If you'll turn now from the front of your Bible to the back of your Bible to Revelation chapter 17. I'm going to read the first six verses as our text this morning. Revelation chapter 17 and verses 1 through 6. And there came one of the seven angels, which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither, and I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sits upon many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness. And I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. And upon her forehead was a name written, mystery, Babylon the Great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman, drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration." Let's pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. Help us this morning in our understanding of it. Thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ. While we are unfaithful, He is faithful. And in the midst of many harlots through history, those who have abandoned their first love, it has never been you who have abandoned your bride. But your bride has been pure because of your faithfulness. So help us this morning to put away idolatry, to put away spiritual whoredom, to remain faithful to our Lord Jesus, to love Him and keep Him in a place of prominence in our hearts and our minds and our life. Help me in my exposition of the text this morning, that I would not fear the face of man, that I would be faithful to the Scriptures as they are put before us, that we would see the beauty of Jesus Christ and the awfulness of spiritual whoredom away from Him. For Christ's sake we ask these things. Amen. Thank you for standing. You can be seated. We now begin what is a two-chapter examination of the destruction of this city, because as we go on in this chapter and the next, we see that this great whore, this mother of harlots, is a city. The scriptures tell us clearly, the last verse of chapter 17 says, "...and the woman which thou sawest is that great city which reigns over the king's of the earth, and so this chapter and the next chapter, both chapters 17 and 18, are going to give us in vivid detail the telling of God's judgment and destruction upon this city, identified here as mystery. Babylon the Great, mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, as verse 5 declares her to be to us. Like most of the topics in the book of Revelation, there has been a wide variety of interpretations given as to who this mystery, Babylon the Great, mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, is. I'm not going to spend any time this morning debating what I see to be purely futurative, speculative interpretations of this. Many believe that there's going to be some future city that's going to rise up, and I can't speculate as to what the future holds, so I'm not going to spend really any time discussing that. But I'm going to attempt to interpret Scripture with Scripture. which is my goal every time that I come to the scriptures. I want scripture to be the interpreter of itself. And I will also seek to address the orthodox historical interpretations that great godly men of the past have held and postulated in a majority view in certain areas and times. So let's dig into this. Instead of going verse by verse, we're going to start that, Lord willing, next week. I really want to take this whole section of these two chapters and look at the clues that the scriptures give us in identifying this Babylon the Great. The first clue, and I say it's the first clue not only because we come upon it so immediately in our text, but also because of the number of times in which this clue is given to us over the next two chapters, is this idea of spiritual infidelity. that she's called the great whore and the mother of harlots. Verse 1 says the great whore. Verse 2 says the kings of the earth have committed fornication, made drunk with the wine of her fornication. Verse 4 says, "...the golden cup and her handful of abominations and filthiness of her fornication." Verse 5, "...the mother of harlots and abomination of the earth." So this is the striking feature of this city. Spiritual adultery. Harlotry, whoredom, fornication, all of these words are used to give us the entire picture that the person, or the city rather, that we're talking about, identified as this woman, is a adulteress. She's sexually promiscuous in a spiritual sense. She's not been faithful to the one who called her. These two chapters give us all kinds of context clues in helping to identify this woman. It talks about the merchants of the earth buying and selling. It talks about the kings of the earth coming to her. It talks about being seated on seven hills. I mean, there's all kinds of geographical and economic clues given to us here. But the consistent description of her character is this whoredom. And if this book was written to these seven churches in Asia Minor, which we saw in two of the first three chapters of this book, if you were to tell any of those individuals in those churches who were biblically literate, who knew the scriptures, who'd studied the Old Testament and even that of the New Testament that they'd received up to that point, and you said, The Apostle John is telling you by the Spirit that there is a city that God is accusing of playing the harlot. He's promising to judge her for that. Who do you think he's talking about? I think that you would get a unanimous answer. I think every biblically literate individual in those churches in the first century would say, we know who God says he will judge for playing the harlot. Because he said it again, and again, and again, and again in the scriptures. If you have your Bibles and you want to follow