Urban Blight

Transcript

We have been spending our day thinking about ministry to the city. We looked at this morning, “Urban Renewal,” and we’re going to consider, “Urban Blight,” this evening, seems like the order is reversed. I hope that you understand that by the end of our time together this evening. I would start by getting you to think about this: In a fallen world where things are not the way they're supposed to be, accurate diagnosis is essential.

I had a bit of a scare several months ago. I was sitting at home; our daughter, Nicole, was still with us, and I began to feel this increasing discomfort in my chest. Since I'm not a recent graduate of college, I thought that was something that I should take seriously, and I drove myself up to Chestnut Hill Hospital, which is not too far from us, filled out the requisite forms with the triage nurse, and waited for a couple hours to be diagnosed.

Fortunately, it was not, in fact, an emergency. But over the next few days, I was very thankful for the accurate diagnostic technology that's now available in our culture. I drank dye, and my heart was looked at, and I did all kinds of tests that just let me know that my veins were wide open, and my heart muscle was working, and I must have just had indigestion. I was thankful for that indigestion. I praise God for that indigestion day after day.

Now, we’re going to look at a passage that is a scary passage of judgment, but this passage is, it sits in Scripture, not just as a vision of the righteousness and holiness of God, the fact that our Lord will deal with the evil in this world, it surely is about that. And you have to, as you heard the passage being read by Jonathan, you have to think, “Wow! How scary, how awesome is the judgment of God.”

But the passage is more than that. This passage is a diagnostic of the blight of the city. Now, you have to understand how this passage works. It's a passage that talks about the judgment on Babylon. Babylon was probably the first of the great cities of the ancient world. It was an economic, and a political, and a scientific, and a cultural center. If you want to understand Babylon, just think, “New York City.” Babylon was one of those ‘everything’ cities, like the city of New York is, where you can just about find the finest of everything there.

And so, Babylon sits in this passage as a metaphor for all the great cities of human culture, and the passage is really about God's judgment on the blight of the city, what goes wrong with the city. And the language here is really the language of blight. I like the way it’s communicated here. Look at verse two of Revelation 18: “And he called out with a mighty voice, ‘Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great!’” That’s the language of blight. Fallen are the great factories of northeast Philadelphia; fallen is the Opera House on North Broad; fallen is the bridge at the end of South Street.

Fallen! Fallen! Fallen is the language of blight. But this language is not about the blight of physical buildings; it's not about the blight of broken bridges. It's not about the blight of those nagging potholes that you wish would finally get fixed forever. It's about a deeper, more profound life; there's something that has fallen in the city. So Babylon, for all of her glory, for all of the bright shining success and wealth and power of Babylon, Babylon had become a very, very dark place.

Brothers and sisters, this city, we live in, in places is a dark, dark place. There are things that are happening in places in Philadelphia that would shock you. There are places in Philadelphia where we’re murdering our young people at a shocking rate; there are things being done right now in the dark recesses of this city that would send a chill down your spine. And sure, there's renewal, physically that you can see; and there is blight, physically that you can see, but there's a deeper, more profound blight. And we could cry out tonight, “Fallen! Fallen! Fallen is Philadelphia because that blight is within our reach; that blight is on our streets; that blight is in our neighborhoods; that blight mars this great city.”

And so, this wonderful passage is not just in the Bible so that you would know that God is ultimately going to deal with evil because He’s the holy and righteous God, and we can take comfort in the fact that He will make it right again. But it sits in this place as the ultimate diagnostic; there is no more accurate diagnostic of the human condition; there's no more accurate diagnostic of the fallenness of the city than you would find in the Word of God, than you would find in this passage.

Why do great cities fall? Why do these wonderful places, with all of the art and culture, all of the accoutrements that make us love the city, why are they, at the same time, such dark places? Why? Why? Why? What explains that? You see, you can't participate in the renewal of the city without understanding the blight that mars the city. And so, we need this passage because, it not only predicts the future, but it diagnoses the present, and that's its purpose.

Why the fall of the city? I want to read for you, if you would, turn back into your Bibles, beginning with verse four. I'm not going to read a very long section. In fact, I actually want to just expound to you a few words tonight in this amazing passage, and I wanted to read the whole portion so you would see these words and hear these words in their context. But these words are really the ultimate diagnostic of the fallenness, the blight of the city. Verse four:

Then I heard another voice from heaven saying, “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities. Pay her back as she herself has paid back others; and repay her double for her deeds; mix a double portion for her in the cup she mixed. As she glorified herself and lived in luxury, so give her a like measure of torment and mourning, and since in her heart she says, ‘I sit as queen, I am no widow, and mourning I shall never see.’”

