severity, if I can use that word,
the severity and the depths of the depravity of humanity. And
it's not just individual wickedness. It's not just little pockets
of wickedness. It's a dominating problem. It's
a dominance in the world. So as I'm wicked and you're wicked
and we live together in the same house and we've got neighbors
that are wicked and they live in the same neighborhood and
we've got several communities that live in the same city. I
mean, imagine how this looks. The wickedness of humanity grows
in abundance exponentially. And it's not better. I know in
California, when we live, you know, we live in the East Bay,
and across from the East Bay is San Francisco. So the San
Francisco Bay on this side is the East Bay, on that, San Francisco.
And it was always some unspoken understanding for most professing
Christians When they talked about the city, they used that language
to express the wickedness of the sin that the city was known
for, which was homosexuality. And so when someone was in a
conversation, we were talking about how bad things were, it
was not rare to hear someone say, well, at least we're not
like the city. You know, in Richmond, which
was north of Oakland, which at the time we lived there was the
most dangerous city in the United States of America per capita,
there was a junior high gang rape in a public park in the
middle of the afternoon. and seven or eight young men
were tried to be rounded up and identified and arrested and arraigned.
It was 13 years old people. I mean, and I'll never forget
having that conversation of just with some of the pastors in the
area whose family was affected by how this girl was tortured.
And someone saying in that conversation,
well, it's getting about like the city over here, you know? And so when we look at the, Just
the depravity of humanity, it's very easy to segment it. Look
at those wicked people over there. Look at that sinner over there.
And let's not be coy. There is a level of wickedness
that comes with those types of sins that is just morally reprehensible. There is something to be said
about people who hurt children and people who are aggressive
and murderous versus somebody who steals a bag of popcorn.
I mean, yes, if we're gonna weigh it in our own eyes, oh my Lord,
give us a bunch of thieves and let the rapists and the murderers
stay away. Give us people who are just flat rude. Give us some Bostonians or some
New Jerseyans that just honk and yell instead of the sexually
debauch. You know? So yes, there is this
level of wickedness that we can understand, but in the economy
of God's holiness, it's all equally wicked. Sin is sin and worthy. The lie is worthy of the same
wrath as the rapist. The coveter or the idolater is
worthy of the same justice as the murderer. And this is what
we need to understand about what we're seeing in Revelation 17,
is that the picture of the wicked is just vast. And the depths
of that wickedness collectively is just exponentially viral. It continues to give birth and
to move out of control. And the wonderful thing that
we need to grasp, and I say wonderful because it should make us awestruck
in wonder, when it comes to our mind as a conclusion, is that
this evil is us in totality. Who are not in Christ, we were
once a part of this. Now we're not going to speak
about the eternal decrees of God. We're not going to subject
ourselves to the conversation that comes from Paul's epistle
to the Romans that teach us that before the foundations of the
world we were decreed just by God and the fulfillment of this
Justification is seen on the, or the righteousness of this
justification is seen with Jesus on the cross. But Paul in the
same type of teaching to the Ephesians would say, you once
were alienated. You once were dead in your sins.
And I don't know about you, but I can look back at my life and
I can see all the sins that I've done by the grace of the Lord,
and I can honestly tell you that if I were to weigh my sins against
the sins of what I see in the world today, I am a saint in
my own mind. You see that? And what happens is that we find
people who yet are not murderers, but yet they're murderers at
heart. They're not sexually immoral, but yet they give credit or they
give agreement to sexual immorality. They are not liars, but they
don't mind the white lie. So in that sense then, they are
guilty of the same sin, for they condone those sins. Paul says
that for the church, we do not have these things named among
us, much less be in practice of that. We are not those who
are known for wickedness. We are those who are known to
be the antithesis of such because Christ has saved us. We are those
who are known as those who live in a different place in society.
