Living in Babylon
Austin White · Tidal Church Moncton · April 6, 2025 · Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation series
Austin White looks at Jesus' words to four churches in Revelation 2 and 3: Ephesus, Pergamum, Sardis and Laodicea. Living in a Babylon-like world, believers are called to stay alert, return to their first love, resist compromise, and follow Jesus wholeheartedly.
More from Austin White · The Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation series
Topics: Faith, Mission & Outreach, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:00] I recently saw a post on social media saying my joke at work was so funny that I got a meeting with my boss and human resources for them to hear it in person. Unfortunately, maybe the joke didn't land quite so well. And today as we dive into Revelation chapter 2 and 3. This is a meeting with the boss and Human Resources. This is Jesus talking to the churches, saying, "Here's what needs to change. Here's where you're at, here's the good, here's the bad, here's the ugly." And we're gonna explore four of those churches here today and look at how it is relevant to our walk here in 2025.
[0:48] Can I just say it's weird saying 2025? It just, that feels like a faraway date to me. I don't know about you, but before we dive in, if we haven't gotten the opportunity to meet yet, my name is Austin. I am the youth and Shediac campus pastor. It's been incredible what God has been doing, both at our Miramichi campus and our Shediac campus. We've been averaging over 100 people every single Sunday in Shediac, and on top of that, absolutely. And on top of that, we're seeing that it's not just people that attended here at the Moncton campus and now they're in Shediac, but rather we're seeing over 50 people that have had no connection to a church being a part of the Tidal Church Shediac campus.
[1:35] So it's amazing seeing people connect with His body. So I want to thank you, as Pastor Jim said, your generosity is what paved the way in making that happen. But a little bit more about me. I've been pastoring here at Tidal Church for the past five years, and my wife, Jess, and I have been married for over eight years, and we're actually expecting our first child at the end of May. So we're so excited. It's just incredible, an incredible time of sleeplessness and all that fun as you guys are telling me. But she is Pastor Liz's assistant and we're so blessed to be able to be a part of this church family. On top of that, some of my hobbies are, I enjoy reading, my wife, Jess, and I, we enjoy running together and I also play rugby with the Moncton Black Tide team.
[2:22] And I coach at Moncton High, and I referee a little bit, but the most important thing that I want to share about myself and I start most of my messages with this, is if you forget everything else, the most important thing about me is I'm a Bible guy. I believe that God's word is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I believe that there's all kinds of wisdom, all kinds of self-help and life advice, but ultimately it's God's word that is our hope. It's God's word that we can build our life on. It's God's word that doesn't change with the shifting sands of culture. And I hope at the end of my life, people can look back and they can say, you know, Pastor Austin was all about His word. And I would encourage you to stake your life on the Scriptures as well. I wanna teach from this title today, "Living in Babylon," living in Babylon.
[3:13] We've chatted in previous weeks about how Babylon is this symbol in Revelation of the evil in this world. And I think this idea of us living in a Babylon as we look at society around us and the day and age we live in, I think it's more relevant than ever, isn't it? Living in Babylon. As we look around and we see the hopelessness, the addiction, the breakdown of the family and morals, I believe that this is more relevant than ever as we open up His word. And the main point that I want to drill down on as we talk about living in Babylon is this idea of "be on guard." Be on guard. 1 Peter 5:8-9 says this, "Be on your guard and stay awake.
[4:05] Your enemy, the devil, is like a roaring lion sneaking around to find someone to attack, but you must resist the devil and stay strong in your faith." I've heard it said before that the greatest trick that the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist, was convincing the world that, you know, those stories that we read in the Scriptures, those are just in previous days, but he is alive and he's active. And it says in this passage that he's like a roaring lion sneaking around, looking to devour. So like I said, we're going to be in Revelation chapter 2, but before we open up God's word, let's go ahead and bow our heads, close our eyes, and let me go ahead and pray over His word. Father God, we know that Your word is sharper than a double-edged sword that pierces right to our soul, that it opens up the desires and the wayward aspects of our heart.
