1. "If you asked a fish about his day, he might not even mention the water. It's just too obvious. Well, I think that we have a spiritual interest in trying to notice what those most important things are about us that we might take as being too obvious to even mention."

2. "Let me tell you both humbly and confidently as a Christian, I don't think we're born knowing the most important things about ourselves. And I think we even have a vested interest in not knowing them."

3. "We love things that are as lasting as bubbles, and we neglect things that will last longer than the pew you're sitting in or this building or the government you work for."

4. "The cemeteries of this city are filled with indispensable people. Too many of us are living our lives to be one of those indispensable people God will judge."

5. "We value that which we are destined to lose with every day that passes. And we do the silliest, most stupid things."

6. "People pleasing is the drug of choice for many today, but it is a relentless master. Its demands never stop. Be very careful about living your life to get a laugh or a look of approval or an invitation or a job."

7. "Pride is a brittleizer. And because you don't want to be hurt, you will move away from people who tell you the truth and you will just go to those who want you around for whatever reason so they will flatter you."

8. "Humility is like that good Internet connection in our spiritual lives. You get that one right, and it will help you grow in every other way that you need to grow. But you get that one wrong, and your growth is going to be slow and spotty."

9. "One of the things we see again and again in the Bible is that the doomed don't realize they're doomed. That's why I prayed that God will wake us up today."

10. "This world makes promises and this world doesn't keep them. God makes promises to us in Jesus Christ and he keeps every one of them. You need to know this because this world is passing and God will judge and he will reign forever."

Observation Questions

1. According to Revelation 17:1-2, how is the "great prostitute" described in terms of her influence, and what did the kings of the earth and the inhabitants of the earth do with her?

2. In Revelation 17:4-5, what is the woman wearing and holding, and what title is written on her forehead?

3. What does Revelation 17:14 say will happen when the beast and the kings make war against the Lamb, and why will the Lamb overcome them?

4. According to Revelation 18:4-5, what command does the voice from heaven give to God's people, and what is the reason given for this command?

5. In Revelation 18:7, what does the woman say in her heart about herself, and what does she claim will never happen to her?

6. How do the merchants and sea captains respond to Babylon's destruction according to Revelation 18:15-19, and what recurring phrase describes the speed of her fall?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why do you think John was "greatly astonished" when he saw the woman (Revelation 17:6), and what does this suggest about the nature of worldly deception?

2. The sermon emphasizes that the woman appears wealthy and attractive (Revelation 17:4) but holds a cup "filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries." How does this contrast help explain why God's judgment on Babylon is described as praiseworthy in Revelation 19:1-5?

3. Revelation 17:14 describes believers as those who are "called, chosen and faithful" and who are "with" the Lamb when He overcomes. What does this teach us about how Christians experience victory over the world's opposition?

4. The sermon connects the command to "come out of her, my people" (Revelation 18:4) with the call to spiritual separation rather than physical withdrawal. How does this interpretation fit with the broader context of Revelation's message to churches living in a hostile culture?

5. In Revelation 17:16-17, we see that the beast and the ten horns will ultimately destroy the prostitute, and that "God has put it into their hearts to accomplish His purpose." What does this reveal about God's sovereignty over even those who oppose Him?

Application Questions

1. The sermon warns that we can be deceived by appearances—things that look permanent but are actually passing. What is one thing in your life (career achievement, financial security, reputation, relationship) that you may be treating as more permanent or important than it actually is? How might this passage change your perspective?

2. The sermon states that "popularity is not the way forward for the Christian" and that following Jesus may cost us social acceptance. In what specific situation this week might you be tempted to compromise your witness in order to be liked or accepted? How can you prepare to remain faithful?

3. Revelation 18:7 reveals Babylon's pride: "I sit as queen; I will never mourn." The sermon describes pride as a "brittleizer" that makes us resistant to correction. Who in your life has permission to speak hard truths to you, and when was the last time you actively sought their correction?

4. The sermon describes worldliness as "a gradual weakening, a subtle contaminating"—sitting in church but not excited to be there, singing without affection, hearing but not applying. What specific practice could you adopt this week to guard against spiritual dullness and cultivate genuine love for God?

5. The command to "come out of her, my people" (Revelation 18:4) calls for spiritual separation from the world's values while remaining physically present in it. What is one concrete way your small group or church community can help each other live as "the spiritual living among the dead" in your workplaces and neighborhoods?

Additional Bible Reading

1. 1 John 2:15-17 — This passage directly addresses the command not to love the world, reinforcing the sermon's warning about the passing nature of worldly desires and the permanence of doing God's will.

2. Proverbs 7:6-27 — This extended description of the adulterous woman who leads the naive young man to destruction parallels the seductive imagery of Babylon the prostitute in Revelation 17.

3. Isaiah 47:1-15 — This prophetic oracle against ancient Babylon uses strikingly similar language to Revelation 18, including Babylon's boast "I will continue forever" and her sudden, unexpected fall.

4. Daniel 4:28-37 — Nebuchadnezzar's pride and subsequent humbling illustrate the deception of power and the truth that God is sovereign over all earthly kingdoms.

5. Acts 4:23-31 — This prayer of the early church, quoted in the sermon, demonstrates how God uses even the opposition of rulers to accomplish His purposes, connecting to Revelation 17:17's teaching on divine sovereignty.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Most Important Things About Us Are Often Unseen

II. The Deception of Looks

III. The Deception of Popularity

IV. The Deception of Wealth

V. The Deception of Pride

VI. The Deception of Power

VII. Wake Up and Trust in Christ Who Keeps His Promises

---

Detailed Sermon Outline

One of the joys of living in Washington, D.C. is, of course, all the great malls that we are, or the, not the malls, take two.

