Revelation 18:9-20

February 28, 2021

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 19:50 in the audio file.

Or, When the Establishment Goes Up in Smoke

Series: Just Conquer Part 48

Introduction

The great antidote to materialism is not becoming a monk or a missionary. Ironically many monks and missionaries still define themselves in relation to money and stuff, but in terms of living in austerity rather than luxury. It still signals a man’s spirituality according to his possessions, it still defines spirituality in earthly terms.

The great antidote to materialism is not Marxism (socialism or communism); materialism isn’t overcome by identifying and overthrowing structures of human power, or redistributing materials among many. The great antidote is recognizing one’s identity as an image-bearer of God. The remedy for humanism (man—and his stuff—at the center of life) is worship (God at the center of life). The way to deal with the love of money is to love God and to give thanks when He blesses. The problem is not in good bread and wine or in comfortable homes and iPhones, the problem is when we’re consumed with those goods and forget God.

God’s blessing on image-bearers gave them purpose and strength to multiply and work and take dominion on earth. We reflect God in our relationships and in our responsibilities. Genesis 1:28 anticipated a network of coordinated ingenuity and industry. Genesis 9:1-7 reaffirmed this vision after the fall and after the flood.

In the next chapter, the men in Babel, as it came to be known later, had a great civic project. The proposed tower would provide work as well as a cultural symbol. It would require working together in relationships and working diligently in particular responsibilities. This could have been a great image-bearing symbol, but instead it was a symbol of man’s hideous strength (a line from a 1555 poem by Sir David Lyndsay about the tower of Babel). The men intended this tower to reach to heaven so that they could mitigate any more “natural” disasters like a flood. The project was more than an impressive artifact, it was an artifact of how impressed they were with themselves. “Let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 10:4). They didn’t need God, or at least that was the theological blueprint they started with.

More generations of Christians have been bad at this than have been good at it. We see the temptations of possessions and prosperity, we see men trying to build towers for the wrong reasons, and so we don’t try to build anything. By God’s grace there have been generations of Christians who built together for the Lord’s sake rather than their own, but it’s not an easy balance. Then there are others who are bad at building who get envious, or self-righteous, and argue that they are the really spiritual ones because they aren’t even trying to be successful in worldly ways.

It makes sense that Paul wrote to the Philippians about learning how both to be abased and to abound (Philippians 4:12-13).

I have introduced today’s passage this way because it would be easy to preach it wrongly divided (cf. 2 Timothy 2:15). It would be easy, and wrong, to preach it moralistically, though it is based on moral standards. When we consider what this revelation means and how we’re to respond, we should be clear that the sin is not in the stuff nor in being a salesman nor a sailor. The sin is in the establishment of a system that tries to do it all without God. In the end that sort of humanistic and materialistic establishment will go up in smoke.

Revelation 17-18 describe the economic establishment of the end times as a prostitute with whom the kings and nations spend their wealth. The political and religious and financial leaders are all in bed together, and it’s for pleasure and power and self-promotion, until it crashes, and it will crash hard.

In Revelation 18:9-20 we h[...]