Father, we confess before you that we have longings and yearnings and desires that we
turn away from and that we have longings and yearnings and desires that are not truly of
you.
We ask, Father, that you would put to death in us desires that are not of you and that
you would fan into flame within us longings and yearnings that do truly come from you.
And, Father, we acknowledge before you that not only do we need your Holy Spirit to do
this, but we cannot do it at all by our own effort and apart from thinking about your
Son.
So we ask, Father, that as we reflect upon your word and as we are open to your Holy
Spirit, that you would make us disciples gripped by the gospel, living for your glory.
And this we ask in the name of Jesus, your Son and our Savior.
Amen.
Please be seated.
I have to confess that every time I read a text like the gospel text, which I just read
a few moments ago, I smile.
I don't know how many of you noticed me smile at a certain part.
And that's because quite a few years ago, I led a young man to faith that he did a lot
of drugs, mainly just soft drugs, marijuana, but exclusively just soft drugs.
And he had a hard time after he became a Christian, believing that he wasn't supposed to keep smoking
up.
And back in those days, they call marijuana grass.
And I still remember the day he came to me all excited, saying the grass is in the Bible,
so it must be all right, because God made the grass of the fields for human beings.
And so every time I see the word grass in a text, I think of this young man and how he
would get all excited, thinking that it was showing that the Bible was giving him permission
to smoke marijuana.
It's actually a good introduction to the talk today.
That was quite a reading by Helen.
Helen.
I was joking with Jeremiah the other day, and again, just before the service.
I said, I'm really curious to see what music you've picked to go with a scripture text on
the great prostitute and the beast.
And because that's what we're going to talk about today.
And I have to confess, this has been one of the hardest chapters in the book of Revelation
for me to come to terms with.
I don't know what you were thinking when you were hearing the text, but it was a hard text
for me to get my mind around.
Part of it is that there's certain parts of the part of the way it's written makes my
eyes glaze over.
When I hear there were five, and then there's one, and then there'll be another one, and
then there's an eighth like it.
When I hear that it was and was not and is and my eyes, it just makes my eyes glaze over.
That's part of it.
And part of it is it's just, it's a really, really difficult text.
So what we're going to do today is if you get your Bibles, we're going to just, I'm going
to try to help you slowly read through the text.
You see, the problem I have with the text is I could give you a two-hour lecture on the
text.
But what does that do?
I mean, the big question is, so what?
You know?
Now what?
I could give you a long lecture, but what we're going to do is we're going to look at the
text.
And I actually think that there's some very powerful lessons for us to learn that can
affect how we live our day-to-day lives from the text.
So it's Revelation chapter 17, and I invite you to turn to it.
And it's the text about the great prostitute and the beast.
You know, if we had a church sign, we could put that.
Our sermon this Sunday is on the great prostitute and the beast.
I'm sure it would just draw in the crowds, even in a snowstorm.
Just a burning question that most people ask.
I mean, this is apart from the fact that it's unbelievably politically incorrect to use the
word prostitute.
But that's what the word that the Bible uses.
So here's how it goes.
Then one of the seven angels, Revelation 17.1, 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 the earth have become drunk.
Now just sort of pause.
One of the things about difficult texts is that we have to often slow down and notice the flow,
the pauses in the text.
And here we see that the angel is telling John what he's going to do.
He's going to give John a vision or a showing so John can see something.
And he tells John what he's going to see in sort of a very, very brief description.
And we can see here that he said you're going to see a beast sitting on many waters.
And at the very, very end, maybe if you were listening carefully when Helen was reading
or if you were following along and you noticed it because you're a very attentive reader,
you're going to see that the many waters, that the text itself tells you that it represents
peoples, people groups and languages and nations.
And it shows the beast in a sense over, sitting them is, over them is an image of possession,
of control.
And he said you're going to see this woman and she's the great prostitute
and you're going to see people drunk with what it is that makes her who she is.
They get so excited over this.
It's like a type of drunkenness.
They drink more and more of this and it overwhelms them.
And that's what you're going to see.
And as well as that, as we're going to see at the end, the prostitute is the great city.
The great city.
Just the other day, I was reading the Saturday papers and I was reading a columnist and one
of the op-ed writers in the paper and they just made a casual reference about New York
and central Ohio.
And the way she wrote about it, it was just very obvious that we would understand that
New York City is an important place.