One of the great joys of living in Washington, D.C. are the museums that we are blessed with on them all.

I don't know what your favorite museums are. I know that mine is probably the National Gallery of Art. Not that I understand art that well. I have to confess to the art lovers among us that when my wife and I lived in Europe and we would tour the great museums there whose names I will not pronounce lest I embarrass myself, that we would spend about an hour in them. But we were glad to be in them.

Anyway, when I go down to the National Gallery of Art and I have occasion to look at particularly medieval paintings and Renaissance paintings, I'm always struck how you have these paintings of biblical scenes painted like in 1450 or 1500 and they're dressed. These biblical characters are dressed like they lived in 1450 or 1500. I don't know if you've ever noticed this. So you've got the Virgin Mary playing a mandolin.

And it's just strange. But though I don't know much about art, I'm an historian, and I understand that people then were thinking that everybody had always just dressed however they dressed when they were painting. They didn't think that clothing had changed. They weren't thinking about things like that. Some of the most important things about us you just take for granted.

They're just the way things are. So if you asked a fish about his day, he might not even mention the water.

It's just too obvious.

Well, I think that we have a spiritual interest in trying to notice what those most important things are about us that we might take as being too obvious to even mention. I think sometimes we aren't aware of what those most important things are. I think we take them for granted and we may not even in one sense notice them.

Do you think the things that are most important in life, in your life, you know?

Do you assume that if something is that important, you just You have to know it. There's something about the law of the universe that says, I must be aware of everything that is most important to me now, or else it's just not fair.

Why would you assume that?

Why would you assume that sitting here right now, you know all those things that are most important about yourself?

Let me tell you both humbly and confidently as a Christian, I don't think we're born knowing the most important things about ourselves.

And I think we think we even have a vested interest in not knowing them.

The last book in the Bible, the famous book of Revelation, was given precisely because we don't know innately all the things most important about ourselves. In fact, unless God gave us knowledge of them, we would never know them at all. Basically the whole Bible, and certainly the book of Revelation, tells us that we all live like we are drunk or dreaming. We spend our time and we spend our money and we spend our lives dodging things that aren't there. And quite certain of things that really aren't there, and then ignoring the most important things, the things that are there.

We love things that are as lasting as bubbles, and we neglect things that will last longer than the pew you're sitting in or this building or the government you work for. We ignore them. And that's, according to the Bible, no accident. According to the Bible, there is a malicious intelligence that desires us not to see these most obvious things, that intentionally draws us into living in an illusion, spiritually sleeping your life away.

The devil wants to deceive us. And this morning, this sermon is meant to wake you up. Our study passage this morning is Revelation, chapter 17, verse 1. At least it starts there.

Let me encourage you to take your Bibles, turn there, leave them open during the sermon. You'll be helped to pay attention to the sermon as we go on, as we study through this this passage of Revelation 17:1 to 19:5. When I mentioned Revelation 17, I mean the larger numbers, 17 and 17:1 would be a little one after it. That's the first verse. So we'll be looking through these chapters in the Bible.

You'll find this passage in the Bible provided either on page 1226 or page 1298. So let me encourage you, grab your Bibles, turn there, leave them open. While you're doing that, let me just remind you that in the book of Revelation we've already seen that John was exiled to the island of Patmos near Greece. We saw the initial vision of the risen Christ appearing to John when he was in the midst of prayer. Jesus Christ revealed Himself as the First and the Last.

And then in chapters 2 and 3, He gave him letters to the churches. And then in chapters 4 and 5, John is shown the throne room of heaven. And from there, God's sovereign judgments over the world are presented. In three series of sevens. First, the seven seals that are opened, and then the seven trumpets that are proclaimed, and then the seven bowls that are poured out, as we saw last week in Revelation chapters 15 and 16.

And with that, we read in chapter 15, verse 1, god's wrath is completed. Now in our passage this morning, chapter 17, verse 1 to chapter 19, verse 5, it's kind of as if we go back into that time when God's wrath would be poured out in chapter 16. And we kind of get to rewind and then sort of close up on one particular aspect of God's judgment that's summarized there in chapter 16, verse 19. Look at chapter 16, verse 19. The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed.

God remembered Babylon the Great. And gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of His wrath.

Now John goes back to Babylon the Great and he zeroes in on God's judgment on that city particularly. And we see things there in our own lives that if we didn't have this vision We might never see. Let's listen to God's Word from Revelation 17:1.

One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, 'Come, I will show you the punishment of the great prostitute who sits on many waters. With her the kings of the earth committed adultery, and the inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries. Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls.

She held a golden cup in her hand filled with abominable things and with the filth of her adulteries. This title was written on her forehead: Mystery Babylon the Great, the Mother of Prostitutes and of the Abominations of the Earth. I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus. When I saw her, I was greatly astonished. Then the angel said to me, why are you astonished?

I will explain to you the mystery of the woman and of the beast she rides, which has the seven heads and ten horns. The beast which you saw once was, now is not, and will come up out of the abyss and go to his destruction. The inhabitants of the earth whose names have not been written in the book of life from the creation of the world will be astonished when they see the beast because he once was, now is not, and yet will come. This calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.

There are also seven kings. Five have fallen, one is, the other has not yet come. But when he does come, he must remain for a little while. The beast who once was and now is not is an eighth king. He belongs to the seven and is going to his destruction.

The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the beast. They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them. Because he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers. Then the angel said to me, the waters you saw where the prostitute sits are peoples, multitudes, nations and languages.

