Speaker: Dustin Scott

Passage: Revelation 18-19:10

REVELATION 18-19:10 | INVESTING IN ETERNITY

If you don’t know the significance of St. Patrick’s Day, it’s about a whole lot more than green beer and shamrocks. It’s about how a missionary took the Gospel to the very people who enslaved and mistreated him. And today in Ireland, if you’re celebrating St. Patrick’s Day, you’re supposed to dress up in green if you’re Catholic or saffron orange if you’re Protestant. And me forgetting that St Patrick’s Day was tomorrow is keeping you guys guessing. 

I also shaved off my beard and uncovered some new wrinkles and was thinking about the line from the Irish poet Yeats, where he says, “I curse the hand of time, which has so transfigured me.” 

But back on topic, we’re diving into Revelation 18-19, and I’m excited and honored to share this message with you because it’s going to relate heavily to economics. I don’t know if you’ve been reading the news lately, but economics is all the rage. 

There’s questions surrounding consumerism, inflation, market instability, international trade, and if it wasn’t hard enough to navigate, Revelation has to insert itself into the conversation and make it harder, right? 

I’m excited, though, and we’re going to be dealing with a lot in these two chapters. But before we dive in, I want to give this message a title, which is something I don’t usually do. I want to call it Investing In Eternity. 

How do we as a people invest in eternity? How do we keep ourselves undistracted in the concerns, the evils, the tumult of this world? So, before we dive into two excerpts from these passages, I want to pray, get ourselves settled, and then dive into the truth of Scripture. 

Would you pray with me? Holy Spirit, would You lead us and guide us as we study Your Word? Lord, there’s a lot of tumult in our world right now, and we need Your kingship, Your Lordship, and Your eternal wisdom to lead us through it. Holy Spirit, You are the one called the Lord and the giver of life. So, we give You Lordship, and we recognize that true life only comes from You. 

Would You give us ears to hear Your truth this morning? Would You give us discernment to push out those things which have deceived us, distracted us, led us astray, and would You return us to Your heart? We ask all these things in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And everyone said, Amen.

REVELATION 17:3-6 & 18:1-3

You know I’m going to make you do this. Would you stand with me for the reading of the Scriptures? Revelation 17:3-6. “So he carried me away in the spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting in a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was clothed 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 prostitution, and on her forehead was written a name, a mystery: ‘Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth’s abominations.’ And I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the witnesses to Jesus. And when I saw her, I was greatly amazed.” 

In verses 1-3 of chapter 18: “After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illumined by his splendor. He called out with a mighty voice, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! It has become a dwelling place of demons, a haunt of every foul spirit, a haunt of every foul bird, a haunt of every foul and hateful beast. For all the nations have fallen from the wine of the wrath of her prostitution, and the kings of the earth have engaged in sexual immorality with her, and the merchants of the earth have grown rich from the power of her luxury.’” 

THE BRIDE AND THE PROSTITUTE

You may be seated. Last week, Pastor Gary opened this section of John’s letter by stressing the sovereignty of God in the eventual destruction of evil. For John and the believers of the seven churches, this image, this symbol of the great prostitute, was an unambiguous representation of the Roman Empire. 

We find in verse 7 that this was a city seated atop seven hills. We find in verse 4 that this figure, this prostitute, resembles the goddess of Rome– Roma– who is clad in scarlet and purple. And we find that this city, this empire, was a military and economic power which exercised dominance over all the peoples, nations, and languages of the earth at this time. 

Now, at the same time, we have to remember that John is drawing from an extended Old Testament tradition in which women are used to personify people groups. We find in Revelation 17-22 that there are two women: there’s the Bride of the Lamb, representing God’s people, and there’s the prostitute who represents the unrepentant of the earth. 

We’re familiar with this. If we’ve read the Proverbs before, we know that God’s wisdom and those who would follow after wisdom are personified as a righteous woman who is content in her husband, whereas human sin and idolatry is personified as what? An adulterous woman who vies after other lovers for provision, attention, and affection. 

Revelation is picking up this same Scriptural tradition depicting God’s people as the Bride and the unrepentant world is the prostitute. And what’s the crucial distinction between these two people groups? The Bride finds contentment in the care and character of her husband, whereas the prostitute goes after other lovers for finance, protection, and fulfillment. 