We are those who are known to love the law of God. We are those
who are known to love the righteousness of God. And we know that our
obedience is not righteousness before God, but rather our righteousness
is Christ's obedience. But yet, we know that wickedness is wickedness. We need to keep in mind that
in the context of this vast evil sits also many of those who in
our lives would state that they are our brothers and sisters
in Christ. They would say, I am also a believer. I follow the
Lord. I am in church. But yet, by the
very truth of the matter, they are not believers because they
do not even have the gospel in their mouth, much less their
lives. For if we know our salvation
is of Christ alone and we cannot even say it, what does it say
about where we are? And what have we put our faith
if we don't even know the basic precepts of what the Word teaches
about the Gospel? What have we believed in? Well,
I'll tell you what we've believed in. We believed in the world's
answer to man's dilemma. And we believed in the world's
answer with man's religion. And we believed in the world's
answer to who God is. And we believed in the world's
answer to another gospel. And that gospel looks like Christ
plus works, or that gospel looks like works and works, or that
gospel looks like, well, I said the right prayer, or that gospel
looks like, well, I came down the aisle. That gospel looks
like, well, I'm a member of the flock. That gospel looks like,
well, I'm an evangelist, or I'm a pastor, or I'm a teacher. These
are not things to hold our hat upon. These are not things that
we can hold tightly to. These are not things that we
can believe on and know that we're born of God and have security
in Christ. These are additional things,
things that are not salvific. People that love the glory that
comes from men. The faith that we saw in the
latter part of John 2 that says that they believed in Christ,
but Christ did not believe in them, for He knew the heart of
man. Nicodemus believed in Christ,
but Jesus said, you cannot see or enter into me except you be
born of God. In John 12, after the resurrection
of Lazarus, the Jews decided that Lazarus and Jesus must die. The dumbest thing in the world.
Let's kill the one who just raised the dead. But they did it, for
it was the will of God. Better for one man to suffer
and die than the whole of the kingdom, the whole of the people,
prophetically, said the high priest. If, then, what we see
in the text of Scripture is true, many people believed in John
12 that Jesus was Messiah, but they dared not what? Confess
it. For they love the glory that
comes from man rather the glory that comes from God. It is not
just wicked, evil, overbearing, satanic sinfulness who are the
reprobate. It is the self-righteous, right-wing,
evangelical, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian do-gooders that
are also wicked. If anything, in their hope is
not Christ alone. You see? And when we begin to
look at it, we might say, well, you know, I don't know very many
good Baptists who are sexually moral. Well, sexual immorality
has become the key expression of depravity. And sexual immorality, by definition,
is the love of one's own pleasure. And friends, it isn't all about
the body when we talk about pleasure. Sometimes it's about the ego.
Sometimes it's about pride. Sometimes it's about glory. Why
is it that so few pastors are willing to exposit scripture
on Sundays? For the fear of losing the very
little bit of glory they have. What horror would it be for a
young man who just graduated from seminary, is not even ready
to even open the Bible in front of a group of people, but yet
he can, so he does, and he teaches with his heart pounding out of
his chest, and his stomach nauseated, and he gets through, and the
last thing he wants is ridicule. But the first thing he gets is
ridicule. And I've been rebuked before
from the pulpit, coming down from the pulpit, in two ways.
One rebuke was very worthy. A 17-year-old kid comes to me
and says, I came here to hear the Word of God and all I got
was a comedy show. He and his parents walk out.
I'm thinking, you need to slap that boy talking to a grown man
like that. But he was right. And another rebuke I've had is
that I need to calm down and teach on something that's happy.
I've been told that. Not from you. Y'all don't do
that. Because I'd handle it a little bit different. But this person
told me I need to teach on happy things. Right there at the pulpit. happy things, to which I loudly
exclaimed in the midst of the service, fellowship, the after
service, what is more gloriously happy than the gospel of Jesus
Christ and His Word? Pray tell, tell me what I should
teach. I said it to her just like that,
but probably wasn't the right way to handle it. Woman, tell me what you're talking
about! I mean, you know, it wasn't necessarily the right way to
handle it. But the question was right. What else is there more
glorious than this? And you know, when you're preaching
through Hebrews, what is greater than every verse of Hebrews?
