If this world is what the Bible says it is, then focusing your whole life on laying up treasures here. Things like beach houses and 401ks and worldly fame and Instagram followers or having your name on a building at Duke. In a single hour, all that wealth will be laid waste. I'm telling you that there's many of you who are giving your whole lives for things that are going to burn up in less than an hour. Hey friends, welcome to the Summit Life podcast.
I'm Molly Vitovich. Whether you're listening on your commute, at home, or somewhere in between, it's a privilege to bring you clear, gospel-centered teaching each week, walking with you as you grow in your faith. And if you're looking for ways to stay encouraged beyond this podcast, one simple option is to connect with Pastor JD on social media. On platforms like Facebook and Instagram, he regularly shares scripture, short reflections, and timely reminders of gospel truth designed to meet you in the middle of everyday life. You can find him on Facebook by searching for Pastor J.D.
Greer and on Instagram at Pastor JD Greer. It's an easy way to stay rooted in God's Word, revisit themes from the teaching you hear here on Summit Life, and bring a bit of biblical encouragement into your daily scroll. And if you'd like to learn more about this ministry or access past messages, you can always visit us at jiddygreer.com. Remember, we're cruising right along through the book of Revelation. Today, Pastor JD shows us the value of living as exiles in a place that frequently seems alluring, but will ultimately pass away.
What we are meant to do is to fix our eyes on the heavenly city, the one with true, lasting foundations. Here's Pastor JD. 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 into a wilderness.
And I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names. and it 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 forehead was written the name of mystery.
Babylon the Great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations. And I saw the woman. drunk with the blood of the saints. the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. Revelation fourteen.
Just north of the demilitarized zone on the Korean peninsula. Sits a small, quaint village that North Korea calls Peace Village, but South Korea has more appropriately dubbed Propaganda Village. Peace Village was built by North Korea in the early 1960s, right after the Korean continent had been subdivided into North and South Korea.
South Korea, of course, went on to become a place of freedom and prosperity. They even experienced one of the greatest evangelistic awakenings in Christian history. They are a market capital of the Asian Peninsula. North Korea, by contrast, has gone on to become one of the most totalitarian, oppressive dictatorships in the history of the world. The UN says that 40% of the people in North Korea are malnourished.
The official wage in North Korea is less than $10 a month. And more than 120,000 people are in what they call political prison camps. Usually they're there for a little more than saying the wrong thing or being associated with the wrong kinds of people. But if you stood on the South Korean side, And you looked at this little North Korean village through binoculars, what you would see is breathtaking. The city has delightful, colorful buildings with blue roofs.
You'll see well-dressed street sweepers out on the road, keeping the roads spotless. Lights glow at night. In fact, back in the 1960s, when this little city was first built, much of rural Korea didn't even have electricity.
So, looking at this little village through binoculars made it look like a utopian city from the future. The problem is that it's all fake. The buildings are just facades. They have no actual rooms inside. Even the windows are painted on.
The lights run on timers. The street sweepers are paid government officials who go through the motions to impress observers looking from a distance across the border. The spectacle does not stop there either. In the 1980s, South Korea erected a 323-foot-high flagpole on its side, 30 stories high.
So North Korea responded with a 525-foot flagpole on its side, 50 stories. At the time, it was the tallest flagpole in the world. By the way, this all coming out of a country where people lack the most basic necessities. North Korea then mounted huge loudspeakers that blasted propaganda about how wonderful life was under the regime in North Korea. The South retaliated with its own broadcast until the border had turned into a sonic battlefield.
Why do I share that? It's because the final chapters of Revelation or about a war between two cities. Babylon and the New Jerusalem. And in many ways, it's a propaganda war. Chapter 18 opens up by saying this: Fallen, fallen is Babylon.
The Greats. And then chapter 19, which we'll get to next week, tells us about the coming of the new Jerusalem. Babylon in the Bible Represents mankind united in opposition to God. Babylon, of course, has a long history in the Bible. Under King Nebuchadnezzar, the Daniel and the Lion's Den days, Babylon had become the world's first truly global empire.
The armies of Nebuchadnezzar had literally destroyed the first Jerusalem in 587 BC. Fascinatingly, by the way, Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon had been built in the exact same place where the Tower of Babel had been erected, the plains of Shinnar, which had been the place of mankind's first united insurrection against God. And so in the Bible, Babylon. Comes to represent the kingdom of man, united in opposition against God. In fact, Peter in his epistle to the church, 1 Peter, uses Babylon as a code name for Rome, even though the actual city of Babylon had been destroyed about five centuries before Peter wrote that epistle.
The new Jerusalem, of course, is God's city, and the book of Revelation ends with this city coming down from heaven. Saint Augustine in the fifth century A.D. said that all of human history can be characterized as a struggle between these two cities. He called them the city of man. and the city of God.
