Revelation 17
All right, Revelation chapter
17, beginning at verse one, says, 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
a name of a 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.
When I saw her, I marveled greatly. But the angel said to me, why
do you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of
the woman and of the beast with seven heads and 10 horns that
carries her. The beast that you saw was and
is not and is about to rise from the bottomless pit and go to
destruction. And 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. This calls for a mind with wisdom.
The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman is seated.
They are also the seven kings, five of whom have fallen. One,
the other, has not yet come, and when he does, he must remain
only a little while. As for the beast that was not
and is not and is an eighth, but it belongs to the seventh
and it goes to destruction. And the 10 horns that you saw
are the 10 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 hand
over their power and authority to the beast. They will make
war on the lamb and the lamb will conquer them for he is the
Lord of lords and the king of kings. And those with him are
called chosen and faithful. 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 tent horns
that you saw, they and the beast will hate the prostitute. They
will make her desolate. They will make her naked and
they will devour her flesh and burn her up with fire. For God
has put it into their hearts to carry out his purpose by being
of one mind and handing over their royal power to the beast
until the words of God are fulfilled. The woman that you saw is the
great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth.
After this, I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having
great authority, and the earth was made bright with his glory.
And he called out with a mighty voice, fallen, fallen is Babylon
the great. She has become a dwelling place
for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every
unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast.
For all nations have drunk the wine of her passion of her sexual
immorality, and the kings of the earth have committed immorality
with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from
the power of her luxurious living. Then I heard another voice from
heaven saying, come out of her, my people, lest you take part
in her sins, lest you share in her plagues, for her sins are
heaped high as the heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.
Pay her back as she herself has paid back others, and repay her
double for her deeds. Mix a double portion for her
in the cup she has mixed. She has glorified herself and
she has lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment
and mourning, since in her heart she says, I sit as a queen, I
am no widow, and mourning I shall never see. For this reason, her
plagues will come in a single day. Death and mourning and famine,
she will be burned up with fire. for mighty is the Lord God who
has judged her. And the kings of the earth who
committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her, they
will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning.
They will stand far off in fear of her torment and say, alas,
alas, you great city, you mighty city Babylon, for in a single
hour, your judgment has come. The merchants of the earth shall
weep and mourn for her since no one buys their cargo anymore. cargo of gold, silver, jewels,
pearls, fine linen, purple cloth, silk, scarlet cloth, and all
kinds of scented wood, and all kinds of articles of ivory, all
kinds of articles of costly wood, bronze, iron, and marble, cinnamon,
spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, oil, fine flour, wheat,
cattle, and sheep, horses, and chariots, and slaves, that is,
human souls. The fruit for which your soul
has longed has gone from you, and all your delicacies and your
splendors are lost to you, never to be found again. The merchants
of these wares who gained wealth from her will stand far off in
fear of her torment, weeping and mourning aloud. Alas, alas
for the great city that was clothed in fine linen and purple and
scarlet, adorned with gold, with jewels and with pearls, for in
a single hour all this wealth has been laid waste, and all
shipmasters and seafaring men Sailors and all whose trade is
on the sea stood far off, and they cried out as they saw the
smoke of her burning. What city was like the great
city? They threw dust on their heads as they wept, and they
mourned, crying out, alas, alas for the great city, where all
who had ships at sea grew rich by her wealth, for in a single
hour she has been laid waste. Rejoice over her, O heaven, and
you saints and apostles and prophets, for God has given judgment for
you against her. Then a mighty angel took up a
stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea saying,
so will Babylon, the great city be thrown down with violence
and will be found no more. The sound of harpist and musicians,
flute players and trumpeters will be heard in you no more.
And a craftsman of any craft will be found in you no more.