along with me, I'm not going to take a lot of time to let you flip to these passages because I have a lot of scriptures I want to get to. But you can jot them down or maybe you can flip fast enough. Jeremiah chapter 3 and verse 8. We get a clear accusation by God that both Israel and Judah, the northern tribes and the southern, all twelve tribes of Israel, God was going to divorce because of their harlotry. He says in Jeremiah 3.8, And I saw, when for all the causes whereby backsliding Israel committed adultery, I had put her away, and given her a bill of divorce. Yet her treacherous sister Judah feared not, but went and played the harlot also. So God says, all twelve tribes of Israel are harlots. They're adulteresses. I bought them. I redeemed them. I made them a nation when they were no nation. I cleansed them when they were in their own blood and I put my garments of righteousness on them and they've played the harlot. Hosea, the entire book of Hosea is God playing this drama out in front of His people in clear color. Hosea 1-2, the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said unto Hosea, Go, take unto thee a wife of whoredoms and children of whoredoms, for the land has committed great whoredom, departing from the Lord. Our passage tells us that this woman was in purple and scarlet, and had jewels and pearls, all of this on her. In Ezekiel chapter 16, this is the passage where the Bible tells us about God finding Israel, and cleaning her up, and making her His own, and yet the majority of that chapter in Ezekiel chapter 16, as beautiful as the picture is in the beginning, the rest of the chapter is dedicated to God's accusations that in spite of all of that, she went and played the whore. She committed spiritual adultery against him. And look at some of the descriptions in Ezekiel chapter 16 and starting in verse 15. But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and playest the harlot because of thy renown, and poorest out thy fornications on every one that passed by his it was. and of thy garments thou didst take, and deckest thy high places with diverse colors, and plaitest the harlot thereupon, though like things shall not come, neither shall it be so. Thou hast also taken thy fair jewels of my gold and of my silver, which I had given thee, and madest to thyself images of men, and didst commit whoredom with them. and tookest thy broidered garments, and coverest them, and thou hast set mine oil and mine incense before them." So he describes her colorful garments, and her jewels, and her gold, and he says, you've taken these good gifts that I've given you, these blessings that I've clothed you with, and that I've poured out upon you, and you've used them to allure lovers to yourself. The gifts I gave you. Our text tells us the kings of the earth have committed fornication and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. Well, this is exactly what God says in Ezekiel chapter 16. Look, starting in verse 26. Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians, thy neighbors. great of flesh, and hast increased thy whoredoms to provoke me to anger. Behold, therefore, I have stretched out my hand over thee, and have diminished thine ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate thee, the daughters of the Philistines, which are ashamed of thy lewd way. Thou hast played the whore also with the Assyrians. because thou wast unsatiable. Yea, thou hast played the harlot with them, and yet couldst not be satisfied. Thou hast moreover multiplied thy fornication in the land of Canaan unto Chaldea, and yet thou wast not satisfied herewith. He says, The kings and the nations of the earth, you're not happy with any of them until you've fornicated with all of them. Until you've played the whore with all of these Gentile, idolatrous nations surrounding you, you've brought in the kings and the nations of all the earth to be idolatrous against Me. To worship their gods and their idols and to forsake Jehovah, the Lord your God, which purchased you and married you. The second great context clue in my mind in comparing Scripture with Scripture and identifying this city is that chapter 18 tells us in two places that the destruction of this city will be the vengeance of the prophets. In chapter 18 and verse 20, the Scriptures say, Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God has avenged you on her. And then down in verse 24, And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all that were slain upon the earth. Well, in which city was found the blood of prophets and apostles and saints? While the first reason for the judgment of this city is her infidelity to God and her promiscuity with the nations of the world, the second reason we're given for why God is going to bring judgment upon her is because of her martyrdom of the prophets, the apostles, and the saints. Who does the Bible say God will hold accountable and judge for the blood of all the prophets, wise men, and scribes that were slain on the earth? Jerusalem. That's what the Bible says. Luke chapter 13 and verse 33, Jesus is warned, look, Herod's out to kill you. And Jesus says in Luke 13.33, Nevertheless, I must walk today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. That's just what Jerusalem's known for. They're going to kill the prophets. A prophet's going to die. You can bet it's going to be in Jerusalem. Jesus said the same thing in Matthew chapter 23. starting in verse 29, Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, and say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets. Wherefore, ye be witnesses unto yourself that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers, ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes. And some of them ye shall kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute them from city to city, that upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel, unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barakias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar. Verily I say unto you, all these things shall come upon this generation. So when Babylon falls and God says, prophets, apostles, The saints, all that were slain upon the earth, rejoiced. God has brought vengeance upon them." We know exactly who he's talking about. He told us while he walked on this earth, Jerusalem is the city that kills the prophets. It can't be that a prophet would perish outside of Jerusalem. And therefore, this generation is going to receive the full measure of God's wrath from the beginning of time, the very first martyr Abel, all the way up to the present day. All of those holy men who were killed, are going to be avenged on Jerusalem. On the Pharisees, and the Sadducees, and the Herodians, and the Scribes, and all of these who were taking hand-in-hand counsel against the Lord and against His anointed. The third big clue we get in trying to compare Scripture with Scripture is that we're told, or the people of this city are told, to come out of her and be separate. This city is in some way so connected to the people of God that they are commanded to come out of her. Certainly in a spiritual sense, they are to disassociate themselves from her apostate idolatry. But also in a physical sense, they need to flee geographically like a lot was pulled out of Sodom so that they don't receive the plagues of her judgment that are coming. Where did Jesus tell his disciples to flee from when they saw the signs of the destruction coming? Jerusalem. It's Revelation chapter 18 and verse 4 where we see this command. And I heard another voice from heaven saying, Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues. So I don't want you being associated with her spiritually, so that you don't become tainted with her fornications. And I don't want you being associated with her geographically, so you don't receive the plagues that I'm going to send upon her. Jesus said in Luke 21, starting in verse 20, And when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains, and let them which are in the midst of it depart out, and let not them that are in the countries enter therein too. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. If this city is called Babylon, spiritually called Babylon, it should be no surprise that God would call His people out of her, both literally and figuratively. This is the call that God gave to His people when they were in physical Babylon in the Old Testament. In Isaiah chapter 52, when Israel was held captive in Babylon and God was preparing to rescue her out of there, He says, Depart ye, depart ye, go out from thence. Touch no unclean thing. Go ye out of the midst of her. Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord. So in Israel, Ethnic Israel was in physical Babylon. God's call to them was, come out, depart from her, don't touch the unclean thing. Now the Holy Spirit applied this to the church in Corinth in the New Testament in the first century. In 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 17, when Paul is warning them not to dabble in idolatry, he says, wherefore come out from among them. And be ye separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you." And now the Holy Spirit applies it through the Apostle John to the believers there in Jerusalem. Come out from among her. Don't be associated with her idolatries. Her plagues are coming and you don't want to be partakers in those plagues. The fourth great clue is that this book, and I didn't realize how clear terminology until I was studying for this sermon, this book contrasts the great whore and the bride, the lamb's wife, in almost word for word detail in some ways. If you have your Bibles there, keep your finger here in chapter 17, and then turn the page over a page or two to chapter 21. Revelation chapter 17 and verse 1 says, And there came one of the seven angels, which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither, I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sits upon many waters. Now look at chapter 21 and verse 9. And there came unto me one of the seven angels, which had the seven vials, full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will show thee the bride, the Lamb's wife." So almost word for word here we get one of the angels of the seven vials saying, Come hither, I'll show you the great whore. One of the seven angels with the seven last plagues says, Come hither, I'll show you the bride, the Lamb's wife. Verse 2, Revelation chapter 17. With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. Flip over to chapter 21 and look at verse 24. And the nations of them which are saved shall walk in the light of it, and the kings of the earth do bring their glory and honor into it. Look at Revelation chapter 17 in verse 3. So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness, and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet-colored beast full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And verse 4, And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication. Look at chapter 21 and verses 10 and 11. And He carried me away in the Spirit, in chapter 17 it was to the wilderness, but in chapter 21, He carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me that great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. And her light was like unto a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal. So