The city of man, he said, is founded on love of self. even to the contempt of God. The city of God, he said. Is founded on love of God, even to the contempt of self. And Augustine explained that you will choose to pursue and make your home in only one of these two cities.
They are mutually exclusive. John writes the book of Revelation to pull back the mask. on Babylon.
so that you will see that all of her promises are fake. And he does so by giving you a glimpse of her end. John explains to us his motive for writing these things in chapter 14, verse 12. If you want to look at it, here is a call, he says, for the endurance of the saints. For those who keep the commandments of God and have put their faith in Jesus, I want you to notice and highlight the word endurance.
John knows. Listen. That the Christian life, to actually live it, listen. Takes endurance. It takes the ability to experience delayed gratification.
Because to belong to God, you've got to live for something you can't see and feel yet, and doesn't always pay off in the short term. I'm talking to somebody right now. The new Jerusalem is something up in heaven that will one day descend down to earth. It is not here yet. You cannot see and feel it yet.
And see, that makes living for the new Jerusalem hard because Babylon is here right now. And her propaganda machine is in full swing. It mounts its flagpole higher than ours and blares its propaganda everywhere. You turn on the TV and Babylon's propaganda machine hits you square in the face. Shiny, happy people who look like they've got it all.
Babylon even has algorithms designed to tailor its false propaganda specifically for you now. If you think nice watches and expensive cars are the key to a happy life, that's the propaganda that will blare into your life. You think romance or pornography or a lean body is the key to a happy life? That's what it puts into your feed. You know, one useful thing about these phones, and we dog on them all the time, and we probably should, but one useful thing is that they will correctly identify your idols for you.
Whatever is feeding back to you, it's what it's picked up from you, is the key to a happy life. to forego all the seductive promises of Babylon. You have to have a deep conviction that the things that you can't see yet are real. In fact, they're more real than the things you can see. And John 1, John knows that that's hard.
And so he wants to help you see how Babylon ends so that you don't get taken in by Babylon's false propaganda. And so chapters 14 through 18 are all about the final destruction of Babylon. They walk us through what we call the bowl judgments, which is the last in a series of three sets of judgments: seal, trumpet, bowl, that defined the seven-year great tribulation. Look at chapter 16, verse 1. Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.
Now, I'm not going to go deeply into these bold judgments because they're fairly similar in character to the seal and the trumpet judgments, which we've already looked at. But let me just make some big picture observations about the judgments. If you're taking notes, this is what you should write down. Number one: the bold judgments are the most intense of all the judgments. You see, each round of judgment, seal, trumpet, bowl, has gotten more intense than the one before.
These bold judgments represent the final destruction of rebellion on earth, and so they are the most intense, which leads me to number two. Like the previous judgments, the bold judgments bear striking similarity to the plagues in the Exodus. We learn, for example, that in bowl number one, painful sores break out on people on earth, which is similar to the Egyptian plague of boils. In bowls two and three, the waters turn to blood, which is some kind of metaphor for a pollution of the water supply. And that, of course, is similar to when Moses turns the Nile River into blood in the first plague of Egypt.
In bowl number five, darkness covers the earth, which, of course, also happened in one of the Exodus plagues. In Bowl 6, there's an explosion of frogs on the earth. In fact, let's just look at this one real quick, verse 13. Look down in your Bible or up here on the screen. I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon, remember that's Satan, and out of the mouth of the beast, the Antichrist, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs.
These are actually demonic spirits performing signs who go abroad to the kings of the whole world to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty. This, of course, is similar to the Exodus plague of frogs, except this time John explicitly tells us that the frogs are demons, and these demons go throughout the earth, stirring up the nations for the final battle of Armageddon. They make the Antichrist hopping mad, you might say.
Okay, sorry, I had to do that. They put the ribbon in tribulation.
Okay, I'll be here all week.
Okay, in Bowl 7. In Bowl 7, gigantic hailstones rain down on the earth, which also occurs, which also occurs, of course, during the Exodus. That leads me to number three. As in the plagues of the Exodus, mankind refuses to. Repent.
Look at chapter 16, verse 9, and yet it says they cursed the name of God. Who had power over these plagues, they did not repent and give him glory. And then again, verse 11, and they cursed the God of heaven for their pain and their sores. Yet they did not repent of their deeds, just like Pharaoh in the Exodus. You know, listen to me, the heart of man is so wicked.
But even after all this, they still won't repent. Friend, we always think that unbelief is a head problem. But the scriptures say it is first a heart problem. We are inclined not to believe here. Because in here, we don't want to believe.
We don't want God to be in charge. You say, Well, I do want to believe, but I don't believe it's that inside, we don't want God to be in charge, we want to be in charge. We don't want to acknowledge God as all-wise. We want God to submit to our wisdom. We don't want to give God glory.