The sound of the mill will be heard in you no more. The light
of the lamp will shine in you no more. The voice of the bridegroom
and the bride will be heard in you no more. For your merchants
were the great ones of the earth and all nations were deceived
by your sorcery. And in her was found the blood
of the prophets and of the saints and of all on the earth who have
been slain. After this, I heard what seemed
to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven crying out,
hallelujah, salvation and glory and power belong to our God for
his judgments are true and just. For he has judged the great prostitute
and corrupted the earth with her immorality. and has avenged
on her the blood of his servants. Once more they cried out, hallelujah,
the smoke from her goes up forever and ever. And the 24 elders and
the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God, who was
seated on the throne saying, amen, hallelujah. And from the
throne came a voice saying, praise our God, all you his servants,
you who fear him, small and great. Then I heard what seemed to be
the voice of a great multitude, like the roar of many waters.
and like the sound of the mighty peals of thunder crying out,
hallelujah for the Lord our God, the almighty reigns. Let us rejoice
and exult and give him the glory for the marriage of the lamb
has come and his bride has made herself ready. It was granted
to her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure for
the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints. And the
angel said to me, write this, blessed are those who are invited
to the marriage supper of the lamb. And he said to me, these
are the true words of God. Then I fell down at his feet
to worship him. But he said to me, you must not do that. I am
a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold to the
testimony of Jesus. Worship God for the testimony
of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Amen. This is God’s word of judgment
on the world and encouragement to us. When I was a kid growing
up, we did not have cable television. All our friends did, and so we
would always go to their house to watch TV. We had the poor
man’s satellite with maybe Channel 2 and Channel 12 and a few others
when the weather was good. But in about 1990, we got cable
at our house. It was a big deal. And the main
reason we got cable, because there was a war on. And you remember
the Gulf War when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The coalition of armies
went and rescued Kuwait from this invasion. We watched it
on television. I think it used to be that you
saw snippets of war on television, maybe on the nightly news, but
this was the first time that war was live streamed, as it
were, as America went and rescued Kuwait from their invaders. Fast
forward to the early 2000s, post 9-11, when I was in seminary,
we had TVs all over the place and they had cable and they were
always on one of the notorious constant news channels. And we
watched the invasion of Iraq. We watched the war take place
in Afghanistan. I remember in March of 2003,
watching as we began bombing Baghdad and began the takeover
of that country. One of the things I remember
was the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein. A group of
Iraqi nationals put a chain around this bronze or whatever statue
of Saddam Hussein, their wicked dictator. They hooked it to the
back of one of their pickup trucks and they yanked the thing over.
And then the next thing you knew, people who had been so scared
of this man were dancing on top of this toppled image of this
wicked dictator. But we’ve watched wars, we’ve
embedded reporters, we’ve seen it live streamed. And now we
have a sort of picture of that at the end of evil empire in
the world is, in a sense, we get taken into a live picture
of what does it look like when Babylon the Great, the capital
city of evil, the woman, the prostitute who embodies who,
personifies evil in this world is taken down in one quick hour
at the end. We have this picture of the cosmic
battle that began in the garden, actually before the garden when
Satan fell at heaven. It manifests itself in the garden
in the book of Genesis and all the way to the present day and
at the end times as we see in our scriptures, we get to watch
this great battle that is taking place, this cosmic battle between
Christ and Satan. So a question for us, how has
evil manifest itself in the world? Well, we read a little bit of
how it has manifest itself in the world in chapters 17 and
18 of Revelation. But go back just very briefly to the early
parts of your Bible. We see very quickly that after
Adam and Eve sinned against God in the garden, their son, Cain,
killed his brother, Abel. We move on from there and we
see wickedness after wickedness. We see the Tower of Babel, the
people say, we’re gonna make a name for ourselves, and so
they build a skyscraper, as it were, up into the heavens. They
want to show the world that they’re great and that God is unnecessary
in their lives. We show our wickedness by our
idolatry. We show our wickedness by building
monuments to ourselves in this world. But we show our wickedness
also by our spiritual compromise, by our immorality. And it’s all been pictured for
us, personified for us in the woman and in the city of Babylon. You know, every person born on
this earth has a God-sized hole. in their life. And Saint Augustine,
the fourth century theologian, said that of this God-sized whole
that our hearts are restless until they find rest in Almighty
God. And one of the things we have
to note of all this wickedness, all this evil, is these people
are never satisfied. They’re always looking for more,
more riches, more luxury, more more fast and loose living, more
ultimate highs, and they never will be able to fill that God-sized
hole because only God can fill it. And so we see the futility
of their lives, but here we also see the end or the judgment. What’s pictured for us here as
we look at the judgment of Babylon, the judgment of this woman, Well,
what’s pictured is the end of the world, the capital city of
evil, evil as personified by this woman. And it shows the
ultimate, the addition of the buildup of the deception of Satan
and the allure of the world that has fallen on mankind. Sometimes we’ll make a little
visit to the shopping mall. And every time I leave a shopping
mall, I feel oppressed. I feel oppressed because I’ve
been assaulted. I’ve been assaulted with, I need this. You want that. This will help
you. This will improve your life. You must have all these things. They’ll make your life so much
better. And a pair of shoes helps, or clothing and those sorts of
things help. Medicines, those things help. But just the constant onslaught.