It's a cultured place and that a place like Dayton, Ohio or central Ohio isn't very important.
It's not sophisticated.
It's not like a leading city.
It's a place where people who don't matter as much live.
And the way she wrote, she didn't say it in those words.
She just made a comment about Manhattan and New York and she made a comment about central
Ohio.
And she wrote it in such a way that every one of the readers she assumed would automatically
get it.
And we do get it.
We do understand on one level that there's a type of superiority to certain cities.
That if we were to announce that there was a political symposium, if there was a fashion
symposium of the latest designs from Dayton or Billings, Montana, it would not have quite
the same as if it's from New York and London and Paris.
That if we were to get the leading political thinkers from Billings, Montana or Dayton, Ohio, it would not have the same type of impact as people from New York and Washington, London and Paris.
So we understand on one level something about why it is that a city is going to be used to be a bit of an image for a certain way that we understand the world naturally.
It might look odd at first, but if we think about it, we already think in those terms that there are cities which are somehow important and significant and others that don't.
In Canada, Toronto wishes it was a combination of New York City and Los Angeles.
And it laments that it laments that it's not Washington, that politics is in Ottawa.
And maybe politicians in Ottawa lament that they are an unimportant, relatively unimportant country and city compared to Washington and Moscow and London and Paris.
So the angel tells John, I'm going to show you a vision.
And this is what you're going to see.
And he's going to have the vision.
And then the rest of the chapter is going to be different comments on aspects of the vision to explain it and make it clear.
So it is the vision that he actually has.
The vision begins in verse 3.
And it goes like this.
And the angel carried me away in the Holy 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.
Actually, in the original language, it says golded with gold.
It was golded 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 the 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.
Just sort of pause there.
That's the vision.
But before we talk about the vision, I just want to draw a little bit of an aside.
Maybe for you, this will be the important point of the day.
And you'll say, okay, God, I got what I need to get out of this sermon.
Now my eyes can glaze over and I'll fall asleep for the rest of it.
Hopefully you won't say that, but maybe for some of you, you will.
This is the last time in the book of Revelation that the wilderness is mentioned, I believe.
Maybe I'm wrong about it, but I believe it's the last time.
So I just wanted to draw you out a thing.
For Christians, in the book of Revelation, the wilderness is a place of protection where you can see and learn things that you can't see and learn other places.
And this is actually a really important thing for us.
Because every Christian has times when they're in the wilderness.
And we hate being in the wilderness.
We find it depressing.
And we often find it full of despair.
But in the book of Revelation, the wilderness is a place where we experience God's provision.
Obviously, the wilderness is the wilderness.
It means that there's a whole pile of things that we usually would like to have that we don't have.
And it means that there's power that we would like to have that we don't have.
And that there's delights and pleasures that we would like to have and we don't have.
It's the wilderness.
There's a whole pile of things that we don't have.
But in the book of Revelation, wilderness is the place of God's provision.
And the question in the book of Revelation is always, while you're in the wilderness, what can you now see and hear from God that you could not see and hear anywhere else?
And for an aside, for some of us, if you're at all like me, when you're in the wilderness, you hate being in the wilderness.
And often when I'm in the wilderness, all I think of is my lacking, all the things I'm lacking.
But the text is inviting me to understand that sometimes when I'm in the wilderness, what I should first of all be doing is looking and seeing how is it that God is providing for me even while I'm in the wilderness.
And then to say to him and ask to him in prayer, what is it you would like me to see and hear while I am in the wilderness?
Just a bit of an aside.
But it's maybe an important one for some of you.
Maybe you've come here today and you're in the wilderness.
You feel like you're in the wilderness.
And all you're feeling is despair and anxiety.
And the book of Revelation has a very, very, it's a consistent lesson every time the wilderness comes up.
I don't know if I've mentioned it very much before.
I wanted to mention it before we moved away and the wilderness would not turn.
But what about the beast?
So that John is taken by the angel into the wilderness.
And in the wilderness, he's able to see and hear.
Here's the angel and he sees the beast and the great prostitute.
And it's a very, very odd vision.
And at first, it doesn't seem like it's a very helpful vision.
Because how on earth will we ever see something like the great prostitute?
How can that actually be something which is helpful for us?
Well, what we see in the vision is this.
The first thing is we see a great mistake.
Remember I said that John is told by the angel that he's going to see a great prostitute sitting on many waters.
