Selected Scriptures

January 10, 2021

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 18:55 in the audio file.

Or, The Pulpit, the Pews, and the Priesthood of Believers

Series: Our Worship #2

Introduction

The feedback after last Sunday’s sermon about liturgical feedback was encouraging, as in, many of you were encouraged. There is more to say today, and there will be more to say after today. My observations about what the liturgy has been working into us over the last decade or so are what they are, but those observations don’t say much about our objectives for following such a liturgy. While we can and should be thankful for the fruit, the liturgical seeds we’re sowing were not chosen just because we thought they would prepare us for something. They were chosen because we thought they would help our worship.

We always say something, not just by our words, but by what we choose to do and how we choose to do it, even when it becomes routine. Most of the time we just eat dinner and talk about the day. Sometimes the dinner is special and we talk about how tasty it was. But most nights we don’t all talk about the recipes used and the methods followed and the food presented. It’s all important, even strategic at different levels, but not explicit. We eat, we’re strengthened, we get back to work.

Our liturgy is like a recipe. It’s there, and those who lead the Lord’s Day liturgical charge consider it as they prepare, but we only talk about the recipe explicitly a few times a year. While there are many aspects to body life, our corporate worship on Sunday mornings is unique, and it works on and in us (and even through us) in ways that are worth knowing about. As should become more apparent as this message continues, the ingredients are not something only a few should know.

When I asked the elders about this round of liturgy reminders, they all agreed that it was worth setting a full table. We have been joined by a good number of worshippers who may like the taste, but may not have heard why we make it like this. We also have some among us who’ve been among us all along, but they are now twelve years-old instead of two, or they are saved instead of not, or they are different than they were and at a new stage of appreciating the meal. Then there are the rest of us who need regular reminders because we haven’t memorized the recipe. (Every once in while, someone who has otherwise enjoyed the taste freaks out when they hear what’s in it, but that’s not the norm.) I’m making the same meal of messages once more, but so far fresh.

We will consider the five Cs, why we chose to cook with those ingredients, what flavor we’re going for. But before that, there is an assumption that is only an assumption if you stop thinking about it.

Our liturgy (the recipe and ingredients and pattern) is for the worship of the assembly. It should not be surprising that one’s understanding of who worship is for affects how worship is conducted.

Our gathering together on the Lord’s Day is for corporate worship not for large-group evangelism. We meet as a church, we meet as those belonging to the Church, as those who confess that Jesus is Lord and believe in our hearts that God raised Him from the dead. Of course not everyone who comes is a Christian, and there are congregations, in different contexts of history and cultures, where one might expect a higher number of spiritually dead men to attend. But we are a group of worshippers, and the liturgy should help Christians to worship, not constantly question whether we are Christians.

That “church” (as a verb) is for the church (as a noun) is not assumed by many churches/pastors. But I’ve observed that of the churches that do think church is for the church, many still treat it like the worship of the church is for Christians, and treat them much more as individuals than as an assembly. It is [...]

Selected Scriptures

January 3, 2021

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 23:10 in the audio file.

Or, How Our Worship Has Created a New Normal

Series: Our Worship #1

Introduction

Years ago I read an observation that by the time you get meaningful feedback, the real work is already done. It’s a general principle, even if modern men are more assuming about immediate replies and reports. The farmer works and works, and waits, to see how much will come up in his field, and he is not the only one whose fruit takes a while to taste.

We at TEC, by God’s grace, have tasted some blessed fruit. It’s not perfect. We haven’t arrived. But the feedback we’re getting (especially over the last year or so) shows what sort of work we’ve been doing. I do not mean feedback such as, “Oh, those people at TEC are nice,” nor am I referring to the work done by the elders or leaders. What I mean is the feedback of our corporate joy and maturing and our unified irritation over the governor’s restrictions on worship. That feedback comes from the work we’ve been doing, and the work that has been done on us, through our Lord’s Day liturgy.

TEC is a week shy of ten years old. Many of the relationships among us are twice that long, and our total number these days is a little more than half from one other church. When TEC started we started by considering our worship. The first Sunday I preached from Revelation 5, getting our focus onto the worthy Lamb. The motivation was to keep us from becoming the F.O.G., the Fellowship of Grievances. It is easy to gather a group around shared complaints, until the complainers “bite and devour one another” (Galatians 5:15).

