

The First Question

The immediate temptation of many readers is to immediately try and figure out WHO this mystery Babylon IS.

What nation does she represent?

Historical/future/etc.

The problem is - as the name on her forehead suggests - it’s somewhat of a mystery.

There is great debate and disagreement on the particular identity of this woman and her historical or present-day manifestation.

So I think it’s important before we define who this great harlot IS we first examine what she DOES and how she goes about it.

That’s the most important lesson we can learn.

There are no less than 10 different descriptions of this woman and her behavior and each of them are helpful for understanding who she is and how she operates.

The Place to Start

But the best place to start is with her name.

“MYSTERY: Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and of the Detestable Things of the Earth

As we said earlier - the idea of prostitution in this context seems to be that of spiritual prostitution.

Rebellion against God.

Notice that this woman is the “mother of prostitutes.”

Not meaning that she produces more and more prostitutes underneath her but that she is the greatest spiritual prostitute of them all.

She’s the “mother of the detestable things on the earth” in that she is the greatest example of what it means to reject God, hate God and live life outside of his good designs.

What does that look like in particular?

I think we can begin to answer that question by looking at the first part of her name: Babylon.

Old Testament Types

John uses this designation Babylon for a reason so it’s important we understand them if we want to understand John’s Babylon in Revelation.

Babylon shows up in the OT a couple of different ways.

The first is the tower of Babel in Genesis 11.

The pride and arrogance of humans led them to believe they could build a tower to heaven and be just as great as God.

Nimrod was in charge.

Many years later, the Babylonian empire was established in the same area with the city of Babylon being its capital.

That Babylon was overseen by King Nebuchadnezzar.

Which of the two cities does John have in mind?

I think both.