We want the glory for ourselves. And we think, well, if He would just do more to convince me, well, then I would repent. What Revelation shows you is that's not really true. In order for you to repent, Jesus has to change your heart through his Holy Spirit, and that happens to the preaching of the gospel.
So it doesn't matter how many plagues and how many judgments there are, until you understand and believe the gospel, it's just like talking to a wall. Number four, the bold judgments we learn are the outpouring of God's wrath. The outpouring of God's wrath. Look at verse 19. And God remembered Babylon.
Babylon the Great to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. I take a moment to point this out because it's gotten really popular among some today, even some. Christians To downplay any idea of God's wrath. We prefer to think of God as a gentle force for good. He doesn't really hate sin.
He doesn't hate anything because that would be unbecoming of God. Sin just makes God sad. It breaks his heart because of what it does to us.
Some even say that at the cross, God was not pouring out his wrath on Jesus in our place like some kind of cosmic child abuse. Really, all God was doing was demonstrating the depth of his love and putting on display the tragic consequences of our sin.
Now, let me be clear. It's very true. That at the cross, God was putting on display His love for us. It's also true that the cross death is the natural consequence for our sin. But it is simply not true.
That God has no wrath against sin. Passages like this one show you that, and they put it in the strongest terms: the fury of his wrath. It is a fearful thing to stand before the living God in a posture of rebellion. God's hatred of sin, by the way, is not in opposition to his love. His hatred is an extension of that love.
Because see when you when you love something You hate the thing that destroys it. If something attacks my children, I hate that thing. God cares too much for his creation just to shrug at evil. J.I. Packer explains that God's wrath is his settled opposition to all that is evil.
Wrath, he says, is not the opposite of love. Wrath is love's demand for justice. In fact, without wrath, love is ju really just apathy. It's just apathy. God loves his glory.
He loves justice. And he loves his creation too much to not be wrathful at sin.
Okay, that's chapters 14 through 16.
Now in chapter 17 and 18. The Apostle John shifts the camera angle. Same events, different angle. First three chapters told us the order of events.
Now, chapter 17 and 18, the camera angle shifts to what these judgments do to the Babylonian world order, which is under the reign of the Antichrist and the false prophet. The fall of Babylon occurs in two waves. First, the religious side falls, chapter 17. And then the political economic side follows. That's chapter 18.
Chapter 17 is going to tell us all about the fall of religious Babylon, downfall of the false prophet. Ironically, His downfall, the false prophet's downfall, comes at the hands of the Antichrist. I say ironically because up until this point, these fellows have worked hand in hand. But look at chapter verse one of chapter 17. 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.
That's the false prophet who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality. Jump down to verse 16. It picks it up. Then the ten horns, that is the kings that are in alliance with the Antichrist that you saw, they and the beasts, the Antichrist, will hate the prostitute. They will make her desolate and naked and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire.
At some point, the Antichrist... Who heads the political and economic side of the regime, turns on the false prophet. Turns out the Antichrist was not all that interested in religion after all. What a shocker. He and the other kings used her like a prostitute to gain control.
It's like Karl Marx said, religion is the opiate of the people and you can use it to control people. And then when they're finished with her. And she's no longer useful to him, they discard her. I wish Christian leaders today. Understood what John is trying to show us here.
Not all politicians are bad. Let me say that very clearly. There are many faithful men and women serving in politics, and we need a whole lot more of you going into those fields. I'm praying that out of our church, I've prayed this for years, that out of our church will come senators and a Supreme Court judge, at least one, and who knows, maybe even a president.
So I'm all for serving in politics. But I'm just saying that the overwhelming trajectory of politics on earth. Which is by the way infiltrated to unusually high degrees by the dragon the overwhelming trajectory of politics on earth. is to use religion as its useful idiot. When I served as the president of the Southern Baptist Convention for three years.
I would occasionally be invited up to Washington, D.C. with other Christian leaders to meet with some of our nation's top political leaders. And during one of those meetings at the White House, One of my Christian leader colleagues Made his way up to one of our elected leaders. He told me this story right after the dinner was over. Made his way right up to one of our elected leaders and said to him, Hey, hey, and called his name, said, Please know.
Please know, sir, that we are praying for you. He said this leader looked back at him, paused for a second and said, well, thank you. But what I really need you to do is get your people out to vote for me. My colleague told me he persisted. He kind of pushed back a little bit.
He said, Well, of course, of course. I mean, yes, that's partially why we're here. But just understand that the most important thing that we can do for you is for us and our people to pray for you. He said this leader looked at him, paused for another long second and said, Yeah. But what I really need you to do is to get your people out to vote for me.
Now that is I'm not picking on that one political leader That's often how it is on both sides of the aisle, by the way. Political leaders wanting to use religion as a tool to help them wield control. They're not really that in suit. Religion because they're building the city of man, not the city of God.