The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked. They will eat her flesh and burn her with fire. For God has put it into their hearts to accomplish His purpose by agreeing to give the beast their power to rule until God's words are fulfilled. The woman you saw is the great city that rules over the kings of the earth.

After this I saw another angel coming down from heaven. He had great authority and the earth was illuminated by his splendor. With a mighty voice he shouted, Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great. She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries.

The kings of the earth committed adultery with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries. Then I heard another voice from heaven say, Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues. For her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes. Give back to her as she has given. Pay her back double for what she has done.

Mix her a double portion from her own cup. Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself. In her heart she boasts. I sit as queen. I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.

Therefore, in one day, her plagues will overtake her. Death, mourning, and famine. She will be consumed by fire, for mighty is the Lord God who judges her. When the kings of the earth who committed adultery with her and shared her luxury See the smoke of her burning, they will weep and mourn over her. Terrified at her torment, they will stand far off and cry, Woe, woe, O great city, O Babylon, city of power, in one hour your doom has come.

The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her because no one buys their cargoes anymore. Cargoes of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls, fine linen, purple, silk and scarlet cloth, every sort of citron wood and articles of every kind made of ivory, costly wood, bronze, iron and marble, cargoes of cinnamon and spice of incense, myrrh and of frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of fine flour and wheat, cattle and sheep, horses and carriages, and bodies and souls of men. They will say, the fruit you longed for is gone from you. All your riches and splendor have vanished, never to be recovered. The merchants who sold these things and gained their wealth from her will stand far off, terrified at her torment.

They will weep and mourn and cry out, Woe, woe, O great city dressed in fine linen, purple and scarlet and glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. In one hour such great wealth has been brought to ruin. Every sea captain and all who travel by ship, the sailors and all who earn their living from the sea will stand far off. When they see the smoke of her burning they will exclaim, Was there ever a city like this great city? They will throw dust on their heads, and with weeping and mourning cry out, Woe, woe, O great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth!

In one hour she has been brought to ruin.

Rejoice over her, O heaven! Rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets! God has judged her for the way she treated you.

A mighty angel picked up a boulder the size of a large millstone and threw it into the sea and said, With such great violence, the great city of Babylon will be thrown down never to be found again. The music of harpists and musicians, flute players and trumpeters will never be heard in you again. No workman of any trade will ever be found in you again.

The sound of a millstone will never be heard in you again. The light of a lamp will never shine in you again. The voice of a bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you again.

Your merchants were the world's great men. By your magic spell all the nations were led astray. In her was found the blood of the prophets and of the saints and of all who have been killed on the earth. After this, I heard what sounded like the roar of a great multitude in heaven, shouting, Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for true and just are his judgments.

He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries. He has avenged on her the blood of His servants. And again they shouted, Hallelujah! The smoke from her goes up forever and ever. The twenty-four elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshiped God who was seated on the throne, and they cried, Amen!

Hallelujah! Then a voice came from the throne, saying, Praise our God, all you His servants, you who fear Him, both small and and great.

Well friends, that's the passage and I feel like it could almost just stop right there. Is that not an amazing picture of this world and of what God will do? So much in this passage. I can't give you a verbal commentary. Number one, we don't have time.

Number two, I don't have wisdom. I can't tell you what every little thing is in a way that I'm certain of, but I do think there are some main themes here that are clear. I think what you want to ask as you think about this passage is this: Am I living the life of the deceived?

Am I in any way living the life of the deceived? If I am, O God, will you open my eyes? Will you help me to see the truth? You see, in this vision of God's final judgment on all worldliness, He unmasks so many of those things that invite us every week, every day to accept them and like them and love them and desire them. And give our lives for them, which then just vanish when they take in our lives.

I want us to consider five deceptions. If you're taking notes, that's the outline. Five deceptions that we see in this passage. And I pray that as we do, God will open eyes and grant understanding And make reality clear to all of us who are gathered here this morning.

I pray that God will wake you up. In fact, why don't you just quietly pray that right now as we prepare to go on. Pray that for yourself.

The first slumber we sleep in, the first deception that I want us to note is the deception of looks. The deception of looks. What I mean is that appearances are deceiving. That's why it was necessary for God to give this vision to John in the first place. Throughout this passage, God is teaching John and through John He's teaching us that He will judge this world, even those parts of it that look so permanent.

All of these great things, this great city, this great beast, which we see here are the kings, its godless government.

God will judge it, all of it. Look again at Babylon's doom as it's described there in chapter 18, verse 23. Michael and I were talking about this yesterday. These are some of the most evocative images in the Bible of judgment. You know, the mighty angel takes the stone and he throws it down into the sea and that violence, that suddenness He pictures perfectly what's going to happen in this case with the judging of Babylon.

He says, With such violence the great city of Babylon will be thrown down, never to be found again. And then you see how he describes it. The music of harpists and musicians, flute players and trumpeters will never be heard in you again. The sounds silenced.

No workman of any trade will ever be found in you again. The sound of a millstone will never be heard in you again. The economy is gone. Jobs are gone.

The light of a lamp will never shine in you again. The signs of human life, of people staying there even overnight, are gone.

The voice of a bridegroom and bride will never be heard in you again.

Life won't continue. Not there. And your merchants, they were the world's great men.

Friends, the cemeteries of this city are filled with indispensable people.

Too many of us are living our lives to be one of those indispensable God will judge. God's judgment will be correct. It will be seen to be correct. Look at the way He's praised for His judgment in this passage. Do you see this?

