His Perfect Love

Matt VanderVen: Someone once said the only reason a great many American families don't own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments. All kidding aside, greed and materialism is a growing problem in our world today. But what it leads to is not pretty. Let's talk about now on His Perfect Love.

Guest (Male): In the great tribulation, the world will be at a place where it esteems commercialism and materialism higher than the voice of God. And doesn't that sound familiar to our day? Well, God will eventually say enough is enough and destroy this commercial system. When all this goes down, there will be quite a striking difference in the reaction between heaven and earth.

Welcome to His Perfect Love and our continuing study in Revelation. Pastor Matt VanderVen frames today's talk around Revelation 18, where we find the destruction of commercial Babylon.

Matt VanderVen: I want to be clear God's not saying there's anything wrong with wealth or money here. Having a home is fine, but when it becomes your idol, that's the problem. Does everybody see that here? If it's your purpose, if you're striving for that and that's what you're doing, then it's not good.

And just like Lot's wife. Lot knew right and wrong, but he listened to his wife. He listened to this woman that was not speaking biblical truth. And because of that, it caused death and destruction. It's like Lot's wife. Many do not recognize they're holding on to the past, an old life, which was all based on the care of this world.

This call to depart from Babylon and the worldliness that is represented is a theme repeated frequently through the scriptures. I'm only bringing this out because the scriptures do. And I just want to take just a few minutes to look at this.

Ephesians chapter 5, verse 11: "And have no fellowship with unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them." How about Isaiah chapter 52:11? "Depart, depart, go out from there, touch no unclean thing, go out from her. Be clean, you who bear the vessels of the Lord, you who are vessels of God." Second Corinthians chapter 6, verse 14: "Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness?"

And do you realize there's degrees of yokedness? There's degrees of yokedness even within believers. Are we equally yoked? Are we equally mature in our faith? There's a warning to that too, because if you take a plastic purported Christian and you take someone that's sold out for Jesus, do you think there's going to be some marital issues there? Absolutely.

There's a warning there. Those things you discuss early on, even before proper premarital counseling, if done correctly, resolves most of this or says pause. Some of you know what Pre-Cana was because you grew up in a denomination. And it was a worksheet. You went through a worksheet and you thought, "Yes, no, yes, no, okay. We're going to have a joint account. We're going to have a single account. We're going to do this. We're going to do that." That is not premarital counseling.

Premarital counseling is understanding yokedness. It's understanding that God has given me a word. The other person has received a word. It's understanding that I am making a vow and a commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ. It's also understanding that He has acknowledged this and ordained it. And that means that we both surrender our differences.

If we're not able to do that, if there's "Well, I want to live here," or "Maybe I want to go there," or "I want to attend church here, I don't want to attend church there"—those are the kind of warning signs. You may say, "Pastor, aren't you making a big deal out of something small?" No, I've done this a number of years. I'm telling you when there's not yokedness, it's not that we can't work through those things with pastoral discipleship and biblical counseling. We can.

But the reality is to recognize that the quality of yokedness matters. Sometimes we just take it slow, make sure it's right, and then when we do it, God is glorified. For all of us that have been married here, it's difficult enough because you're taking two different individuals and you're bringing them together. And now the Bible says you are becoming one flesh. He didn't say one spirit.

Isn't that interesting? It'd be easier if it was one spirit. No, you have one spirit in you, but you're becoming one flesh. How many of you like to use your own toothpaste? Go ahead, raise your hand. If you're married and you like to use your own toothpaste in here. How many of you don't care if you use your own toothpaste and you'll use your spouse's toothpaste? Raise your hand, go ahead. Do you see, even in a group of believers here, half of you were like, "Yeah, I want my own toothpaste."

How many of you share toothbrushes? Oh, now that's too far. But aren't you doing the same thing with the toothpaste because it touches both? I'm just bringing up silly examples, but yokedness matters. Now, I made that really simple because I made it about marriage. That's an easy layup for the example. All of us can relate to that.

When I do premarital counseling sessions, it's easy to identify those things, work through them, and then give the blessing on the marriage, or say, "I need to pause. We need to pause." And I've had to do that. That's real love, sitting with someone and saying, "Let's wait." That's real love. It's hard. They don't like you. But they love you because years later they sit back and go, "Pastor, I thought you were crazy, but now I understand. I couldn't at the time." None of us could until we've gone through it.