The prostitute represents an unrepentant society which is greedy, discontent, and selling herself for short-term gain, whereas the Bride represents our calling as the church: worshipful, grateful, and trusting in the care and the protection of Jesus. 

JESUS WARNS HIS PEOPLE

Jesus is going to give a warning to His people within these chapters, in verses 4-5 of chapter 18. He says, “Come out of her, come out of this society, my people, so you do not take part in her sins and so you do not share in her plagues, for her sins are heaped as high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities.” 

These chapters are Jesus’ challenge to the Church. He’s asking us a question: are you living as the Bride, or are you living like the prostitute? Remember, the prostitute symbolizes selling yourself for momentary gain. 

God is compassionate. It’s the whole reason He had this letter sent to the churches. He understands that, in a certain sense, selling yourself is an alluring option within a sinful society. 

Think about it: no one has ever moved in with a romantic partner before without convincing themselves that somehow the emotional and the economic benefits of this arrangement justified the sin. No one has ever stolen money or invested in a wicked company without first believing that financial well-being somehow justifies wickedness. 

The command to leave Babylon, to leave Rome, to leave this wicked society is drawn from the book of Jeremiah, where Yahweh tells His people, “Come out of her, my people! Save your lives, each one of you, from the fierce anger of the Lord!” 

But it’s interesting, in the Book of Revelation, the command to “come out” isn’t a command to leave the city; it’s an appeal to leave the lifestyle. The Roman Empire was built atop sexual perversion and economic greed. The early Christians were under constant pressure to compromise with sin in order to achieve economic benefit. 

Trade guilds compelled their members to worship false gods, sex was treated like an item to be bought and sold in the marketplace, and human beings were used as resources rather than being honored as people made in the image of God. Doesn’t that sound familiar to a certain society which we know? 

THE EXCESSES OF ROMAN CULTURE

Jesus warns His people not to take part in these wicked practices. Revelation 18:11-13 document the ravenous consumerism of Roman society. Now, I’m going to read it; bear with me, it’s a bit of a mouthful. 

“And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn for her, since no one buys their cargo anymore, cargo of gold, silver, jewels, pearls, fine linen, purple, silk, scarlet, all kinds of scented wood, all articles of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron, marble, cinnamon, spice, incense, myrrh, frankincense, wine, olive oil, choice flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and chariots, slaves– and human lives.” 

At first, John’s list comes across a bit humorous. If we read ancient historians like Pliny the Elder or Suetonius or Tacitus, they complain constantly about the excessive spending of Roman society. And if we read this passage, it almost reads like a Vogue magazine description of the perfect Roman household. 

Yet this twenty-eight-item list of cargo is theologically and economically significant. Why? Well, if we go back to John’s numerology, we find that the number four represents the four corners of the earth– all of creation. Seven represents the number of completion. 

What is John trying to tell us? That Roman sin is consuming all of the earth’s resources. It gets more intricate than that: the economic significance of the number twenty-eight is ancient merchants and accountants wouldn’t use their fingers– at least not directly– to do complex math. They would use their knuckles. And if you look at your hand, you’re like, Wait, one, two, three, four, five… there’s fourteen knuckles on each hand, coming to a grand total of twenty-eight. 

Why does this list have twenty-eight items? It’s showing us a picture. Roman households needed a professional accountant to inventory their possessions because there was too much stuff for the average person to count. That makes us a little uncomfortable as Americans, doesn’t it? There might be a husband in here this morning, elbowing his wife, going, We’re not going to Costco anymore after church. Sam’s Club is better. 

It’s at this point that the Greek text is going to do something astonishing. When speaking of slaves, John doesn’t use the typical Greek word for slaves, which is douloi. He opts for another term, which is sōmata, which means “bodies.” Within this sinful society, people have turned the human body– a person made in the image of God– into a commodity to be bought, consumed, and destroyed. 

The next phrase, psychas anthrōpōn, which means the “souls of people,” is also significant because it shows us that people are quite literally selling their souls in this society in order to get ahead. 

