Crumbling

REVELATION 18 v 1-24

Do we remain strong as evil crumbles?

• John uses Babylon as a metaphor for the evil world.
• Everything that tries to block God's purposes will come to an end.
• This evil was rife in John's time as the merchants would exploit people’s sinful pleasures, such as - greed, money and power. Today’s society and business world is the same.
• God was bringing destruction to this evil world, we as Christian are in the middle of this evil world and when God has finished with it we will be the last ones standing because everything else has crumbled.
• We are all human and we all sin, sometimes we are tempted by evil desires. But what happens when the evil is destroyed and one desire has hold of us?
• Do we fight it off? Or do we allow it to drag us down with it?
• King David was consumed by one certain evil desire which led to much worse things.
• 2 Samuel 11v 1-5 - "¹ In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king’s men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem. ² One evening David got up from his bed and walked around on the roof of the palace. From the roof he saw a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful, ³ and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, “She is Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” ⁴ Then David sent messengers to get her. She came to him, and he slept with her. (Now she was purifying herself from her monthly uncleanness.) Then she went back home. ⁵ The woman conceived and sent word to David, saying, “I am pregnant.”"
• David's heart attitude was wrong because he was not following God's plans and purposes, he had not gone to war to represent God and fight for the King (God).
• Then David goes somewhere he know he can see stuff he shouldn't, I don't believe David only saw the bath house for that first or it was his first time on his roof. His motives were wrong.
• David has been sucked in by an evil desire and now there are consequences which he either opens up about or covers up.
• 2 Samuel 11 v 14-17 - "¹⁴ In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab and sent it with Uriah. ¹⁵ In it he wrote, “Put Uriah out in front where the fighting is fiercest. Then withdraw from him so he will be struck down and die.” ¹⁶ So while Joab had the city under siege, he put Uriah at a place where he knew the strongest defenders were. ¹⁷ When the men of the city came out and fought against Joab, some of the men in David’s army fell; moreover, Uriah the Hittite died."
• David tried to get Uriah to sleep with his wife Bathsheba to make it look like the pregnancy was his baby. But Uriah didn't.
• So David organised his murder, a major cover up.
• David was never at first wanting to kill people but from one evil desire comes another.
• If we focus on not sinning, we will end up sinning. But if we focus on God and His heart then we will do His purposes for our lives.
• I don't believe it is about putting lots of barriers in place to prevent sin, but it is a matter of changing our heart and desires. God has to play a key part in this change in partnership with our willingness to change.
• Thankfully for David he was challenged by Nathan who gave David an opportunity to repent. 
• What if the evil around David crumbled would he have been pulled in or would he have resisted?
• God wants to destroy evil because of the problems it causes.
• If we like David for the most of his life expect this event and a few others, live righteously we won't pulled down by the evil as it crumbles as God destroys it. 
• We all make mistakes and yet God still wants to use us just as he used David in many mighty ways.
• Let’s ask God for a greater desire for Him and our desire for other things will decrease.