[5:02] So, Lord, would You help us to become more like You today? Lord, I pray for the person here that may be struggling with their mental health, their mental illness. God, would You please comfort them here today? Would they feel Your presence? God, I pray for those who are on the fence with You, that they would encounter Your love and Your goodness today, that they'd be transformed by Your word. Jesus, we thank You that You died on that cross for us all those years ago so that we may have life and life to the fullest. God bless the reading of Your word, and we pray this in Your name. Amen. Today I want to explore four different churches that Jesus is addressing in this HR meeting. He's talking about their conduct, His command to be on guard and His warning against the attacks of the enemy and living in this world, living in this Babylon.
[5:53] The churches that we're gonna explore today are Ephesus, Pergamum, Sardis, and Laodicea. We're gonna start off in Revelation 2:2. This is God's word. "I know your deeds," Jesus said, "your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not. And I found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardship for my name and have not grown weary." Let's pause there over and over and over again in the New Testament, whether it's Paul, whether it's here in Revelation, there's a similar word that we see crop up all the time. And we as Christians and non-Christians must remember this, persevere, run the race.
[6:38] Well, do not grow weary. He says, "You've done all these good things. You've guarded the teaching, you've guarded the leadership. I admire your hard work and your perseverance." He says, "Yet this I hold against you. You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you've fallen, repent, and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place." Simply put, as we explore this church of Ephesus, their love was disordered. Simply put, Jesus was rebuking them because their love was disordered. They were doing all the right things. They were putting in the work, they were making sure that they were doing the right things, but their love had slipped.
[7:30] It reminds me of the story of the farmer and his wife who had been married for a number of decades, and the wife, they were driving down the street in their old pickup and the wife looked at this old farmer and said, honey, why you not say that you love me anymore? And he glanced over at her and gruffly said, I told you I loved you the day that we got married, and I'll let you know if anything changed for him. He had told about this one-off love, but maybe his love had started to slip. Maybe he needed to remember his first love. We look at the seven churches, listed here in Revelation, and each of these seven churches were actually historical churches.
[8:16] And what church history tells us is that Ephesus was a great commercial, political, religious and sports town. The location of Ephesus made it a great town, and in the beginning part of AD, cities that sat at the mouth of the rivers were these hubs for trade. Ephesus lay at the mouth of the Cayster Valley, making it one of the greatest harbors in all of Asia Minor. Not only did Ephesus have this great seaport, but three great roads also connected it and made it this hub and this influential area in commerce and in wealth. And in the things of this world, there was few cities that could match Ephesus, but God is talking to a group of believers that didn't have their eyes fixed on the things of this world, but the things of heaven, a group of believers that were very conscientious of making sure that their faith was spoken clearly and they were living their lives in a way that was clear and honest and according to His Word, this was a church that could smell liars and dishonest people a mile away, that pleased God, and God let them know that this pleased Him.
[9:31] But I worry that maybe this hardworking church of Ephesus had worked itself into a big case of burnout. In the middle of all that intense effort of doing all the right things of serving, I worry that they had burned themselves out. They forgot that they weren't working for their own good or for, they forgot that they weren't working for God's kingdom, but rather maybe they thought they were working for their own. I've heard it said before that if the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy. I've heard it said that in our society in 2025, we have something called hurry sickness. We get so busy that perhaps we forget our first love.
[10:20] Maybe you used to spend a lot of time in your devotions and you used to dedicate all this time to God and you used to go to church every single Sunday, but all of a sudden life has gotten busy and your first love has started to slip. Isn't it easy to do that? We can get so easy serving God and working for His kingdom, but sometimes we get this notion that Jesus needs us to take over and manage everything for Him. All of a sudden it becomes less about Him and more about our works. That is when we work ourselves up and we wind up fit to quit, we get so busy on work that we forget that we're here because of the work of Christ. We get so busy doing what we think we need to be doing, getting in a routine that all of a sudden we move from having our eyes fixed on Christ to having our eyes fixed elsewhere.
[11:16] In the midst of all of our work, of the busyness of family and life, we must not forget that our number one goal is to love God and enjoy Him forever. And God also intends for us to enjoy His church. You know that the average Christian, nowadays, the average Christian attends church just twice a month. God created His church to be a family, to be a living, breathing instrument for His good in this community. That's why small groups are so important, a place full of brothers and sisters in Christ. If we forget to enjoy the treasure of spiritual family, all our work turns into drudgery. And here's the key. Ephesus was doing the right things.