To see that there is a confident covenant that God has that no
religion of man could accomplish. Even His own commandments to
man could not accomplish those things. That's what's beautiful
about it. And so these young men that come
out into the church these days, when they see the face of someone
after the Sunday sermon and they come up to them, and they're
excited and they're hoping to be encouraged, and all they get
is, where do you think you're coming from, boy? Preaching to
me that way. Don't tell me. I've been a Christian
for 61 years. Don't tell me who God is and
who God ain't. Wow, that was neat. Little ring
there. Don't tell me! But yet, a young
man like that won't say, well, sir, the Bible says. A young
man like that will change his tune next week. And a few months
later, he'll change his tune. And a year later, he'll begin
to buy little outlines. And a year later from that, he
might not even write another sermon at all, but he may just
purchase somebody's. You know that's a market, right?
That's a market, a multi-million dollar market. Purchase not only
a sermon series, but the outlines to go with it, the fill-in-the-blanks
things that you can put into the bulletin with a white label
on it. You can put your own church logo on there. You've got pictures
and a PowerPoint presentation and the acclaimed slides and
the proclaimed music to go with it. The whole score for the orchestra
and everything. For a couple of thousand dollars
you can have 52 sermons sitting right there on your computer.
You don't even have to study them because it's word for word
verbatim of what you need to say. And if you're a good expositor
or if you're a good orator, you can actually look and read and
look and read and look and read. You can read four or five sentences
ahead and actually say what you've already read and look down and
people think you're coming off the top of your cup. And if you've
got them ahead of time, you can actually memorize the silly things.
And you might think, that's awful. I would bet you anything that that is the reality of three quarters of America's
Baptist churches. Especially after about their
third or fourth year ministry. Very few men can make it 10 years
in the same church. They can't take it, they can't
take that. Very few, you know the average
lifespan of a first time pastor, 18 months. And you know that
60% of them leave the ministry. Because the ones that stay in
the majority of churches are the ones who can actually, what,
appease the people they're talking to. What does that look like,
to appease someone? It looks like this prostitute
right here in the 17th chapter of Revelation. That's what it
looks like. So, let's be careful that we're
not talking about those people in the city. Oh, those people! No, beloved, listen. It's everything. It's wickedness that has no boundaries. It's wickedness that has no measure. That has no wall around it. And
it encompasses everything. And look at it. You wonder why
people like AHA exist? Abolish Human Abortion? It's
because they see the majority of the Church of the United States
apathetic toward wickedness. apathetic. They see a majority of so-called
professing Christians sitting inside a holy huddle, inside
a country club environment, and they could care less about their
neighbor, much less what's going on in bad sections of the world. Now, that's not an indictment
on us, we need to do more, but yet it is something for us to
pause and consider. Because it's not about doing a whole bunch
or having concern. Empathy and sympathy is not salvation. Faith in Christ alone is salvation.
Preaching the gospel is not salvation. Unbelievers do it every day. But we need to recognize that
the recompense that God will pay upon wickedness includes
false teachers and includes close teachers. It includes congregations
of people who, by their unrighteousness, suppress the truth. Those who
would attack the gospel heralder because they don't want the Word
of God to shake things up the way they are. Those who would
come against the truth. Those who, from their own pulpits,
would preach that the Bible is not necessarily authoritative.
You might say, who would preach that? I listened to six sermons
in the last four days or three days, I don't even know how many
days it's been, from a pastor who has devoured the authenticity
and the authority of Scripture from his own pulpit. has preached
against it. I think he's got Bart Ehrman's
sermon package. If you don't know who that is,
Bart Ehrman was once a seminary professor and pastor who left
the faith because of the higher criticism of the New Testament
variants. And that means the variations and the differences
he saw in different Greek texts. And he goes around the world
and he's made a name for himself. He wrote a book called Misquoting
Jesus. And it talks about how the scripture
is not reliable as a document, so therefore what is in it must
not be reliable. Friends, that is what the devil
has been doing from the beginning. And so it's not grave immorality
that's attacking the church. We'll get here in a second. It does, don't get me wrong,
wickedness attacks the church. The great wickedness. I mean,
look at the church in Rome. Look when Rome finally fell.