So chapter 17 tells us how the Antichrist overthrows the false prophet. Then chapter 18 goes on to tell us how God overthrows the Antichrist and the political economic order that he has established. Interestingly, the Antichrist himself is also referred to with the imagery of a prostitute. Talking about the fall of the Antichrist. Verse 2 says this: chapter 18: 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. I told you, man, birds aren't real, okay? Right? They're tools of the Antichrist.
A haunt for every unclean cat.
Okay, that's not really in there. I added that, but it felt right. Number three, verse three. 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.
Notice the imagery of prostitution applies to both sides of Babylon, both the religious side and the political economic side. In fact, chapter 18 says that Babylon is the mother of prostitutes.
So here is my question for you this weekend. Why? Why would the primary metaphor that God chooses For the Antichrist and the false prophet and the world order they create, why would the primary metaphor be prostitution? A lot of metaphors you could choose there. Why make it prostitution?
It's not because, hear me. Her main sins are sexual ones. Although she certainly has a lot of those. No, this sexual immorality in verse 3. Is a metaphor for humanity's unfaithfulness to God.
The Bible consistently uses prostitution as a metaphor for our unfaithfulness to God, and it does that for two reasons. The first reason is because, hear me, sin at its core. is relational betrayal. Sin at its core is spiritual adultery. Adultery is a two-sided sin, right?
When a man commits adultery on his wife, He's committing two sins. He is forsaking her, his wife, his covenant with her. Secondly, he is using some other person to get something he has no right to and that he ought to be finding in his spouse.
So Jeremiah 2.13 says this, my people have committed two evils. What are the two evils? The first evil is they forsook meat. The fountain of living waters. Second evil is they hewed out cisterns for themselves, holes in the ground that would hold rainwater.
broken and cracked that couldn't even hold water to begin with. How many sins did they commit? Two. One, you forsook God where you were supposed to find meaning and fulfillment and purpose and joy. That's sin number one.
Sin number two, the other side of that is you created an idol, a false God, to try and obtain the things that you should have been getting from God that you no longer wanted to find in your heavenly father. I point this out because a lot of times we reduce sin, the bad deeds we do to others. And that's certainly part of it. But the primary wickedness of sin is that we forsook God and replaced him with something else. We got a good heavenly father who loves us and created us to be full of him, to be joyful in him.
And we said, No, you are not good enough. You are not enough. I don't trust you. Same thing a man does essentially to his wife when he betrays her. And then we turn to other gods to replace what we were no longer finding in God.
That's why the wrath of God is upon the human race. because it's ultimately blasphemy. It says to God, you're not really God. I'm God, and you're not really good. These other things are better than you.
Second reason Babylon's called prostitute. is that she is so appealing. All throughout these chapters, she is described like this. Look at chapter 17, verse 4. She's arrayed in purple and scarlet.
adorned with gold and jewels and pearls. My apologies to you if you wore a purple dress this morning with your favorite pearl necklace, okay? But in the Bible, not today, but in the Bible, this kind of dress signaled prostitution. She looks so Good. She's striking.
She's beautiful. She promises you, she's got those eyes, and she promises you pleasure and love and judgment, free acceptance, and she makes you think that she's really into you. But she doesn't care anything about you. She's only interested in your money. It's not love for you that drives her, it's lust for your wallet.
You end up throwing away all the best parts of your life, your family. Your career, your peace of mind, everything for what turns out to be an empty mirage. By the way, this is all imagery. All imagery from Proverbs chapter 5. We're Lady Folly.
representing all of sin is described like this by Solomon, the lips of a forbidden woman. Drip, honey. Her speech is smoother than oil, but in the end, she is. Bitter as wormwood, her feet go down to death, her steps take hold of hell. Her feet lead down to the grave.
Friend, listen to me. This is all sin, all of it. It's all Babylon. It's a mirage. It looks so good, but all those who chase it find that it leaves you empty.
It leaves you more dead inside. Even worse, it leaves you under the judgment of God. Partnering with Summit Life is more than just supporting a radio program. You're actually helping make the gospel accessible to people who may never step inside the walls of a church. Every day, men and women tune in looking for answers, for hope, or maybe even for a fresh start with Jesus.
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So, if Summit Life has been a trusted source of spiritual encouragement to you, would you prayfully consider partnering with us financially today? You can learn more or give a gift now by visiting jdcreer.com. You know, they say you can entice and trap a male butterfly simply by using a cardboard replica of the female. You ever try to catch a butterfly without a net? You ever try that?
It's not easy. It's hard, but if you put up a colorful cardboard cutout of a female butterfly in a cage. Doesn't have to be that good. He will trap himself. Look at that poor male butterfly, by the way.
It's not just flitting around, you know, lonely, looking for love. Things aren't going well back at home. And there she is. Oh, look at the beauty of those wings. I ain't never seen a pattern like that.