we get this comparison of these two ladies, and they're, in some ways, word for word comparison, and yet their character could not be any more different. The one lady is a whore, the other is a bride. The one lady is decked in scarlet and purple and jewels, the other has a stone clear as crystal. The one is located in a wilderness, the other is located on a great and high mountain. The one is committing fornication with the kings and the nations of the earth, the other has the kings and the nations of the earth bringing their glory unto it. Who is being contrasted so starkly here? I believe Galatians chapter 4 and verses 25 and 26 answer this for us. For this Agar is Mount Sinai in Arabia, and answers to Jerusalem which now is, and is in bondage with her children. But Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all. So Paul compares two cities. He says, one now is and is in bondage, and the other is free and is in heaven and is Christ's. There's Jerusalem which now is, there's the physical Jerusalem located in Israel, and there's the heavenly Jerusalem, the spiritual Jerusalem, the city of God, the bride of Jesus Christ. And so these two are compared. One, having completely abandoned Jehovah and His Christ. He came unto His own and His own received Him not. And the other being those who were faithful to Christ. Those who were the true pure bride of Christ, who did not abandon Him. But who were given the power to become the sons of God, even those who believed on His name. So then the question that maybe I know is on some of your minds, and maybe on many of your minds, what about the Roman Catholic papacy? The Roman Catholic papacy, the majority view of the Reformation, was that this whore, this great whore, this mystery, this Babylon the Great, was speaking of Rome and the papacy. Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Knox, John Gill, all commented and made application to the papacy when dealing with this mystery Babylon. Well, I don't believe that was the primary message to the first century readers of this book. I don't think the believers in Sardis read this book and thought, I wonder what's going to happen in 1500 years, you know, where there's going to be a city who's like... No, they're going to know Wait, there's someone decked in purple, and scarlet, and gold, and jewels, and holding a golden cup in their hand, and having a golden crown on their head, and that golden crown says, holiness to the Lord, but it's not holiness to the Lord, it's blasphemy. Yeah, I know who that is. That's the high priest in the temple, continuing to offer sacrifices, which Jesus was the once for all sacrifice. That's not holiness to the Lord, that's blasphemy to the Lord. However, I do believe that theirs was a proper and faithful application of this message to spiritual whoredom and harlotry in their day, which was most certainly the papacy of Rome. When Isaiah told Israel to come out of Babylon and not touch the unclean thing, I don't think the Israelites in 700 were thinking, I wonder what application this is going to have in the first century after the Messiah has come and there's a new covenant brought in. No, they knew. Leave Babylon. Quit worshipping the idols of Babylon and go back to Israel. And yet the Holy Spirit in His perfect power and wisdom also made application in the New Testament. Church in Corinth, this also applies to you. Come out from among her and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing. Church in Jerusalem, this also applies to you. Come out from among her and engage not in her harlotries and touch not the unclean thing. And in the 1500s, this also applied to them. Come out from among her and touch not the unclean thing and be ye separate. The principle was the same in 700 B.C. and 70 A.D. and 1519 A.D. When there is a system, the prevailing system, which has largely and in many facets completely forsaken the true God and elevated superstition and self-righteousness into the center of their religion, God notices, He sees, He's not blind to, their spiritual adultery, and he calls his people to abandon that apostate system and return to worshipping him in spirit and in truth. In many ways, Rome adopted the same exact superstitions that Jerusalem practiced after it rejected Jesus. You look at the parallels and it's uncanny. They instituted men as priests to intercede between God and man. They required works of righteousness to justify them before God. They viewed objects as talismans to be venerated. They used incense and holy water and meats and drinks and holy days as binding requirements for rightly worshiping God. They taught that being in the holy city meant that you were closer to God. Rome certainly continued the spiritual whoredoms that Jerusalem, her mother, post-Jesus Christ, had begun. But we need to be careful that we don't apply this only in history, whether to Jerusalem or Rome, but that we continue to apply those same principles in our day. If you weren't raised around blatant idolatry, idols that people knelt before. I remember Vodie Bachum talking about seeing his mother kneeling in front of a stone idol and offering incense and fruit to it. And he said, to this day, there is a rotten taste in my mouth any time I see a little Buddha statue or any kind of idolatry. It brings me back to that idolatry of my mother. If you've never been exposed to that, thanks be to God, But do not be apathetic to the wickedness of that. Maybe because you haven't seen your own mother bound to an idol, you think it's trite and entertaining to dabble in astrology. To be entertained by wizards and druids and necromancers. to decorate your house with