The Unveiling

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. People read the book of Revelation with all the dragons and the beasts and they imagine it as this delusional fantasy world. It is actually the most accurate depiction of the world that you'll ever read. It is seeing the world with spiritual eyes. It is the world as God sees it. This is the unveiling. This is the unmasking. This is pulling back the curtains so you see things as they really are. Welcome to Summit Life, the Bible teaching ministry of pastor, author, and theologian J.D. Greer.

I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that if there's one book of the Bible that's generated more curiosity and debate than any other, it's the book of Revelation. Some find it fascinating while others find it terrifying.

And most of us to some degree or another find it pretty confusing. Lots of weird mind pictures, crazy beasts, unusual storylines. It's got it all. So today, Pastor J.D. is going to help us wrap our minds around the main point of this prophetic book.

He titled today's message, The Unveiling, and it's part of our overview of the Bible called The Whole Story. Grab your Bible, turn toward the back, and let's join Pastor J.D. Got your Bible with you this weekend.

I'd invite you to take it out and open it. You ready for this? To the book of Revelation. Revelation.

I know some of you are excited about this, probably more excited than you should be. The Christian tradition I grew up in talked a lot about the end times. It was one of our favorite themes. We had our annual prophecy conferences, our end time movies, our rapture board games. And so one of the results was that I grew up obsessed with and frankly, a little terrified of the rapture.

If for any reason, that's when Jesus comes back and all those people go meet him in the air. For any reason, I could not find my parents around the house. I knew it was because they had been raptured and I'd been left behind.

I'd run through the house. Mom, mom, to see if her clothes had fallen neatly into a pile as she ascended to be with Jesus. I had this recurring dream when I was in elementary school that Jesus would come back. I literally had this dream three or four times where Jesus would come back and I'd see all the people go up to meet him in the air and I would start to rise up to meet him and I'd get to about the top of my house and then I'd drop back down to the earth because that was all the faith that I had.

I was terrified of it. My wife says she had a similar experience growing up. And so one night early in our marriage, we were drifting off to sleep, lying in bed there, and she starts talking about the rapture. And so as quietly as I could, I slipped out of bed and laid there on the floor beside it. So after like four or five minutes, she's like, JD, JD. She starts smacking the place beside me.

And it's just my way of helping her stay ready and be good. So anyway, when I was in high school, a little book came out that got instant popularity. It was called 88 Reasons Why Jesus is Coming Back in 1988. A lot of you weren't even born in 1988, but some of you that were around then might remember that book. It was actually really compelling. It says you can't know the day or the hour that Jesus will come back, but this guy said you could know the three day span and it was going to be September 12th and 14th of 1988.

I went to a Christian school and so that was required reading. And I remember my soccer coach sitting us all down in the bleachers after practice and saying, well, I'm pretty convinced. So guys, we're going to sit here for about an hour and we're just going to wait and see if it happens.

It's pretty terrifying to be a 10th grader and to have, especially because he looks at me and says, JD, if it happens, I want you to make sure that all the equipment gets put back in the locker room and locked back up. So you may or may not have had experiences like that, but I know for a fact that some of you still have some Y2K food tucked in a closet somewhere. I will be honest with you. I am glad that we are not obsessed like that at this church, but sometimes to be honest, I think we have fallen into an opposite and perhaps even more pernicious error. And that is we rarely think or talk about the end of time at all. To many of us, it seems like something only crazy people or religious zealots would ever think or talk much about. But consider this, listen, the second coming of Christ is the most talked about doctrine in the Bible. It is the most talked about doctrine in the Bible. The Bible talks about the first coming of Christ a measly 129 times.

And we got a whole holiday for that one where we give each other presents. It talks about the second coming of Christ 329 times, nearly two and a half as many times. For every one prophecy in the Bible concerning Christ's first coming, there are at least eight that talk about his second coming.

So you tell me which one's more important. You tell me which one is more worthy of our focus, which brings us to the book of Revelation. The book of Revelation is a book about the end times.