And the image usually of sitting on something is an image of control, of dominance.
And so what we see is we see the woman sitting on the beast.
And the beast is described as having seven heads and ten horns so that the person who's been reading all the way through the book of Revelation will understand that even though it now is a little bit different because it's a different color,
it's the same beast that the dragon, which is an image of the devil, has called out of the abyss to do the dragon's bidding upon earth.
And the beast is a person, an empire.
He's evil, completely and utterly under the domination of the dragon.
And so he's a different color.
He's scarlet.
In the ancient world, scarlet is the color of wealth.
And all that wealth can buy.
All of the luxury that he can buy.
And there's a great mistake here.
And John's going to be caught up in it.
We're going to talk about that in a moment.
But by the end of the image, you'll understand the great mistake.
There's an old blues song that has a line.
Don't give the devil a ride.
He only wants to drive.
It's an old blues song.
Don't give the devil...
I try to sing it.
Actually, my voice sounding the way it is, it maybe sounds like I've been drinking cheap whiskey and smoking unfiltered cheap cigarettes.
And maybe I could, with Jeremiah up here, maybe I could imitate a blues singer singing this particular line.
But I'll spare you it.
Don't give the devil a ride.
He only wants to drive.
And so the great prostitute, which is the great city.
The great city organized in rebellion and contempt of God.
That's what the image of the great prostitute is.
It's an image of the great city.
The great city.
The New York.
The Los Angeles.
The Paris.
The London.
The Washington.
The Milan.
The Moscow.
The Beijing.
The great city organized in contempt against the living God.
organized to do whatever it wants.
Organized around political power and wealth.
To be its own boss.
And it rides upon and sits upon the beast.
And the great city thinks that it sits upon the beast.
That creation of the dragon.
And therefore it controls it.
But the great city does not understand that you do not give the devil a ride.
Because it only wants to drive.
And by the end of the story.
You will see that the great prostitute thinks it controls the beast.
But the beast controls the great city.
And the beast will see the great city by the end of the chapter.
Devoured.
Destroyed.
Completely and utterly.
Because that is the nature of the beast.
And the woman herself.
She is portrayed as wearing clothing of purple and scarlet.
And in the ancient world as I already mentioned.
Scarlet is the color that indicates great wealth.
And purple is the color that indicates great political power and prestige and authority.
And so this woman is representing the great city.
Where political power.
And with it all of the.
And great wealth.
And all of the persuasive and cultural power that flows.
All of it in a sense the social mysticism.
And spirituality.
Which is so deeply and utterly connected to political power.
And wealth.
And the adoration that goes along with people who adore such great political power and great wealth.
And it's united in her.
And she's golded with gold.
And she's covered with jewels.
And she sits drunk.
And what is she drunk with?
She's drunk on the fact that so many kings and peoples come to do her bidding.
To come to have a dalliance with her.
And she casually.
And she's not only does she casually be completely and utterly contemptuous of the living God in his ways.
But with impunity.
She will kill those who bear witness to Jesus.
And delight in the fact that their blood is shed.
Now before I go any further.
You see this is where the book of Revelation can sometimes be very very difficult for us.
In the 70s.
I know a lot of you weren't born in the 70s.
And just so you're clear.
I'm talking about the 1970s.
Not the 1870s or 1770s.
But in the 1970s there was a very very powerful book called The Late Great Planet Earth.
It sold more books in the 70s than any other book in North America.
It was almost completely and utterly wrong about everything it said.
And at the time there were 10 countries in Europe that made up the European Union.
And so they imagined that somehow or another Rome or whatever it was.
Was the seat of the Antichrist and the beast.
And this new thing would all happen.
All just talking about the future.
Just all talking about the future.
But the book of Revelation is fundamentally a book about Jesus.
It's a book about Jesus.
What he's done.
What he's doing.
And what he will do.
The book of Revelation is a book about Jesus.
What he's done.
What he's doing.
And what he will do.
And that means that whenever we read the Bible.
Whenever we read Revelation 17.
There's two types of things that are going on.
On one hand it's talking about something which exists in the future for us.
Unless we are just days away from the end of time.
I don't know if we are.
I don't believe we are.
But we might very well be.
We might very well be.
And so part of what's being described is something which is describing the very, very end of the end.
And part of it's describing what we live right now.