I mean, where was it? What was it? It was just about
like America. But it's not necessarily the
pitchfork, the hayfork, the devil, and the tail and the demonic-looking
wicked smoke coming out of the nose type thing. The beast is
not a horrifying thing. The beast is often very subtly
good. And I've said that several times
through teaching some of these things. But the beast is often, as a
matter of fact, most of the time, representing himself as good. An angel of light. An angel of
light. So that he might try to deceive
the church, and when the church sees through it, even those who
seem to be the church come against those who see the truth. And
then we end up with this infighting. My class today had some, the
very first question that came from one of the students this
afternoon at our homeschool association is, I have a friend I've been
trying to share the gospel with and he confronted me with the
idea that how can he trust Christianity because he doesn't see any actual
evidence of any spiritual unity amongst any professing Christians.
Well, that's great. This kid's 16 years old and he's
having these conversations with his peers. who are teenagers,
young adults, already seeing the hypocrisy of what the church
looks like. But the way I answer that question
is, where in the world can you go and put people together in
groups and not have problems? The grocery store? I've seen
bras in the grocery store. I've seen people get in the cashier
space and I've seen cashiers throw things at people. I've
seen, I mean, how about a concert? That's a joke. Pawn shop. I've seen people jump bad in
there. I've seen people getting fist
fights in Waffle House. It's wherever. Truck stop. Grandma's house. You think but
Walmart? Always Walmart. The people of
Walmart, don't look at it. I mean, you know, Jerry Springer
has a long... I don't even think he's still
on the air, but if he was, what is it now? Dr. Phil, there we
go. Dr. Phil, there's a long line of contestants in the world.
As long as there's people hanging out with at least one more person,
there's a contestant. Why? Because we are never going
to get along as people. Because we love ourselves and
our flesh and we're going to disagree. We're going to have
problems. So the church is not immune to that. The difference
is that many people who claim to be Christians in the church
are not inside of a congregation who love each other enough to
say, hey, can I help you through this? Hey, I asked you, could
I help you? Now you're just making a fool
of yourself. Hey, buddy, I'm getting somebody else to come
and talk to you. Hey, church, these people just aren't gonna
stop sinning. So then we just get them right out of there.
It's called church discipline. If church discipline was practiced
at the primary level, the churches would always seem unified. But we're not going to find places
to get along. And brothers and sisters, when
we find ourselves in the context of a normal American church,
we find that the Scripture is not really held to a high view.
How do you know? Because most of what's taught
and the commentary that comes out of the mouth that stands
in front of the church is not contextual most of the time.
It's not even implied most of the time. And as a matter of
fact, if you've ever, literally you haven't because I did a good
job of scraping them from the internet, but if you ever were
able to hear some sermons of mine from way back, When I was
preaching in Savannah, and then Brunswick, and then in the first
year in Virginia at least, you'd be like, oh my gosh, he's a heretic. He's abusing the Word of God. Why? Because I had a clear objective. This is what we want to do with
this service here, A. You can do anything else you
want to do, but if I'm going to read this text and do this,
I'm going to hear that song, and those lights are going to
go down this way, then we want it to point to this objective,
and this objective is what we want taught, so this is where
we're going to go, and then the response to that is going to
look like this. And it was easy. It's easy. It's
easy. If I want to sell you that guitar,
I can do it right now. I can sell it to you. At least
if you can't afford it or don't want to buy one, you will when
I get through. You might even learn how to play. You know what?
It's easy to learn how to play guitar. This one plays itself. You don't have to tell the truth
to sell something. Do you? You don't have to tell the truth.
Makes good company when you're lonely. I mean, I am sort of
lonely. I think I'll buy it. What's the point in it? The point
is, is that we are going to see as this world grows older, more
and more people professing to be Christians who are really
Babylon. And they're not going to join the ranks of Babylon
in comparison to their morality, in contrast to their morality.
