The Goodness of God's Wrath

Well, if you have your Bible with you, and I hope you do, let's go to Revelation
chapter 16 this morning. We are back in our study of this important book following
our Christmas break. And as we jump back into Revelation 16, we're in one of the
chapters in this book that, honestly, we would prefer to skip over if we could.
Now, let me just remind you, John received these revelations and wrote them down and
shared them with the early church for the purpose of encouragement, edification,
and exhortation. And it's true for us today, even when we read a chapter like we're
going to read this morning, which is full of God's wrath being poured out on the
earth. It is there for our encouragement, for our edification, and for our
exhortation. It's not just there to give us information, either historical or future
information, it's there to speak to us in terms of how we will live. We will see
in this chapter God pouring out judgments on the earth, and we've seen this before.
But here in chapter 16, what we're seeing is more intense, more far -reaching.
We can see that God's hand, this is ramping up throughout the church age.
And John has had visions already of God pouring out his wrath on the earth in
other parts of this book. When the seals were opened back in chapter 6 we saw
God's wrath being released on the earth with the horsemen coming. When the trumpets
were sounded in chapter 8 again we saw God's wrath being poured out on the land,
on the waters, on the sky in a limited way with limited impact. Chapter 14,
where we just were recently, we saw the winepress of God's wrath and the grapes
being crushed in that winepress. And here in chapter 16, we come to the seven bowls
of God's judgment, bowls of God's wrath being poured out, and the pattern here,
which is similar to the trumpets that we saw back in chapter 8, those were limited
in their scope, but it's the same pattern. There's an intensification that is
happening as these bowls of judgment are being poured out. This is total,
it's complete, and it covers the whole earth. This is the indication that the end
has arrived. This is the kind of chapter in the book, in the Bible that troubles a
lot of people when they read it. And let's be honest, when you read about God
pouring out bowls of wrath and bringing vengeance on the earth. You flinch a little
bit at that, right? I mean, God, being a God of wrath and vengeance,
is any a God of love and grace and mercy and kindness and compassion? We have no
problem thinking of God in those terms, but a God of holiness, righteousness,
justice, judgment, vengeance? Hold on a minute, right? But,
the God who is, the God who reveals himself in the pages of Scripture,
and he reveals his character to us in the Bible, the God who created the world and
everything in it, and you and me, the same God who so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have
everlasting life. This same God, according to the Bible, is a God who will judge
the world in righteousness and will pour out wrath on sin and rebellion and
unrighteousness. And what I want us to see as we read these first 11 verses in
chapter 16 is that God's wrath is ultimately good. There is an ultimate goodness in
the wrath of God. We may flinch and we should flinch. This is horrific, but we
just talked about God bringing trials into our lives for His glory and our good.
God will pour out His wrath on the earth for His glory and our good. In fact,
what I want us to see this morning is that God's pouring out of His wrath on the
earth is a necessary and essential part of God keeping His promises and filling the
blessings that he has promised in eternity for his people. If you don't have his
wrath being poured out, the blessings can't come. So with that as our framework,
I want us to read through these passages. Again, Lord, we ask that you would be
our teacher this morning, that you would give us ears to hear and hearts to obey
the word that you speak to us. Holy Spirit, be our teacher, we pray. We ask it in
Jesus' name. This is Revelation chapter 16, beginning at verse one. You follow along
as I read. This is the word of God for the people of God. John writes, then I
heard a loud voice from the temple, telling the seven angels, go and pour out on
the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.
So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and harmful and
painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshipped
its image.
The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea and it became like the blood of
a corpse. Every living thing died that was in the sea.
The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water and
they became blood. And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say,
"Just are you, oh holy one, who is and who was,
for you brought these judgments, for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets
and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve."
And I heard the altar saying, "Yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and just are your
judgments." The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun and it was allowed to
scorch the people with fire. They were scorched by the fierce heat and they cursed
the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him
glory. The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast and its
kingdom was plunged into darkness. People nod their tongues in anguish and cursed the
God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.
We're going to stop there. There's still two more bowls to go, but we've got enough
to deal with right there. So may God bless this reading of his word. The grass
withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will last forever. So these
first 11 verses give us five bowls being poured out on the earth, and along the
way there are three responses that we see to these five bowls of wrath.