It's a book about the second coming of Christ. Now be honest here by raising your hand. How many of you when you think about the book of Revelation, you find the book intriguing but confusing, exciting but frankly a little scary.

Why don't you raise your hand? It is certainly easy to get lost in it. All that talk about raptures and bowls of judgment and beasts and false prophets, a gigantic woman who is called the mother of all prostitutes, the four horsemen, poison locusts, human eating dragons, the number 666 and whatever that's about. And so yes there's a lot to be confused by but fear not summit church your pastor is a trained professional. All right I went to seminary where I mastered divinity which I've always thought was a little presumptuous of a title.

I mastered God when I was in seminary. What does that mean? At any rate I am now certified to take you safely in and out of this book ensuring that no one gets left behind.

Okay so there we go that was free. Listen sometimes even I get confused as to what all the symbols point to but the big picture point is crystal clear and we get into it right here in chapter one. So if you've got your Bible Revelation chapter one verse one here's how John the apostle same guy who wrote the gospel of John by the way opens the book. The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave to him to show his servants the things that must soon take place and here we encounter our first mystery. You see revelation is a word that means unveiling pulling back like pulling at the curtain to show something and the question that we ask is what is it that is being unveiled? What is the revelation of? You see is it a revelation of Jesus Christ or is it a revelation by Jesus Christ of the things that must soon take place? You see how you could read that either way? Is it a revelation of Jesus or a revelation from Jesus? The way that it is written in Greek is ambiguous so you don't know immediately.

The answer is both. It is both a revelation of Jesus and a revelation from Jesus of the things that must soon take place. That is the central thing for you to keep in mind as you read the book of Revelation. The point of revelation is not to give you a specific timeline of events or or help you identify various historical figures as various of the beasts.

The point is to pull back the curtain of history so that you can see the powers at work behind the politics on earth. You see people read the book of Revelation with all the dragons and the beasts and they imagine it as this delusional fantasy world. It is actually the most accurate depiction of the world that you'll ever read. It is seeing the world with spiritual eyes. It is the world as God sees it. It is the powers and the politics of the world that are in fact an illusion. This is the unveiling. This is the unmasking.

This is pulling back the curtain so you see things as they really are. You see listen the church at this point the church at this point in history is not doing particularly well. All the apostles have been martyred except for John. We're in 95 AD and John has been exiled as the remained living apostle to the isle of Patmos where he is imprisoned in a cave. Christians are being hunted down like dogs and fed to the lions in part because they were wrongly blamed for the burning of Rome and other problems throughout the Roman Empire.

Roman and Jewish leaders have made it illegal almost everywhere to be a Christian. The movement is still growing but it seems like the bad guys are definitely winning and so Jesus appears to John the apostle in this dark little cave. I've actually been to the isle of Patmos and been in the cave where they think John got the revelation.

I mean it's a depressing place. Suddenly you're filled with the presence of Jesus and Jesus gives John a revelation of how God sees the world and a forecast of what God plans to do in the world. I would tell you that you and I need to see this vision just as badly as John and his church needed to see it because maybe we're not going through the tribulation yet but we wrestle with the same questions. We feel overwhelmed by disease or discouragement or dysfunctional people and so this is the unveiling. This is seeing the world the way that God sees it. This is seeing where it's headed. It's showing you what God is doing in it.

Two things I want to focus on to that end. The first is the unveiling of our world. Jesus pulls back the curtain on the politics that are going on and then we're going to go to the unveiling of Jesus himself. The unveiling of our world that's in Revelation 17. So I want you to leave Revelation 1 and fly over to Revelation 17 where we'll spend a few minutes and then we're going to come back to Revelation 1 where we'll see the unveiling of Jesus himself. Revelation chapter 17, the unveiling of our world. One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls.

The seven bowls are a series of judgments God is pouring out in the earth. One of them came to me and said, come I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute who sits by many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries. Then the angel carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness and there I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns.