the weekly Sabbath of the world, as it were, making the trip to
the mall and purchasing things that we hope will make us happy.
We feel oppressed and we can be so quickly deceived by Satan
that these things lead to something greater and better. So what do
we think of chapters 17 through 19? Well, we’re gonna look at
each chapter, just a quick overview of each. The first is chapter
17, the great prostitute. the Beast. That’s the entirety
of chapter 17. We won’t read it again, but we’ll
make reference to a thing or two. Those of you who’ve been
in a literature class, you know what personification is, right?
It’s when an inanimate thing is given personal qualities,
right? Sometimes we say of something, it has human qualities. Well, the personification here
is the woman represents evil. So evil is personified or made
into a person-like character in this woman, this great prostitute. Now, back up for just a second. How has the book of Revelation
used the image of a woman before? Well, on a positive note, the
church is portrayed as a woman. The church is portrayed in chapters
12 and chapter 19 as a woman. We’re called the bride of the
Lord Jesus Christ. Brides are always women. Well,
at least they were until a couple years ago. There’s another example
of how evil this world has gotten, and God will judge that as well. But the church is personified
as a woman, the bride of Christ. But here also, evil is personified,
not only as the woman, but as the great prostitute. And so
what we have in chapters 17 and 18, both in the woman and in
Babylon, we have a picture of how evil the world is, and it’s
represented by this woman, by her influence, by her evil deeds,
and by the way she has hoodwinked the men of this world and the
kings of this earth into unrighteous living and God is going to judge
it. She will no longer deceive the
earth. She will no longer bring her
abominations to pass for God will judge her and put an end
to her life and her life will be no more. So that’s a quick
overview, a big picture picture of this great prostitute and
the beast. Look at chapter 18. It describes
the fall of Babylon, and we won’t read it again, but we’ll make
a reference or two to it. When you’re in grade school,
you learn your capital cities, right? You learn the capitals
of all the states of America. Then you learn the capitals of
all the major countries of the world. But did you learn the
capital city for evil. Well, if you read Revelation,
if you read chapter 18, you would have learned the capital city
of evil in the world is Babylon. In fact, in St. Augustine’s great
work, The City of God, he established a compare and contrast between
the city of God, which is the Jerusalem above, and the city
of man, which is Babylon. Babylon representing all things
on earth, all evil, all manner of wickedness, but the New Jerusalem,
the city of God, the city from above whose foundations are not
of this earth. So we learned that Babylon is
the capital city of evil. It represents an evil regime. It represents everything wicked
on the earth. And just like our Maybe our Iraqi
friends some years ago were happy to see the fall of their dictator,
Saddam Hussein. We would be very happy to see
the fall of Babylon, the capital city of wickedness, and the fall
of Satan and this woman who oppress so many with their wickedness. One of the interesting things
about the fall of Babylon, you see it, in one of the verses
where it talks about their judgments, their shame reaches up into the
sky, reaches up into the heavens. One of the things wicked people
like to do is they like to build monuments to themselves up into
the sky. And it’s sort of a play on judgment
here, a play on words. Instead of building a tower into
the sky, like Babel is a name for yourself, their sins, their
judgments, their wickedness, heaps into a pile right up into
the sky and their sin is seen by evidence. of this great piling
up of their wickedness. There’s a number of laments in
chapter 18. If you were to say, what’s the
theme? What’s the main event in chapter
18? Well, it’s the judgment of Babylon,
the capital city of wickedness. But there are a number of laments. If you look at verses two and
three, it says, she has become a dwelling place for demons,
a haunt for every unclean spirit. The nations have drunk the wine