And it's not just that the Bible is sort of a series of symbols for us to help to understand what we're living right now.
Because everything in the book of Revelation will somehow or another at some point in time be completely and utterly fulfilled.
Jesus will come back.
Things will come to an end.
But when we read parts like this we don't know.
I mean obviously we're not going to see a woman see a beast.
But maybe we will.
I don't know.
Because in advance we won't know what parts are symbolic and we don't know what parts are literal in advance.
But the most important thing is for us to have the words of scripture firmly in our minds and in our hearts.
So that if we are alive when that time comes we'll recognize the signs.
See my problem I have with most radio preachers who talk about the book of Revelation and most popular authors.
is they purport to understand what's symbolic and what's literal.
And be able to tell you precisely what every one of the details means.
And I have to confess before you that when I listen to them I think to myself only God can know that.
And you might be a very good man and you might be a very wise man but you're not God.
So you can't be so definite about these things.
But what matters is that we remember the words.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago there's a whole genre of fantasy novels and fairy tale type stories.
And often in this whole genre there's some type of a quest.
And on the quest usually there's something maybe it's a written document.
Maybe it's some words of a seer.
And there's certain types of signs that they have to recognize to fulfill the quest.
And a great challenge within the course of the story is to actually remember the wording, the precise wording of the signs.
And if you know the story you'll know that people forget them.
They get caught up.
They get confused.
They don't recognize them.
Maybe the reader doesn't even recognize it at first.
But often the reader does because the narrator will help us to know.
And in a sense what the book of Revelation is doing is inviting us on one hand to understand that some of this which is future.
The main thing for us to do is to remember the words.
And if we remember the words we remember the signs.
Then when the time actually comes.
When the time actually comes.
And we'll maybe be able to recognize what was symbolic and what was literal.
And how the different signs all coalesce around a particular event.
But to try to figure that all out in the future in advance.
I just think that's just not very helpful.
But at the same time everything in the word refers to things that we can be experiencing right now.
And the very, very first thing that the text is going to do.
We now have the vision.
So John in verses 1 and 2 he's told by the angel that we're going to have this vision.
In verses he goes to the wilderness.
In verses 3 to 6a he has the vision.
But then look at the very, very puzzling thing that happens to John in response to the vision.
And it's at the very last part of verse 6.
And most of your Bibles, you know, verse 6 is broken up and a new paragraph begins.
At the very end of verse 6 it says this.
When I saw her, I marveled greatly.
Now this should give us all pause.
He liked her.
He was attracted to the great prostitute.
He was blown away by the great prostitute.
The great prostitute spoke to something inside of him.
And this is a profound warning for every one of us.
That there is in fact something attractive about evil.
Even this city, this preeminent city that's organized in complete and utter contempt of God.
And that will casually, willfully, whenever it pleases, put to death those who speak of the living God.
And speak of Jesus.
And John, an apostle in the presence of an angel.
Find something marvelous and attractive about it.
And if that can happen to John, it will happen to you and me.
It's one of the reasons we need to read the Bible and guard our hearts.
And ask that God will be kind to us.
That God will purge from us and put to death within us any desire that we might have for such great evil.
That he would put to death within us anything within us that would have such a longing and yearning to see such a great city exist.
And he knows the Bible.
God knows our hearts.
And so there's this warning to us in it.
John has the angel snap him out of it.
It's in verse 7.
But the angel said to me,
Why do you marvel?
It's almost like a slap on the side of the face.
John, what are you doing?
That's the great prostitute.
That's the city organized in contempt against God.
And in rebellion against God.
Seen itself as in complete and utter control.
Why are you marveling?
I will tell you the mystery of the woman.
And of the beast with the seven heads and ten horns.
It carries her.
And now he'll start to take the image and explain the different parts of it.
First, the beast.
Verse 8.
The beast that you saw was and is not and is about to rise from the bottomless pit, the abyss, and go to destruction.
The dwellers on earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the foundation of the world will marvel to see the beast.
Because it was and is not and is to come.
Right?
He's saying here that those who are not followers of Jesus will marvel to see the beast.
But just a few words earlier, John marveled.
There's something within us that finds humanity organized in rebellion against God and contemptuous against the living God, attractive.
And I'm going to talk more about the beast in a moment.
But John is just reminding him that this is the same beast that you just saw earlier in Revelation 13.
