This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day two of our look together through Revelation 17. We began yesterday
by talking about this place called Babylon, this civilization that sets itself
up against God. Not just individuals, but as a whole we tend to set ourselves up
against the direction of God in our lives.

We're going to look, beginning today, at five ways, five pictures that are given
to us of this place called Babylon. Five ways that you and I can recognize this
civilization, this culture. Eugene Peterson has said about this chapter, this
image of Babylon, that it is "an image that can bring to never again to be
forgotten awareness the powerfully seductive presence of those who would
obstruct or subvert our worship of the slain and risen lamb.

" That is the danger of Babylon, is we get our eyes focused on ourselves, we get
our eyes focused on our things, we get our eyes focused on our power, and we get
our eyes off the love of God in Jesus Christ. This is what this world is all
about that you and I have to live in every day of our lives, the way of thinking
in this world. And it keeps us, if we focus on this world, from worshipping God
as we would want.

It keeps us from focusing our lives on him like we would want. In the end, it's
going to cause many to miss out on the love of God. But as we talk about what's
going to happen in the end here, I hope you're also thinking about your life.

You and I should be. I don't want to miss out on the love of God today. So these
five descriptions of the civilization, the life that sets itself up against God.

Number one, the first description is a woman sitting on a scarlet beast. This
idea of sitting on a scarlet beast, Revelation chapter 17-3 begins by saying,
"Then the angel carried me away in the spirit into a desert. " Now before I read
the rest of that verse, why did John need to be carried away into the desert
here?

This seems to happen when he's getting further insight on something that's just
occurred. It's like, okay, I'm going to take you over here, I want to give you
further insight. But the interesting thing here is by being carried into a
desert, it also takes us back to another woman who was carried into a
wilderness, in this case for her protection in chapter 12.

There is a woman in Revelation chapter 12 who is not this woman. The woman in
Revelation chapter 12, you remember, is the people of God, the church of God.
And now here is a woman in Revelation chapter 17 who represents the way of this
world.

And the counterpoint between those two is very powerful. We're going to come
back to that at the end of this week. John is taken away in the spirit into a
desert and he sees something.

There he says, "I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was covered with
blasphemous names and had seven heads and ten horns. " Now we're going to come
to the seven heads and ten horns later this week. Right now focus on the scarlet
beast covered with blasphemous names.

This is a reminder, this first picture, this civilization that sets itself up
against God, that its father is the devil. Scarlet the color of Satan and sin in
the book of Revelation. And Satan, the source of all evil, is the power behind
this world system.

And when I say world system, I'm not talking about the way we do politics or the
way we do governments. I'm talking about our selfish way of thinking. That's the
world system.

We want what we want when we want it. Now I should not blame the devil for my
individual choice to sin. I've made that choice and I'm responsible to God
before that.

But I should name the devil as a source of sin. Shouldn't blame the devil for my
sin, but I should name the devil as the source of sin. The reason there is sin
in this world is there is an evil one in this world who has brought it in.

And Satan is the father of all evil. And this world looks like their father. I
don't know if you remember the first time you looked in your mirror and saw your
father staring back at you or your mother staring back at you.

Or the first time you might remember you said something and you heard your
father's words coming out of your mouth or you said, "Oh, I sound exactly like
my mother. " That tends to happen. We reflect whoever's child we are.

Satan is the father of this world system. And so this world looks like Satan.
Satan is a liar.

Guess what this world is filled with? It's filled with lies. Satan is one who
twists whatever is good.

So guess what this world is filled with? People who twist whatever is good to
their selfish ends. Satan is an accuser.

He comes to accuse. And so this world is filled with critics, people who accuse
other people's lives. As you look at this world, it is not too hard to see in
the selfish system of this world the character of Satan in it.

Now as a believer in Jesus Christ, you are to be entirely different. You are
given the promise and the hope of being different because you know Christ. Now
you have a different father.

And we begin to reflect our heavenly father. You begin to look more and more
like him every day. You begin to love people the way that he loves people.