The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. The name written on her forehead was a mystery. Babylon the great, the mother of all prostitutes.

So you parents are looking for biblical names for your kids. If you have a girl I would not suggest that one because it means mother of all prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth. Verse six, that I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of God's holy people, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus.

When I saw her I was greatly astonished. This woman, this prostitute represents all the enemies of God, all those who do not belong to Jesus. You notice verse two that her customers are kings from every kingdom and their inhabitants all over the earth. We're not talking about one people or one culture.

We're talking about all cultures and all people. Hers is a universal kingdom. You see there's essentially only two kingdoms in the world. There is hers and there is Jesus's kingdom and you belong either to one or the other. A few things that you'll notice about her if you're taking notes you may want to jot down. First, she's a prostitute. She's a prostitute.

That's not because she's all about sex. It's because sin at its core, listen to this, is spiritual adultery. At its core sin is not bad deeds.

Sin at its core is giving to something else what you should give to God. We were created to love and worship God, to serve God as the center of our lives, to find our fulfillment, our security, and our greatest delight in Him. The primary sin of the human race was, the Apostle Paul explains in the book of Romans, that we put ourselves in the place that God was supposed to be. We worship and served ourselves rather than the Creator.

So rather than finding our hope and our satisfaction and our delight in Him rather than being submitted to Him, we submitted to ourselves and we found all those things in us. So she as a prostitute represents the distracted or diverted love of the human race. Second, she's called Babylon. She is called Babylon. Babylon is the name of a city with a long history in the Bible and it symbolizes man's rebellion against God.

We first encounter Babylon in Genesis 11 where it is called Babel. There the human race unites to build a tower in rebellion to God. The human race was attempting to demonstrate its glory, its power, and its potential.

What it could do independent of God. This is what we can do. This is our accomplishments. It's what we want.

The essence of the spirit of Babylon is, I will do what I want to do rather than what God wants me to do. I'll be the point. I'll accomplish it. I'll do it in my strength.

I'll be the center. Third, she's really attractive. Now you may not seem to think that she's that attractive because she's sitting on a beast and that is not typically how a guy envisions a high girl. But John uses several images to convey that she's really attractive. Verse 4, she's arrayed in purple and scarlet adorned with gold and jewels and pearls. She entices people from all over the world.

Even John himself, verse 6, is awestruck by her. Living with her, verse 2, is intoxicating for a while because she promises so much. Listen y'all, sin is enjoyable for a season and anybody that tells you differently is lying to you. I can still remember one of my old youth pastors saying, if sin ain't fun you ain't doing it right. Right? It's fun.

Sin is fun for a season. It just ends in a place that you don't want to be. You don't want to be. She's really attractive. Fourth, and this one may come as a surprise to you, she is super religious. She is super religious. One of her companions you'll find out is the false prophet.

It wasn't in the verses we read, it's later. False religion. False religion engages in a lot of activity for God. But listen, it does so without ever putting God back into the central place he belongs in our hearts. I want to say that again because this can be a little hard to get your mind around. Every false religion in the world will get really really busy for God but without putting God back in the right place in our heart.

I'll give you just two examples of it. First, every false religion in the world, every single one, teaches you that you can save yourself. If you're good enough, you work hard enough, you give enough money, you pray enough, then you'll be saved. The list that each religion provides is different but the message is basically the same. Work hard enough, say this enough, pray this enough, go here, be good, love people, you can earn heaven or nirvana or whatever and see what that does is it makes man his own savior which means that we're going to get all the glory for our salvation and we're in a negotiating position with God.

God, I did this so you owe me that. The gospel teaches exactly the opposite. The gospel teaches we could do nothing to save ourselves so God had to do it all for us and all we can do is receive it as a gift and he's the one that gets the glory for it. It also means that we owe him everything and our love and gratefulness for his salvation that he gave us by grace makes us willing to give him everything in our lives. So what religion does is it makes you very busy but it keeps yourself as your own savior so that you are still the primary hero in your life. Here's a second example of her religion. The message that we hear unfortunately often in churches all over America, the message that you can get God back in your life without ever surrendering yourself fully to God.