Wonder why she's in that strange little box. Oh, no matter. Oh no matter, I'm sure her love is worth it. Only to get there to find out after he's trapped that she's fake. And the next thing he knows, he's on display at the Museum of Life Science with snot-nosed kids staring and poking at him all day.
When are we going to learn that that's the trajectory of all sin? Those buildings, those party lights, those street sweepers, that fun sound of music coming out of Peace Village, it's all fake. Consumerism turned out to be unfulfilling. It's like a drug, you always need more of it. Pornography becomes addictive.
Cynicism rots your soul and just makes you more and more bitter. When are going to learn that these are all false promises and they're fake, they're propaganda village? Y'all, sometimes the ones who best reveal this to us, I found, are our comedians. The ones we pay to make us laugh. Like this guy, Robin Williams.
One of the funniest people of our generation. who ultimately committed suicide because his life felt so empty. What he said shortly before he died, I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy. Because they know what it's like to feel absolutely worthless. All it takes is a beautiful fake smile.
to hide an injured soul. In other words, it's just a mirage. Or this guy, Dak Shepard. You may not remember him as well, but. If you watch the show Parenthood, he was one of the stars there.
He's got a podcast now called Armchair Experts, pretty popular. Here's what he says. They're paying me a ton of money. People recognize me now, the airport. I'm doing everything I've ever dreamed of doing, and yet I'm the least happy I've ever been in my entire life.
And closer now to not wanting to be alive than I've ever been, and yet on paper I've had every single thing I've ever wanted. Previously, I could always tell myself one day. If I have money. One day when I'm doing the thing that I've always wanted to do, that'll solve everything. You know, I think a lot of us proceed through life thinking we will be happy if we will have self-esteem, if we will know contentment.
If Those are illusions that most people don't get to find out, or just illusions, but I got to find out. Or one more, of course, Jim Carrey. I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of doing so they can see that it's not the answer. I'm telling you from the mouths of our comedians, the people we pay to make us happy. They're saying it's all fake.
It's all a facade. The building has no rooms. C.S. Lewis talked about the sweet poison of the false infinite. I love that phrase.
The sweet poison of the false infinite. Babylon promises love and intimacy, but all you find there is heartache and trouble and brokenness. It's propaganda village, nothing but empty supermarket shelves over there. Y'all listen, honestly. recently, not just this week either, like for the past few months, this has been my summer theme.
I've been thinking about my own. personal battles with different sins. Unfortunately, you don't get to leave temptation to sin behind when you became a pastor. I tried. Right, but when they handed me my degree in seminary, they didn't hand me a get out of send free card.
You bring all that stuff with you. There's a few things that sin promises me personally, things Babylon uses to entice me. And I got to constantly tell myself, I have to preach to myself. Y'all, listen, my best sermons are not delivered to you. My best sermon is the one I preach to me.
That's why I do a quiet time every single morning because the first guy that needs to hear a sermon every day is JD. And what I gotta constantly tell myself. Every single day using scripture is it's all a mirage, all of it. Oh, it looks so good. It looks like such a sparkling city with lights and street sweepers, but it's all fake.
It's all fake. It might be the promises of money or the promises of fame or forbidden romance. They're all dressed up for me in purple and scarlet and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls. But scripture tells me they're empty, they're fake, and that our steps take hold of hell and our feet lead down to the grave. Beware the sweet poison of the false infinite.
When Babylon falls, John says this, chapter 18, verse 15. The merchants of these wares who gain 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, and purple and scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels, and with pearls, for in a single hour. All this wealth was laid waste.
You're gonna be somebody who wakes up one day. To find out that you gave your life to chase one empty mirage after another, only to find out that none of it was what you thought it was, that you spent your whole life climbing some ladder just to get to the top of some building, only to find out that the building had no rooms, the windows were painted on, and it was all fake. Tony, what you're looking for is in Jesus. It's in the New Jerusalem. In his presence, the psalmist says, Psalm 16, 11, in his presence is the fullness of joy.
At his right hand are pleasures forevermore. Fullness of joy means joys that could not get any stronger. Pleasures forevermore means joys that could not last any longer. But those things are only for those who wait. In faith.
and who seek the invisible city, the heavenly city, The New Jerusalem.
So see, that's the end game.
So what are the implications for us?
Now. That's a question we've asked every single week. What are the implications for us now? Look at 18 verse 4. John will tell you.
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.
Now remember real quick There's two ways to read Revelation. You can read it firstly as prophecies about a time coming in the future. An actual seven-year period in the future where an actual Antichrist and an actual false prophet reign. There will be a time during that seven-year period when God literally says to his people, Get out of Babylon. I'm about to destroy it.