In other words, we're not going to see a bunch of people leave
the church and become like the organizers of slaughterhouses. We're just going to see people
stand around and gather up teachers to scratch their itching ears
and they'll get bigger and richer and more powerful and have a
more of a voice. We're already seeing it. We're seeing denominations
split. We're seeing hierarchies of overseers
and Presbytery, not necessarily, but well, they've already had
their day in the sun. but where we see these large
groups of individuals that make an idol out of nationalism, an
idol out of homosexuality, an idol out of feminism, an idol
out of whatever it might be, and they find some social stand
to stand upon, and they make it their mantra. And then those
who are the body of Christ go, no, no, no, no, we're not going
to do it that way. Then y'all can go and leave. And these people leave. And the world looks on and goes,
see, the church can't even stay together. Well, because the church
wasn't there to begin with. Those that left were probably
the church. And then we're hanging out with people who call themselves
the church. The church is just a building that we hang out and
do something in for most people. That's the beast here. These
are the things that we see here. And I know we got to the point
last week where we were at verse 10. I mean, not verse 10, talking
about the 10, verse 11, 12, verse 12. And we see this picture of
the beast. We see that there's continually
going to be kingdoms, that it's not just individual wicked people,
that it's communities of people that turn to governments of people,
that turn to governments of nations, that turn into the world. You
may think we have political enemies, but really, the governments of
the world are not enemies with each other, they're enemies with
God. Beloved, I hate to bust your bubble, but America's always
been an enemy of God. Yes, did we start on some precepts
of really good biblical foundations of 70%? Yes, absolutely. But starting on the morality
and the equality and the laws that honor the Lord is not something
to revel in and go, look at us, we're godly. It's a command of
God. Jesus Himself comes to the table
and says, what do you do with the slave who has worked all
day so hard in the fields? And he's sweated and he's hurt
and he's bruised and he's worn out and he's worked for you to
make you money. What do you do when he comes
in after a long 12 hour day and he can barely walk? And I'm exaggerating
it to give you the picture. Do you say, oh you poor slave,
sit down and let me find you something to eat. You say, no
slave, where's my supper? Those are the words of Jesus.
And the parable there is that we do not get rewarded for doing
what we are commanded to do, but we sure will be punished. And the consequence of sin is
death. We are not to placate and pat
people on the back for being social movers and social justice
establishers and people who stand for some sense of morality. All
governments, Our Babylon and all governments will fall. There
is no nation but the kingdom of heaven, and there is no king
but Christ. Well, you get all that. Verse
12, 13 through 18. It's right there. I've already
preached it. I haven't even read it yet. It's
very easy. The ten horns you saw were the
ten kings. The ten kings. who have not yet
received royal power, but they will 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. Look
at this. John is given understanding, as the angel said. Don't marvel.
This requires understanding and wisdom. These ten kings, the
number that is figurative for the fullness of wickedness. How do you get that? Well, I
look at Revelation 2.10, 10 days of persecution by the devil.
Revelation 12.3, the dragon with 10 horns. Revelation 13.1, the
beast coming out of the sea with 10 horns. 17.3, 17.7, 17.12,
17.16 as you'll look down there, and
the 10 horns. So everywhere we see in this
writing, 10 is indicative of the fullness of what Satan is
in control of. And the scripture says that Satan
is in control of all the governments. But the beauty of it is, is that
the scripture teaches, Paul says that all the governments that
are made in the world are established by Jesus. So don't forget what
we've learned already in this apocalypse, is that Jesus sovereignly
rules over the devil's work. He sends him to do exactly what
he wants him to do, and he gives him the freedom, but he's still
bound to only do what he's told he can do, and he only exercises
that authority as God gives it to him. Why? Because God is sovereign
and God is working, even with evil, to bring about the fullness
of His decrees and of His promises and of His purposes as He sees
fit to do it. Because He is God. He's God. And one hour means
it's a short-lived time. All the kingdoms of the world
give their authority to the beast. Now do you remember what the
beasts were? The dragon is the devil, and there's a beast, and
then there's another beast. And the totality of the world
in this picture is under the control of the God of the air,
Satan, 2 Corinthians 4. And this God of the air, this
devil, this enemy of God, Lucifer, a created being, Everyone of
the world, even the kingdoms, are working for Him by the will
of God. By the will of God. And they hate God's people. So when the church, quote, quote,
quote, I'm not recording this tonight for some reason I forgot.
When the church is quote, now saying, oh it's okay, let's embrace
this part of the world. Oh, no, no, no, let's stop preaching
that part of the Word. Don't preach on sin. Don't preach
on sin, what Joe Osteen would say. No, no, no, no, no. Don't preach on the things that
the Scripture teaches about poverty. People want prosperity. In heaven's
debate, see, I need my sixth drawstring, so I'm not surely
going to preach that God's okay with you being poor. You want
to be poor? No, you don't want to be poor. See how this looks? And then you've got so-called
evangelical Christians embracing all sorts of evil in the world.