I've told you before it's embodied in that bumper sticker I see a lot of people or a lot of people used to have in their car. God is my co-pilot and by that they mean I need God to give me guidance and companionship and I need him to give me suggestions about where to go and I need to to know how to avoid this and how to stay out of this jam and when my car breaks down I need him to fix it and what I've told you is if God is your co-pilot somebody's in the wrong seat because when you come to God you don't come to him to get help and where you're going in life you come to him and you say it's your car and I stole it and so here are the keys back to your car and I'm gonna get in the back seat and you tell me where we're going because my car quit running anyway and it's just broken down. It's a fundamentally different way of coming to God and so the false prophet the woman the prostitute loves religion that keeps man at the center of fifth she has successfully seduced a lot of God's people. Here's how I know this go to the next chapter 18 verse 4 here you have this warning then I heard another voice from heaven say come out of her my people so that you will not share in her sins so that you will not receive any of her plagues. It is possible to be one of God's people and still be swept up in her up in her enchantments.

In fact I would say it is more than just possible. I would say it is what is happening to the majority of us. Here's why I say that studies show that our lifestyles as professing Christians look just like those of the world around us.

We are just as sexually immoral inside the church as people are outside the church. We are just as self-centered as the world. We are just as materialistic.

Our spending patterns are strikingly similar to those of the world around us. Only six percent of Bible believing American Christians tithe. Six percent. Now here in the Summit Church we're at 18 percent of us tithe which is like three times as much. That still means four out of five of you have never learned to obey God in that area of your life. In parenting the priorities of Christian parents for their kids look virtually identical to those of non-Christian parents for their kids. So we cart our kids all over town in the same way that non-Christian parents do teaching our kids to be good at the same things the world says they should be good at like sports and getting into the right college.

And the effects are evident. 60 to 80 percent of our kids are going to leave Christianity behind once they hit 18 years old. You see when you live with the values of this woman you bring upon yourselves the plagues of this woman. You rob yourselves of God's blessing and we rob ourselves of spiritual power.

So see I would say this is an important question for you and your family. Are you more shaped by Babylon or the Bible? Who's the center of your life? Here's number six. She hates Jesus this prostitute. Verse nine. The beast she's sitting on is described as having seven heads which John says symbolizes seven mountains and seven kings.

Now scholars say this could refer to either seven Roman emperors or seven empires that have come and gone or are to come before Jesus comes back. And what they have in common is that they're all drunk with the blood of God's people because this woman has always hated Jesus and his people. Listen some in church you need to get your mind around this. In every generation true followers of Jesus have been hated and will be hated by the predominant world system under the control of this prostitute. Some of the empires have been religious empires.

Some of them even have the name Christian attached to them. Yet they have persecuted the followers of Jesus, the true followers of Jesus, for preaching that salvation was a free gift of God's grace and not something you could earn by religious zeal so that nobody could boast. They have hated the followers of Jesus for saying that religion is not all about earthly power and control but following Jesus instead means emptying yourself and becoming a servant of all. They've hated them and they've killed the true followers of Jesus. In non-religious empires the prostitute has hated and persecuted the people of God for saying that Jesus is in charge and that he's the Lord and that he makes the rules about morality. That you don't look within and find out what's true for you and what's right for you and what sexual preferences you have.

You look above to the Lord of history and determine what he says about those things. I see it right here in this church. I'd say that most of the people who come in each week think of themselves as religious. Man they want God as a part of their lives.