Look there in chapter 18 verse 5, God remembered her crimes. 18 verse 6, Give back to her as she has given. Pay her back double for what she has done. Makes her a double portion from her own cup. Give her as much torture and grief as the glory and luxury she gave herself.

God is giving the basis for His judgment of Babylon. And He forgets no crimes. He overlooks no sins. The heavenly voice calls out for justice. And double here is simply an Old Testament idiom for full, complete, not missing anything.

A double portion in that sense. And what He's saying here is there will be full justice. There will be appropriate justice. There will be no mistrials, no miscarriages of justice. There will be proportional payment.

Friends, you realize that there is nothing un-Christian about justice.

Now in our own world, we need justice and we have proximate justice. We have kind of justice. We have enough justice to keep letting us get by. But in a fallen world, we are not promised any more than that. And as I have noted to you before, those of you who know that best among us are the lawyers.

You know what our legal system is like. You know what it can do.

This is a picture of the fact that one day there will be real, true justice. And what joy there will be in that justice. Chapter 18, verse 20, Rejoice over her, O heaven, rejoice, saints and apostles and prophets. God has judged her for the way she treated you. God's judgment is praiseworthy.

Look at how heaven there in the beginning of chapter 19 says, Hallelujah again and again. Praise our God Not all you his servants, you who fear him. So all of God's judgment is just and correct. It's laudable. The 24 elders, the living creatures all join in to praise God for his justice.

Friends, if you're here and you're not a Christian, I wonder, are there things which you have taken to be permanent, never ending? That actually you've lived to see the end of?

Or are there things that you were certain if you got this, then you'd have all this. And you got this, you did get this. But then you didn't get all those things. You weren't satisfied in the way you had been promised satisfaction. This city fools so many people.

I have on a few occasions been allowed to open the Senate in prayer. And I remember in one of those prayers concluding with a request that God would remind all who work here in massive buildings which seem so permanent, remind them of the brevity of life and the certainty of judgment. Now friends, the senator who invited me to actually do that, to open in prayer, was a powerful man at the time. I remember visiting him in his offices in the Capitol building and they were, I think, without exception, the most impressive offices I've ever seen. He was chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

He had an office where you went in and then you turned and then you turned before you finally got to him, like the Wizard of Oz.

He had been mentioned for vice president. He was governor of the state before that. Basically, he had a resume that some of you would salivate over. And do you know that when I have mentioned His name to people actually for years now who work on the Hill, they've never heard of Him? Behold the grandeur and glory of Washington.

Are these the things that you're trusting in, that you're living for?

Large bubbles. Burst quickly. Things that look so great in this life are passing. Do not be deceived.

Appearances are deceiving. One of Satan's great triumphs in our culture is to get us to try to look young. We don't value age, which of course at least is a small kindness of God's in return for our aging, that a society would value age. But no, we value that which we are destined to lose with every day that passes. And we do the silliest, most stupid things.

I remember standing in a line to get on an airplane just a couple of years ago, and in front of me was a very well-known comedienne who has had her face redone, I think, countless times. And I think she did it because I think she must think it makes her look young. I thought it was one of the saddest things I'd ever seen.

Friends, the appearances of this world are passing. Do not live for what you look like. Do not be deceived by things that appear so important, so permanent, because I promise you, they are not.

Do not be deceived by appearances. We find here another warning, a second warning, about the deception of popularity. The deception of popularity.

Especially because we find that we are in a fallen world. We are all born at odds with God and most people continue in that opposition. If you are here and you are not a Christian, perhaps you do not understand this part of Christianity. You may think of Christianity as those nice That's fairly ineffective people who try to help some people do some good things. Well, actually there's a little more to Christianity than just that.

One of the things that we understand the Bible to teach is that everybody is basically bad. We don't teach that everybody is basically good. We don't think Muslims are basically good and we don't think Methodists are basically good. We don't think Buddhists are basically good and we don't think Baptists are basically good. We think everybody is basically bad.

Not that there's nothing good about us. We're all made in the image of God. All of our rights are to be protected. But we think that all of us are in rebellion against God. We are all, in our first parents, Adam and Eve, fallen.

And we all live out that rebellion by doing what we want. We will try to make it look as nice and polite as we can, but please don't misunderstand, we are going to do what we want to do. And we're in a culture these days that even celebrates that.

And we celebrate the fact that everybody wants to do what they want to do. And we think a good argument for something is that somebody themselves really has a desire for it, and they, in their core, they really want to do it. And if that desire is innate, then we think that must, of course, be good. Well, Christianity teaches so clearly, all of us have innate desires that are wrong. Every single one of us is sitting here.

Chapter 17 talks about this woman who sits on many waters. You see how she's described in verse 1. And if you look down at verse 15, the angel explains those waters. He says, the waters you saw where the prostitute sits are peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages. What that means is that she led many people into sin.

This Babylon is an international cosmopolitan city.

It's not like there's one nation that's our problem.

This is an international, worldwide problem because sin is popular. And sin in this world will always be popular. And you and I are apt to be deceived by that. Ancient Babylon is represented by Babylon here. And Rome in John's own time.

And other great Cultural powers since then, I think, are all what are being represented by this Babylon. In John's day, there was an image of Rome that was popular, the city sitting there on great waters. And he turns that popular image here to Rome's own condemnation. Rome had served to organize human effort and wealth to oppose God and His servants. Remember, it was one of Rome's officials who had exiled John to Patmos.

Was one of Rome's governors who had executed Jesus. The reality of spiritual rebellion against God knows no political boundaries, no limits. It didn't end and it doesn't now. Babylon's sins engulf us all. That's why our basic message at this church is never clean up your life.