of the passion of her immorality. The kings of earth have committed
immorality. There’s lament, if you skip over
to four through eight, it speaks of the people taking part in
her sins, paying back those sins. God remembers iniquity. She glorifies
herself in luxury. says she’ll never mourn, she’ll
never be a widow, but plagues come on her in a single day. And on and on throughout chapter
18, you see these laments of her wickedness and her judgment. But I want you to notice verse
21. There’s a great picture here. A mighty angel took up a stone
like a great millstone and threw it into the sea saying, so will
Babylon the great be thrown down with violence and be found no
more. You’ve been to the side of a lake or a creek side, and
you’ve picked up rocks, and you’ve thrown them. And what’s the sound
they make? Ka-plunk. And where do they go? They sink
to the bottom. That’s exactly the picture here that God gives
of Babylon, the wicked capital city of evil. She’ll be thrown
into the sea, never to be found or to reappear. And her judgment
is final. Then the third section, 19. verses
one through 10, we have rejoicing in heaven and the wedding supper
of the lamb. I mentioned just a few moments
ago back in 2003, the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein.
I can still see that picture vividly watching it on the news,
all those happy Iraqis dancing on the statue of this man who
had tormented them so greatly. Is it okay to celebrate the toppling
of evil? Is it okay to celebrate when
wicked men have their day of justice? And the answer is absolutely. But the answer for us also is
we let God do it. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord.
We let him take care of business. And so there’s a celebration
in heaven here in chapter 19, 1 through 10. And it’s the first
time we see into heaven since chapters four and five. Remember
in chapters four and five, we saw a picture of the throne room
of God. We saw God on his throne, and then we saw the righteous
and worthy and able lamb who was able to open the scroll and
its seven seals. And since that point in chapter
five, when Jesus stepped forward, took up the scroll, opened its
seven seals, we’ve seen the cycles of the end times over and over
and over. And we said one of the things,
one of the characteristics of these cycles of judgment, this
progressive revelation of the end times is that it’s gonna
get worse and worse. Well, it’s gotten worse. God
is going to put to death this woman and this ancient city,
this capital city of evil. And he’s gonna put an end to
it. And so we go into heaven where the saints are, and we
see them jumping for joy. We see a great celebration in
heaven. It says in verse one of 19, after
this, I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great
multitude in heaven. We see the 24 elders worshiping
God. We see a great multitude in verse
six, like the roar of many waters and like the sound of mighty
peals of thunder crying out. Yesterday we went to football
game and the home team was there, but the away team was local. And the stadium was jam-packed
as halftime came. And when each team made a play
that they liked, there was this mighty roar. And when you’re
in the bowl of a stadium, that roar goes up. And that’s the
sound of the saints singing. Something great has happened
and it’s the roar of their voices. Up in Maine, on the coast of
Maine, there’s a little site called Thunder Hole. And it’s
a hole in the rock formation of the coastline there along
Mount Desert Island, somewhere up near Bar Harbor in that area.
And when the waves roll and they fill this hole full of water,
there’s a thunder that’s a mighty thunder and it’s earth shattering.
This morning, or actually this evening, we sang Psalm 93, and
it speaks of God’s voice like the thunder of many waters. And
that’s a bit of the description here of the sights and sounds
of heaven. The voice of the great multitude
singing is like the sound of many waters, like the sound of
mighty peals of thunder. the roar of the crowd. And what
are they celebrating? They’re celebrating the fall
of evil in the person of this woman, the great prostitute,
but also in the city, the capital city of evil. And we have the
true church glorying over the fall of the false church. In fact, that’s what the world
and its systems are, isn’t it? That’s what the antichrist is.