None of us have arrived, but we don't flirt with these things. Let's look at Jeremiah 51:45: "My people, go out of the midst of her and let everyone deliver himself from the fierce anger of the Lord." Jeremiah chapter 50, verse 8: "Flee from the midst of Babylon, and let everyone save his life." God is telling us in so many passages, don't become like commercial Babylon, like idolatrous Babylon.

Verse 5: "For her sins have reached to the heaven and God has remembered her iniquities." It says basically the sins of commercial Babylon have piled up like a tower, just like the Tower of Babel. And God has remembered her iniquities. This is the destiny of a materialistic world. But compare that to God's children, His born-again believers, where He says in Hebrews chapter 8, verse 12: "I will remember your sins no more." That's right. Praise the Lord.

Look at verse 6 and 7: "Render to her just as she has rendered to you and repay her double according to her works. In the cup which she has mixed, mixed double for her. In the measure that she has glorified herself and lived luxuriously, in the same measure give her torment and sorrow. For she says in her heart, 'I sit as queen and I am no widow and will not see sorrow.'"

The ancient Greek word here for render or reward means literally to pay a debt or to give back that which is due. That's what it's saying here. God will give commercial Babylon exactly what she deserves. And if you remember Exodus 22:4 and 9, if something was done, you were to give double restitution. That was a requirement under the Old Testament law in cases of theft.

Maybe this points to dishonest dealings that were going on as well in mystery Babylon and commercial Babylon, these unholy, not right dealings. The idea of paying her double reminds me of double judgment because that's what you were to do under the old law when you knew and purposed dishonest dealings. Do you see that there?

Verse 7 describes a twofold sin of this greedy world system. First, self-indulgence. She lived luxuriously. Second, pride. She glorified herself and sits as a queen. This isn't saying, "I'm the daughter or I'm the queen of the Lord." That's not the context. This reminds me of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel chapter 4, verse 33, when he stood above and looked at all the stuff and had one of those moments of pride, and then shortly he realized it wasn't him and became almost like an animal, deranged out of his mind and debased.

"I am no widow and I will not see sorrow." Such pride, thinking she is beyond correction or destruction. I was just talking to somebody this morning. I went up to them and said, "I just need to make a correction on this one thing. Please don't take it harshly or the wrong way." And the person looked at me and said, "No, I'm not above correction. Correction's helping me because it gives me instruction and helps me understand how to do things differently."

I just want to be sensitive to that because I know words can hurt and they matter, and the way we say things matters. And she says, "No, the minute I get above correction, I'm setting myself up for destruction." That's biblical, right here in verse 7. All these are characteristics of worldliness and materialism. Do you all see that? Ask yourself honestly, examine your own heart. Am I above correction? If somebody comes up to me and tells me something that I don't like to hear but it's found in the Bible, what do I think of that person?

I know on Wednesday I was asking the whole world, the nation, to pray because there's a lot of violence. I said, "Please don't make this political." But not everybody agrees with that. Some people want to make it political. Look, all I care about is what Jesus said in the word of God: love and be others-focused. I don't have to agree with their positions. I don't even have to agree with what they're saying.

But the minute I start to downgrade human life, that's a slippery slope. There's a lot of people that pass away every day. I don't agree with them, but I want them to know Jesus. I don't care what they espouse or what comes out of their mouth. I just want them to know Jesus because I want to have the heart of Christ. And He wants everybody to be saved.

I can disagree or agree with all kinds of different things, but that has nothing to do with valuing human life. Everybody's life is valuable. All babies' lives are valuable, all the way up to the geriatric as we get older. They're valuable. Everybody in between is valuable because they're a creation of God. And God doesn't make a mistake.

If you're here this morning, you are valuable. I absolutely care about you and your heart. I don't want anything bad to happen to you even if I agree with you or don't agree with you. I love you because Jesus has told me that when I love you, I begin to understand His heart and how He loved me. Does everybody understand that?

That's why He says there's no greater thing than to lay down one's life for another. Everything Jesus did made Him a revolutionist for His time. Women were thought of as a lower class. Jesus says, "No, come unto Me." He had women disciples. People were like, "Oh my gosh, He's out with women, eating with them."

He was a revolutionist at that time regarding different people and classes. Look at Samaria. Remember who was the gentleman walking on the other side of the street? "Oh, they're Samaritans. We walk around them." The rabbis wouldn't walk on the same side of the street because they looked different. Jesus says, "No. Are you silly? We all got off the boat together. We just have different pigmentations. We have different genders. But we have the same qualities, every one of us in Christ Jesus."