We are sitting here as people with dirty lives. It doesn't matter how nicely, you know, we've looked. The one time a week I put on a suit, here I am. It does not matter how nicely we look this morning, how nicely we appear. We are sitting here with dirty lives and that's why we need a Savior.

That's what we're about as Christians. Self-righteous communities of religious people are perhaps other places this morning, but we hope this will never be that. We are gathered here because we are those who confess our sins and confess that we need a Savior. Look again down in chapter 18, verse 4.

Then I heard another voice from heaven say, 'Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues. You see, God calls His people out of this city. Now, Christians, we are not called out of the world in any physical sense. That's not what He means here. What He's saying is that when we are born again, we are called out spiritually.

In the sense that we become the spiritual living among the dead. We are called out by God's holiness. We are called to be holy as He is holy. We are called out by His grace. We are not to be deceived by popularity.

Now, you should know that the traditional way Presbyterians and Congregationalists and Baptists and other Protestants have understood this image of Babylon in these chapters has been as the Roman Catholic Church. And so this call here in verse 4 is a call to come out of fellowship with the Bishop of Rome.

I'm going to suggest that we should take it a little more broadly. I'm going to suggest that we as the people of God are to be separated from the world, not by Amish clothes, or Roman monasteries, but by our lives of loving holiness. And we are to come together in our local churches. And in that sense, this local church is the beginning of the appearance of the great division eternally. This local church is a kind of trailer, the preview of the solemn separation as our church's statement of faith calls it, which will one day suddenly and finally take place where the sheep are separated from the goats.

Where those who have submitted themselves to God and are trusting in Christ alone are separated out from those who have decided as respectable and fun as they look to really just keep doing their own thing. They're separated out finally. One to be saved by the blood of Christ, the other to be judged forever because of their rebellion against God. Part of what it means for us to fear the Lord, to regard Christ uniquely as our Master is for us then not to be guided by popularity, not to be having fellowship to use old languages with the unfruitful works of darkness. That's why we practice church membership here.

That's why we practice church discipline. We intend to be a congregation of those people. So not just one, but a bunch of us who agree together that we're trusting in Christ and that we mean to be separate from what we have been ourselves. And from what we see others are continuing to be committed to be, that is to live according to their own desires and whatever the culture is encouraging them to desire. We mean to be a community who are not like we were.

We don't want to be deceived by popularity. We know that right will never be determined by a poll. We Christians are different and we know it. We don't mourn over what the people of the world mourn over and we don't joy over the thing they have joy over. Some of them we have in common, but we have our own unique mornings and our own unique joys.

Friends, people pleasing is the drug of choice for many today, but it is a relentless master. Its demands never stop. Be very careful about living your life to get a laugh or a look of approval or an invitation or a job. Be very, very careful.

Do you imagine that you're called to influence the world by befriending it? Think again. Popularity is not the way forward for the Christian. Remember what Jesus told His disciples in John 15, if the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated Me first. Friend, if you're a Christian, you follow one who was Himself rejected by the world.

Why is it we expect a different outcome? Why do we expect that everybody around us will be approving when they weren't of the one that we say we popular? I pray that you'll remember this in the workplace. I pray that you will be willing to be unpopular at work if need be to live and witness and work faithfully to God.

Wives and mothers, I pray that you will remember this as your choice to build your life around being a blessing to your husband and your children is dismissed and derided in D.C. I hope you will remember that popularity is never the way to determine what's right, to determine what's best.

Friend, God has called us to be willing to be resistant to what people are saying. To be resistant to those calls to blend into Babylon.

God calls us to be willing to decide to be different for Christ. Now, like I said a few weeks ago, I don't mean I'm trying to take in all your personal weirdnesses and peculiarities and blame those on Jesus. I'm not doing that. All right? I have mine, you have yours.

I am telling you that if you mean to follow Jesus, you will not get away forever with being thought cool by your non-Christian friends. And you need to understand that. And you need to take that up front in the consideration you make when you decide to follow Jesus. If you're always scared of looking like a Christian, friend, you probably don't need to worry about it.

I also want you to notice one more thing while we're thinking about popularity. Churches can be a part of Babylon. If a church values human tradition more than the Word of God, it becomes a part of Babylon. If a church denies the gospel of Jesus Christ, salvation only by faith in Christ, then she has sold her birthright for a mess of pottage and has become a part of Babylon. If a church heeds man's wisdom more than God's revelation, that church has become a part of Babylon.

If a church is more affirming of the world than confronting, more interested in changing the world than calling people to change and have hope in Christ beyond this world, more interested in our actions than God's provision in Christ, then that church is Christian in name only and has really become a part of Babylon, regardless of what name it may have on its sign. Do not be deceived by popularity. God will judge everyone. No one will escape His judgment.

Another deception that we see revealed here Number three, the deception of wealth.

Friends, wealth is deceiving. Self-indulgence is dangerous. Look at that description of the world here in chapter 17, verse 3. Then the angel carried me away in the Spirit into a desert. There I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns.

The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand. Filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. This title was written on her forehead mystery. Babylon the Great, the mother of prostitutes and of the abominations of the earth.

The strangeness of this vision is really right there in verse 4. Her wealth is both obvious and that's what we would see naturally. But here's where the spiritual vision is added. It's truly putrid and filthy and entirely corrupted.

So that woman's opulent appearance contrasted with the filth of her spiritually, with her sins. God's true view of her wealth is revealed. It is abominable. I mean, she was dressed to kill, literally. Like the adulterous woman in Proverbs 5 and 7, this woman is beguiling and seductive and attractive and deadly.