The symbol of the prostitute illustrates the sinful consumerism of the civilization. She’s depicted as sitting or reclining in verse 3, which denotes the worship of pleasure and leisure. She’s adorned in precious textiles and jewels, which is the worship of finance and material abundance. And she holds a cup which is gold on the outside, but on the inside is full of abominations, which represents the worship of external appearances rather than inward purity. 

The Roman citizenry was willing to debase themselves and exploit the world in every imaginable way just to get a little bit more money, a little more pleasure, and a little more success. 

THE COST OF SIN

And Jesus invites the seven churches of Asia Minor to consider the profound cost of compromising with Roman sin. It says in verse 24, “In you was found the blood of the prophets and of the saints and of all who have been slaughtered on the earth.” 

I believe Jesus is inviting us to consider the same dilemma. Rome was a wicked, wicked society. If you wanted to engage in sexual sin, you could walk down the road and go to a brothel or to a cultic temple prostitution establishment– I don’t know if that’s the formal term, but that’s the term I’m going to use. If you wanted to, you could buy merchandise from all over the world, and it was built by slaves. 

But we live in a society where you can go to a brothel through your phone. And we live in this society where you can buy merchandise built by slaves, and it comes to your house with overnight delivery. 

I believe Jesus is inviting us to consider the same dilemma: how are we selling ourselves for monetary benefit today? How are we compromising not with Roman sin, but with American sin? And what sexual and economic destruction does this compromise lead to in our world? 

Let’s think about it. Sexual sin: that could be extramarital sex, pornography use, posting sexual images on social media, adultery, prostitution, homosexuality, unbiblical divorce, and remarriage. What havoc does that create in our world? Parentless children, broken families, abortion, bodily disease, spiritual and psychological devastation, addiction, human trafficking and sex slavery, self-mutilation, child abuse, and the list goes on and on and on. 

What about economic sin? The faithless pursuit of money, lack of generosity, flippant accrual of debt, financial irresponsibility, ravenous consumerism, unethical investments. What do these things lead to in our world? Foreign slavery and exploitation, sweatshops, financial ruin, bankruptcy, wars of imperialism to rob other nations of their natural resources, economic instability, the destruction of God’s physical creation, and the list goes on and on and on. 

Sin is a big deal. John is making a point here; he’s telling these churches, Remember that sin destroys. God’s going to judge it. 

And before we get too ahead of ourselves, this is a pet peeve of mine because whether the political system is run by a Democrat or a Republican, something we love to do is go, Oh, it’s their fault that society is this way. No, it’s not because we learn in verse 3 that the prostitute rides on top of the beast; the beast serves the prostitute. So, when we see wicked rulers in our world, they’re nothing more than a reflection of our own sin. 

HOW DO WE LIVE IN A SINFUL SOCIETY?

Jesus exhorts the seven churches and us to remember whose team we’re on. He’s telling these churches, Stop selling yourself short in exchange for momentary benefit. God has made you a member of the Bride. You’re to be faithful to Him. You’re summoned to be a people of life, light, and new creation, not a people who partner with death. 

We are to be actively investing in the building of His Kingdom, not this kingdom of wickedness. So, how do we do that? It seems like sin is everywhere. It seems like we can’t go to the store and buy lunch without somehow partnering with some evil in the world. So, what do we do? 

He gives us an answer in Revelation 19:6-8. It says, “Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder peals, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord 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; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure’– for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.” 

As we close this section of Revelation– which, by the way, guys, the good news is, this is the last dark section. We’re on to the good stuff next week. Who here is excited? I am. New creation’s awesome stuff. So, as we close this cycle of Revelation, we find that the Bride of the Lamb– God’s people– are clothed in holy works. 

It’s interesting. Pastor Gary talked to us last week about the trade of Tyrian purple, which was one of the most wicked facets of the Roman economy, and Ephesus was a manufacturing center of these purple garments. And the Lord rebuked the church of Ephesus for compromising and forgetting their first love. 

Yet if we go back to the Book of Acts, we find that there’s a certain woman, a purple merchant, and her name is Lydia, and she uses her business acumen and her financial mind to create and invest in the building of God’s Kingdom. Which means that it is fully possible to live in a society without living from a society. 

WE ARE INVESTING IN ETERNITY

God has provided us with many gifts: relationships, sexuality, finance, time. And we can abuse these gifts in order to ravish, consume, and destroy, or we can use these gifts in accordance with God’s purpose, to give, to create, and to invest in eternity. 