You begin to care about what's happening in the world the way that he cares
about it. You begin to care about what's important the way God cares about
what's truly important. You begin to care about eternity the way that God cares
about eternity.

It's all in who your father is. But this worldly way of thinking, because the
father is the devil, it reflects the liar, the accuser, the one who is evil.
That's the first description.

In the description of a scarlet beast, you get the sense, the powerful truth,
that the father of this worldly way of thinking is the devil. There's a second
description. In 17 verse 4, the Bible says, "The woman was dressed in purple and
scarlet and was glittering with gold and precious stones and pearls.

" Just that first half of verse 4, look at the stuff, look at the things in that
verse. This worldly system, its father is the devil, its focus is materialism.
Now as I walk down through this, is it starting to look familiar, maybe, with
our world today?

As we talk through what Babylon is, we're going to see that, yes, it was in the
past, but it's also in the present, and there are going to be future
fulfillments of what this woman is all about, what this city is all about. When
the book of Revelation was first written down, it was pretty evident that Rome,
the power of that day, was a Babylon of the day. It held all the power in the
world.

It was a place of materialism. We could go through list after list after list of
the kind of material waste that was part of the Roman Empire. One of the
favorite drinks at lavish parties was the drinking of pearls.

They'd take an expensive pearl and they'd melt it with vinegar, they'd put it in
a drink, and they would drink literally pearls that cost hundreds of thousands
of dollars on our money today. Why? Just because they could, just to do it, just
because they could afford it, just to say that they could spend anything that
they wanted to spend.

Now this isn't just about Rome, obviously. Do you see any of that kind of spirit
in our world today? Yes, it's the spirit of materialism.

I spend it because it makes me feel powerful to spend it. Obviously it doesn't
give you any advantage to drink pearls, it doesn't give you any power, but
people tend to go after materialism because they want to feel power and they
look in all the wrong places. You see, the truth about Babylon, this place whose
focus was materialism, it's a nice place to live.

If you list the top hundred cities of the world to live in, Babylon is first.
There's wealth for everyone. Everybody's needs are catered to.

It's a center of power. People like living in Babylon in one sense because it
appeals to our sense of pride. It gratifies our need for pleasure, but only for
a time.

Pride in the end, it leads to a fall. Chasing after pleasure in the end, it
leads to a deep sense of futility in life, a deep sense of loss in life. This
place called Babylon, whose father is the devil, whose focus is materialism,
it's still here today.

It's still here in my life, in your life. How do you struggle with lies? How do
you struggle with twisting what is good to your own selfish ends?

How do you struggle with buying something or having something, not just for the
use of it? We have to have things. We have to use material things in this world,
no sense, no doubt about that.

But how do you use things to try to feel more powerful? You see, we are in this
world, and you and I have to struggle with this. But by the power of God and
Jesus Christ, we can win this battle day by day.

In fact, I want to take a moment as we pray today to continue to ask for His
victory. Would you pray with me? And just say, Father, before looking at others,
I want to look at myself.

And I realize I lie sometimes to get out of trouble, to make myself look better.
And when I do that, I'm following the way of this world and not my father.
You're my father.

And I want to be a person who tells the truth in love. I realize I twist things
for my selfish gain sometimes. Father, I don't want to be like that.

I don't want to fall into the way of everybody else in this world. I want to
have the courage to live in a new and different way. And Lord, it's easy to have
an attack of materialism because there's so many material things around me,
whether I have a lot or have a little.

They're all there. And it's easy to think that somehow they might give me power
or strength. They do not.

Lord, help me to help me to know how to use things to love people instead of
loving things and using people to try to get them. that you have a different
way, a new way. And Lord, as I pray for myself, I also pray for others.

I pray for friends, for family who are caught up in this selfish way of thinking
and whose very lives are so caught up in this. They cannot see the truth of your
love. They can't see the truth of your, the bright truth of your power that you
want to give into our lives.

Help them to see these people that I love. Help them to see Jesus. In your name,
I pray, Amen.

Tomorrow, as we continue through chapter 17, we're going to look at three more
descriptions of how we organize ourselves without God.