One is a heavenly response and two are earthly responses to the bowls being poured
out. So we're going to work our way through each of the five bowls and look at
not only the judgment but also the responses of people. Verse one here is a
commissioning of the seven angels to pour out the seven bowls. And let me start
again by reminding you that my understanding of the book of Revelation is that we
see these visions not as happening in chronological order necessarily, but they are
happening in a cyclical pattern. They overlap one another. So what we saw with the
seals and what we saw with the trumpets, we're seeing again with the bowls, but
there's an intensification as the process goes along. It's the same patterns
happening, but they intensify as things draw near the end of the age I think the
vision John has described for us here in chapter 16 and throughout the book is a
vision a recapitulation of the various ways in which God's wrath will be manifested
throughout the church age culminating in the final great day what the will cause the
day of the Lord or the judgment day. So when you go back and read about the
opening of the seven seals in Revelation chapter 6 or the sounding of the seven
trumpets in Revelation 8, you will see parallels there with what we see here in
chapter 16. It sounds like it's the same. Hasn't this happened before?
Yes, but there's growing intensity as it continues. You'll also see, as we've seen
already, in our study of this book, that these judgments are a repicturing of what
happened to the Egyptians during the time of Pharaoh and the time of the Exodus. So
as we read these judgments and we hear about water being turned to blood and
darkness covering the earth, and we hear about sores and painful boils, we should
think that sounds like what happened to the Egyptians during the time that led up
to the Exodus. And yes, what we're seeing is that what happened in the time of the
Exodus was a prefiguring, a type of what will happen at the end of the age
throughout the earth, as God's enemies will experience God's judgment and God's people
will be liberated and brought to a promised land. So, I believe here we can
summarize these judgments that we're seeing, including these bold judgments, this way.
In much the same way that God poured out plagues and wrath on Egypt and the
Egyptians refused to obey God, during the church age God will pour out his wrath on
the earth in a variety of ways. There will be wars, there will be natural
disasters, disease, pestilence, poverty, and these kinds of events will be limited in
their scope and their duration and will serve as a warning to people of the greater
day that is ahead when these judgments will be unlimited. So today we have a
foretaste of what will one day come like a flood.
And each time God exercises or demonstrates judgment on the earth during the church
age, he is warning people to flee "from the wrath that is to come." Here in
chapter 16, God has been warning people throughout history, this is the final and
complete pouring out of his wrath. The Bible reading plan that I followed in 2014,
when we got to last Tuesday, on New Year's Eve,
I read in Malachi chapter four, which is the last chapter in the Old Testament.
Look at how Malachi prophesies what will be taking place on the day of the Lord.
It sounds like what John is seeing in Revelation chapter 16. Malachi says, "Behold,
the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all the
evildoers will be stubble. The day that is coming shall set them ablaze," says the
Lord of hosts, "so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you
who fear my name the Son of righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings You
shall go out leaping like calves from the stalls and you shall tread down the
wicked for they shall be ashes under the souls Of your feet on the day when I act
says the Lord This great day that is coming Malachi says is a day that will be
terrible destruction for the wicked and the unbelievers a day of Liberation for those
who follow Jesus. And what we're seeing here in chapter 16 is angels being
commissioned to begin pouring out the bowls of wrath in this final cycle of God's
judgment on the earth. What's happening here is the de -creation of the universe.
Interesting because I finished reading the Bible on the last day of 2024 and then
when I started again I'm in Genesis 1, right, Genesis 1, 2 and 3, you read about
creation. And I'm reading about creation and God making the heavens and the earth
and then God making the water and then God making the dry land and then I'm
reading in Revelation about God sending judgment on the dry land and sending judgment
on the waters and judgment on the skies. And I'm seeing He is undoing everything
that He did. He created, now he's decreating, he's destroying that initial creation.