We find in Isaiah 65 and 66, Ezekiel 48, 2 Peter 3, Revelation 20-22 that– and this is a pet peeve of mine, so bear with me– eternity isn’t some disembodied, boring existence as a spirit floating around in heaven. That sounds terrible, right? What are we going to do, count the countless minutes of our boredom by floating around on clouds and plucking on the twenty-seven strings of our harp? That’s not a Christian picture of eternity. There was an ancient religion which believed that, it was called Gnosticism. 

Christianity teaches that in eternity, we will live in resurrected bodies, in God’s new creation, Heaven and earth in perfect unity. It’s going to be a world which, according to Scripture, has mountains, rivers, forests, cities, natural wonders, righteous government, unending adventures, precious treasures. And in the words of Ezekiel 48, the best news of all: the Lord is there. All of it is encompassed in His eternal glory. 

That’s our destiny. That’s the eternity we’re investing in. But in the here and now, God has given us an opportunity to shape eternity through our present life and time in this city, in this region. And we’re facing trying economic times in our nation and in our world, right? And things could get a lot harder. We have history to remind us of that. 

GOD WALKS WITH US IN BLESSING AND HARDSHIP

But why do we assume that God’s intention for His people is that we would despair and freak out like the rest of culture does? Why do we assume that the church should mimic the pattern of an idolatrous society rather than living by faith? 

Yes, it’s true, God may call His people to go through the same lack and financial difficulty as everyone else. But at the same time, He may enable His people to walk in supernatural favor through a season of natural hardship. Because what do the prosperity gospel and the poverty gospel have in common? They’re both false gospels. 

The real Gospel, the true Gospel of Scripture, is the Triune God’s saving of humanity in and through the person of Jesus and by the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is the true Gospel. And through the Gospel, sometimes God requires the pain, the persecution, in the worldly suffering of His people. 

And I don’t know about you, but in my experience, He doesn’t really apologize when He makes me suffer. Unfortunately, I’ve complained about that, but I think it went to the complaint department. 

At the same time, though, God also lavishes good gifts, Fatherly blessing, and overwhelming provision on His people. In the words of Pastor Greg, “Prosperity is too good of a word to let the heretics claim it.” God’s generosity is prosperous. 

Look around you. We eat three meals a day. We live in houses which are luxurious and wonderful. We don’t really ever have to worry about being cold or being hot, except in the momentary times where we’re running from our house to our car. God is overwhelmingly generous. 

And I think, as human beings, we love to embrace a one-size-fits-all approach to faith because it insulates us from the need of regularly hearing His voice and giving Him government over our lives. We’d rather have a formula than have His voice. 

And within the New Testament alone, there are numerous ways in which God might ask us to invest in eternity. God tasks some believers with the vocation of marrying, building homes, having children and parenting, which, according to Genesis 1:28, was the very first commandment that God gave humanity. 

God calls others to a life of celibacy and singleness, which, according to Jesus, is a very sharing in the eternal life of the angels. 

God will draw some into success in business, to create jobs, to generously give, to dispense finance to His Kingdom, whereas He’ll ask others to surrender their possessions and trust Him with their needs. 

At this present moment, God is inspiring some of us to enter into new seasons. Maybe that’s engagement in marriage. Maybe that’s having a child for the first time. Maybe it’s starting a business or a charity or a new ministry at the church. 

Whereas God is comforting others at the close of a season, whether that’s turning away from a former life, saying goodbye to a past loved one, or surrendering a human dream, desire, or relationship. 

INVOLVE GOD IN ALL PARTS OF YOUR LIFE

The gist is, you will never know what God intends for your life unless you surrender control and you actually talk to Him. 

So, have you talked to Him about your resources? Have you built a monthly budget in prayerful conversation with His voice? If not– and this is a bold statement– you’re in sin because that resource belongs to Him, not to you. And if you’re like, Pastor Dustin, I’m not in sin. Leave me alone. Go read James 4 and find out. 

Have you built a weekly calendar with Him? If God has numbered our days, if He could tell me in this moment, Dustin you’re going to live for ten more years, three months, two days and eleven hours and five minutes and four seconds– I think I did that right– wouldn’t it make sense to talk to Him in my use of this time? 

