This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Hi, this is Pastor Tom and we are looking this week at Revelation chapter 17.
This is day one of our look at that chapter. Revelation 17 and 18, I put them
under the title of "Building Your Life on That Which Will Really Last.

" These two chapters tell us this world will not last. The things of this world,
the way of this world, it will not last. And in these chapters we get a
description of that which will not last, but in that there's an encouragement.

There's an encouragement for you and for I to build our lives on the things that
really will last. Now, in these chapters there is a very particular description
of this world that will not last. And it's based on a city, the description of a
city.

If I say to you Las Vegas, some pictures come into your mind that you have. If I
say to you Washington D. C.

, you have some pictures in your mind of what that city is like. When I say to
you the name of this city, Babylon, what do you picture? Maybe not as much as
they did in the day that the book of Revelation was written.

If you take a look at Revelation chapter 17 and 18, God says, "Here's the
picture that I want you to understand concerning this very important city,
Babylon. " Babylon, the sense of this city is it's the cradle of civilization.
And even more than that, it's the cradle of a sense of civilization that sets
itself up against God.

Babylon, this whole idea of setting ourselves up against God started at a place
in the Old Testament called Babel. You remember Babel in the book of Genesis,
well that becomes Babylon. In Babel, Babylon is more than just a place, it's an
attitude.

If you really want a picture of Babylon, you go back to Babel. You go back to
Genesis chapter 11. In Babel, they decided to build a tower.

And quickly you see Babel, Babylon, the similarities. The civilization of
Babylon is expressed right there in Genesis chapter 11. In verse 3, the Bible
says, "The people said to each other," Genesis 11 verse 3, "They said to each
other, 'Come, let us make bricks and bake them thoroughly.

'" And they used brick instead of stone. Now why did they use brick instead of
stone, by the way? A little pause here.

So they could say they did it. Not stone that God had made, but brick that they
had somehow, they'd re-crushed the stone and made it themselves. So going on
with the verses, "They used tar for mortar and then they said, 'Come, let us
build ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens so that we may
make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.

'" You go back to Revelation from Genesis. The spirit that was in this place
called Babel was scattered over the entire earth and it's still scattered. It
will be there till the end and God's going to deal with it at the end.

The spirit that's in this place called Babylon, which many people call the
cradle of civilization, is the spirit of mankind, our civilization, our
organization, and it's the spirit of setting ourselves up to be God, setting
ourselves up against God, setting ourselves up as a supreme authority in the
universe. That's what this is all about. The attitude of Babylon is seen in what
happened in Babel.

Let us make bricks. Let us build a great city. Let us make a name for ourselves.

Let us not be scattered over the earth, not a mention of God. Let us make bricks
so we can be proud of ourselves, so we can say we did it without God. Let us
build a great city so we can look only at ourselves, not even at the things that
God has made.

Let us make a name for ourselves so that God's name somehow is lost. And let us
not be scattered over the earth so that we're impressed with ourselves. But they
were scattered over the earth because God confused their languages so that
people, instead of getting what they wanted, they began to fulfill God's plan.

The Bible says in Genesis 11, "But the Lord came down to see the city and the
tower that men were building. The Lord said, 'It's as if one people speaking the
same language, they've begun to do this and nothing they plan will be impossible
for them. Come, let's go down and confuse their language so they will not
understand each other.

' So the Lord scattered them all over the earth and they stopped building this
city. That is why it's called Babel, because there the Lord confused the
language of the whole world and from there the Lord scattered them over the face
of the whole earth. So you see in Genesis 11 the whole idea of Babel and Babylon
is confusion.

We get confused. We get confused by our own selfishness. We get confused by our
own desires and we set ourselves up.

We set ourselves up in our own individual lives to be God. But these chapters,
Revelation chapter 17 and 18, help us to realize that this not only happens
individually. It happens corporately.

It happens across our civilization. God's description and God's perspective on a
place called Babylon are in Genesis chapter 17 and 18. And as we walk through
this description, I have a feeling, I think that a feeling, a sense of
familiarity will slowly dawn on you about what an important message this is for
us today, what important chapters these are for us today.