This is the same beast that the dragon called out of the abyss to be the one that would bring all earth under its sway.
This is the same beast that would have an apparent resurrection that would cause all of the world to find it marvelous.
It's powerful.
But as we'll see in a moment, it's not a true resurrection.
It's a deadly, deathly resurrection that only leads into bondage away from freedom.
Verse 9.
This calls for a mind with wisdom.
The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated.
They are also seven kings, five of whom have fallen.
One is, the other has not yet come.
And when he does come, he must remain only a little while.
Well, as for the beast that was and is not, it is an eight, but it belongs to the seven.
And it goes to destruction.
Doesn't that sound like a lot of fantasy novels?
Doesn't it?
And fairy tales with that language.
I have to confess my mind glazes over.
And what it's going to mean in the future, I don't know because I'm not God.
I'm not God.
I don't know what it will mean in the future.
I don't know what it will mean when the end finally comes.
I don't know what it means.
I don't know which parts will be symbolic and which parts will be literal.
But I hope that if I am here in the days just before the day that Jesus arrives, just before the world's last night,
I hope I will remember this text and understand what I'm seeing.
But one of the things that we can understand is that the text is saying that God is in control and that there's a process of kings.
And that there's going to eventually be like a king and then a king and then it's over.
And that throughout all of that, whatever it is that's happening, that God is the one who's completely and utterly in control.
And that's what's going on.
And that the beast, in a sense, isn't just coming out of nowhere.
In a sense, today, right now, the parts of Washington and Moscow and Ottawa and London and Paris and Rome,
parts of all of these great cities that are already organized in rebellion and contempt of the living God,
that when that final great city comes, it will be understood that it did not come out of nowhere,
that it emerged out of something that had already been going on for a long time on the earth
and that you and I already have to deal with on some level,
not to the same level and degree that those who are here for the world's last night will have to deal with it,
but that there is already something in the great cities of the world
and our desire for the great cities of the world.
That's already part of a process that will one day culminate in the great city made in contempt of the living God.
Verse 12,
And the ten horns that you saw are ten kings who have not yet received royal power,
but they are to receive authority as kings for one hour together with the beast.
These are of one mind, and they hand over their power and authority to the beast,
and they will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them,
free as Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called.
Actually, in the original language, there's the definite article before each of the three last words.
It should actually say literally,
And those with him are the called and the chosen and the faithful.
Makes sort of awkward English, but that's what the original language is.
They will make war on the Lamb, verse 14, and the Lamb will conquer them,
for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are the called and the chosen and the faithful.
They're going to make war on the Lamb, and they're going to lose.
I don't know what the ten kings means.
I don't know what it means.
But, you know, we see something about it,
and we're going to see it because it's all coming to a close.
We can see something about it right now.
You know, as I was reading this, I was thinking a lot about what happened to Alison Redford,
the former premier of Alberta.
I'm not trying to make any political points.
I'm not trying to say that she's the beast or anything like that.
I'm really not, okay?
But everybody in her party and her cabinet loved her
when she beat the Wild Rose Alliance, didn't they?
But they're also very quick to throw under a bus, aren't they?
Like, isn't that how politics works?
And, you know, you see with the insight,
and the politicians involved with the insight,
am I saying the right word, the thing in the east side of Vancouver,
and living lavish lives.
And we see with Alison Redford, and we see with other politicians
that they have a desire to live lives of luxury.
And to be heavy-handed in politics.
And they think they have their cabinet and their party with them with one mind.
And the party and the cabinet will throw you under the bus
as quick as the blink of an eye.
On one hand, what you see here with the Ten Kings,
we see in the papers all the time, all the time, all the time.
It's saying something which is true
about those who worship power for power and wealth for wealth.
Well, it's saying something true.
In fact, as we'll see in a moment, it's saying something also very, very true,
that on one hand, the way that the lamb will beat the great prostitute
is by doing nothing.
Because the very, very kings that are also alive with the beast
will turn on the great prostitute and completely and utterly destroy her.
That all evil has within itself something which is self-destructive.
That all evil has something which is its own punishment.
I had friends when I was in high school and in university
who got involved in drugs, hard drugs.
And several of them, their lives were completely and utterly
and irreparably ruined.
It ruined their minds.
It ruined their IQs.
It ruined their relationships with their family.
And no prison and no jail sentence could punish them more than drugs punished them.