And those of us who are still around at that point will flee the premises. But I've told you that's a valid way to read this There's another important way to read Revelation, and that is to read it as descriptions of forces that are already at work in the world now. Because while there is an Antichrist coming one day, the spirit of Antichrist is already here, John tells us.
So you should read it both ways.
So this command is not just for a future generation. It's also for us now. Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins and then share in her plagues. That's a command we find, by the way, not only here to come out. It's multiple times in the Bible, both Old and New Testament.
Come out from among them and be ye separate. But see that presents a problem, doesn't it? Because there are other places in the Bible that tell us seemingly the opposite, tell us to stay put. For example, Jeremiah 29, 7, which was written during the time of Daniel. Right during the time when they were literally exiles from Jerusalem living in a literal Babylon.
Here's what Jeremiah, God said to Jeremiah, build houses, live in them, plant gardens there. Seek the welfare of the city. The city is Babylon. Where I have sent you into exile. The Apostle Peter basically picks this command up and gives the same instructions in his first epistle to the church, 1 Peter.
Peter tells the believers there in Babylon, Rome, stay put, be a witness there, make a difference. Make room a better place to live.
So Church, we got two seemingly opposite instructions, don't we? Come out of her, my people. And settle in. Seek the city's welfare. Is this a contradiction?
All right, let me teach you a little Bible interpretation rule. Whenever you see an apparent contradiction in the Bible, That is usually the place where you find wisdom. What this means Is that we are to live in Babylon, deeply integrated into life here, but distinct from her sins and her man-centered ways. I got a whole book about this coming out next month called Everyday Revolutionary: How to Transcend the Culture War and Transform the World. It's about how to obey Jeremiah's command to live in Babylon and seek to bless Babylon and, at the same time, Revelation's command to stay the heck out.
How to go from being a culture warrior to being a gospel witness. It's a whole in the world but not of the world paradox. Christians, hear me. Listen, Summit. I'm about to put you in two different categories.
Fair, which one you're in. Christians always tend to navigate toward one of two extremes. For some people The come out from among them and be ye separate, that's what they do. By the way, this was a key verse in my Christian high school. I heard so many sermons on that verse right there.
It's like the pastor, if he didn't know what to preach about, he just went back to that verse. Christians should be different. We didn't dress like the world. Our dress code in my Christian high school was straight out a little house on the prairie. right with an occasional fashion flare that we picked up from the brady bunch As boys, we wore our hair short.
If your hair's touching your ears, that's sinful. Even though the style of the time for boys back in the 80s was long and wavy. Right, like Luke Skywalker, but he was with a force and he was demon-possessed anyway. And we didn't, we, you know, the men didn't have beards. Sure, in all the pictures of Jesus in our KJV Bibles, he had long hair and a beard, but those pictures were drawn by liberals because only liberals like art.
Right? We didn't get tattoos. We didn't wear earrings. Only gangs of pop stars, you know, tattoos and earrings. Only the lead singer of Wham wears an earring.
You don't want to be like that guy. We didn't dance 'cause dancing was the devil's foreplay. Right? In fact, we didn't have premarital sex because it might lead to dancing. Because apparently dancing was the worst sin out of all of them.
We didn't listen to rock music because that would make you want to dance. We all know we're dancing leads. We were forbidden to listen to Christian rock music because Christian rock was mixing God's message with Babylon's rhythms. It's like putting mustard on a turd is what I heard. I know it's not polite language, but that's how I heard it.
By the way, I'm not making any of this up. These are literal things I've heard dozens of times. Although, my dad, after the Thursday service, asked me to point out to you that these were not the things he and my mom taught me. They were things that my Christian school emphasized, not him, okay?
So I was told, don't even listen to rock music, even if it's got Christian lyrics. If the beat gets to your feet before the lyrics get to your heart, it's sin.
Okay? Plus, plus, you never know what Satanists, atheists, and sneaky liberals have backmasked into your music. And if you don't know what backmasking is, look it up later. You will thank me, I promise. Come out from among them and be ye separate.
That was the command, and we took it seriously.
Social weirdness was proof of godliness.
Now, there's others of you. You don't have any problem with that right there, okay? You're deeply integrated. You're deeply integrated here. What you actually struggle with Is applying this verse at all.
Your lives bear no virtual distinction from Babylon at all. Your values and your job are basically Babylon's values. Your modesty standards, the way you dress are Babylon's values. Your goals for retirement are the same as Babylon's goals. Your social media behavior and your social media posts are shaped more by CNN, Fox News, and the Daily Wire than they are the epistles of Paul.
You don't challenge the world with your online presence. You mirror the world. Your approach to relationships and romance is more influenced by Taylor Swift than the Holy Scriptures. You mean prove it? Let's play a little game.
We'll play a little game. It'll be fun, I promise. It's a call and response game. It only works if you respond. Here's the deal.