This week, Revelation chapter 17, we're going to look together at God's
description of Babylon and next week, Revelation chapter 18, we're going to look
at God's perspective on Babylon. God's description, it begins with Revelation
17, 1 and 2. Let me read those verses.

"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. " Now, even before who
this is, this great prostitute, this woman that's mentioned here, many people
have the question, when is this?

When does this happen? Remember where we are in the book of Revelation. Judgment
is complete.

The seven bowls of wrath have been poured out. And what's happening here is not
another bowl being poured out. What's happening is we're going back to get a
more detailed description of what happened, a more personal description to us of
what happened, a description of a place called Babylon.

And anyone in John's day who read about a place called Babylon, that name would
have been just as familiar to them as the Las Vegas or Washington DC that I
mentioned earlier are to us. They would have immediately pictured things. The
Old Testament is filled with pictures, not just of the Tower of Babel, but of a
place called Babylon.

You might remember from reading the Old Testament that Babylon was one of the
countries that attacked Israel and took the people of Israel captive and kept
them captive in a foreign land as exiles for years until God allowed them to go
back into their home. You might remember that this is one of the countries that
Ezekiel and many other of the prophets talk about as being one of the centers
and sources of evil in the world in that day. They would have had a very clear
understanding, a clear picture of a place that sets itself up against God.

This was a place where commercially and socially and religiously everything was
in opposition to God and who he is. To anybody reading the book of Revelation in
the day that John first wrote down this Revelation, Babylon would have pictured
the sum total of culture without God, everything that opposed God, everything
that oppressed God's people from the beginning of time. One person has said it
this way, Babylon is entrenched worldly resistance to God.

That would have been their picture. That's the picture that God wants us to
understand that's in this world still today that can be in our lives still
today. It's this idea that we've decided we're going to dig our feet in, I'm
going to say who I'm going to be, I'm going to set my life up, I'm going to be
who I want to be.

And God, you just stay at arm's length. In fact, you stay out of my life. You
can still see this all over the world.

You can even see it in your own life sometimes. Remember as you study through
the New Testament that very clearly there are three channels, three ways through
which evil enters our lives, the world, the flesh and the devil. Now the world
doesn't mean the physical world, it means the way of this world, it means the
philosophy of this world, it means the selfish way that people think.

The flesh doesn't mean my physical flesh, it means the me that is selfish, that
in me that always wants my way, that has to have my way, that in me that says
yes to the temptation of sin. And then there is the devil, Satan, the evil one
that we've looked at in the book of Revelation, the source of evil in this
world, the world, the flesh and the devil. Babylon is a picture of the world.

This system that we all live in today that sets itself up against God. And this
week together we're going to look at this place called Babylon. We're going to
look at how God is going to change everything.

But as we begin, I've got to start, you've got to start, we've got to start with
our own lives. So as we pray together today, ask God to give you wisdom about
yourself. And just pray and say, Father, I live in a world that is so often
selfish, and it's so easy for me to follow that direction.

I want to get ahead, I want to win the job, I want to get the thing, I want to,
I want to have the prize, all those things that other people seem to get, I'm
tempted to want those same things too. And sometimes I'm not sure if it's
something you want in my life or it's because of my selfishness. But I know if
I'll ask you, you'll reveal it to me.

You'll help me to begin to sort out my thoughts, sort out my thinking, begin to
understand, am I just following the ways of this world? I don't want to do that.
And I pray this week that as we walk through this chapter, Lord, you'd help me
to, in a brand new way, see places where I might be following the ways of this
world.

Just the selfish way of thinking that's so easy. And help me to see instead how
I can follow your ways, ways of serving others, ways of loving you, ways of,
ways of experiencing your grace. I pray that even in this chapter, you would
show me your ways in brand new and fresh understanding.

And I pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Join us tomorrow. We're going to begin to
look at five ways that you and I can recognize the civilization that sets itself
up against God.