Contemplating Christ, praising His glory, hearing His call for us to obey as His disciples, was not new to any of us. What was different were some of the unspoken parts of our service. Most of us were familiar with singing songs to prepare our hearts to hear the Word preached in the sermon. Perhaps there was a Scripture reading, even a corporate prayer, then maybe another song or two after the sermon, either for an altar call, or a pew call, where you could think a little longer about the message.

That is an order of service, a liturgy. Every church has a liturgy, whether it is simple or sophisticated, whether it is meandering or direct, whether it is admitted or contradicted. I myself, as a mostly Baptist, had never belonged to a church which practiced much more than the Sing, Read, Pray, Preach, Sing pattern. Especially in the churches who cared about truth, theology, Bible, it made sense for the pulpit and the preaching to be in the center.

It may be facile to describe it this way, but that sort of worship service is more like a melodic classroom where you pay every week instead of once a semester. Some of you may remember me talking about truth-tubes. I imagine a science lab with rows of skinny beakers ready to be filled with whatever truth they can collect. It’s as if the goal of the Christian life, and the church’s worship, is to accumulate more accurate sentences and good thinks.

That is wrong on a number of levels, and it is one reason why even conservative, orthodox, Bible-preaching churches have struggled so much over the last nine months. Their liturgy has not prepared them, and they are getting the feedback.

Like the tubes, believers may not be empty, but they are disconnected from the other tubes, even if they are next to one another. Like the tubes, most Christians are an audience, waiting for someone to fill them up (which can, it turns out, mostly be accomplished through screens). They are collecting truth, and trying to avoid cracking, these seem to be the goals.

This is not much of a defense against the world’s efforts to conform us. Even if it isn’t new, the world made clear this last year what it wanted and wants with us. Here is my list of what our rulers and our experts want with us.

The world wants us to be complaint.

Sometimes t[...]

Romans 8:18-39

December 27, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Chris Martin

The sermon starts around 13:50 in the audio file.

Or, A Year of Groaning Considered as the Basis for Convinced Optimism in 2021 and Beyond

Series: Miscellaneous

Matthew 1:1-17

December 20, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 18:00 in the audio file.

Or, The Day of Small Begettings

Series: Advent 2020 #4

Introduction

My favorite technique of painting is Pointillism. For whatever reason, I remember my fourth-grade art teacher introducing us to “Seurat the Dot” at least as she nicknamed him (here is my favorite painting). Pointillism, as you might expect, is the meticulous pointing or dotting of a canvas with small dabs with the tip of a small brush. From a distance it is often hard to tell that the painting is made of dots at all, but up close one can see the crowded specks that blend to form the picture. (Also interesting, printers and screens are concerned with dpi, that is, the density of dots per inch.)

Pointillism is the opposite of broad brushing. It’s not a quick method, not like rolling or spraying the side of a barn. No single dot makes the painting, but every single daub gives depth and direction to it.

The birth of Jesus could be considered as just a dot in a landscape of human history. For as significant as the Incarnation was, and is, God did not dump out a 5-gallon bucket of paint to mark it. Ponder with me, like Mary, some of these things in your hearts.

God told the serpent that Eve would have offspring who would crush his head (Genesis 3:15). God did not tell Adam and Eve, or the serpent, when. God told Abram that he also would have offspring of his own, that nations would come from him, and that certain of his offspring would bring blessing to all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:1-2; 15:5). God did not tell him when. God told David through Nathan that he would have offspring that would rule from the throne as King of Israel, that the nations of the earth would come and do homage (2 Samuel 7:12-16). God did not tell him when.

There were a lot of details given to the patriarchs (i.e., Abraham, Jacob, Judah) and to the prophets about the seed, starting small. Some of it is super obvious, at least if you know what you’re looking for. But the prophets themselves “searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the Spirit of Christ in them was indicating” about His coming (1 Peter 1:10-11).