He's destroying the world in preparation for what? The new heavens and the new
earth, which he will create. So that's a long time to set a context for verse one,
but God is commissioning angels to bring these five bowls. Let me just point out
that the voice is coming from the temple, which I think is a poetic way of saying
God is the one giving these commands. The voice that comes from the temple,
the temple is God's dwelling place among his people on the earth. I don't think
this is a way of saying this is coming from a particular temple on earth or a
temple in heaven. I think it's just a way of saying it's coming from the voice of
God. And let's look at what the first angel and the first bowl of wrath, what
happens in verse 2. "The first angel went out and poured his bowl on the earth,
harmful and painful sores, came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and
worshiped its image." You may remember this as one of the plagues back in Egypt,
the plague of the voils or the souls. That's in Exodus chapter 9. It's the sixth
of the 10 plagues. And one way to understand what's happening here in verse two is
to see it as a potential literal future event. A day ahead when unbelievers on the
face of the earth, all who have taken the mark of the beast, will experience mass
leprosy or some kind of an outbreak of a painful skin disease. And that's entirely
possible. There's another way some scholars see this. It could be, excuse me, it
could be pointing to a literal outbreak of skin disease among unbelievers, But it
could also be a metaphorical description of the painful experience that believers are
going to experience that is going to affect both body and soul as God pours out
His wrath, that they will experience that the sores and the boils are as much sores
and boils on their soul as it is sores and boils on their body. These people will
experience a profound soreness and sickness of the soul, a deep distress and anguish.
They took the mark of the beast and now as this first bowl of wrath is poured
out, they experience the anguish that comes from drinking of or from hoping that
they would find joy and salvation and peace from following the beast.
And what they're finding is that their soul is sick and sore sore because there's
never been hope found there. They built their lives on shifting sand,
not on a solid rock. So whatever kind of sore is being described here,
it's an experience that those who have rejected Christ will face as a consequence of
this rejection. That's the first bowl that's poured out from the first angel. The
second bowl, in verse 3, the Second angel pours out his bowl into the sea,
and it becomes like blood of a corpse, which every living thing dies that was in
the sea. We saw this before back in chapter 8. When a third of the sea became
blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died. That was a warning. This
time a third of the seas, third of the rivers became blood,
and a third of the creatures died, this time it's total. And again, both of these
events take us back to Exodus, chapter seven of Exodus, which is where the waters
of the Nile turned to blood and all of the fish died. And the primary point here
is that God is destroying in reverse order what he created in Genesis one. The
first bowl brought the wrath of God on mankind, on the land. land, this brings it
on the sea, and all that's in the sea, on the fish. And the next bowl,
the one we'll look at the third bowl, the third angel, destroys the water supply
for the earth, which is the source of life on the earth. If all the springs and
rivers become blood, how long you got? How long can you survive?
If that's all you've got to drink. So we start with the land,
then the oceans, then the rivers, and we'll see in the fourth bowl the skies are
affected. God is bringing judgment over all the earth in preparation for the new
heavens and the new earth. The second bowl has a parallel with the first bowl.
Those who took the mark of the beast are the ones who face God's judgment. With
both the second and the third bowls, those who shed the blood of the martyrs, now
see the rivers turned into blood. You see the parallel? If you took the mark of
the beast, your body will be marked with boils and sores. If you shed the blood of
martyrs, you'll be left with nothing but blood to drink. That's a part of the
poetic symbolism that's at play in these verses. These people are, essentially, you're
going to reap what you've sown with your evil. When God brings judgment on that
horrible day, you will experience back on you the kind of horror that you've sown
in the lives of others. In fact, verse 4 says, "When the third angel poured out
his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, they became blood." The second
bowl had broad destructive impact on the economy and the food supply of the world.
If We're thinking again, in literal terms, all the fish are dead. Red lobster is
closed permanently, right, at this point. There's no more food to eat anywhere. But
then when the water supply turns to blood, there's no Desani or Aquafina anymore.
You turn on your tap, you take the shower, you've got nothing. Now think for a
minute here. Let's say you're sitting down and telling your co -workers That you you
went to church yesterday and there was a sermon about the Bible saying that God's
gonna pour out his wrath on the earth and That people are gonna experience a plague
of sores and oceans and rivers are turning to blood The seas and all the animals
in the sea will die as a result and you ask your co -worker after you've shared
this sermon with him What do you think about God and his plan for his people for
people? How do you think think your coworker would respond if you said here's what
I learned about God and about the Bible yesterday. I would imagine your coworker
would say that's horrible. I could never believe in a God who would do something
like that. Have you heard that kind of a response from people when you've talked to
them about God's judgment or wrath? I thought God was a God of love. I don't
believe this for one second. That sounds about how an unbeliever responds to this
part of the Bible. Here's what I want us to do. I want us to compare and contrast
how a natural man responds to this with how the angels in heaven respond to the
news of what God is doing. You read Revelation 16 -1 -4 to your fellow workers and
they'll go, I can't believe in a God like that. But look at verse five, the angel
in charge of the waters says, not I can't believe in a God like this. He says,
just are you, O holy one, who is and who was. The first thing he declares is this
is right for you to do this, God. It is just for you to do this.
