The New Testament reading this morning is taken from the book of Revelation, reading chapter 17 verses 1 through 8. Then one of the seven angels, who had the seven bowls, came and talked with me, saying to me, come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot, who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast, which was full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and precious stones and pearls, having in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written, mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots, and of the abominations of the earth. I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, and when I saw her I marveled with great amazement. But the angel said to me, why did you marvel? I will tell you the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. The beast that you saw was, and is not, and will ascend out of the bottomless pit and go to perdition. And those who dwell on the earth will marvel, whose names are not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. The Word of the Lord. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, according to Matthew, chapter 3 and beginning of verse 7. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come. Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father, where I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones. And even now, the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree, which does not bear good fruit, is cut down and thrown into the fire. Indeed, I baptize you with water unto repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly clean out his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but he will burn up the chaff with uncountable fire. Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, thanks be to the Lord, let us pray. Lord Jesus, this is your word given to us, your people in this day, in this time and for this moment. And again, we ask that you would give us your spirit. By your spirit, we might see and know, understand and embrace this. And I pray that you would seal it to our hearts that we might be shaped by your word, and then give us your grace to go forth that we might live in accordance with it. Come to us to these ends. We ask in your name, men may be seated. Just before the service this morning, and after praying for the service, one of our elders, Dr. Frank James gave me a little three by five card. And written on that three by five card are these words, the pulpit is the throne of God from where he wills to govern our souls. The pulpit is the throne of God from where he wills to govern our souls. That is from a sermon preached by John Calvin on a passage from 1 Timothy. And when he gave me this card, I thought someone else ought to preach this morning. Now, I'll tell you what is reflected in that statement is a great deal of theology, a theology of the church and for the church theology which reflects things as they really are right now for you and for me at this moment in this day, in our time. And we don't see what is true. That is, we don't see what is true with our physical eyes. And it is not a matter of material things. It is not a matter of physical sight. But as I've been trying to encourage this over the last several weeks, these are things which are true and are seen with the eyes of faith. And the mystery is, the wonder is, the remarkable thing is that somehow, in and through the foolishness of preaching, in and through the foolishness of the activity of this particular fool, God governs our souls and regulates our lives and shapes our thinking and orders the desires of our hearts and guides and directs our paths. And he does that. And he does it first of all, it seems to me by getting our thinking, our minds into conformity with his thinking and with his mind. And I have to say, I have to confess to you that one of the things I've been struck by, myself, is I've tried to make sense of this book of the revelation and work through it. One of the things I've been struck by is how far removed my thinking is from the thinking of God and how differently I see the world from the manner in which God sees the world. But more and more I want from my perspective or view of things to be that of God's. More and more I want my perspective and view of things to be the heavenly view and perspective of things which is God's view. And brothers and sisters, in the past, I've suggested to you that when you walk through those doors back there, when you cross that threshold, you are passing into a different world. You are coming out of the world of material things, you are coming out of the earthly order, you are entering into the sanctuary of Almighty God, you are going up into the heavenly places, you are drawing near to Zion, you are coming into the Holy City Jerusalem and everything here, everything in this place is of a different order. And this experience right now is inherently and essentially supernatural and heavenly. The problem is for us that we are so accustomed to living out there in that other world. We've been so shaped and influenced by it that it's difficult for us to make the transition. And it's difficult for us to see things in the way that God sees them. And it's difficult for us to love the things that God loves and it's difficult for us to order our lives accordingly. It's just playing difficult. You know that and I know that. But that is what this is all about. And that particular idea has particular application and relevance to a consideration of the book of the revelation. This last week, Barbara and I rented the movie Immortal Beloved. I don't know if you've seen this movie. It's a story based upon the life of Ludwig von Beethoven but it's highly speculative. And it all revolves around a particular piece of correspondence. Correspondence recovered after Beethoven's death. The movie is called Immortal Beloved and it depicts the attempt of his agent and Fred, Anton Schindler, to find this mysterious woman who is the subject of this particular piece of correspondence. She is referred to as the Immortal Beloved. Nobody knows who she is and so Schindler is about the business of trying to find her and he catches up with three different women thinking that each of them tells you something about Beethoven's life. Thinking that each of them is the Immortal Beloved but you never find out who the Immortal Beloved is. It remains a mystery because Beethoven never disclosed her true identity. A couple of interesting things about that. Number one, you learn things about people by reading their correspondence. And number two, God has not left us in the dark about some things.