And even worse, some sects of Christianity, and I say that
very lightly, but it's the only way to describe it, are actually
turning a blind eye and saying, I don't care. Who cares? They're part of this. So that
all of the kingdoms give their complete power and authority
to the beast. John has given this understanding. that no governments
are exempt from this. None. None of them. And governments
may be at war, and we may, as a country, be at war with a good
cause, and we may be righteous in our actions. We may be fighting
those who are oppressing others, which is good. God has given
the government the sword for a reason. But friends, do not
let that fool you into thinking that it is God's government.
to be established forever and ever. He will bring an end to
it. And this revelation teaches us that He will bring an end
to it by the fact that every government will eventually be
ruled by Satan. They have one mind. Isn't that
funny? Everybody in our culture thinks
they're autonomous in their thinking. You know what that means? That
there's nothing that influences their thought. They're free thinkers,
they're philosophers. You know what a philosopher is? A slave
to something somebody else has already come up with, but nobody's
said it. Many things I've written down.
Man, that is just amazing. I can't wait to coin this phrase,
only to find an article a thousand years old somebody else already
wrote. Man. They're of one mind. And with
that one mind, what God has ordained... See, this is what's awesome.
We've already seen that the devil and the workers of iniquity are
after the church. They hate the church. But look at verse 14. They will
make war on the Lamb. They make war on the Lamb and
the Lamb will what? Cower before them? No. The Lamb will conquer them. This
is the message of hope that we see in this apocalypse right
here, as we've seen in every chapter thus far. We've seen
every time that the church is persecuted, every time that the
people of God are brought to the place of destruction, or
brought to the place of misery, or brought to the place of persecution,
we see the victory of the Lamb. what will happen. The entirety
of the world, all the kingdoms of the world, every human being
who is not sealed by God in faith in Jesus Christ, make war on
the Lamb. Is that not happening now? And
it's not happening to a holistic view that we can see. We see other parts of the world
that actually do care about religious freedom. We see other parts of
the world or of our communities and our culture. We see little
pockets of unbelievers who really do want to see good Christian
things happen. But that's not going to last
forever. And it doesn't matter who God puts in as the president
or the prime minister or the king. or in Parliament, or in
Congress, or on the throne. It doesn't matter, because everyone
that goes there is God's sovereign election for that role, and everyone
that sits on that is either going to be used by God to bring judgment,
or used by God to bring mercy amongst the people. But as we've
already learned, a church will never suffer God's judgment.
Though we may die in the midst of it, it's not for us. You hear
that, church? Though we may die in the midst
of it, it's not toward us. That's why we see that one day
God will vindicate our deaths in the midst of our suffering.
The Lamb conquers them. How? Look at this hyperbole,
but it's actually truth. Because He is the Lord and He
is the King. But He's not just the Lord and
He's not just the King. He is the Lord of all lords and
He is the King of all kings. That's what the scripture teaches
here. He's conquered them. How? We'll see it over in chapter
19. We've already seen it over in
chapter 16 and over in chapter 12, by the word of the Lamb, the
word of the testimony, the blood of the Lamb, is victorious. Jesus
Christ is the Lord of all things. He's the King of all things.
He is the King of every king that ever lived. And He's the
Lord of everything that ever lived. And so there is no one
above Him. No one can rule Him. No one can
stop Him. And as we know already in this
text, there is no one that can actually make war against Him. You ever had somebody that you
were going to visit and they had a little tiny teensy dog?
I mean a teensy dog. But that dog didn't know it was
really small. And it would yip and bark and
growl and scratch and run and snap. And it could not even reach
the flesh of your ankles. It would have to untie your shoes
maliciously. But it thought it could do something.