To Isaiah it was revealed:

> Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. (Isaiah 7:14 ESV, quoted in Matthew 1:23)

To Micah it was revealed:

> But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,

> who are too little to be among the clans

> of Judah,

> from you shall come forth for me

> one who is to be ruler in Israel,

> whose coming forth is from of old,

> from ancient days. (Micah 5:2 ESV, quoted in Matthew 2:6)

As I mentioned in the first advent message three Sundays ago, God’s people were waiting; they didn’t know when. As generations went by God progressively revealed more specifics, but fathers and their sons anticipated the arrival of a Son who would be King.

They weren’t the only ones looking for this one seed in a great tree, for the promised point on the canvas. It wasn’t only the visible realm, but also the invisible—at least to our eyes—world that was watching. The ancient serpent, the dragon, was also looking for the seed.

Remember from Revelation 12, the great sign of a “woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars” (Revelation 12:1)? That Woman is not Mary, it is the genealogy of Matthew 1:1-17. The Woman is not only the Jesus’ genealogy, but if this was a painting, think of His genealogy as a distinct line of subtle color on the Woman, obvious once it’s finished and pointed out. It was not only subtle leading up to Joseph and Mary, it was covert, so small that it was largely secret.

Why? Because the dragon was looking to devour the Child.

> And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great red dragon….His tail swept down a third of th[...]

Matthew 1:1-17

December 13, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 20:15 in the audio file.

Or, Far as the Curse Is Found

Series: Advent 2020 #3

Introduction

Christians do not believe reasonable things, at least as the world defines reasonable, and often even what religious people call reasonable. Jesus Christ, God’s Son in flesh and blood, is not reasonable. His existence is a scandal.

Many Jews anticipated the promised Messiah, but they stumbled over Jesus’ claim to be that divine King and they killed Him for it. The fact of His crucifixion caused other Jews to stumble over Jesus, because their Messiah couldn’t be a crucified Messiah. Jesus was a rock of offense (1 Peter 2:8; 1 Corinthians 1:23). Not only Jews, but also many Gentiles had their own religious expectations and considered the word of the cross foolish (1 Corinthians 1:23). What kind of “god” was this?

The scandal and offense and foolishness began not with Jerusalem but Bethlehem. The Word lifted up (John 8:28; 12:32-33) started with the Word come down, the Word become flesh.

The doctrine of Jesus’ divinity taking on humanity is called the hypostatic union. As our historic catechisms confess, Jesus is “true God from true God” and “became truly human” (Nicene Creed, AD 325).

> one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation; the distinction of natures being in no way annulled by the union, but rather the characteristics of each nature being preserved and coming together to form one person and subsistence, not as parted or separated into two persons, but one and the same Son and Only-begotten God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ (Definition of Chalcedon, AD 451)

In the first few centuries this was simply unbelievable. Some argued that Jesus wasn’t really a man but just seemed to be one (Docetism), or that Jesus wasn’t really God (Arianism), or that there were two separate persons in Jesus (Nestorianism), or that after the incarnation there was only the one nature (Eutyches). The hypostatic union was too much of a scandal for many to handle.

Christmas has been causing idealogical and worldview arguments since it started. The incarnation of God (the second Person of three Persons in the Trinity, equally God but not the Father or the Spirit) is staggering enough. As Athanasius pointed out in his book On the Incarnation, the Son was still holding the universe together while His limbs were being knit together in His mother’s womb.

But the divine-human union of Jesus’ nature is not the scandal that Matthew started with. As we’ve seen the past two Sundays of Advent sermons, the first seventeen verses of the New Testament point to God’s promises fulfilled over generations of waiting. The fulfillment came in the coming of the Christ; my boss is not just a Jewish carpenter. The King was born! As we come for a third focus on the genealogy we see that Jesus’ family tree is a royal mess.

The “book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ” (verse 1), the “account of the origin” (NIV fn), the “record” (NASB) could very well be called the original Christmas naughty list. The birth of Christ is filled with inconveniences for Jesus’ immediate family, Joseph traveling with his pregnant fiancé where there were mask mandates in the inn, and no room (Luke 2:1-7). But Jesus’ extended family is filled with immoralities.