Buddhas and the Tao, or to otherwise dismiss God's call to keep yourself from idols. Come out from among her and be ye separate. That didn't merely apply to Israel in Babylon physical. It didn't merely apply to the church in Corinth who were trying to rid themselves of the idolatry around them. It continues to apply to God's people in all ages. My little children, keep yourself from idols. If you've been in any way, shape, or form tied into American Christianity in the last hundred years, you've probably heard Jerusalem spoken of as the Holy Land. You've been taught to think of particular ethnic features as people who are the apple of God's eye. Maybe you even think of yourself as sharing the Judeo-Christian worldview with Orthodox Jews, And you haven't realized that they hate Jesus of Nazareth in no uncertain terms. If you ask a rabbi today how he's to interpret the law when they have no temple, no priests, no sacrifice, you know what he'll tell you? Babylon tells me how to worship God. I've got the Babylonian Talmud. I know how I can worship God, even though I don't have any of the things that God told me to worship Him by, Babylon's told me how I can get around that. If you haven't been close to the superstitions of Rome. If you haven't heard the vain repetitions in their prayers. Seen the veneration paid to bits of metal, wood or bone. Been told that you're eating the literal flesh of Christ and drinking His literal blood. been given a list of to-dos in order to help you atone for your sin, and the list goes on and on. Perhaps you're tempted to think that Roman Catholicism is just another Christian denomination. Nothing all that serious. They played the harlot many centuries ago. So long ago, it's hard to say when they stopped being faithful to God, if they ever were at all. They do not love Jesus Christ as revealed in the Scriptures. They do not believe that they are made right by God by grace through faith in Jesus Christ alone. They've moved the love of Christ out of the way and they've put the love of the Pope and of superstitions and of traditions of men in the place of Jesus Christ. Every time they do these things, they continue their spiritual whoredom. Their idolatry. And as I said, the spiritual, institutional, harlotry didn't end with Rome. Many so-called Protestant denominations and churches today have sold themselves to the highest bidder. where Babylon and Jerusalem and Rome told their followers they could atone for their own sins. Big Eva says, you have no sins that need to be atoned. Your problem is you don't have enough self-esteem. Your problem is that you've been indoctrinated in some old-fashioned bigotry and now we just love and accept everybody. And Jesus is a great example for how we can just love everyone and live a good life. The connecting thread between all of them is that they jettison Jesus as the one who is all in all. They stop telling you this is the one that must be at the center of everything. He's your only entrance to God. He's the only sacrifice for sins. He's the only intercessor between man and God. He's the only name given among men under heaven whereby we must be saved. And every one of them tells you you're good enough to save yourself. They've stopped loving Jesus most and they've started loving themselves the most. Their own traditions, their own goodness, the love of self. What conclusion then do we draw from this spiritual whoredom? I hope you see, and we'll see more as we go through these two chapters, spiritual whoredom is no joke. It is serious business. It's the reason God said in the Old Testament He had divorced Israel. It's the reason He says here in Revelation that He's going to bring great plagues upon the city and His people need to go away so they don't have the same plagues fall upon them. Spiritual whoredom is what happens any time we begin to institute anything into any place that only Jesus has the right to occupy. Whether with Rome it's the high priest, or whether with Jerusalem it's the high priest, whether with Rome it's the Pope, the vicar of Christ, or whether with liberal evangelicalism it's you and your goodness, Only Jesus has the right to be there. He's the only High Priest. He's the only Sacrificial Lamb. He's the only one whose righteousness can bridge the gap between God and man. The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world is seated at the right hand of the Father, where He ever makes intercession for us. His bride He has purchased and He is purifying and He is keeping her faithful and pure. Not because of our own righteousness, but because of His faithfulness. If our heart condemns us, God is faithful. He cannot deny Himself. We must be certain we never attempt to put anything in that place. The place between us and God, the place of perfect righteousness, the place of sacrificial lamb, the place of high priest, the place of the holy city, the temple, that thing which brings us to God, is Jesus. It's not a city on this earth. It's not a venerated object. It's not our own inherent goodness. But it's Jesus Christ. All in all, let us be faithful to Him. Let's stand to our feet and we'll be closed with a word of prayer and a song. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for Your faithfulness. While we certainly know in ourselves we have not been faithful to You as we ought, we throw ourselves upon the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. We pray that You would keep us from spiritual whoredom. that our love for You would ever be paramount, that You would protect us from the superstitions of men, the love of self, the idolatry of materialism. We thank You for the Lord Jesus, in whose name we