Being completely and utterly under the grip of pornography is its own punishment.
It ruins relationships with real women.
It ruins your time.
In a sense, it is its own punishment.
Worshiping power for the sake of power,
it seems like it's something that is good for you and it helps you,
but it ultimately becomes its own punishment.
That there's something about evil which destroys us.
And that's what this text is trying to make clear to us.
That we might repent.
Look how it finishes.
Verse 15.
And the angel said to me,
The waters that you saw where the prostitute is seated
are peoples and multitudes and nations and languages.
And the ten horns that you saw,
they and the beast will hate the prostitute.
They will hate the great city.
They will make her desolate and naked
and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire.
For God has put into their hearts
to carry out his purpose by being of one mind
and handing over their royal power to the beast
who will destroy them
until the words of God are fulfilled.
The woman that you saw is the great city
that is dominion over the kings of the earth.
Now, just to wrap it up,
how does this affect us?
Maybe already the text has spoken to your lives in different ways,
but the text talks about yearning and desire.
And to understand it, we need to look at another text.
And that is that the great prostitute is,
the great city is ultimately in contrast with another city.
And to see it, you have to turn with me to Revelation chapter 21.
And if you turn to Revelation 21,
you'll see another woman
and you'll see another city
in a very, very different context.
You see, as we read the story of Revelation 17,
we have to understand
that all evil is a bending or a twisting
of something which is good.
That evil is a bending or a twisting
of something that's good.
The devil can actually not create anything.
Evil doesn't create anything.
Evil bends and twists the good.
So what is the bending or the twisting
of the great prostitute,
the great city and rebellion against God?
It is a bending and twisting
of a city that we were made to long for.
Verse 1 of chapter 21,
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away,
and the sea was no more.
And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God.
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
Behold, the dwelling place of God
is with man and woman.
He will dwell with them,
and they will be his people.
And God himself will be with them as their God.
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more.
Neither shall there be mourning,
nor crying, nor pain anymore,
for the former things have passed away.
See, Revelation 17 poses to us,
to you and me, this question.
Do I long to rule in hell
or serve in heaven?
Do I long
to rule in hell
or serve in heaven?
Do I long
for that city
which is humanity organized
under the redemptive care of God,
where God is present,
and I behold him face to face without shame,
and I delight in his presence,
I delight in his face,
I delight that he sees me,
I delight that I stand always naked before him,
and that that is a great joy.
Is that the cry
and the longing of my heart?
Or is the cry
and the longing of my heart
for that city
where God is not welcome
unless I bid him?
Which is the longing
and the yearning of my heart?
Which is the longing
and the yearning of your heart?
And if I long
and yearn
for that city,
that time,
that place
where God is distant,
where he only comes
at my bidding,
he only sees
what I want him to see,
he only does
what I want him to do,
he only knows
what I want him to know,
he only shows up
if I feel like
spending some time with him,
do I in fact
have within myself
the desire
that even though
I might not be able
to rule all of hell,
I just desire
and long
to be able
to rule
some tiny part of hell.
And it's connected
to another fundamental
longing and yearning.
You see,
do I long
and yearn
to tower
over situations?
Do I long
and yearn
to tower
over situations
spiritually
or with my mind
or with my looks
or with my position
or my influence
or my affluence?
Do I long
to tower
over situations?
And if I live
in a world
where I always
long to tower
over situations,
there's this
ever deepening desire
to tower
more and more
and more
because the only
option is
if I am not
towering,
then somebody
else is towering
and if somebody
else is towering,
then I am
cowering
before them.
And so,
is the desire
of my heart,
is the dreams
that come in my heart,
as I think
about situations
with my boss
or in my workplace
or with my neighbors
or with my kids
or with my wife
or with my friends,
am I thinking
about how they
said this to me
and how they got
their way over me
and how I wish
that I had been able
to say this
or do this
or have accomplished
this or possess
this or owned
this so that I
could tower over them
all for their good.
But is the desire
and the dream
of my heart
to tower?
Is it even
impossible for me
to imagine
any alternative
to towering
or cowering?
And the Bible
paints the picture
that once we're
redeemed by Jesus
that the dream
and the longing
of our heart
should be the
doulos of Jesus,
the servant
of Jesus,
that there's
an option
in redemption
that's separate
from towering
or cowering
and it's serving
Jesus in that
situation.