Nineveh and Tyre are described in the Old Testament as prostitutes, wealthy cities, misleading many. Wealth is deceptive. Self-indulgence is not only one of the pillars of our economy. Friends, it's the path away from God. My Christian friend, wealth has led more than one person who's described themselves as a Christian away from Christ.

Remember what the Lord Jesus taught of such disciples? He said, They are like the seed sown among thorns. They hear the Word. But the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth, and the desires for other things come in and choke the Word, making it unfruitful.

Now such drifting usually isn't dramatic. C.J. Mahaney describes it in his little book, Worldliness, as a gradual weakening, a subtle contaminating and eventual conforming to this world. People can be attending church, singing songs, apparently listening to the sermons, no different on the outside than they've always been, but inside that person is drifting. He sits in the church but is not excited to be there.

She sings songs without affection. He listens to preaching without conviction. She hears but doesn't apply. Love for the world begins with a dull conscience and a listless soul.

Sin doesn't grieve Him like it once did. Passion for the Savior begins to cool. Affections grow dim. Excitement lessens for participating in the local church. EagerneSs to evangelize starts to wane.

Growth in godliness slows to a crawl. Find yourself sometimes justifying your disobediences by the fact that I was obedient over here. Find yourself trying to do kind of quotas and caps with God.

That you could trade some obediences for some sin. Friend, if that's you, then you're being ensnared by vanity fair.

Your heart is being captured by sin. You are becoming worldly.

The deception of wealth.

Have you really found the money you've gotten all that satisfying?

Has your money always told you the truth? How secure are those? What do they sell them to us calling them? Securities?

I am so thankful I grew up in a small town with all my family on both sides around. You know, the house I lived in was given to my parents by my great-grandmother. And she lived two doors down. I knew my parents, obviously my great-grandparents, my grandparents, I knew like cousins. And one of the interesting things about it was in God's kindness, I grew up around four older ladies who were study in contrasts.

Two of them were rich by this world's standards. One kind of locally. Her family had moved there after the Civil War. They bought up half the county. And another, even more than locally, and when she died, she left her money to a large Eastern College as part of a big endowment.

Two other ladies had no money. They were both people who were very faithful Christians, unlike the two rich ones. They were both people who lived for the Lord. I just knew them as older women. They both died when I was around 10 years old.

I was not a Christian. But I remember seeing their lives and seeing their joy. I remember seeing how they held lightly to things of this world, how they owned very little. And you could tell by the way they dressed. But I remember the joy they had.

And I've always been so thankful to God that he committed to my mind, my little mind, when I wasn't even really thinking about him at all, he committed to my mind such a clear picture of how this world, this world doesn't satisfy. The richer they were, the more problems they had. I'm not trying to say wealth is bad and poverty is good. I know that's not true. But I am warning you that wealth is deceptive.

And what that means is that you won't agree with me and you'll think you do. What that means is if we're talking at the door and I say to you, you know, the Bible says money is the root of all evil. You will be so quick to tell me, no, it says the love of money is the root of all evil. Why is that?

I think it's just because you're trying to protect your wallet a little bit. I mean, I know in economics we don't want to misunderstand productivity and capital and how it's good. I understand. But there is also in us a defensiveness. Don't you get near my money.

And part of that is because we believe it's lies. Friends, they're lies. I've seen so many wealthy, embittered people.

And I have said in so many people who are poor in the things of this world but rich in the things of the Lord, I will take that life any day. Let me exhort you that same way. Do not be deceived. As John Piper puts it so well, There are no U-hauls behind hearses.

Beware the deception of wealth. Another deception that we are alerted to here. Number four is the deception of pride.

I think we see this most clearly right there in chapter 17 and verse 8. Nope, it must be 18 verse 7.

Yep, 18 verse 7.

The only time we hear the woman speak, the prostitute, and what does she say? I sit as queen, I am not a widow, and I will never mourn.

Friends, I have to tell you, when I read this whole passage, as striking as it is, that one phrase that struck me most was this woman's pride in saying, I will never mourn.

Friend, be very careful when you speak confidently of the future.

Pride is deceptive. Pride makes us think we have things that we don't. Remember the church in Laodicea back in chapter 3? You say, I am rich. I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing, but you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind, and naked.

One of the things we see again and again in the Bible is that the doomed don't realize they're doomed. The doomed don't realize they're doomed. That's why I prayed that God will wake us up today. If there's anyone who's spiritually slumbering, that they will be woken up by the truth of what God says here.

You know, one recent Roper poll found that 96% of Americans thought that they watched TV less than most people.

We're not good at self-knowledge. 96% of us, at least, are not good at self-knowledge and on things far more important than this. Now, friend, if you're here today and you're not a Christian, I just have a question. Has your pride ever blinded you? Can you think of examples in your own life when, because of certain assumptions you made, you weren't right and things didn't go well because you were too prideful.

Christianity has an extremely dim view of pride. Christianity is pro-humility. So Jesus washes His disciples' feet in John 13. In Philippians 2 we read that He humbled Himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. He prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away, unless I drink it, may your will be done.

We read in 2 Corinthians, God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The way of Jesus is the way of humility. Now, my Christian brothers and sisters, how is pride deceiving you in your own life? Is it at work? Are you encouraged at work to think that for you to get ahead, you've got to have a kind of prideful attitude?

Kids, when you go home this afternoon, Ask your parents. Mom, Dad, why is pride so dangerous? Ask your parents this afternoon, what are you doing to protect me from pride? I don't understand it very well. Just tell them, ask them to explain what pride is.