It’s not just the bit players either. The headliner names, Abraham and David, were not mere mythical figures in Jewish history, they were mortal and sinful men. Abraham, who is the father of the Jews, was not a Jew himself. Abram was from Ur, chosen by God to become the father of many nations, including the nation of Israel. Though Abraham believed God, he also disobeyed God, as Genesis records that twice[...]

Selected Scriptures

December 6, 2020

Evening Service

Ryan Hall

Series: Centers and Circumferences Part 11

Matthew 1:1-17

December 6, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 20:35 in the audio file.

Or, On the Increase of His Government

Series: Advent 2020 #2

Introduction

One December when I was a kid I got into big trouble for writing “X-mas” on a box. As I remember the circumstances, I wasn’t trying to make a theological statement or express a new commitment, I had seen X-mas somewhere and it seemed like fun, plus, it fit on my small box. My abbreviation skills were not appreciated and I got a good lecture on keeping “Christ” in Christmas.

Even with my contrarian streak it wasn’t my intention to keep the gifts but get rid of God in flesh. But I took the lesson to heart, and made the concern my own for a number of years…until I learned Greek in college. In Greek class I learned that the first letter in the word for Christ is a chi, which looks exactly like our English letter x. Perhaps the first person to ever write X-mas was a sophomore Biblical studies major who thought he was being clever, and little did he know how much consternation he would cause among Christian mothers trying to teach their kids about the reason for the season.

In more recent years we Christians have gotten garland wrapped up tight around our groins about business signage and disposable coffee cups and public greetings of “Happy holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas.” This verbal shift was calculated to promote the good-feels of the god of pluralism and avoid offending those who don’t worship the Christ. I’m fine with a deliberate “Merry Christmas” back with a twinkle in your eye, or if you have a little longer, maybe a response of, “Thanks, but what’s so holy about the holiday without Jesus?”

The Christ in Christmas is certainly key. Christ is more than Jesus’ last name, though after a while calling Him “Jesus Christ” became natural in a way that calling me “Sean a Pastor” never will. Being the Christ is part of Jesus’ very nature.

All of the gospel writers identified Jesus as the Christ, but Matthew highlighted this attribute more than the others. It is part of the reason that his gospel comes first of the four, and part of the reason that it comes immediately following the end of the Old Testament. The Law, the Prophets, and the Writings anticipated the Christ. The people of God were waiting for the promised Seed, the Christ.

Χριστός (Christos) is the Greek word, transliterated into English as “Christ,” that translates the Hebrew word for Messiah, a word that is difficult to define with just one word (which is why the English “messiah” is transliterated from Hebrew). It referred to one who was anointed, that is, recognized and appointed to a certain office or title or responsibility. We typically associate Jesus as Christ with Jesus as Savior, and that is good. But there are specific words for savior, like, you know, the word Savior. When we think of “Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 1:4), we think of Him as God’s-Son who saves and is sovereign. Again, that’s good. But it’s not enough.

Yes, Jesus will save His people from their sin (Matthew 1:21), but the saving work, the primary aim of His first coming, is prominent in His earthly name: Jesus; the Hebrew name Jesuha means “the Lord is salvation.” Calling Jesus the Christ makes prominent that He is the Savior King. Keeping Christ in Christmas is only as good as we’re thinking about it as keeping the King in Christmas.

If you are a serious Christian, one who reads his Bible, one who hates the commercialism and the materialism and the secularism of what our holiday has become, you also probably think about Jesus as a King in terms of Jesus’ explanation to Pilate when He said, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36). The way such a serious Christian honors Jesus as King is w[...]

Matthew 1:1-17

November 29, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 20:00 in the audio file.

Or, Some Anticipation Required

Series: Advent 2020 #1

Introduction

I have never preached a series of advent/Christmas messages before. For a number of years I’ve taken the four advent Sundays and connected four confession exhortations or communion meditations, but never four sermons. I prefer keeping the course through a book of the Bible, at least up until the Sunday immediately preceding Christmas. Even then many times I try to link the providentially appointed next paragraph with the holiday theme.