Is that the dream
and the yearning
of my heart?
Is that how
I bring
the different
memories
and desires
and imaginations
of my heart
to God?
Do I bring them
to him in terms
of how I can
tower and my
fear that if
he doesn't show
up and put
those other people
to defeat,
I will tower?
Or am I asking
him to show me
how I might be
his doulos
where I am?
Do I secretly
long to rule
in hell
rather than serve
in heaven?
And therefore
do I long
for that city
where God
is in subjection,
is treated
with contempt?
Very, very
briefly
in closing,
you know,
if you look
all the way
through the book
of Revelation,
the beast
that appeared
to have died
but is risen
to the dead,
what does he do?
He destroys
people.
What does
Jesus do?
He saves
people.
He frees
people.
He makes
people whole.
He makes
people themselves.
He brings
freedom and
peace,
peace within
and peace
with God.
You see,
the beast's
apparent death
and resurrection
was just
a coming to
life
to be more
completely
and utterly
in rebellion
against God
and to be
more completely
and utterly
embroiled
in a contempt
against God.
But the Bible
portrays that
when Jesus
dies,
he conquers
death by
conquering that
which causes
death,
which is our
rebellion
against God.
So that's why
on the cross,
when he dies
upon the cross
and he says,
my God,
why have you
forsaken me?
He's taking
upon himself
our rejection
of God.
He's taking
upon himself
all that
keeps us
completely
and utterly
separate from
God.
And in his
death and
tasting all
there is to
death and
in his
resurrection,
what we see
in his
death and
in his
resurrection
is we see
first and
foremost a
defeat of
our evil
and our
rebellion
against God.
And because
he defeats
this,
he is able
to defeat
death.
And so he
stands on the
far side of
death,
offering to
us life and
freedom and
wholeness,
and a way
of being so
gripped by
the gospel
that it's
not just a
matter that
I, by my
willpower,
try to
imagine now
that I will
change my
longings and
yearnings.
But that as we
understand how
Jesus tasted all
there is to
taste of death
and tasted all
there is to
taste of that
which causes
death, and
he took it all
upon himself
for us and
emerged on the
far side of
that which
causes death,
which is human
evil and our
evil, and
death itself.
And he emerges
on the far
side of that,
willing to
share his
life and his
triumph and
his status as
God's son
forever, and
we become his
son or daughter
forever, and he
shares that with
us, and as that
grips us, it
pushes us and
prods us into
new desires and
to recognize that
our desire to
rule in hell is a
fell desire that
will only unmake
us, and that the
true desire that we
should have is to
be the doulos of
the one who died
to redeem us.
The beast emerges
from death into
deeper death and
emerges from death
into deeper evil, and
those who marvel are
led into deeper
death and deeper
evil.
The lamb emerges
triumphant over that
which is evil and
causes death and
death itself.
And when we put our
hand out to him and
his hand takes ours, it
is life, it is
reconciliation with
God, it is
wholeness, it is
restoration to our
humanity.
That is what we
receive from his
hand and to which
we are to bear
witness.
Please stand.
Bow your heads in
prayer.
Father, first of all, we
ask that you grant
within us a mind of
wisdom so that we
might understand and
see within us what
our true desires are.
Help us to recognize,
Father, how often we
desire to rule in
hell rather than to
serve in heaven.
And how often,
Father, we desire and
yearn to keep you far
away.
And how often we
desire, Father, to
treat you with
contempt.
And we ask as well,
Father, that you
fend flame within us
those longings and
yearnings to serve in
heaven, to be with you
and to see you face to
face and to have you see
us face to face.
But, Father, we
confess that it's not
just a matter of us
changing our
yearnings.
we ask, Father, that
you would make us
followers of Jesus
gripped by the
gospel, gripped by
what Jesus has done
for us on the cross.
And, Father, we ask
that what he has done
for us on the cross,
that that will so
grip us that it will
push us slowly,
maybe quickly, but
push us into new
yearnings, true
yearnings, original
yearnings, the
yearnings that you
created within us to
see you face to face.
And to joyfully serve
you in heaven.
And to be the
doulos, the servant
of your son Jesus,
on this side of the
grave, until we see
him face to face.
Father, come, Lord
Jesus, send him soon.
And help us to be
gripped by the
gospel, living for
your glory.
And all this we ask
in the name of Jesus,
your son, and our
savior.
Amen.