If you know what comes after what I'm going to say, you've got to respond. Out loud. And you got to do it even at our campuses, even though I can't hear you. Everybody else can hear you, okay? I'll start off.
If you know it, you complete. Cause baby now we got I think it's a lot of money. Pretty good. I knew you were trouble. Why can't you see E E?
I don't like Taylor Swift. All right, really good. Most of you. A couple of you don't like him. Her?
I didn't have to give you the song. I just gave you the, and you can finish it.
Okay, so you know Taylor's wisdom about love and relationships. How about the Bibles? Let's try. 1 John 3.16. By this we know love that.
Y'all, it literally says, John says. I'm going to tell you exactly what love is. Love is... And you don't even know what the verse says. Jesus is like, baby, now we got, that's what he's saying to us, okay?
But this we know, love that He laid down His life for us, and thus we ought therefore to lay down our lives for the brothers and sisters. How about Ephesians 5, 25? Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, too. Dudes. Paul, literally, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is telling you how to love your wife.
You don't even know what it says? In case you're curious, it's make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word. Is this painful enough yet? Let's do one more. Colossians 3.14.
And above all these, put on love which... binds everything together in perfect harmony. See, maybe you're a little bit more influenced by Babylon than you think you are. And by the way, I know Taylor just got engaged, so congratulations to C.
Okay, I'm not trying to pick on her. But I don't think that qualifies Taylor to give you more instruction about marriage than Jesus.
Okay? Amen. In 10 years, she may or may not still be married. But this will still be the Word of God.
So the question is who shapes Who shapes your view of life, and how distinguishable are you really from the world? In his book, The City of God, St. Augustine said that Christians, citizens of the kingdom of God, should be most distinguishable from the world around them in three primary ways. Called him his big three. Money, power, sex.
If you want to know if somebody's really distinct from Babylon, those are the three areas to look at. Not the length of their hair or how many tattoos they have. The city of man, Augustine says, sees money as a tool for acquisition and self-promotion. Get all you can, keep all you can, spend all you can, give a little bit.
So you look good. Get some tax breaks. But otherwise, it's for you. The Christian, by contrast, believes money, all of it, not 10% of it, but all of it, is a stewardship from God. given to bless others and advance his kingdom on earth.
In the same way, the city of man says power is to be grasped and leveraged for yourself. By contrast, the Christian believes power is something God entrusts to us to serve and build up others. We are evaluated in God's eyes, not by how we use our power to climb high, but by how high we lift up others around us. Finally, the city of man says sex is whatever you want it to be. You write your own rules.
If it works for you, it can't be wrong. The Christian says sex is a gift from God to be honored within his design. For the Christian sex is about loving, self-giving, and God-glorification more than it is stingy self-gratification. That makes you different. It's like Tim Keller says: I love this: Roman society was stingy with his money.
and promiscuous with its bodies. They gave nobody their money and practically everybody their body. By contrast, the Christians in the early church came along and gave practically nobody their bodies and practically everybody their money. You're supposed to be different from the world, not because you don't got earrings or tattoos or because you wear denim skirts and culottes. Your whole life is supposed to scream, you're from somewhere else.
People should look at you and say, you ain't really from around here, are you? Because you're so out of sync with the rhythms of Babylon. The way I've illustrated it over the years is like this. I've told you, picture football, big kickoff this weekend, obviously, kickoff weekend.
So you see these huge marching bands out there at halftime, they're amazing. Every person moving in perfect sync and lockstep, right? But then you see one, just imagine you see one guy out in the middle. of that whole group of hundreds of people, one guy just doing his own thing. He got the same uniform on as everybody else, but he's moving completely differently.
When everybody goes left, he goes right. When they duck, he jumps. When they stand still, he shakes, or whatever you do on a marching man. It looks totally out of rhythm. Right?
Like you can't keep beat until you notice. He's got AirPods in. And you find out he's listening to a local radio station, and they just happen to be playing I Don't Want to Wait by David Guetta and One Republic. Turns out he's perfectly in rhythm. He's just tuned into a different conductor.
That's the Christian life. To the world, we look odd, even out of step. We're actually just watching another conductor. We're perfectly in rhythm with the music of another city. And see, that brings us to the end of chapter 18.
All those shipmasters and seafaring men, sailors, and all whose trade is on the seas stood far off. And they cried out as they saw the smoke of her burning: What city is like that great city? John uses that question right there as a rhetorical question to set us up for the other city which he's about to introduce to us. The new Jerusalem. The city of God that's coming down like a bride adorned for her wedding, coming from heaven, whose pleasures are real and eternal and last forever.
You got to decide which city you belong to. You got to decide which city is the illusion and which one you're going to make your home in. If this world is what the Bible says it is, then focusing your whole life on laying up treasures here. Things like beach houses and 401ks and worldly fame and Instagram followers or having your name on a building at Duke. In a single hour, all that wealth will be laid waste.