But it’s 2020. If the only thing that doesn’t change is change itself, then could we say that change feels like the most normal thing? That obviously breaks down, and quickly, but I thought, why not? Revelation 17 and 18 go together, so pausing in between is sort of like parking on the downhill side. After these Christmas sermons and some sermons on our worship and liturgy, we’ll pick up in the Apocalypse and speed toward the finish sometime in the spring, Lord willing and the ‘rona don’t rise.

So, four whole messages for advent. Advent (from Latin adventus), as we’ve learned, means coming. Some people advent naturally, others of us have learned to appreciate the discipline of the season, and even how the annual month of conscious re-waiting for celebrating Christ’s incarnation (His first coming) orients us for Christ’s parousia (second coming). Not everyone gets excited about the Christmas holiday, and fine, but every Christian should be getting ready for the great day of the Lord.

What I’d like to do in these messages is consider some Christmas meta, not just sub details, but some of the overarching narrative that gives a pattern or structure for our beliefs. Christmas is a message about the coming of God’s Son, and Christmas gives meaning to God’s people.

To start that, I want to take a look at a part of the story that most people skip, or skim. We’re going to take a look at, and a look through, the genealogy of Jesus in the first chapter of Matthew. If your family reads Scripture on Christmas morning, you probably start in Matthew 1:18, “Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way” (or you read Luke 2 instead). And yet the first verses of Matthew’s gospel, the first verses of the New Testament are, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ” (1:1).

There are (at least) four large-scale encouragements, applications, plot points, object lessons, etc., in this genealogy. Don’t get anxious about how bored you’re going to be, at least wait a little before deciding you’d rather quietly disagree about the millennium.

In fact, the first lesson is just that: wait.

Waiting is an appropriate subject for a heavenly host of reasons, including that this is the first Sunday of advent, so it is the furthest Sunday from Christmas. Christmas is on Friday this year, so we’re almost as far away as we could be. We are at least post-Thanksgiving, which makes it lawful to talk about the next festivity, but it is also still November.

Waiting is also appropriate because 2020 has demanded it. “Fifteen days to flatten the curve” was 259 days ago. Lockdown deadlines approached, pressure built, and then deadlines were extended, restrictions added, inconsistencies multiplied, apparently arbitrary decisions magnified. We turned some anticipation energy toward elections, and what a sinus headache with your head in a vice on a plane climbing altitude that turned out to be. Whence comest relief? We can’t crescendo forever, right?

I like movies the same way I recommend marital engagements: short and sweet. Anticipation can be fun, if it doesn’t go on forever. I appreciate Melville’s work in Moby Dick, how he so successfully gave me a sense of how tedious months on a ship in the [...]

Revelation 17:7-18

November 22, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 20:20 in the audio file.

Or, Love to Hate and Raised to Fall

Series: Just Conquer Part 46

Introduction

It has been observed that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and getting the same result, but expecting a different one. Because of sin, there are more insane people than polite people want to acknowledge. To be insane means to be in a state of mind which prevents normal perception and behavior. Our English word comes from insanus, which is the idea of not being sanus, so not healthy. While we know that man’s depravity means he is spiritually dead and incapable of seeing the truth on his own, one of the symptoms is a mental sickness that believes in the dark. It’s “normal” only in the sense that he’s not by himself in his perceptions of reality.

The last days will be marked by a society of unrestrained delusion. There will be great, global agreement on impossible things, at least until the hour when agreement self-destructs. This is the insane part, because the agreement was on destruction, so it was only a matter of time before it imploded. A society cannot survive if it is built on idolizing a liar and living in deception. Only those who can’t be insane won’t be, and the only ones who can’t are called by the Spirit and chosen by the Father and faithful to the Lamb.

The burden of Revelation 17 is to show the path of destruction, to show what has been determined for those who deceive and are deceived. They love to hate, their “love” turns to hate, and it is insane to think that it was ever going to turn out differently. They have a mind for war, a shared mind set for destruction, and those who are raised up in such an irrational system are destined to fall.

As believers, we are not just being given information about the future world insanity and the sorts of persecution that believers will face, we are being given a different mindset, we are being given a share in the conquering King, and we are being given confidence in God’s Word. All of His words will be fulfilled, and it can’t be any other way. It is the definition of insanity to deny His sovereignty, let alone to make war against the Lamb.