It made war against you, but you just laughed. Look at all
this war. Get away from the dog. I mean,
you know. There's nothing there. It's like
a butterfly attack. Oh no. What is that? That's the devil. A butterfly
attack against Jesus Christ. It's stupid. Huh? There's not even no comparison. I don't know what to compare
it to because there's no comparison. It's just like God is doing all
of this stuff and guess what? Those who are with Him are called
chosen and faithful. We are victorious, beloved. We're victorious. We're victorious. We win because Christ has already
won. Do not fear the consequences
of where this world is heading. You hear that? Do not fear your
neighbors. Do not fear your president. Do
not fear the laws. Do not fear the consequences
of this life. Do not fear. Do not fear. That's why I get so bent out
of shape when Pulpit's robbed God of His glory to speak politics. It's like showing up to a restaurant
to watch somebody else eat outside the car through the window. And then having your head chopped
off. That's ridiculous. Why would we rob the church of
feasting on the victory of Jesus, the Lord and the King of all
things, so that we can get the church excited about politics?
Thank God I wasn't a preacher during the American Revolution. Thank God Jonathan Edwards died. He probably would have died anyway
before the revolution. And yet we see books and volumes. And I'm not saying that as a
people we ignore, we put ourselves in a bubble and ignore what's
going on in the world. We don't ignore it. But friends, we cannot
charge the world to do something in contrast to what God is doing. Christ wins. And the angel said to me, the
waters that you saw where the prostitute is seated, verse 15,
are the peoples and multitudes and nations and languages. Who are these? Who's this Antichrist?
Everybody who's not in Christ. They are the Antichrist. One
big beast called Babylon and every leader of them. But look at verse 16. Look at what God does. This is
crazy. You know, it's sort of like,
I've had a lot of conversations through the years of people who
have been caught in infidelity. And it always amazes me the one
who actually is the new, usually the woman, the new woman in the
relationship who's been dating the married man secretly for
a couple of months, you know. It blows my mind that the new
woman in the relationship thinks this man is trustworthy. You
see what I mean? It's like, oh yeah, he's so sweet,
he loves me dearly. He said that to his last, oh
excuse me, his current wife. I said that to one girl and she
goes, well no, it's different. I said, sister, if I can call
you that, you are blind. And if the people of the world
think they're gonna have their day in the sun, With the devil
at their lead, they have gone and lost their mind. Look at
verse 16. And the ten horns you saw, the
leaders of this world, the workers of iniquity, and the beast will
hate the prostitute. They hate her. And she's the
one who drew them all. Remember now, she's the one who
drew them all in, got them all to come. And now they hate her,
and they'll make her desolate and naked. Remember how she's
closed? In royalty. Beautiful, enticing, powerful,
strong, diligent. And they're going to leave her
for dead and devour her flesh and burn her up with fire. What's
the point of that? Evil self-destructs. That's the point of that. Self-destructs. Look at it. So when you think of all these
different things, you think these seven things, these kingdoms,
and yet there's one to come and all of them here, the five have
died. Friends, evil self-destructs, nothing lasts. The powers of
this world never last. You can have a conversation with
my wife about all the monarchs of history, and she can give
you very good details of all of them, but they're all dead.
They're gone. Cromwell started chopping off
heads, they're like, okay, we submit. They're gone. They die. It's over. Evil self-destructs. Why? Verse 17. For God has put in
their free will to make them do what they wanted to do. No,
it doesn't say that. You show me free will in the
Bible, I will eat the very text you prove it from. Show it to
me. A bucket of chicken. It's an
open bet. You can beat that. You can show
us free will. Trey will give you a bucket of
chicken. 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. And the irony is this. Verse
18 says, and the woman you saw is the great city that has dominion
over the kings of the earth. So they're eating themselves.
They're destroying themselves because God caused it. How much more powerful does God
have to be? How much more relaxed do we have
to be? in order to trust in the sovereignty
of God. Because I don't know about you, but this text is probably
one of the strongest, most peaceful. I was thinking about this text
last night when the wind started blowing. I am a mess with a phobia
right now of wind. It blows me away. No pun intended. And I mean, I started hearing
the wind and the rain, little old tiny thunderstorm that I
used to go out in, look at. And ever since Matthew, I'm just,
I'm skittish. My heart started beating, I woke
up. Oh my gosh, I'm gonna die in my sleep. And I'm going, thank
God I had read this yesterday. What am I scared about? The wind? So what if my brand new almost
finished roof blows off before it's put on? Start over. What's the worst that could happen?