And note that he says,
Oh, holy one, who is and who was. What's left out there? When you think of that,
who was and is and will be. This is the will be. This is the culmination.
There's no more looking ahead to this happening. The will be is happening right
here. You have brought these judgments. They have shed the blood of the saints and
the prophets. You've given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve. and then
the altar says, "Yes, Lord God Almighty, true and just are your judgments." I just
want us to camp here for a few minutes. Let me just say, I don't know who the
angel in charge of the waters is. Maybe he's one of the angels pouring out the
bowls. He's in charge of pouring out the bowls on the waters. But whoever this
angel is, his response to God's wrath on the earth is to declare it is right for
God to do this and to worship him and glorify him for doing it. God pouring out
his wrath on the earth this angel says this is the just and right thing to have
happen. And the response of the altar, now I don't know again it's not like the
the altar has a voice so again I think there's a symbolic representation could be
the those under the altar remember the martyrs are under the altar, but the altar
is the place where prayers are offered up, where sacrifices are offered up to God,
and the response there of the altar in the same situation is true and just are
your judgments. Your friends may think that the whole idea of the wrath of God is
some kind of barbaric, pre -literate, terrible,
it's not how modern people should think about God. You're just, I mean, that's the
way old people used to think, but we're modern people now, we don't think that way.
In heaven, they don't agree with your friends. In heaven, they affirm the goodness
of God in doing all of this. So maybe it would be better for us to align our
thinking with the way the angels think about it than the way our friends at
Starbucks think about this. Maybe it's better for us to think, Boy, I read this and
it sounds horrible to me, but just and right are God's ways.
I want us to think about the wrath of God and how it fits into our understanding
of who God is and what the Bible tells us about the character of God. Specifically,
we're going to look at five things related to the wrath of God this morning. Five
things I think we need to consider. First, we need to rightly define what we mean
by God's wrath. Then secondly, we need to see that the Bible actually teaches that
God is a God of wrath. Third, we need to understand that the absence of wrath on
the part of God would bring His holiness into question. Fourth, we need to see that
it is right for God to exact divine vengeance. Vengeance is a good thing for God
to bring, and then finally we need to see the benefits that will result because of
God pouring out His wrath on the earth. So let's just walk through those five
thoughts together here. First of all, what do we mean when we say that God is full
of wrath? Now when you and I use the word wrath in a human context, if I say
man, there was just this explosion of wrath, we would not see that as a good or
or helpful thing. We would, we think of wrath as uncontrolled rage.
A person who shows wrath, it's uncontrolled rage. In fact, when you read through
Colossians 3, wrath is one of the things you're told to put off. Now you also put
these aside, anger, wrath, malice, slander, abusive speech. That should have no place
in the life of a Christian, the kind of wrath that's being described there. So we
think to ourselves, anger and wrath, these are sinful things. But here's what's true.
Our anger and wrath is sinful because we're sinners.
Our anger and wrath is sinful because we have hearts that are deceitful above all
things. Because we don't have pure anger or pure wrath. It's mixed together with
selfishness and self -interest. God's anger and wrath is different than your anger or
your wrath. The kind of anger we're talking about when we talk about God's wrath
being poured out is what John Stott says. He says it is absolutely pure and
uncontaminated by those elements which render human anger, sinful.
God's wrath is different than your wrath because God is different than you. God's
wrath is holy wrath because he is a holy God. If you've read through knowing God
from J .I. Packer that we've talked about this year, you know that Packer writes
this. God's wrath in the Bible is never the capricious, self -indulgent,
irritable, morally ignoble thing that human anger so often is. It is instead a right
and necessary reaction to objective moral evil. God's wrath is a right and necessary
reaction to objective moral evil. A. W.
Tozer gives this definition of the wrath of God. He says, "It is his utter
intolerance of whatever degrades and destroys. God hates iniquity as a mother hates
the polio that takes the life of her child.