We have been considering John’s visions of the Great Tribulation for a number of chapters. What we have seen unveiled with the apostle are not things that have happened yet, they are not things that are currently on stage either. That said, we are not luny to think that they are immanent. We are not mentally unfit, or unhinged because we think they could happen at any moment, because John himself wrote that they would happen soon, as did many other NT writers. When we see insanity in our own day, we are seeing the same path of destruction. Our heightened awareness of the two paths, one of conquering and the other of being conquered, only helps us be faithful.

Revelation 17 began with a vision of a “great prostitute,” who represents a system of spheres which seduce men with the promise of prosperity and pleasure. The woman works with the beast, the Antichrist, until he turns on her, which anyone who knows anything about beasts could have told her would happen.

John introduced the prostitute and identified some of her behavior in verses 1-6, and in verses 7-18 he is given an angelic interpretation of what it all means. Five times we’ll read “that you saw” (verses 8, 12, 15, 16, 18) as the angel provides divine commentary.

Raised to Fall (verses 7-14)

John’s response to the vision begins halfway through our verse 6: “When I saw her, I marveled greatly.” We might compare this to the first time Digory saw Queen Jadis, or what Ahab thought about Jezebel: Wow, and Yikes! There was an overwhelming sense of pomp (she “was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with [...]

Revelation 17:1-6

November 15, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 20:15 in the audio file.

Or, The Great Joyride of Unrighteousness

Series: Just Conquer Part 45

Introduction

Because we are always becoming more of what we are, we’re not wrong to look down the road and see what’s coming. It’s as true for cultures and nations as it is for individuals.

God Himself promises to “restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish” His people (1 Peter 5:10), having chosen us in order “to be conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). True Christians, are “by God’s power…being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5). For all who believe, we trust that the testing of our faith makes our believing bolder, and the trials and contests increase our courage.

The reality works the other way as well. Hard hearts get harder. Willful bitterness swims into the deeper waters of Wormwood. Hatred mothers more hatred; the leech is never satisfied (Proverbs 30:15). Death produces more death, and the stench can be as thick as hell’s unquenchable smoke.

We are all becoming more of what we are. Christians are being made more like Christ, with more endurance and courage. Earth-dwellers are being made more like the world, more like the dragon, more hardened in sin against the Lamb. These next couple chapters of Revelation give a good look at what happens when God removes His restraining grace.

The apostle John isn’t the only one moved by the Spirit to write about such a day. The apostle Paul wrote about the time of “rebellion,” when “the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.” “The mystery of lawlessness is already at work,” and “the coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and be saved.” They are dying to death because they loved their life of lies. “God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, in order that they all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” (2 Thessalonians 2:1-12)

There is not only a man of lawlessness, there is likewise a woman that throws off all restraint.

Revelation 17 provides a vision of the great joyride of unrighteousness. It’s an international ride. The kings and the commoners embrace any lie necessary for a little more pleasure. This chapter is a “better” look, at least a more specific look at the world gone wild. It is a vision given by the Spirit to John to give to us. This is God’s message, these are God’s metaphors, this is part of the prophecy God wants us to hear and keep for sake of our blessing.

It shows the beauty and the beast, though the beauty is as fake as a successful Marxism, though more dangerous. Chapters 17 and 18 give this expanded explanation of the seventh bowl judgement. Per the end of chapter 16, all the bowls have been poured out, but these chapters fill in more about what it looks like when restraining grace is gone and why the bowl judgments are so fitting. Chapter 17 shows Babylon’s drunken “glory,” chapter 18 shows Babylon’s drunken ruin. Chapter 17 opens with the vision (verses 1-6) and then the rest of the chapter provides the interpretation (verses 7-18).

The Woman Introduced (verses 1-2)

We know that the bowl judgments of chapters 15-16 are connected to this scene because “one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came” to John (verse 1). This is one of the seven, not an extra angel, because “one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels” the bowls of wrath (Revelation 15:7). Perhaps it was the angel with the final bowl who in[...]