It's very dangerous. And ask them how they are working and laboring to protect you from pride. You know they work to make sure you eat well and get enough sleep and you're healthy.

But they care for your spirit too. Ask them what they're doing to protect you from pride. Brothers and sisters, you understand why pride is so dangerous, don't you? It flatters us. It tells us that things are a way we would like things to be, but they really aren't.

And we want to hear that they are. And so we really want to be told these kind of things. And those unrealities in the way we understand ourselves then end up causing all kinds of havoc in our lives and our relationship with God most of all, but in our relationship with our family and friends and at work, because we're not seeing accurately. We too often sound like Laodicea or the prostitute here. Consequently, we ignore those things we should give attention to, and we focus on those things which we shouldn't.

Friends, pray for humility. Cultivate humility. It's a muscle that needs to be stretched and exercised, and if you do If you do that, you can handle more. And if you don't do that, well then you won't seek out correction, but you'll try to avoid it and you'll become brittle. Pride is a brittleizer.

And because you don't want to be hurt then, you will move away from people who tell you the truth and you will just go to those who want you around for whatever reason so they will flatter You, friends, it is in your best interest eternally to fight pride, to cultivate humility.

Ken Barwick reminded me of a good illustration of this just yesterday. I don't know about you, I struggle with my wireless internet connection sometimes. It's slow, it seizes up Thursday. It was like I had no email at all for the whole day. But you know what it's like when you get a really good connection and the Internet runs really quickly?

Friends, humility is like that good Internet connection in our spiritual lives. You get that one right, and it will help you grow in every other way that you need to grow. But you get that one wrong, and your growth is going to be slow and spotty because you are proud. You are resisting correction, and you will not prosper from that. And everybody around you will kind of learn it.

And they will learn just not to talk to you about certain things because you have no ears to hear. And you will create a zone of deafness around you by your own pride, and it will just get worse and worse and worse and worse. Unless you act to cultivate it, you will become just like this prostitute who sits there and says, I will never mourn, and she will not listen to the prophets that God sends her to call her for repentance because she has stopped up her ears in pride. Friends, do not let that be you. Do not let that be you.

Beware the deception of pride. The last deception to note that our passage warns us about is the deception of power. The deception of power. Friends, power is deceiving. I don't know of any passage that could show that more clearly here.

God is the final judge. This beast represents at least a king and he's working, it looks like for a lot of kings. This is fallen government once again in the book of Revelation opposing God. John sees this beast like the beast in chapter 13. You know, what's going on?

People wonder about the so many and then not here and then back or then the dying and coming back. Well, it's a kind of mock of the resurrection. It's showing us that this opposition of godless government to God will not end in this world until Christ returns. It's going to It will continue in different forms, it may be, but it will continue to be here and we need to respond to that in honesty and with wisdom. Brothers and sisters here, we are once again warned.

We are cautioned about power. We are warned about human government. Not to avoid it, not to neglect its worthy ends, but to always be aware that we have a higher duty of obedience to God and that that obedience Our response to God is not simply going along with what's popular in the world, as we've already thought about, but being willing to sacrifice our social acceptability. And then here's where it comes to power. When we realize that we're willing to be different for Jesus, that we are by His grace willing to follow Him even in a way others may not be, then we have to realize what comes from that.

We have to realize, as so many of our brothers and sisters do this very day, in India and in Nigeria and in Iran and in Burma and in North Korea and in Saudi Arabia and in so many other places that in sacrificing acceptance socially, we may not be too far away from being willing to accept society's censure of us popularly and legally. And we may not be too many steps from being willing to sacrifice ourselves. That's part of the decision we make when we follow Jesus. Did you notice there in chapter 17 verse 6?

I saw that the woman was drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of those who bore testimony to Jesus. You remember how back in chapter 13, verse 7, it mentions the beast conquers Christians?

Here we have another aspect of that same grim reality. We know how we have seen this fulfilled in history.

How will we see this gruesome prophecy fulfilled further? And we look down in chapter 18 toward the end there in verse 24. And we see in her was found the blood of the prophets and of the saints and of all who have been killed on the earth. And then again in chapter 19 verse 2 we see the blood of his servants, the godly have again and again and again and again run into problems with godless power.

Sometimes that power is used in the name of the state as it was with slavery, as it was at the Holocaust, as it was with the planned famine in Ukraine, as it was in sad, countless number of ways in human history. And some of the times that power is used more passively by police in a state ignoring the stoning of Christians by angry Hindus, by police in Turkey ignoring the threats to the Christian bookstore in town. But that power is used to bring about the death of God's saints. Consider Herod and John the Baptist as an example. Arad would keep his entertainments and pleasures untroubled more than he would allow John to keep his head.

Having power and loving pleasure often makes one a persecutor of the godly, doesn't it? So brothers and sisters, don't be deceived. That world that holds out pleasures to us now to seduce us will as soon as she can use its power to oppress us and even kill us. We read in chapter 17, verse 14, They will make war against the Lamb.

But we've got to notice the rest of the verse. But the Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and with him will be his called, chosen and faithful followers. I love that. The Lamb overcomes, and you and I, we're with him. You know, it's not like we are the ones who successfully subdue the world as in an over-optimistic post-millennial view for those of you who are theology guys.

But it's the Lamb who overcomes and we're with the Lamb. Jesus Christ will conquer. The Lamb who is, as we see here in verse 14, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We see this title again later in chapter 19. The book of Revelation, you'll notice, has a very high estimate of Jesus.

