Come Out of Babylon: Cling to the Lamb

Babylon always promises life, but it produces death. That's what we need to understand. So I don't know what sins you're struggling with, but my guess is that if you're a believer in Christ, the Holy Spirit's inside you, he's reminding you of sins at some point in your life. Can I just plead with you right now that you don't ignore that? You need to see what sin does here. It always leads to destruction. [01:16:47] (34 seconds)  #SinLeadsToDeath

And so many times, what's in Babylon's cup looks better. My prayer is is that today we are just reminded and we see it is not, and it always leads to destruction. But the cup of Christ leads to life, eternal life with no pain, no sickness, no sorrow because Christ took that. The wrath of God that was poured out in those seven seals we talked about last week, Jesus drank from that cup for us. So we can drink from this cup today of allegiance to him. [01:35:28] (50 seconds)  #DrinkChristsCup

Revelation places two women before us as I mentioned. One is Babylon, the prostitute clothed in luxury, wealth, influence, and power. She looks beautiful for a moment. The nations admire her. The kings pursue her. The world is intoxicated by her promises. But in the end, she's exposed, abandoned, judged, and destroyed. [01:21:22] (24 seconds)  #BabylonExposed

But here's what we need to understand. Sin and temptation rarely appears ugly at first. Rarely. Babylon doesn't, according to this text here, doesn't seduce people through ugliness, but through beauty, through comfort, and promises of wealth, and pleasure and power. And and we have to be careful that we're not following after those promises first and foremost. [01:08:03] (34 seconds)  #BewareDeceptiveBeauty

The other woman appears later in chapter 19 and in twenty and twenty one, which we'll talk about, the bride of Christ. Unlike Babylon, she is pure, faithful, and holy. She appears weak now. She suffers now. She's a church. She waits now. She belongs to the lamb and her future is everlasting joy. [01:21:46] (23 seconds)  #BrideOfChrist

So the point is is that this is just a cycle of reruns. We're doing the same thing over and over again. And and and also the temptation tactics that the great dragon that we talk about here, Satan, that he uses is the exact same. You you go back to the garden and you see the things that how he tempted Eve and Adam. Remember that? Remember that story? Maybe go back to the garden. Remember that? And he says this. He's like, you know, did God really say? [01:02:34] (27 seconds)  #SameOldTemptation

So we must resist her seduction. We must reject her values. Refuse the idols of Babylon. What are the idols of our country? Think about that. What are the idols of our country? We gotta refuse those. We can't bow down to those idols. You know what I'm talking about. We we we can't what what our world puts up as most important and our allegiance goes to, we reject that. [01:19:52] (34 seconds)  #RejectModernIdols

And so what we're gonna see here is I'm just gonna point out different different verses as we go along here. But we're gonna see that, first of all, sin is just simply a cycle of reruns. That's all it is. Babylon, Egypt, Nineveh, Tyre, Rome, Same rebellion, different century. From Eden onwards, humanity keeps believing the same lie. We can live without God. We don't need him. [01:01:40] (35 seconds)  #HistoryRepeatsSin