God's wrath is not something spontaneous or impulsive. When God pours out his wrath,
it is intentional, it's calculated, and it's purposeful. God's wrath is not him
responding petulantly to a personal slight or a moral offense.
He is responding to the rebellion of his creatures, the persistent stubborn rebellion
of his creatures, and he is responding to where that rebellion inevitably leads both
them and his creation.
And as Packer says, this is not just God being irritable, God's wrath is poured out
on whatever,
whatever, God loves the things that are true and good and beautiful. He is pouring
out his wrath on those things that are evil and untrue and repulsive.
God knows what brings human flourishing. His wrath is toward that which brings
destruction and decay to all that he has created. That's the right way for us to
think about the wrath of God when we're talking about God being a God of wrath. We
have to have the right understanding of that term. Secondly, we need to affirm that
it's legit. This is a legitimate aspect of God's character. It is right for us to
think about God being a God of wrath. It is who he is, whether we understand it
fully or even like it. It's true about him. It's not uncommon for people in our
day to think about God this way. You know, the God of the Old Testament, he was
angry and judgmental and he was the God of wrath. But Jesus, he's the gentle,
loving, kind God who kind of corrects the God of the Old Testament, who fixes up
the problems from the old broken, cranky, hostile God of the Old Testament.
That's not what the Bible teaches. In fact, the Bible teaches that the God of the
Old Testament was full of mercy, kindness, and compassion, and teaches that Jesus
displayed wrath. Think about the money changers' tables in the temple.
Think about what Jesus said to the scribes in the Pharisees in Matthew 23, "You
brood to me.
When we think about God and his character, we gravitate toward and love to recite
passages like Psalm 103. I love Psalm 103. "Bless the Lord,
O my soul, forget not all his benefits, who forgives your iniquity,
who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit who crowns you with
steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good so that your youth is renewed
like an eagle's. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in
steadfast love. Is that true? Yes. Amen. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord, that that is
true about who God is. Most of us don't spend the same amount of time meditating
on how God is described in the opening verses of the prophet Nahum's prophecy.
Nahum says, "The Lord is a jealous and avenging God. The Lord is avenging and
wrathful. The Lord takes vengeance on His adversaries and keeps wrath for His
enemies. The Lord is slow to anger and great in power, and the Lord will by no
means clear the guilty. His way is in whirlwind and storm,
and the clouds are the dust of His Okay, that doesn't have the same joyful ring
that Psalm 103 has. But it's equally true as a description of who God is.
He is both loving and kind and just and holy. He is both full of mercy and
compassion and grace and full of wrath and vengeance.
Now, I know that most of us would rather spend time in Psalm 103 than Nahum 1.
Same reason you'd rather spend time with your grandmother over the holidays baking
cookies in the kitchen than with your grumpy old grandfather who's talking politics
in the other room, right? But here's what we have to remember. Both Psalm 103 and
Nahum 1 are true. They're describing the same God. The Bible is not a choose your
own adventure book about God.
The Bible tells us this is the God who is, And when we see the God who is like
Job, we put our hands over our mouth and we fall and we say blessed be the name
of the Lord.
And that's what we have to see. We gotta wrap our heads around the fact that this
is who God is. If indeed God is holy and righteous and he is, then this is the
third thing we need to see. If he's holy and righteous and he is, then the absence
of his wrath would bring that holiness into question. Follow me on this. The voice
that commissions the angels that's coming from the temple. This is the voice of God.
So where in the Jewish mind, where in the temple does God dwell? In what part of
the temple does God dwell? What's it called? The holy of holies. The dwelling place
of God is the Holy of Holies. So this voice coming out from the Holy of Holies
says, "Pour out my wrath."
Rick Phillips says, "It is from this place of perfect beauty, love,
and divine splendor that the bowls of wrath come to be poured out on the earth."
This fact tells us the most important thing for us to know about God's anger. It
is a holy wrath that responds in terrible violence precisely because of God's moral
perfection and the morally heinous nature of sin.
You know what the Bible says in Psalm 5 about God and His holiness? It says this,
"You are not a God who delights in wickedness. Evil may not dwell with you. The
boastful shall not stand before your eyes. You hate all evildoers. you destroy those
who speak lies, the Lord abhorrors the bloodthirsty and deceitful man. God,
because he is holy, cannot dwell in the presence of unholyness and allow it to
exist for eternity. Stephen Charnock, the Puritan pastor, says God's love of holiness
cannot be without a hatred of everything that is contrary to it.