What is the ultimate cause? What is the fatal flaw of Babylon? Here it is, in these three words, hear them, “…she glorified herself.” She glorified herself. You say, “Well, Paul, what does that mean? How does that explain the blight of the city?” Let me give you this principle, and then let me take you through a biblical tour. When man is at the center of the culture of man, that culture will always become a culture gone bad. When man is at the center of the culture of man, that culture will always become a culture gone bad.

The fatal flaw of Babylon was the flaw of self-glory. Now, here is what you need to understand, human beings sit in a particular and important place in God's economy. We literally are in the place of being, if you would, God's resident managers. The Psalms say this: “The heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to man.” What an awesome thing to say. We’re not just here as inhabitants; we’re not just here as residents; we’re not just here as participants; we’re here to exercise a lordship over this created world that God made. We are the holders of the culture. That's the position we've been placed in.

Turn, if you would, in your Bibles to Genesis 1, verse 26:

Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the ground.’

Listen! God placed people in this world to have dominion over the things that God created. We have a position of management. We have a position of stewardship. Hear this truth. This is a definition of culture: Human beings, made in the image of God, interact with God's world, and culture is what comes out.

All of us are always in some way doing cultural tasks. We don't leave the world alone. We’re always changing it and shaping it, and all the structures and institutions and relationships, and values of human culture are the result of that cultural occupation. You are a distinctively cultural human being; some of us just show it more than others.

But you can’t escape that. You never leave God's world alone. You are always involved in it someway; you're always changing it someway. That's why you plant gardens. That's why you decorate a house. That's why you order things, because you’ve been made to live as a resident manager over the world that God created. What an awesome responsibility. “The heavens belong to the Lord, and the earth he has given to man.” You're always doing that cultural task; you can’t escape it. It is your identity; it is your moral responsibility; it is your compulsion as a human being.

There is a second thing you need to understand, that you, as a human being, are wired for glory. You're always in pursuit of glory in some way. We human beings are just amazingly in tune to glory. That's why you actually love the triple mousse cake. That's why you get excited about the triple overtime NBA game. That's why you like the amazing death-defying ride at the amusement park; you love the fact that it’s a 500-foot drop straight down because, for a moment, you experience this physical glory that no human being is ever meant to experience.

Now, think about this. The animals aren’t wired for glory. I don’t know if you have noticed that. We had a little dog with us for quite a while, a Jack Russell Terrier, he didn’t get glory. They are wonderful animals, but they just don't, they’re just not soft wired for glory. Or, think of the penguins, you know when the penguins jump off the ice into the water, they don't score one another, you know, 9.5 technical merit, but lacked artistic creativity, because they’re not wired for glory, but we are.

Now, notice the mix between these two things, that cultural task that you were created to do is always driven by the pursuit of some kind of glory. It will always be driven by an allegiance to glory of some kind. Because you are wired for glory, you’re inescapably after glory, and it will either be the glories, the shadow glories of the created world, all the variegated forms of self-glory; or it will be driven by the glory of God.

Now, the mistake of Babylon was not that Babylon became a cultural center. The mistake of Bablylon was not that Babylon was after glory. The mistake was that it was self-glory, because self-glory will always corrupt the whole system.

Turn, if you would, to John six. This is sort of the final chapter, the rest of the story after the feeding of the five-thousand. This is really a glory passage, verse 22:

On the next day the crowd remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberias came to the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.’

Think about what Jesus is saying. Jesus is saying, “Don't you understand? You got the glory of this moment all wrong. You have stopped at shadow glory; you have stopped at sign glory; you have stopped too soon. The glory that excites you was meant to be a glory that points to the real glory that is me. The glory of this miracle was this, ‘I am the bread of life; you eat my flesh, and you drink my blood, and you will see the kingdom of heaven. I am the bread you need. I am the bread you need, and I won't be your King just because you had your bellies filled.’”

Listen, that's the equivalent of telling your family that you're going to have a wonderful vacation in Orlando at Disney World. And you pack, and you’ve looked at the brochures, and you are so excited, you're so expectant, and you see the first sign that says, “Disney World,” and you get out, and you have your vacation there. Your problem is you stopped too soon. You confused glory with glory.

Now, I’m going to say something to you. Are you ready for this? Don't be too hard on Babylon, because, I think, there are seeds of the flaw of Babylon in every heart in this room. We get glory mixed up. And in the glory, that physical glory of human culture, you can begin to have your heart attached to shadow glories that were never meant to rule your heart. Every gift of physical glory, every gift of material glory, every gift of artistic glory, every gift of human cultural glory is only meant to be a sign that would point us to the ultimate glory that can only be found in the God who is glory.