[12:05] They were doing the right things, but they were doing the right things for the wrong purpose. They had forgotten their first love. There's a great quote from an old catechism from Martin Luther that said, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. Our number one purpose isn't to get busy. Our number one purpose isn't to check all the boxes. Our number one purpose is to serve God and glorify God and enjoy Him forever. One of the ways we can please God is by having a life in which the outside and the inside matches up. If we say that we're Christian here in this space, but we walk out of here and we're yelling at our wife on the way home or yelling at our spouse on the way home, or we're different at work, we're cutting corners, we're telling small untruths, all of a sudden we're losing our integrity.
[13:07] We're not the same no matter what situation we're in. This was a church in Ephesus that had a high standard and high expectation that pleased God, but something was bothering God and He said it clearly in this verse, I have this complaint against you. You don't love Me or each other as you did. At first, God was pleased with the church's commitment, but their love quotient took a big hit. Love is critical and vital in our lives as a church and as Christians. Jesus held up love as one of the greatest signs of commitment to Himself. It was the main topic of the Last Supper when Jesus said in John 15:11, I command you to love each other in the same way that I love you.
[13:58] I think of the Golden Rule, love your neighbor as yourself. I want to drill home this point that it says, love your neighbor as yourself. If you don't love yourself, you can't love your neighbor because God's Word clearly says you must love your neighbor as yourself. And the only way that you can genuinely love yourself is if you've received the love of God. When you have your identity in Him, love your neighbor as yourself. Their love was disordered. So can I ask you, are we loving the way that we need to be loving? Are you on fire and passionate for God? Is your love for God the same as when you started? I wanna explore the second church in our passage.
[14:44] This was a letter to the church of Pergamum, another prominent city with a long history. He accuses the Christians there of embracing the teachings of Balaam and the food that had been offered to idols while practicing sexual immorality. They were starting to compromise. This is what Revelation 2:12 and 17 says to the angel of the church in Pergamum, write. These are the words of Him who has the sharp double-edged sword. I know where you live, where Satan has his throne, yet you remain true to My name. You did not renounce your faith in Me, not even the days of Antipas, My faithful witness who is put to death in your city where Satan lives. Nevertheless, I have a few things against you.
[15:30] There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate foods sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality. Likewise, you also have those who hold to the teachings of the Nicolaitans. Repent therefore. Otherwise, I will soon come to you and will fight against them with the sword of My mouth. Here we see a church who's trying to compromise. Nicolaitans are thought to be a group of people who tried to work out compromise between Christianity and Paganism. They taught that because of the spiritual freedom they have in Christ, that gave them the spiritual authority and freedom to worship idols and embrace immorality.
[16:19] And my friends, don't we have the same temptation today in our world? Don't we have the same temptation to compromise with the ways of this world? I worry that sometimes we abuse God's grace. We say, "Oh, God loves me so much that He made me just the way I am, and I can continue in my sin." How easy is it for us as a church to start to compromise and say, "You know, God's Word says this, but I'm gonna start to adjust to what's politically correct. I know, I know it's against God's Word, but you know, it just feels so good. I know I'm not married and I shouldn't be doing these things with my boyfriend or my girlfriend, but God's grace is good.
[17:10] He loves me. He cares for me," and we start to compromise on the things that we know are true from His Word. We cannot compromise. We cannot let the enemy gain a foothold and allow us, instead of fixing our eyes on Christ and living according to His Word, to start living according to the ways of this world. John Haggai said this: "It is a war of light versus darkness, of Christ versus antichrist, the Word of God versus secular humanism. There will be a winner and a loser. There is no compromise with the enemy. There's no neutrality in this war." Satan will do anything he can do to destroy the church, and if he's unable to do so by other ways, he will try to destroy the church through compromise.
[17:58] If he can get the church to lower their standards and begin to accept the practices of the world, that's when he gets a foothold. For us as Christians, we need to be on guard. We may not have the Balaamites or the Nicolaitans to blame, but we have New Age philosophies. We have relativism, where everything is relative and nothing is true and there's no black and white. Everything is gray. We have the philosophies of this world knocking at our door, and if we aren't careful, the world will seep in the cracks and all of a sudden the church and Christians start to look a whole lot like the world. Now we move on to perhaps Jesus's strongest word to these churches.