It's nonsense when we try to put one person over another or one race or one gender. This is all division and it's an attempt to lord over people. Jesus says there's none of that. In His eyes, everyone is a princess or a prince. He loves all of you and me.

We go to all these things of the world to try to fill that void, don't we? Bringing it back to the context of the passage, my point is we look to all these things to fill that insecurity, that void of where we feel we're not good enough. And friends, you are going to come up wanting. Materialism is not going to satisfy. I've been fortunate. I've been able to buy a lot of things in my life with my past career and different things. It never made me happy. It did for a minute, but the next day I was like, "Well, what's next?"

When you're willing to give up everything for Christ, that's when you actually truly find value because He is more valuable than anything on this earth. And when you put your value in the things of this earth, you actually equate them to God's value whether you intend to or not. And He's saying, "Come out from her." Don't be so arrogant or cocky to sit there and go, "Oh, God doesn't mean that to me." No, those are the characteristics of worldliness. Please don't be a person that wants all the possessions of the world.

You know how many people win the lottery and then years later they're bankrupt? It's a really high number, like 70%. Why? How many of you know what cultural capital means? It's something that's passed generation to generation. Some people have it, some people do not. You want to talk about equality? Teach cultural capital. That's why some people know how to make investments and some don't.

Are the people that have never made investments at a disadvantage because they don't know how to take their money and let their money work for them? I would say so because they don't know what to do with it. So even if you give them a lot of it, they don't know how to preserve it. They don't know that for every $100,000 at a 6% rate of interest allows me to live off of $60,000 if I take a million dollars.

If I can take my principal and live off the interest, for every million dollars I do that with at 6% rate of return, I can live off of $60,000 a year. Anybody who's made a million dollars here knows that. It's common sense to them. They invest that way so they never touch the principal. They pass it down through generational skipping. Why? Because there's tax loopholes.

That's cultural capital. You're understanding how the world works. And that isn't just something shared; that's cultural capital. You really want to invest in somebody, share that cultural capital. Don't just keep it for yourself.

Verse 8: "Therefore her plagues will come in one day: death and mourning and famine and she will be utterly burned with fire for strong is the Lord God who judges her." The destruction of commercial Babylon will come suddenly and with completeness. It's utterly going to be ruined with fire.

This is the direct judgment for her sin. And why? Because the whole point is we spend our whole lives working for these assets, trying to build these things, buying land, doing all this. We work our whole lives and what did Jesus say? "In one night, I've come for you."

This is really important to the Christian. The rapture of the church is going to happen. I don't know when. Nobody knows the time or the hour. But the rapture of the church is going to happen. So if you are working to the point of where you're building all this excess wealth and you know what's going to end up happening? When you are raptured out, someone is going to come behind and grab the keys that are sitting in here because probably your clothes or your keys are going to be laying on these seats. And they're going to go, "Man, I just got a new Mercedes!"

Did they work for any of that? Did they do anything that you literally put yourself in prison for to accomplish and to gain? No. And that's why the judgment's coming, because all the things that people have invested and poured their lives into in one moment are all going to be burned up.

Just think about that here this morning. If you knew that all of your cars out there were going to all burn, if you knew your house was going to burn, if you knew all the additional clothes and shoes you have in your closet were all going to burn—if you knew the multiple screen TVs so you can get the different angles on the NFL were all going to burn—I'm just talking about my sin, I haven't even got to yours.

If you knew all of these things were going to burn, why would you go into debt and put yourself into slavery to have these things when at any moment Jesus says, "Come up"? And it's all going to burn. "Yeah, but Pastor, I get to enjoy it for a little while." But what could you have been doing with all of that time and resources for something that you'll never truly own because it's temporal? What if you were to do what Jesus said, which is build treasure in heaven that neither moth nor rust destroys?

We don't know the rewards He's talking about entirely, but He says, "Build your treasure in heaven." That means the choices I'm making in this life—do they line up with God's counsel? Because if they line up with earthly counsel, I'm going to be pretty disappointed when I get to heaven because I'm going to be sitting there and looking back and going, "My, I could have done—if I would have only obeyed. What could I have done for the kingdom of God when I was here?"

There should never be a biblical church that's ever coming up and going, "Our finances—" The Bible says a Christian will never beg bread. It says it right in the Psalms. It didn't say it wouldn't get tough; He just says you will not beg bread. What are we doing with our resources? What are we doing with our time? That's something only you can answer with Jesus Christ. Some of you have been so gracious to this church, and I just wanted to tell you thank you.