They love the music and they like the uplifting feeling they get during the music and they love the the message most of the time and they like to learn the Bible and they want to think about how to have God as a part of their lives. Man but then I'll say something like I'll say something like you know God's word says that sex is reserved for marriage and so the fact that you're living with or sleeping with your boyfriend or girlfriend or fiance before you're married is sin and that puts you out of fellowship with God and all of a sudden that starts to make people mad and they go home and they write me nasty emails. That's because you want to be religious like the prostitute is religious.

You want to have it your way with God's blessing. Those who love the prostitute, those who want to be their own Lord, those who want to glorify themselves as their own saviors, who want to depend on themselves have always hated those who say that Jesus is the only Lord and can be our only Savior. Jesus said in John 16 said church don't be discouraged when they hate you. Don't be discouraged when they lie about you and when they mistreat you.

That's what they did to me and that's what they're going to do to my people in every generation. So some at church don't be surprised when they misrepresent your intelligence, when they construe your convictions, when they malign your motives. A little interesting thing from Roman history, church history that might blow your mind. The early church had two reputations in the first century. Reputation number one, they had the reputation for being cannibals. Everybody thought of the early Christians as cannibals.

You said what in the world? Because they always talked about eating the body and blood of Jesus and so that got twisted into a lie that in their church services they ate people. The second reputation they had was for being, get this, atheists.

You're like what? Yeah, atheists because Christians taught that God was a spirit and he was not worshiped in temples made with human hands. They twisted that to say they want to tear down all the social fabric and establishment of the empire. Now neither of those things are true but that's what they did. That's what they twisted because they hated them.

They weren't true. My point is that they're going to do the same thing to us. Now hear me, my point is not that the church doesn't have any problems or that everything that gets said about us is not true. Unfortunately we do have a lot of problems and we need to humbly and repentantly address those but I'm trying to get you to see that the prostitute's hatred of us goes far beyond our problems.

The prostitute's hatred of us is a hatred of Jesus and so if you're thinking that one day we could get good enough that everybody's going to speak well of us, one day we'll be good enough that CNN and the New York Times are going to do articles praising us, that's an illusion and it's never going to happen. This message has been the unveiling or unmasking of the world. Jesus pulled back the curtain for us and tomorrow we'll journey back to the beginning of the book of Revelation for the unveiling of Jesus. Today's program from Pastor J.D. Greer is part of our Summit Life teaching series called The Whole Story showing us how every page of the Bible tells the story of the gospel. We're coming to the end of this series next week but to help you continue to know the Bible better, this month we're offering a custom Summit Life Bible as our thanks for your support. J.D., in the Bible we're offering, we've customized it by adding a few pages at the front with a Bible reading plan.

What makes this reading plan helpful or unique to us? Yeah, the idea that we had behind the plan is that six days a week you're reading, I mean we're like well there's seven days in a week, let's just say that like most of us you have that day. So six days, let's just say that's a little less than four chapters a day.

That's very doable. I will say that that's an eight to ten minute usually kind of chunk of time. I mean of all the minutes you have in the day, eight to ten minutes to hear directly from God, I will say that that is about as good of an investment as you can make.

Right. This will help you maintain a good clip through the Bible in a way that's giving you the overall arc of the Bible and it will move you along in a way that when you get to the end reading less than four chapters a day with one day a week that you can miss, you will get to the end of that and you will say I have read the Bible. I understand the arc of it and then you can see both your life and God more clearly.

I think it's a great resource. I've struggled for years even after being a PhD in theology and a pastor, sometimes just reading through the Bible and I have loved resources like this and so it's a delight for us to be able to provide one to our listeners. You're welcome to request the Summit Life Bible as our thanks when you donate today to support this ministry. It takes friends like you partnering with us to make Summit Life possible so that more people can hear gospel-centered Bible teaching on the radio and web.

Will you join that mission today? The suggested donation is $25 or more and when you get in touch remember to ask for the Summit Life Bible. Call 866-335-5220.

That's 866-335-5220 or you can give online at jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us next time as we continue diving deeper into the book of Revelation, sing the gospel at every turn here on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.