God hasn't left us clueless about who he is, what he cares about, his passions and how he sees the world. Someone has referred to the scriptures as the autobiography of God. They disclose those things. They reveal those things. And again, one of the things that I've come to see, I believe, in working through the book of the Revelation, while the rest of the world and all of the historians of all of the nations and peoples of the earth don't have much regard for this comparatively insignificant event which transpired in 70 A.D. The destruction of Jerusalem, the demolition of the temple, the severing of God's special relationship with a special people, God's divorcing of Israel while the rest of the historians of the world don't care about that incident. While for most historians it doesn't warrant even a footnote in the annals of human history, for God there isn't anything up to that moment of greater significance. Save the work of the Lord Jesus Christ upon the cross. What happened in 70 A.D. is God's divorcing of Israel. The divorce is commonplace for us. We don't feel the weight of it. Unless we have been in it and a whole book is dedicated to God's divorce proceedings against Israel. Now our thinking really can be ought to be shaped by these extraordinarily significant events because as I've said before, what happens with the end of one thing is that it leads to the birth or in a sense the continuation of something which is even greater. The end of God's relationship to Israel is tragic and it is heartbreaking and it is a divorce. What you see as a part of the complex of all of those events is the ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ where He is seated, distanced in glory, ruling and reigning upon His throne and He is now in the business of extending His kingdom into all the nations of the earth. And He will not be denied in His purpose. And all of history from this moment, all of history is the outworking of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the ascended and risen conquering and victorious Christ seated upon His throne. It is all the outworking of His purpose and you as a Christian this morning by God's grace have become the ally of the great king and are a co-laborer, a co-worker with Him in the business which He is about. And His business, His passion, is the gathering of the nations to Himself that an assembled multitude might worship and adore and delight in Him for all eternity. You see when John Calvin says the pulpit is the throne of God from where He wills to govern our souls, part of what is included in that idea is this idea that our thinking be ordered according to the thinking of God and unconvinced that this is the thinking of God. I wouldn't be standing here telling you this if I weren't. And so while on the one hand the book of the Revelation records something which is extraordinarily tragic, what it records is a point of departure for the whole rest of history and we are a part of the outworking of that plan and our thinking should be in accordance with that. Now I've also suggested to you that what is revealed here and what is directed to this generation of believers also has application to people in subsequent generations and that is us. And it is important for us to learn from God's dealings with His people in previous generation. It is important for us to observe what it is that leads to this act of God severing His relationship to Israel and basically what leads to this extraordinary act, what leads to these divorce proceedings is the adultery, the harlotry, the covenant unfaithfulness of God's covenant people who is Babylon, who is the harlot or the harlot, Babylon is Jerusalem, Israel. What is the basis for saying that? The language and background of the Old Testament over and over and over again in the Old Testament when God describes the unfaithfulness of Israel He uses the language and the imagery of adultery. He uses the language and imagery of faithlessness to marriage vows. The background of this is the Exodus. God delivered Israel from her bondage in Egypt and brought her to Sinai and at Sinai he wed her to himself. He brought her into a relationship with himself characterized by love and commitment and delight. She was the apple of his eye. She was his precious bride. One who had been cast aside, one who had been abused but one upon whom he had had mercy. Look with me to the Old Testament passage in Ezekiel chapter 16 and this is rather lengthy but it is a recollection conveyed through Ezekiel to Israel reminding the nation of her origin and the tender mercies of her God. Chapter 16, verse 1, again the word of the Lord came to me saying, son of man, caused Jerusalem to know her abominations and say, thus says the Lord God of Jerusalem, your birth and your nativity are from the land of Canaan and your father was an amerite and your mother a hitite. As for your nativity, on the day you were born your naval cord was not cut nor were you washed in water to cleanse you. You were not rubbed with salt nor wrapped in swaddling clothes, all purifying, preserving and keeping kinds of ordinances. No eye pitted you to do any of these things for you to have compassion upon you but you were thrown out into the open field when you yourself were loathed on the day you were born. He is reminding them of their origin that their origin was in the midst of paganism and if you know anything about the paganism of Canaan or the paganism of the amerite. So the paganism of the hitites, you know that its