Do you research your investments with Him? Where are we at on time? I want to tell you guys a story. My wife’s in the room, so I’ll be careful here. We both kind of made a mistake on this front. 

It’s ironic that I’m teaching you this message about financial investment in the Kingdom because I feel like I’m the least qualified to do it on our pastoral team. You could have Greg do it. You could have Daniel do it. I’m in a spot where I need the Lord’s wisdom because I literally have no idea what I’m doing. 

And so Kelly and I are figuring out ways to invest our money. I’m asking the Lord, Would You give me supernatural wisdom? Because I’m trying to figure this out, but I have no idea. And one night, He wakes me up in the middle of the night, and I just have this pounding heartbeat, and it’s like, Wake up, Kelly. She’s the one who has the app on her phone where we change money between accounts. Wake her up.

And I’m like, Lord, She’s nine months pregnant. Please don’t make me do this. And I just hear, Wake her up, wake her up, wake her up, wake her up. So, I finally do it. I don’t do it with the best husbandly form, and she’s a little frustrated too. 

And I felt like the Lord said, Sell everything right now. Don’t wait another day. And you know what’s dumb? I didn’t pay attention to it. And you know what happened? The next day, the market crashed, and our stocks went from being worth seven thousand dollars to two. 

He was telling me what to do, and I wasn’t listening. He will talk to us about this stuff. He will inform our research. If we’re asking the question, God, how do I invest in a company which is creating life, rather than wickedness? He will help us through the process. So, do you ask Him when you buy shares, when you assume loans, when you execute new business ideas? 

Do you allow Him to govern your generosity, whether it’s your tithing, your offering, or giving to specific needs? And do you speak with Him in order to hear His heart for the poor, for the widow, and the single mother, for the parentless child, or the elderly or the disabled or the foreigner who lives within our lands? And do you ask Him how He intends for you, individually, to use your time, your finance, and your resources to serve these needs and expand His Kingdom? 

Have you talked to him about your sexuality? In married life, have you given Him space to speak into how you love and romance your spouse? In singleness, have you spoken to Him about the purpose and the duration of your present season? 

Do you submit to the truth of His Scriptures regarding your sexuality, or do you try to make it your own thing? Do you ask for His wisdom and His comfort in purifying distorted desires and overcoming human weakness? And do you seek the accountability of His people when conquering sexual sin? 

God has placed us in our time, city, and region to invest in eternity. 2 Corinthians will tell us that the project of new creation has already begun: “If anyone be in Christ, there is a new creation.” 

And it’s an immense honor for me as a Christian to be doing it with you all, even with all of our and my own hang-ups, weaknesses, sufferings, doubts, difficulties. And there is no one-size-fits-all approach to faith. God is not a formula; He’s a Triune God of three persons. 

And if we want to live differently in our society, if we want to refuse the trappings of corruption and compromise with evil, then we have to be a people who hear and follow His voice. We have to give Him control. 

So, in our spiritual disciplines, in our relationships, in our finance, our time, every aspect of our life, have we given Him the space and attention to lead us? Are we daily in the Scriptures? Are we daily in prayer? Are we talking to Him about the struggles we face as we navigate our culture, society, and economy? Because if we let Him lead us, the gift of Scripture is that those holy works will clothe us in eternity. 

And here’s the paradox of it all: we are the ones who do the work, but He is the one who clothes us, which means we cannot do His work if we’re not letting Him lead us. So, my challenge to you: talk to Him, give Him control, let Him guide you, and then see what He does through your life. 

Let’s pray. Holy Spirit, as we look at this passage, which, in a moment can feel so overwhelming– there’s so much evil in our world we don’t even know how to get away with it. It’s almost as if every decision we make is implicated in sin. Lord, the only sure guide through it is You. The only one who can purify us is You. 

So, would You give us hearts which long for Your presence? Would you give us hearts which grieve any lost time with You? Would You give us hearts which love to sit with You each and every day, and give You guidance in the leadership of our life? 

Lord, in the recurrent statement of this book, would You give us ears to hear what Your Spirit is saying to the churches? Purify us, make us holy, guide us in the work and faith we do for You. We ask this in Your name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.