You can't say you love holiness and not hate what is opposed to holiness.
Not hate, unrighteousness. The word holy, you know this means set apart. Moral purity
is one aspect of God's holiness, but it's only one part of what it means to be
holy. At its core, holiness means you are unmixed or uncontaminated by sin and evil.
You are set apart from sin and evil. You dwell in a different place than sin and
evil. God can't be tolerant of evil and be holy at the same time anymore than I
can give you a bottle of water and say, this is pure water. There's just a few
drops of cyanide in it. I mean, we could say, well, it's just, it's less than 0 .3
% cyanide, so it's mostly pure water. No,
it's poison.
So God can't be a God of holiness and have it mingled with a tolerance for
unrighteousness and impurity. If God does not pour out his wrath on evil and
wickedness, if he tolerates it, then he would be less than the holy God the Bible
describes, which brings us to the rightness of divine vengeance. Again,
this sounds wrong to us, to think about vengeance as a good thing. Jesus told us
we're not to seek vengeance. We're not to repay evil for evil. We're to turn the
other cheek. We're to overcome evil with good. Do not seek vengeance,
Romans 12 tells us, leave it to the When when we talk about God being a God of
vengeance or of retribution, it sounds like God is unwilling to forgive his enemies
But of course the Bible tells us that God's more than willing to forgive his
enemies He sent his son to die so that his enemies could be forgiven He is patient
and long suffering and withholding his judgment on the earth so that people have
time to repent, of course he is willing to forgive his enemies. And let me just
say this, he's willing to forgive any enemy no matter how bad the transgressions
were coming up there. It's not that God forgives the enemies who did the few bad
things. Take the most heinous crimes you know and God is willing to pour grace over
the top of them. That's who he is. So when we talk about the idea of vengeance on
the part of God, what we're really talking about is ultimate justice coming from a
patient and loving God who has withheld that judgment so that people could be
forgiven. But a day comes when he says, "We're done."
Look back at verse 6. The angel talks about God pouring out his wrath on those who
have shed the blood of the saints and the prophets. He turns their rivers into
blood so now all they have left is blood to drink and then it says at the end it
is what they deserve
Like wrath Vengeance is not evil.
It's a form of justice The the Lex Talionis in the ancient world said you pour out
the right The right punishment to fit the crime. It's an eye for an eye,
a tooth for a tooth. When God pours out his wrath, it is the punishment. He's
bringing vengeance. He's fitting the crime with the right punishment.
Because we're not perfectly holy and righteous, our desire for vengeance on others is
polluted with our own sin. That's why God says, "Don't you pursue vengeance. Things
will go bad if you pursue vengeance. Leave it to me because I can execute perfect
vengeance. Vengeance, here's a good definition, vengeance is when a just punishment is
given to an offender, where the severity of the punishment fits the severity of the
crime. When that just punishment has been exacted, vengeance has been accomplished.
And if God does not judge unrighteousness with the right kind of justice,
then he is an unrighteous judge. Imagine we had a judge in our court system, and
tomorrow morning he called the docket and everybody came up and they said, here's
docket number 1422, this man's accused of mass murder. And the judge says,
you know, I'm feeling generous today. Yes, we'll let bygones be bygones next case.
It's a drunken driver who hit somebody Yeah, we're not gonna worry about that today
You know if that's what happened over and over again, and by the way in some of
our cities We've seen that kind of approach to justice happening. What happens in
our world? It falls apart. We must have justice. God's saying,
"I will demonstrate perfect justice." Verses 5 through 7 remind us that in heaven
they understand that it is good and right for God to avenge the wickedness of those
who have rejected him, who have rejected his ways and who have persecuted the
church.
Now, keep in mind that the people who will experience the vengeance are people who
have chosen to follow the beast.
These are not people who are innocent and experiencing judgment they don't deserve.
They've elected to follow the beast. They've rejected God in his ways and said we're
going to put our hope in the world's system. They took the mark. They could have
turned to God and they've said no thanks. They're getting exactly what they asked
for. Not wrong for God to ultimately bring vengeance. It would be wrong if he
didn't ultimately bring vengeance.