I die, ooh, heaven, kill me now. We have peace knowing that nothing
set before us is outside of God's control. The very wickedness
that come against us is coming against us by the very supremacy
of God. Man, that's good stuff. And it
ain't the first and it ain't gonna be the last time that we
see it in this text. But that is the point. Now we've
got like 40 seconds for a question and answer. But this, it needed
two weeks, I had to get this out. We preach no gospel when
we fear monger. What's a fear monger? Somebody
who profits on changing behavior and mindset through fear. In
our day we call it terrorism. A terrorist preacher will try
to scare you into salvation. A terrorist preacher will line
up things at Halloween to bring your youth group into a place
to sue people being cut up with saws and then die in car wrecks
and say, see if this happens to you tonight, you're gonna
go to heaven or hell. Where do you wanna go? I don't wanna die in a car wreck. Will
you say this prayer with me? You know how many kids I've seen
supposedly get saved because they were scared? None. I've seen them respond to an
emotional thing. And you know how much damage I've had to fix
through my years in ministry because of some of those things?
Now, yes, God has saved people through the gospel message in
spite of those things. But the damage is usually way
on the other side. Scaring people about the coming
of an Antichrist and the three and a half years of horror. Well,
you want to be raptured? Or you want to go through the,
what is it called? The Great Tribulation? Had your
eyelashes pulled out and your toes pulled off. You want to
go through that? No? Then come down front. Absolutely,
I'm coming right now. Move these chairs out of the
way. We got everybody coming. I mean, this building sets on fire and
I say, anybody want to live? Go out that door. Everybody goes. That's not the good news of God.
The good news of God is that you are condemned, but Christ
took your condemnation. God's wrath is just on you, but
Christ took your wrath for you. God's command to be holy is given
you. You cannot do it, but Christ
did it for you. That's the good news. And not
only is this true, He is vindicated, for He was raised to life, for
the wage that He paid was not His, for He had no sin, so God
resurrected Him from the dead. You realize that's why the resurrection
happened, don't you? Because He died innocently. Preachers would say, oh, let's
stop fighting about the supernatural stuff. Does it matter if Jesus
was raised from the dead? Yes. It does. And those who propagate
that type of thing and reduce the Bible to just something that
we look at for reference, they're Babylon. I believe they're Babylon. Now can God save? He saved us
out of there. He can save anybody. Be at peace, beloved. Be at peace. Nothing can stop our God. Romans 38 and 39, you know that
text. Let me read it to you. Romans
8, yeah, Romans what? Romans 8, 38 and 39. For I am sure, well, let me just
back up, 36. As it is written, for your sake,
we are all being killed all the day long. We are regarded as
sheep to be slaughtered. No, the question is, who shall
separate us from the love of God? Shall tribulation? No. Distress? No. Persecution? No. Nakedness,
famine, danger, sword? No. Even though we're carried
off as slaughter sheep? No. In all these things, we are
more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am certain
of this. that neither death, nor life,
nor angels, nor rulers, nor the things present, nor the things
to come, nor any power, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else
in all of creation shall be able to separate us from the love
of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. That's good. That's good. Nothing can separate us. Nothing. So we ought to sleep really good
tonight. And we ought to pray better because
we know that. We ought to encourage differently
because it is true. We ought to be able to share
our faith with such a peace that the world thinks we're crazy.
My prayer for you is that the peace of God will overwhelm you
in the truth of his gospel to the point that you have to pray
whether or not you turn to a sociopath because your burdens are so light.
And you might think, what? I've prayed that before. I wish
I prayed that every day, but I have seasons. I'm like, I'm
not worried about anything. Am I crazy? The Bible says that
the burden is light and the yoke is easy. Come unto me all who
are weary and heavy laden. I will give you rest. That is the rest that is promised
us now and by faith and one day face to face in victory. Let's
pray. We love you. We thank you, Father,
for a mighty victory over death, over sin, over the grave. over
the wickedness of this world, Father, that you've snatched
us from the domain of darkness, and you've transferred us into
the light of Jesus and into his kingdom, where he reigns as Lord
over all lords and king over all kings, and nothing shall
thwart your mighty hand. And Father, we shall stand with
him, the chosen ones, sealed and perfect, like him in all
ways. And it is in his name we pray,
amen.