[18:47] Thirdly, let's explore the church of Sardis. Revelation 3:1-3 says this: "To the angel of the church in Sardis, write: These are the words of Him who holds the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. I know your deeds. You have a reputation of being alive, but you are dead." Period. Wake up. He says, "Strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I found your deeds unfinished in the sight of My God. Remember therefore what you have received and heard; hold it fast and repent. But if you do not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what time I will come to you." Wow, what a statement.
[19:33] How would it be if you were sitting in a Sunday morning worship service and heard this read for the first time? We get a hint in verses 2 and 3. He says, "Your deeds are far from right in the sight of God. Go back to what you heard at first and believed at first. Hold to it firmly and turn to Me again." When I read this passage, I think about Jesus' parable of the sower and the explanation He gave to the disciples afterwards. In Luke's Gospel, in chapter 8, verse 13, He said, "The rocky soil represents those who hear the message with joy. But like young plants in such soil, the roots don't go very deep. They believe for a while, but they wilt when the hot winds of testing blow. The thorny ground represents those who hear and accept the message, but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the cares and riches and pleasures of this life.
[20:27] And so they never grow into maturity." The possibility is strong that this is what happened to the members of this church. Life and the devil hit them like hurricanes that hit our region and the eastern seaboard, and under such impact, their faith had taken a hit and they wilted under the demands and the cares of life. God is pleased with their work, it says, but He's not content with their superficial faith. They needed to make some course corrections. They needed to start over and intentionally embrace a life of faith and truly seek God again. This seems like a formula for revival. Can I ask you, is your faith superficial?
[21:14] Is your faith superficial? Do you put on a good show? Do you have the YouVersion Bible app downloaded or a physical Bible at your house, but it rarely gets opened? God is calling you to wake up. God is calling you to have a rich and deep and fulfilling relationship with Him that transforms everything about you. Is your faith superficial? Now is the time to get serious and all in about your faith. This is a great segue to the final church that we'll explore today. This is Jesus sharing with the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3:14. "To the angel of the church in Laodicea, write this.
[21:59] These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God's creation. I know your deeds, that you're neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other. So because you're lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I'm about to spit you out of My mouth." Strong words. "You say, 'I am rich. I've acquired wealth and do not need a thing.' But you do not realize that you're wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from Me gold refined in the fire so that you can become rich, and white clothes to wear so you can cover your shameful nakedness, and salve to put on your eyes so you can see.
[22:50] Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with Me. To the one who's victorious, I will give the right to sit with Me on the throne, just as I was victorious and sat down with My Father on His throne. Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches." God has the same call on us today. "If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with Me." There's not some huge secret when it comes to getting close to Jesus in our relationship with Him.
[23:36] It's not the secret code that you've got to crack. It's not that God is distant from you; it's that you've walked away. Jesus is always reaching His hand out, wanting a deeper relationship with you, wanting your faith to not be lukewarm, wanting for you to be on fire with Him. There's nothing complicated about it. All He wants is for you to reach out your hand and get close to Him. The background of the city that Jesus is speaking to and this church that He's speaking to is that the nearest water in Laodicea was miles away and it had to be piped to the city.
[24:21] You may or may not know that the Romans got pretty good at plumbing, and they had aqueducts and they had very advanced machinery. So what they would do is they would pipe this water from this reservoir, and by the time that it got to the city, it was lukewarm and not refreshing. And even worse than that, it had lots of minerals and probably tasted pretty bad. Jesus picked analogies that hit close to home when He talks about this church being lukewarm and unpleasant to drink. They understood just what that meant. Laodicea, despite this, was a rich city. They were wealthy. They were famous for banking, for fine wool, at a medical school that was famous and specialized in two things, one of which was an ial, again is with the water of being lukewarm.