practices are practices which ought not be talked about in mixed crowds in public with both men and women and then also children present. Don't for a moment think that these peoples depicted in national geographic living in these far away places lead idyllic and peaceful and human kinds of existences, your practices are much like the practices of the Canaanites and the amerites and the hitites where child sacrifice was a regular part of religious experience. Where the little Joshua Aguilars and Aaron Junkmans of this world were offered to gods to placate them and appease them and set aside their wrath in order that crops might be produced in order that there might be bountiful harvests. The flesh and bone of parents was offered up and God is reminding Israel that that is her origin when I passed by you and saw you struggling in your own blood I said to you in your blood live. Yes I said to you in your blood live and made you thrive like a plant in the field and you grew and matured and became very beautiful. Your breasts were formed, your hair grew but you were naked and bare and when I passed you by again and looked upon you indeed your time was the time of love so I spread my wing over you and covered your nakedness. Yes I swore and oathed to you and entered into a covenant with you and you became mine. Says the Lord God and I washed you in water and I thoroughly washed off your blood and I anointed you with oil and I clothed you an embroidered cloth and gave you sandals of badger skin. I clothed you with fine linen and covered you in silk I had torn you with ornaments and put bracelets upon your wrists and a chain upon your neck. I put a jewel in your nose and earrings in your ears and a beautiful crown on your head and you were adorned with gold and silver. Your clothing was a fine linen silk and embroidered cloth. You ate pastry of fine flour, honey and oil you were exceedingly beautiful and succeeded to royalty. And your fame went out among the nations because of your beauty because it was perfect through my splendor which I bestowed upon you says the Lord your God. There is a passage in Isaiah in which God says my glory I will share with no one and what God is intending to communicate through Isaiah is that God is jealous to preserve his own dignity and the proper regard which all men and nations should have for him because he alone is God and he alone is glorious and no one else is. And it is wrong for anyone to put himself or herself in the place of God. My glory is mine and I will share it with no one says God and yet here in this passage God says that his splendor, his glory, he is pleased to bestow upon his beloved the object of his affection so that as she stands in the midst of the nations she radiates that glory to the nations around and the nations observe it and the nations say that is glory, that is compassion, that is kindness, that is mercy, that is blessedness and we want to possess it and the nations would stream to Israel. So they would come because of her glory because she had been united to the one true God who was supremely glorious and by living in the shadow of Almighty God this glory would be conferred upon her. Oh you see the language of the text how intimate, how personal, how relational it is and God had wed himself to Israel and had adorned her with splendor but then verse 15 but you trusted in your own beauty and you played the harlot because of your fame and poured out your harlotry on everyone passing by who would have it. The second chapter of Jeremiah is even more graphic than this and so is the third that Israel was pleased to commit adultery with every passer by under every tree and every opportunity. You took some of your garments and adorned multi-colored high places for yourself and played the harlot on them such things should not happen nor be. You've taken your beautiful jewelry from my gold and my silver which I had given you and made for yourself mail images and you played the harlot with them. You took your embroidered garments and covered them and you set my oil in my incense before them also my food which I gave you the pastry of fine flour oil and honey which I fed you. You set it before these idols as sweet incense and so it was over and over again in the Old Testament Israel is depicted in that way as having played the harlot. The harlotry in the Old Testament describes covenant unfaithfulness and it is always and me used of Israel and or Judah or her cities and towns except in two instances. The imagery of harlotry is used also of tire and also of Nineveh but in each of those cases tire and Nineveh are called harlots after they have been converted to God by the preaching of the prophets and when they are subsequently unfaithful and returned to their idols they are again accused and justifiably so of being adulterers. You see the Bible always is its best interpreter its own best interpreter and if we want to understand who the harlot is if we want to know who the Babylon of chapter 17 is that needs to be understood in the context of the teaching of the Bible regarding Israel. Over and over and over again is warned about her harlotry and her adultery but at this particular time as John warned Israel the acts is laid at the root of the tree and every branch which is not fruitful will be cut down and will be cast into everlasting burnings. And that was a word for Israel and this 17th chapter is a reference to Israel Jerusalem verse five refers to this mystery this name that is written upon her head mystery Babylon the great the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth it is mystery that Babylon is Babylon. It is no mystery that Rome is Babylon but it is a great mystery and it causes John to be amazed with amazement is the literal rendering it causes John to be greatly amazed to learn that Jerusalem has become Babylon and that God in the 16th chapter has visited the full measure of his judgment and wrath upon her folks it is a heartbreaking scene it is a tragic scene and again while it has reference to that particular day that particular time it