The Fall of Wickedness
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Call to Worshi
Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth,
Sing praises to the Lord,
Selah.
To Him who rides upon the highest heavens, which are from ancient times;
Behold, He speaks forth with His voice, a mighty voice.
Ascribe strength to God;
His majesty is over Israel
And His strength is in the skies.
Prayer
The Abingdon Worship Annual 2018: Worship Planning Resources for Every Sunday of the Year March 11, 2018 Fourth Sunday in Lent
God of light and love,
shine upon your people this day.
Meet us in our brokenness,
and heal our errant ways.
Take from us our spirit of disobedience,
and save us with your grace.
Lead us into your truth,
that we may live as children of light,
and act as children of the Most High. Amen.
THE SUFFICING BIBLE
When I am tired, the Bible is my bed;
Or in the dark the Bible is my light;
When I am hungry, it is vital bread;
Or fearful, it is armor for the fight.
When I am sick, ’tis healing medicine;
Or lonely, thronging friends I find therein.
If I would work, the Bible is my tool;
Or play, it is a harp of happy sound.
If I am ignorant, it is my school;
If I am sinking, it is solid ground,
If I am cold, the Bible is my fire;
And it is wings, if boldly I aspire.
Should I be lost, the Bible is my guide;
Or naked, it is raiment rich and warm.
Am I imprisoned, it is ranges wide;
Or tempest-tossed, a shelter from the storm.
Would I adventure, ’tis a gallant sea;
Or would I rest, it is a flowery lea.
Does gloom oppress? The Bible is the sun.
Or ugliness? It is a garden fair.
Am I athirst? How cool its currents run!
Or stifled? What a vivifying air!
Since thus thou givest of thyself to me,
How should I give myself, great Book, to thee?
—Amos R. Wells
The Fall of Wickedness
The Fall of Wickedness
Angelic Proclamation
Angelic Proclamation
After these things I saw another angel coming down from heaven, having great authority, and the earth was illumined with his glory.
Revelation (King James Version) C. The Collapse of Political Babylon, 18:1–24
In the end time Babylon will be what any great capital city is: a great political, commercial, social, and cultural center.
This city will be the capital for the activity of the antichrist. His power will radiate out from this massive city.
As we see here, this city becomes the center of all commence. No one in the world we not be affected by what happens here.
Some believe that this city will be the rebuild Rome. That Rome will come back to power. Others, feel this city will be New York because of its control of finance.
While still others do not see it as a physical location, but refers instead to master system which controls all the world’s national systems.
Revelation (King James Version) (C. The Collapse of Political Babylon, 18:1–24)
The great preacher W.A. Criswell says that these commentators believe that the whole eastern area will become enormously wealthy with its rich oil reserves. They believe that the nations throughout the whole region will become nations of great commercial influence and power. The area has by far the largest population in the world
What we do know is it will corrupt. It will be a Godless, Merciless, and greed driven. Ron Robinson was right when he said,
One of the weaknesses of our age is our apparent inability to distinguish our needs from our greeds.
What John Calvin said about the church is doubly true about the world.
Greed and ambition … the two sources from which stems the corruption of the whole of the ministry.
Once greed gets a hold on you it brings with it his twin corruption.
You begin to justify what every want to do to get what you desire.
For a humorous look at the power of greed read, Confessions of a Shopaholic.
Graduates please hear this.
Greed and corruption act a lot like fire. Fire starts small, with a single match. But then it begins to consume. Once it is raging, it is all most impossible to stop. That is the way greed and corruption is. It starts small, some little thing you want and will not stop till you get it. But once you have it the satisfaction does not last. You and one to the next thing. and then another, and another,. Then you wake up one morning to realize you don’t owe your possessions, they own you. YOUR GREED has got you in so deep in debt, that there seems no way out.
Then satan, though the voice of a friend, suggest an answer, and it is against the law, or you just know it is plain wrong, but, you reason, you are so deep in you have to do something. There it begins.
In youth, in middle age, and now after many battles, I find nothing in my but corruption.
John Knox
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
William Shakespeare
So what is God’s plan to save us from greed and corruption.
Look down in verse 14.