And listen to this: The law of self-glory will always produce the law of consumption because, you see, those things can’t satisfy you. They will never satisfy you. They don't have the capacity to satisfy you because what you are actually seeking is what can only be found in the Messiah. He alone is the bread of life; He alone is the glory that will fill that place in your soul. And so, what happens is you get addicted, and you get hooked, and you see glory after glory, and it’s got to be a bigger, better job; and a bigger, better house; and a bigger, better car; and a better steak; and a better whatever.

You’re never satisfied; it's ravenous, and that's where the dark pleasures, the dark horrors of the city begin to come to the surface, because I do with sexuality what I was never supposed to do, that's not supposed to be the glory that I live for. And I do with my job what I was never supposed to do. That's not the glory I was meant to live for. And I do with relationships what I was never meant to do, that's not supposed to be the glory that I was living for. And I actually become part of the very blight that I hate because I’ve gotten glory wrong. And maybe our dear Messiah would say in places this evening, “Fallen! Fallen! Fallen are my people. They get glory wrong. They get glory wrong.”

Oh, it is so seductive. It's so easy; it's so easy to be tricked; it so easy to get addicted to things that will never satisfy me. I think I can find life from the acceptance of another human being, and I ride the roller coaster of their responses to me. I'm hyper-vigilant. I hope that I can get identity from them, but it will never work; it’s a shadow glory. Human love is only a metaphor of the great love of the Lord. Or, I get addicted to comfort. Praise God that He's created comfort in His world, but comfort is not supposed to rule me. And I live for comfort; I become fat, and lazy, and self-absorbed, and selfindulgent, looking for another comfort, a bigger, better comfort, and comfort is not evil, but it must not rule me.

“She glorified herself.” Hear this truth, “Whenever any glory, other than the glory of the Redeemer, rules your heart, you have now become part of the blight of this city.”

Brothers and sisters, I deeply believe, and I include myself in this, if we are ever going to be part of the renewal of this city, we must first repent of the false glories that have claimed our hearts. That repentance needs to start with the house of God. And we need to get on our knees, and with tearful hearts, say, “Oh, dear Redeemer, forgive us, for there is evidence that we have gotten glory wrong, and we, too, get tricked; we, too, get deceived; we, too, get seduced, and we hook our hearts to shadow glories that will never fulfill us, that make us driven, and anxious, and discouraged, and ravenous, and draw us away from the rest that can be found in the glory that is You.

Well, maybe you’re sitting there thinking, “Well, Paul, you have really encouraged us this evening.” Well, I want to do that because I want to take you to the end of this passage that we read. Go there to Chapter 19.

After this I heard what seemed to be the loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God, for his judgments are true and just; for he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality, and he has avenged on her the blood of his servants.’

Very interesting hymn of praise because… (Look up here for a moment.)…for in this hymn of praise, judgment and salvation kiss. You see, the hope of the blighted city is the justice and the mercy of the Lord. You see, if only He was a God of justice, there would be no hope for any of us because all of us have gotten glory wrong. But He’s not just a God of justice; He's a God of salvation, and He delivers, and He restores, and He forgives, and He fills our hearts with a better, better glory. And so, in His justice, and in His mercy, there is hope for us.

I would ask the question this evening, “Is there perhaps a chance that, although you're one of God's children, although in your heart, you would say, ‘I love the Lord. I want to be part of what He's doing,’ is there a chance that there are vestiges of self-glory still in you?” Is there a chance that you've gotten glory wrong, and is there a way where, although you want to be part of the renewal of the city, you still are part of the blight of sin?

I would say to you, “Run, run as fast as you can to the only place where hope can be found. There is a God of salvation. He is a God of forgiveness; He's a God of deliverance; He’s a God of new beginnings and fresh starts.” And what this passage tells us is, there is going to be a day when every one of us will get glory right, because there will be a day when there'll be no glory that challenges the glory of God anymore. There will be one glory that rules every heart, the glory of God. That is the ultimate solution to the blight of the city.

Let’s pray: Lord, thank you for this incredible look into this moment in eternity. We would thank you for Your justice, but we would thank you as much for Your mercy. And we would confess to You, “Yes, it's true, Lord, we get glory all mixed up, and, in our getting glory mixed up, it completely corrupts this cultural task that You have called us to, and places that should be glorious become places that are dark.” Fallen! Fallen is the city. Lord, we would be so humble as to say, “Yes, Lord, there are places where we’re part of the problem rather than part of the solution.” So we do, we do run to You, and say, “Won't You complete Your work in us? Won’t You deliver us even more, so that we would live with hearts that are glad and hearts that are full for the one glory that is truly glorious, the glory that is You?” Thank you. In Jesus name, Amen.