It’s a false church. We’re made to think that if we
just follow the world, we’ll be happy and we’ll be blessed,
but it’s a false church, it’s a false religion. And so the
choruses of heaven sing, but they also, they have a feast.
And you’ll notice in verse nine, the beatitude of this passage. Write this, says the angel, blessed
are those who are invited to the marriage supper. of the lamb. Obviously there’s a lot of people
not invited and they’re on earth and destroyed with this city
and this woman. But these choruses who sing the
saints of God are invited to the wedding supper of the lamb.
Now we’re not going to get to the rest of chapter 19 tonight,
but there’s going to be a simultaneous feast while we’re feasting in
heaven with God and with Christ, the bride of the bridegroom of
the church. chapter 19, as you see later
on, it speaks of the birds of the prey eating up the carcasses
of the kings of the earth and all the wicked who remain because
they were not invited to the wedding supper of the lamb. And
so there’s feasting in heaven. It’s a wedding feast, but there’s
feasting on earth and it’s the birds of prey eating the bodies
of the wicked who never called on the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ, but blessed are those who are invited to the wedding
supper, the marriage supper of Lamb. Something we say most every
first Sunday when we have communion is we say that the Lord’s Supper
does something for us past, something for us present, something for
us future. In the past, it helps us remember
Jesus’ death. It helps us remember the Passover.
It helps us remember God stepping in and saving us from our sin.
But it does something for the present. It reminds us that God
is feeding us. We’re in the wilderness, we’re
on the way to the promised land, and he feeds us and he nurtures
us by his own body and his own blood. But there’s also something
future about the Lord’s Supper. And that future thing is right
here in Revelation 19, the wedding supper of the lamb. Christ promises
not to eat this meal with us, the Lord’s Supper, until he eats
it anew with us in the new heavens and new earth. And so in the
Lord’s Supper, we’re looking forward to this meal, which will
take place after wickedness is destroyed and thrown into the
bottom of the sea. And so there’s a feast, there’s
joy, there’s a beatitude, a blessing, there’s a promise. There’s great
contrast with what takes place to the judgment of the wicked. But this marriage supper is the
ultimate goal of the church. Maybe some of you have attended
weddings. I think the Platters, y’all are headed to a wedding
in a few weeks up in October and weddings are something we
anticipate. There’s preparation, there’s
invitation, there’s a bride and there’s a groom and this is the
ultimate ultimate blessing that we can look forward to as Christians.
God will bring the church, his people, whom he has redeemed
by the blood of his own son, and he will bring us into heaven. God the King has got his son
a bride, and that bride is the church, which he has purchased
with his own precious blood. And so how are we to live until
this judgment? How are we to live until this
great wedding supper with the lamb? Well, the Bible seems to
teach, Jesus teaches in the gospels, we’re to watch and wait. Remember
the parable of the 10 virgins. They had their oil and they kept
their lamps burning. They waited for the bridegroom
to come so that they could cheer him on his way. But there were
some who did not have enough oil, and while they went to fetch
more oil, they missed the coming of the bridegroom. And so we
keep our wicks trimmed, we keep our lamps filled, and we watch
and we wait. We come to church, we hear preaching,
we take the Lord’s Supper, we remember Christ’s death, we’re
nurtured in our present life, but we anticipate the wedding
supper of the Lamb. Everything we read of in the
paper each day, everything we see on the news as we watch it
constantly, every wickedness, every evil that befalls this
world will pass away because that’s the way Jesus has meant
for it to be. And that’s what he’s paid for
by his work on Calvary. He wins and evil falls to the
bottom of the sea. Amen, let us pray. Lord, we give
you thanks for this word that encourages us to press on and
to keep the faith, to not lose heart, to keep our eyes fixed
on Jesus, to anticipate the great wedding supper, and to know that
all evil one day will soon be vanquished. We bless your name,
Jesus. You are the victor. You are the
conqueror. And in you, we have great hope. And we pray this
in his name. Amen.