has application down through the generation. I think it's something for us to be aware of something for us to be concerned about in our own day and time what is the nature of Jerusalem's harlotry what is the nature of Israel's adultery whether you read the text here in the revelation or you go back to Ezekiel or Jeremiah or any place else what is it bottom the foundational thing the basic idea is that Israel forgot that she was a people set. Apart that she is different from the world around that her citizenship really is in heaven and not here upon this earth and the place of her sister defines how she thinks about herself and how she conducts her business and Israel the old testament Israel of God falls under the curse of God and the judgment of God because Israel in one way or another has wed herself married herself in an adult. She has established on holy alliances she has very very gradually allowed the world to bleed into her life so that she is barely indistinguishable from the nations around. God reminds us that God's dealings with Israel God's dealings with the old testament people of God first Corinthians 10 11 God's dealings with them are for our instruction that by them we might be warned we might take care that we might not make the same mistakes and the principal mistake of Israel is forgetting where she came from. Who she is and where she is going and by forgetting that developing these allegiances and these alliances with the world which is passing away it is so hard to talk about these things and realize that by implication you may run the risk of criticizing people who are brothers and sisters in Christ who are the dearly beloved of Christ you may run the risk of saying things which could be misunderstood and which could come back to haunt you. But I have to say to you it is my growing conviction that even gelicalism in the United States of America is increasingly powerless because she is increasingly worldly because she has said in one way or another if only we can gain acceptance with the world if only we can be viewed as relevant. If only we can be viewed as attractive if only we can soften or somehow adjust or alter or change this very confrontational very piercing message of the gospel if only we can subtly change it not giving away its core not giving away its essence but dressing it up a little bit so that the world finds it attractive. So the world can come in then we'll be able to win the world then we'll be able to change the world then we will see people come to Jesus Christ. It is there and you know it is there and you know that you've been affected by it I hear it I wrestle with it myself with my neighbors I think you know I play golf maybe I should spend more time on my swing. I know this sounds silly but brothers and sisters I wrestle with these kinds of things maybe if I were a five handicap instead of an irregular 12 maybe if I were a consistent five what my neighbors out to the golf course and they'd watch me rip these drives down the center of the fairway and drain these 25 wood putts for birdie and then be compelled to listen to the gospel. And that may be exaggerated and that may be extreme but brothers and sisters that is death to the gospel is death. The Church of Jesus Christ in every age has always been compelling because she has been different and the extent to which we adjust or accommodate in order to be accepted by a world whose categories and thinking are radically opposed to who and what we are by nature is the extent to which the power will be gone power will be gone. Someone said to me last this last week that he had heard someone refer to this whole issue and summarize the whole thing by saying be relevant or be insignificant. And my basic response though I tell you I'm insecure and afraid and uncertain as to how to put this into practice in my own life and in our life as a church my response was to say the relevance of the church has always had to do with her distinctiveness. The relevance of the church has always had to do with the compassion which she has extended with the kindness which she has extended with the concern which she has extended to the members of the fold to those outside who find themselves in trouble. The relevance of the church has never been a matter of becoming like the world in order that the world might embrace the gospel. The relevance of the church has always had to do with the church struggling and fighting painfully to rid herself of the influences of the world and give expression to the gospel in every area of life as salt in the midst of the world. Folks I know this is a hard kind of a word it's hard for me to think about it it's hard for me to preach it but you see I get this card before the service which says the pulpit is the throne of God from where he wills to govern our souls and the God of heaven and earth the govern and rule. Because he loves life and not death so I ask us with great thoughtfulness and sobriety to consider what God has done in Israel and learn from this and I'm not talking about throwing away our clothes or our cars or wearing strange hairdos or funny shirts but I am asking us that we be persevering and relentless. In ordering our lives according to the councils of God in order that in our midst we might know his power and his blessedness and so many the distinctive set apart people of God who will be relevant to the world precisely because they are different. God grant us grace to order our lives in that way let us pray together Lord Jesus Christ King and head of the church lover of our souls and press upon us where it is that we have come from and who we are and where it is that we are going and grant us grace to order our lives in the entirety of our living after the councils of your will. Oh Lord we are a lump of clay without form or shape on the potter's wheel would you be pleased or whatever means you're pleased to employ would you be pleased the fashion and shape us into something of splendor for the sake of your own name and for the good of the nations of the world. We ask in Jesus name Amen.