[25:15] God knows how to bring His point home to a rich city. He says, "You are poor," to people famous for their fine clothes and their wool. He says, "You are naked," to a place renowned for its eye medicine that relieves blindness. He says, "You are blind." And Jesus said this: You are lukewarm. Jesus knew exactly what their idols were. Jesus knew exactly what was taking their attention away from Him, and He spoke directly to it. Are you lukewarm? Are there some things in your life that are higher on the pedestal than Jesus? Because Jesus won't share with anything else. He won't share the glory, the fame, the number one spot in your heart.
[26:04] And can I say this? How can we in this Easter season think about the sacrifice that Jesus made on that cross, dying for you, suffering for you, and say, "You know, I'm just gonna be lukewarm. I'm just gonna be half in, half out." How can we believe in the Great Commission that we're called to go and make a difference and respond by being lukewarm and indifferent? Notice that Jesus in this passage uses the terms cold and hot, not dead and alive. The Laodicean church was in the most dangerous state possible. They weren't spiritually dead or spiritually alive. They were indifferent because the issue with being lukewarm is you don't know where you stand.
[26:51] Had the church been totally cold, there'd be a possibility of warming them up and reviving them. Had the church been hot, they would've been on fire for Jesus, and they would've had spiritual fervor and passion. But the Church of Laodicea was an undecided, neutral group that didn't know if they were in or out. There is nothing more dangerous than half- hearted, in-name-only Christians who are self-sufficient. Don't settle for following God halfway. Don't settle for just showing up on Sundays twice a month and just sitting and saying, "You know, this is good enough. I'm gonna do the bare minimum." God is calling you to more.
[27:37] Can I say this? This church is incomplete without you stepping up. If we're the body of Christ, we need all hands on deck. We need to go the distance to bring people closer to God, and it's not complete without you. Let's read back the final warning that Jesus gives the Laodiceans. He says, "Those whom I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent. Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person." Repentance is the very last thing that a sinner wants to do, and it's honestly the very last thing that a saint wants to do. At times, we would rather do anything than repent, but God is calling you to repentance.
[28:31] Will you repent of being stuck, of being lukewarm, of losing your first love, of compromising with the world? The Laodicean church was complacent and rich. They felt self-satisfied. The things of this world, money, security, material possessions, they offered the temporary satisfaction, but not the satisfaction. That only comes from God. Again, how can we look at the Creator of the universe who laid down His life for you and say, "I'm fine being complacent. I'm fine being lukewarm"? Bishop Justice Benze said Jesus was able to run His own race to the end because He was passionate, passionate about the reward. We must follow His example and be passionate. Are you passionate?
[29:18] God wants to use Tidal Church to transform this community through His presence and His power, but we've gotta be His hands and feet. Who are you inviting to Easter? Who are you inviting to Easter Blast? Who has God called you to impact? I don't have the influence in your place of work. I don't know your lost friends and family, but you do. It reminds me of a story of a World War II town that at the end of the war had been totally decimated by the bombing in France, and the people of this beautiful cathedral came back to the town, and this cathedral and all its glory needed huge repairs. So they go about repairing this cathedral.
[30:04] They restore it to its former glory, and the final thing that they go to repair is this statue of Jesus inside the church with His hands outstretched. But what had happened during the war is a beam had been blown off and had fallen onto the hands of Jesus and knocked His hands clean off, so that there was no hands of Jesus. So they go and they call a meeting to figure out, okay, do we add new hands? Do we commission a new statue? And one of the old saints of the church, a woman, said, "No, we shouldn't replace the hands of Jesus." And they put a plaque on the statue of Jesus and said, "In this world, Jesus has no hands." You are the hands of Jesus this Easter. You are the hands of Jesus. We're called to grow.
[30:51] We're called to evangelize. We're called to be a church that this community is different because we're here, because we go the distance to bring people closer to Him. Will you do it? Will you repent? Will you be all in? Will you be not lukewarm but on fire for Him? Let me pray. Father God, we thank You for the fact that You call us to a higher standard. You call us to go back to our first love, to not be lukewarm, but to be on fire for You. Help us to repent of our complacency. Help us to not compromise with the things of this world, but God, we ask that You would purify us, that we would be people of Your Word.
[31:36] Lord, help us as Tidal Church to go forth like never before, God. I pray that there'd be people that come to know You, that there'd be families that are restored and healed by Your power and presence, because we take Your mandate, Your commission, And your mission, seriously. We pray this in the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.