Matt Chandler - Conquest

I’m going to need you to grab your Bible. I have to show you some things. If you have already read these two chapters, they are wild. I need you to turn there. If you have one, please turn there; I just want to show you some things as we walk through the passage. As I was building out this 12-week series, these last three weeks were the most difficult—not because the imagery gets stranger, but it doesn’t really get stranger. He is laying one thing—and actually kind of two things—in front of us across these last few chapters. As we’ve said from day one in this series, you are not neutral in all of this. There is a war that is waging on, and look at me, I love you; you are on a side. You are not Sweden or Switzerland. You have taken up arms, you are on a side, and you belong, as we are going to see over the next couple of weeks, to a city. What Jesus is laying before His church right now is that you are a citizen of Babylon, or you are a citizen of the New Jerusalem. You are a citizen somewhere. Where I’m going to push today, and where Jesus is going to press on His church—yes, living in Rome, but yes, also living in Dallas in 2021, or Boston in 2021—He is going to press that these are your two cities. You live in one of them; there are no other options. That’s where this passage is going to take us: You need to be mindful; the church needs to be mindful of where she has built her home. Are you tracking with me? Okay, the imagery here is graphic. In fact, sweet Jessica, as soon as we finished praying as a staff, walked up and said, «Really? A prostitute from the whole church?» I said, «That’s not my word, sis; that’s the word. I don’t know why you’re mad.» The Bible is graphic in its imagery, and thank God we are in the ESV. I want to tell you what the words are in the NIV and the King James—I mean, I’d just be up here saying «harlot» over and over again. Did you cringe? I cringed; I had to say it! So I prefer «prostitute.» Now, with that said, He is purposefully and intentionally using graphic language to help us remember what imagery does in apocalyptic literature. He wants you to feel something in your gut; He wants you to get more than just intellectual assent. So, if you’re a guest and you’ve got no background in church and we’re talking about a prostitute and a beast, you might think, «These people are crazy!» But hear me; if you’re not in Christ, just listen. We don’t really believe there is a high-end prostitute riding the back of some dragon-like beast set out to destroy all of us. We believe in the imagery or what is behind that imagery. And I think, by the time I’m done today, you might be able to see some of that by the grace of God. So we have this prostitute; she’s riding this beast. It’s clear from the passage, if you’ve been here through this series, that she is riding the beast of the first 10 verses of Revelation 13. Remember, Revelation doesn’t say anything new; it is a reference back to Daniel 7. This beast that the prostitute is riding represents the state that seeks to divert our affection and worship away from Jesus and put it on governmental structures and systems. If you remember, the whole purpose of the dragon was to make war against the people of God, and he was owned on Christmas. What he ends up doing is beckoning two beasts from the abyss—one from the sea, the other from the land—and they make war against the people of God. One is the state, demonically manipulated state power, and the other beast is demonically influenced religious institutions and false prophets that also try to point to the state and not King Jesus. Coming off 2020, we saw it; we saw pulpits trying to make America great instead of pointing to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We saw it, and we’ll get into this in a second. For those of you who have read Revelation, it’s not just about China or the USSR. It’s this strange kind of janky ecclesiology that I think has taken this book out of your hands and robbed you of the courage to be the people of God in difficult days. If there’s anything I’m trying to do in preaching through this, it’s to say, «Come on, guys, wake up!» Sorry if it’s going to be like that today. Now, I was just talking to someone in the back. I read it; I need your help! I have no idea. Great, I’m glad you said that because that was my plan today. Let me show you this. This is what we read about Babylon. If you have your Bibles open to chapter 17, let’s look at verse 5. On her forehead, now we’ve seen a lot of things written on people’s foreheads, haven’t we? In Revelation, remember that anything on the forehead represents ideology. If you see something written on the forehead, it’s an ideology. If you see something on the hand, it’s action based on that ideology.