At parties and dinners here in town when I don't know how many times I've been told, you, know, the Bible didn't really teach that Jesus is God. It was later Christians who came up with that. Okay. Well, it wasn't too late Christians because here it is in the book of Revelation in the first century and we find it every place else in the New Testament including in the teaching of Jesus Himself. Jesus Christ is clearly the Lord and Savior.

He is presented in the New Testament as God and the Son of God who was sent from He is presented as the ruler of the entire world, the maker and creator of everything who is over all as Lord of lords and King of kings, even of malicious kings. Look there in chapter 17 at verse 16. The beast and the ten horns you saw will hate the prostitute. They will bring her to ruin and leave her naked. They will eat her flesh and burn her with fire, for God has put it into their hearts to accomplish his purpose.

By agreeing to give the beast their power to rule until God's words are fulfilled. What terrible images. Godless power will destroy godless wealth. Civil war among God's opponents. They're only united in their opposition to God.

But, Prince, your salvation is this. God will use even the wrath of man to praise Him. Thus He used the Chaldeans in Job's life and Joseph's brothers in his life. God used Pharaoh to display His power. He used various godless nations in the Old Testament to to judge others.

In Jesus' day, the high priest Caiaphas had his reasons for saying, you, know nothing at all. You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish. And then John went on to note, he did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation and not only for that nation, but also for the scattered children of God to bring them together and make them one.

Friend, Scripture is full of many more examples of this. Supremely is that prayer in Acts chapter 4 where Peter's just been released from prison by an angel. And he comes and he finds the Christians praying and he quotes Psalm 2. He says, why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against His anointed One.

And then he prays to God, Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against against your holy servant Jesus, whom youm anointed. They did what yout power and will had decided beforehand should happen. God is holy and He made this world to know Him. And we have rebelled against Him by our sins and we deserve His judgment. But God in His amazing love sent Jesus Christ who lived a perfect life, the life we should have lived, relying on our heavenly Father entirely.

And He died on the cross. He bore the punishment. For the sins of all of us that would ever turn from our sins and trust in Christ alone for our salvation. And then He gives us new life. And we know this is true because God raised Him from the dead and because spiritually He's already raised a lot of us from the dead.

We have seen the truth of what Jesus teaches, the good news that He brings. Now friends, this world has no interest in you learning that truth.

This world wants you ensnared with its power, with its vision of power, with its dream of power. And again, in this city of all places, that is particularly the case. I remember a conversation with a friend who was fairly high up in an administration a couple of decades ago. And he hasn't been in another one after that and said he's just been out making money. And he was telling me one day, I've not had great power or great money, so it was an interesting conversation.

And he said to me that, you know, the sort of rush from having money is nothing like the rush from power. He said, People don't go after power more because they just don't know what it's like. But when you've been near it, when you've had it, and when it's gone, it leaves a sort of gnawing hole that no amount of money will ever fulfill. I'm thankful I don't know that gnawing. But I know I've known smaller deceptions about power.

And what power can accomplish. Friends, do not be deceived. If you are under that deception this morning, I pray that God will break that spell and that you will wake up and realize that the power of this world, this power is passing. Well, friends, we should conclude. And visitors, that just means he's about done.

Not quite done, but about done.

The world promises and the world does not deliver.

The world promises and the world does not deliver. In that sense, the world deceives again and again. That's why we need to be informed. Ever since the first man encountered sin in Genesis 3, since nature is to deflect and duck and dodge and deceive, and worldliness is sin, and by being informed by Scripture on sin, it begins to become more visible to us and to appear Have you noticed that in your own life? If you will sit under the regular preaching of God's Word even for a month, all of a sudden you begin to see things that you hadn't seen before.

You begin to understand and you begin to think, Really? Well, was that always going on? Has that been happening and I just didn't realize that?

Friends, after the service, talk with each other. Ask each other. How you have been being deceived or tempted even to be being deceived by looks, by popularity, by wealth, by Pride, by power. See if you've seen those deceptions operating in your own life. And remember what John wrote.

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the father is not in him. For everything in the world, the Cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes, the boasting of what he has and does. Comes not from the Father, but from the world. This world and its desires pass away.

But the man who does the will of God lives forever. Friends, we will never perfectly do the will of God, but we can place our faith in one who has, Jesus Christ. We can grow our affections for Him, for Christ and His cross. We can buy that see through the deceptions of this world. So my instruction and encouragement to you is pray that the deceptions of the world would become less deceiving to you.

Pray they would be revealed. Pray that they would disappear. God is so much more worthy of our desires and affections. So cultivate your love for God. Your love for this world should die by cultivating your love for God.

Friends, if your heart is not captured, how else will you remain faithful in the days that are to come?

Now for many of our brothers and sisters around the world today, this issue is as clearly and crisply before them as the sharp edge of a sword. For us, it's a decision made amidst the perils of comfort and the deceptions of appearance and popularity and wealth and pride and power. I pray that God will give you the wisdom to see the truth about Him and His provision in Christ and about yourself.

This world makes promises and this world doesn't keep them. God makes promises to us in Jesus Christ and he keeps every one of them. You need to know this because this world is passing and God will judge and he will reign forever.

Lord God, you, know which ones of us are deep in the sleep of sin. You know which ones of us are napping and which ones are just feeling a little sleepy, being tempted. Oh God, wherever we are, we pray that you would wake us up spiritually. Make us alive and alert to your truth in your word and your love in Christ. Break our hearts over our sins and over the love you've shown for us and the Lord Jesus on the cross and bring us to yourself we pray in Jesus name, Amen, Amen.