And here's the last point I wanna make about God's wrath as we think about it. We
have to understand that all we hope for and all God has promised to us is
contingent upon his wrath being poured out. There are no benefits we can experience
in terms of the blessing of God without his wrath being poured out on evil.
The first benefit that God has promised to us is that there's a day ahead when all
who know and love Jesus will be free from evil. There will be no more evil,
no more darkness, no more night. In our hearts and in the world it will be gone.
That blessing can't happen unless God destroys evil through his wrath.
There'll be a day coming when nobody will ever again drive a pickup truck into a
crowded place and kill people, or where harm will not be done to children around
the world where wars and violence will no longer exist, where there'll be no more
hurt or hate or harm. The only way for us to happen, for that to happen,
The only way that can be true is for God to pour out his wrath on evil and its
perpetrators.
That's what Revelation says he can do. What I'm saying is you can't get to
Revelation 21 and 22, the new heavens and the new earth, without going through
Revelation 16.
You can't have the end without everything that's led up to it in this book, and
that's a part of the point. Yes, are you going to go through a lot of trial and
tribulation in this world? Of course you will. Jesus said it. In this world you
will have tribulation, but we'll go through it and get to an end, a glorious end.
This is necessary to get to that glorious end. Let me quote from Rick Phillips
again. I think he makes this a helpful observation. He says, "Jesus taught his
disciples to pray, "Deliver us from evil," and it is by his wrath on the ungodly
that God will fully answer that prayer. Just as God poured out his wrath onto Egypt
so as to free his people from bondage and suffering, so do all of God's judgments
in history deliver the Christian church from the afflictions of this world. The
cataclysmic outpouring of wrath that will end the history of this age will have the
result of finally delivering the people of God and granting them the victory of
eternal rest. You want God to pour out his wrath on the world,
not because you're vindictive or blood thirsty or you want to see people suffer, but
because you long for the world to be made right, for evil to be vanquished, and
the only way that can "and is for God to pour out his wrath." Now I know we took
a long time looking at the wrath of God, which is a hard thing for us to think
about, but I want us to think clearly and rightly about the wrath of God, and I
want us to ultimately see the goodness of his wrath for his plan and for his
people. I'll just make a couple of observations about the fourth and the fifth bowl
here. The fourth bowl in verse eight, the angel poured out his bowl on the sun. It
was allowed to scorch people with fire. They were scorched by the fierce heat. They
cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and
give Him glory. First three bowls poured out on the people, the land, the seas, and
the rivers, now the sky. The de -creation is continuing. And these verses remind us
that God is the Lord over all of creation. He's the Lord over the sun, not just
the earth. He's the Lord over all the heavens and all the earth. And scholars
disagree on exactly what's happening here, whether this is global warming on a
massive scale, or what exactly is going on with this intense heat. But all the
scholars agree that whatever is going on here, whatever this event is picturing, it's
a cataclysmic event that produces blasphemy on the part of the evil people. Look at
the end of the verse, they did not repent and give him glory. You would think that
in a moment when things are getting terrible and so bad, remember when you're used
to wrestle with your brother as a kid, if you had a brother, you'd get him in a
headlock and you'd be tightening the grip and what would he finally say? "Uncle, I
give. Okay, you win." You would think these cataclysmic events would lead some people
to say, "Okay, enough. I give. You win." They don't.
They don't repent. The human heart is that hard toward God.
Those who reject God would rather face his pain and his wrath than to ever bow
their knee to him. You know Proverbs 19 -3, this good proverb for you to memorize
as a family, talk together about this. Proverbs 19 .3 says, "When a man's folly
brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the Lord." You've seen this happen
to people. Maybe you've done this. You ignore God, a man's folly, the fool has said
in his heart there is no God. You ignore God. As a result, you make foolish
choices and then you blame God for the consequences of the foolish choices you made
when you ignored God. A man's folly causes,
it leads him to ruin and then he blames God because his heart is that hard. That's
what the people in Revelation 16 are experiencing. The righteous judgment of God is
being poured out and in their folly they respond by refusing to repent and give
glory to him. Same thing happens with the fifth bowl. This time the wrath is poured
out on demonic forces and those human kingdoms that have aligned themselves with the
beast. Look at verse 10. The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the
beast and its kingdom was plunged into darkness. People nod their tongues in anguish.