God’s Command
God’s Command
I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not participate in her sins and receive of her plagues;
Did you hear God’s plan. “Come out of her.” Do not participate in her sins.
Her sins, we are told, have to stacked up as high as heaven. What is God plan for his people?
It is a two part plan.
First, he said, “Come out of her.”
Separate yourself from the source of sin.
If you know certain people in your life always invite you to sin, you need to separate yourself from them.
It is like the man who went to the doctor. He told the doctor that when I life my arm up this high, it hurts.
What do you think the advise of the doctor was?
That is right, don’t lift you arm that high.
If you know hanging out with someone is going to tempt you to sin, the answer is, don’t hang out with them.
Separate yourself from them.
So the first thing he said, was, “Come out of her,” or separate yourself.
The second command God gives is, “Do not participate in her sin.”
Not only should we separate ourselves from the temptation to sin. We should not participate in the sin.
The indulgence of one sin opens the door to further sins. The indulgence of one sin diverts the soul from the use of those means by which all other sins should be resisted.
John Owens
There are two kinds of sin. Francis Schaeffer explains it well.
We sin two kinds of sin. We sin one kind of sin as though we trip off the curb, and it overtakes us by surprise. We sin a second kind of sin when we deliberately set ourselves up to fall.
Francis Schaeffer
The apostle Paul advises us in
Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead even expose them;
Evil Destroyed
Evil Destroyed
“To the degree that she glorified herself and lived sensuously, to the same degree give her torment and mourning; for she says in her heart, ‘I sit as a queen and I am not a widow, and will never see mourning.’
My friends, God has promised Evil will be destroyed. We should take comfort in the knowledge that evil will not last forever.
There is a flood of God’s wrath coming on all that is evil.
But there is a problem. The problem is that we are all evil.
Oh, not to the point that Babylon is. But there is evil within each of us. What is not good is evil. There is always a battle raging within us between good and evil
As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said in his book, The Gulag Archipelago,
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between parties either—but right through every human heart—through all human hearts.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
But the day is coming when all evil will be distroyed. We will no longer fight this insideaus battle. Only Good, Godliness will reign within us.
We will not know how to act. We have never lived a moment when evil or sin was not present with us.
Original sin is in us, like the beard. We are shaved today and look clean, and have a smooth chin; tomorrow our beard has grown again, nor does it cease growing while we remain on earth.
Martin Luther
But, halliluah, there is coming a day when the battle will be over.
No more sickness, no more pain, no more parting over there.
Why, because there will be not more sin, not more wickedness, no more evil.
All will be peace for ever more on that happy, golden shore.
But I AM getting ahead of myself. We are just a the point of evil begin to distroyed.
The result of that destortion is:
All Heaven Rejoices
All Heaven Rejoices
“Rejoice over her, O heaven, and you saints and apostles and prophets, because God has pronounced judgment for you against her.”
We remember when heaven was silent. Silent for the first time in all eternity.
When the Lamb broke the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.
But now, all of heaven is singing.
Why? look at the next verse.
Then a strong angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon, the great city, be thrown down with violence, and will not be found any longer.
Babylon is completely destroyed and along with her Evil is destroyed.
The name thus stands for the pride of mankind and for the heathen city-empire. For John, Babylon is the great city, the symbol of mankind in community opposed to the things of God.
Leon Morris
God wins in the end.
But pastor, what about here and now.? What about my everyday life?
This is all going to take place at the end of time, but is there a word of hope of me now?
Martin Luther said.
Console yourself with this in every trouble. Do not lose hope, consider that God is truthful and that He can accomplish what He has promised, even though there were a hundred Babylons to be destroyed.
Martin Luther
The God who will destroy Babylon at the end of time is here for you now to destroy the Babylons in your life.
Just trust him.
A quick review.
THIS CHAPTER BEINGS WITH:
AN ANGELIC PROCLAMATION
AGAINST GREED AND CORRUPTION.
GOD’S COMMAND
SEPARATE
DON’T PARTICAPATE
EVIL WILL BE DESTROYED
HEAVEN WILL REJOICE.
Amen.
Offering
New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update (Chapter 3)
Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,” says the LORD of hosts, “if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.