I'm telling you that there's many of you who are giving your whole lives for things that are going to burn up in less than an hour. Yo, listen, when it's all said and done, when Babylon is done burning. Only two things are going to remain. I tell you this all the time. The word of God in the souls of people.
Only two things in this world last forever: the Word of God and the souls of people. There's only two treasures that you will carry with you into that new Jerusalem: things that are built on the word of God. and the souls of people that you have brought along with you into glory. Only one life to live will soon be passed. Only what's done for Christ will last.
Yeah, it's pretty simple. Build your life on the word of God and the souls of people. Or waste it. It's like I've heard said: those who marry the spirit of this age will find themselves widows in the next. You're spending your whole life building and investing in things that I'm telling you just don't matter.
Especially tragic is that some of you won't fully give your lives to Jesus because you're so enamored with chasing this mirage of Babylon. Friend, let me just plain reason, okay? Listen, just plain reason. Even if one day you could obtain every one of your dreams. You get the marriage, you get the house, you get the fame, you get the truck, you get the money, more money than you know how to spend.
Even if you get it all. Even if it's everything you've ever hoped it would be. But it comes at the cost of your soul. What good is it? You're going to wail with all these people in Revelation 11.18.
How everything you live for is destroyed in an hour and you'll be left with nothing but the wrath of God. At which point you'll call on the mountains to cover you to hide you from the face of the one that you have set yourself in opposition to. Two cities. The city of man and the city of God. Babylon and the New Jerusalem.
Which one do you think is the illusion? And which one have you made your home? You say, well, JD, that sounds great, but... I just don't think I'm good enough to qualify as a citizen of heaven. God would never accept me as one of his people.
Well yeah, that's probably the best news of all. Citizenship in his kingdom is a gift that he gives you. He doesn't award it because you're good enough to earn it. He gives it to you because you took your judgment in your place. See the problem Is that all of us have adopted the posture of the city of man?
Love of self with the contempt of God. We're naturally citizens of that city, Babylon. All of us deserve the wrath of all those plagues, even more, eternity apart from God. But see, the lamb we see walking through Revelation is a lamb who was slain. And the reason he was slain was to suffer the punishment for my sin in my place.
At the beginning of this message, I'll walk you through the bold judgments. This is fascinating. The word we use. To translate into English as bowl is really the word for chalice. These are the chalice judgments.
The cup of judgment, the fury of God's wrath. against the human race because of our sin. And see, that's why on the night before Jesus died. Jesus held up. The chalice.
He held up the bowl. And he said, this is the bowl of judgment that I'm drinking for you. He drank all seven of those bowls of judgment in our place. God's wrath was stored up in a chalice to be poured out on us. We see that happen in Revelation.
And Jesus stood in the way. He stepped in the way. He took that cup out of our hands. He turned it over. said it is finished.
He drank the fury of God's wrath down in your place to the dregs. And said it's paid, all the judgments are complete. Friends, sin will be judged. It's either going to be judged in the ways you see in Revelation, And you along with it, or you can separate yourself from your sins. You can do it right now.
You can separate yourself from your sins, doesn't mean you stop sinning altogether. It just means you repent and put your faith in Jesus' death in your place. Have you received him? Here's what I want you to do. I want everybody at all of our campuses to take out this little.
Carpin. Bread. Won't you just start to open it? It'll take you a little while to figure it out if you're new. It's a little flap on the bottom and a flap on the top.
I want you to hold in your hands and I want you to bow your heads. Believer, this represents the chalice of judgment. That Jesus took for you all of God's condemnation put into him instead of you. But let me talk to those of you who are not yet Christians, who are not sure that you're Christians yet. Believer, you be thinking about just with gratefulness of what this represents, but to the Not yet, believer.
This is not for you, okay? This cup It's not appropriate for you to take it. Any more than it'd be for you to put the wedding ring that I wear on my hand on your end. This is for those who have already received Jesus as Savior. But let me tell you what is offered to you right now.
What is offered to you is Jesus Christ himself. Jesus will save you. He drank this cup of judgment for you. But you got to receive it as yourself, as your own. Uh And you do that really?
In a very simple way. You surrender your life to him. That sounds like this: Lord Jesus, I surrender all of me to you. I receive you as my Savior. I surrender my life to you.
That's repentance, turning away from your sin. I receive you as my Savior. That's turning toward Him. Right now, I want you to pray that in your heart. Jesus, I surrender to you.
And I receive you as my Savior. Be sure to join us for the next message in this teaching series through the book of Revelation. And remember, we'd love to send you a helpful resource this month. It's called From the Beginning, God's Design for Relationships. It walks through biblical wisdom for singleness, dating, friendship, and marriage.
And when you give to support the ministry today at jdgreer.com, we'll send this digital resource straight to your inbox. Until next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries. Um