I don't know if you've ever been under so much stress that you just chew your
tongue until it's sore or bloody. That's what's going on. The anguish that's going
on as the kingdoms of this world are being destroyed with God's wrath.
And again, verse 11 says they don't repent. They cursed the God of heaven for their
pains and their sores and did not repent of their deeds. Pharaoh did the same
thing. God poured out judgment on Egypt and each time he got more stubborn.
He hardened his heart against the God of Israel. Finally, he relents and then What
does he do two days later? He recants his repenting and sends his,
his heart is so hard toward the Lord.
So let me just wrap up with a couple of thoughts about wrath and repenting. First
of all, the people who are experiencing the wrath of God in Revelation 16.
These are all unbelievers. These are all those who took the mark of the beast.
Here's how I know that, because the Bible tells us that God sent His Son into the
world so that all who believe in Him will be saved from the wrath to come.
1 Thessalonians 1 -10, the Bible says, "We are saved from the wrath to come in
Christ." Romans 8, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
A believer will never experience God's wrath on him or on her.
Doesn't mean you won't experience sorrow or pain or suffering in a fallen world and
that you won't experience it more intensely as the day of the Lord draws near.
Jesus said in this world you'll have tribulation. Trials, suffering, sorrow, yes, but
not wrath. You and I, if we are in Christ, if we know him and love him, we will
not be touched by God's wrath. We may be chastened by God.
You may be disciplined by God. You may experience God's loving discipline. Whom the
Lord loves, he disciplines. So you may experience a spanking from God that's
different than the wrath of God being poured on you.
If you're experiencing God's loving discipline, the right response is to repent and
turn from our sinful patterns and practices. Because catch this, when God stirs your
heart to repent and you don't, when you harden your heart toward God, and some of
you have had this experience, the discipline gets more severe. Because God loves you,
he won't let you, you try to harden your heart, he'll come and keep pounding away
at it until he gets through. And you may say, This discipline is more than I can
bear, repent. And God will relent of the discipline, which brings me to the last
point I want to make. These people who are experiencing wrath in Revelation 16,
they deserve what they're getting from God because of their sin and their rebellion.
And so do you.
You and I deserve what these people in Revelation 16 are getting. Let that sink in.
What's happening to the wicked, the evil, the God -haters in Revelation 16 is what
you and I deserve to have happened to us. But the wrath that we deserve has gone
somewhere else.
Where?
on Jesus.
What's being poured out here on the wicked, God poured out on his son on the
cross.
Not because he deserved it, but because he willingly bore it, so that you and I
don't have to.
I'm going to close with a long quote from Charles Spurgeon, "because I could say
something or I can let Spurgeon say it, "and I'm smart enough to know who should
win that battle." Spurgeon says, "How does Christ deliver us "from the wrath to
come? "Why by putting himself in our place "and putting us into his place?" Oh,
this blessed plan of salvation by substitution that Christ should take a poor guilty
sinner and set him up there in that place of acceptance and joy at the right hand
of God and that in order to be able to do so Christ should say here comes the
great flood of almighty wrath I will stand just where it is coming and let it flow
on me
And you know that it did flow over him till he sweat,
as it were, great drops of blood, and more he cried aloud, "My God, why have you
forsaken me?" and still more, till he cried it as finished and bowed his head and
gave up the ghost. He bore that you might never bear his father's righteous ire.
And so, suffering in your stead, and putting yourself in the place of acceptance,
which he himself so well deserved to occupy, he saved you from the wrath to come."
Spurgeon concludes this message by saying, "I used to think that if I once told
this wonder story of free grace and dying love, everyone would believe it. But I've
long since learned that so hard is the heart of man that he will sooner be damned
than be saved by Christ. Well, Spurgeon says, "You must make your choice, sirs.
You must make your choice for yourselves." Then he says, "Only do this for me. Once
you've made your choice, don't blame me for having tried to persuade you to act
more wisely than I fear your choice will be.
God's wrath is real and it will come in fullness one day and it will come on a
day when it is too late to turn at that point. When he begins to pour out his
wrath there's nowhere to run nowhere to hide so if today you hear his voice The
Bible tells us, "Do not harden your heart, but instead turn to God,
receive his grace, mercy, and forgiveness so that you can be spared from the wrath
that will one day come." Let's pray. Father,
it is right for us to think about these things as hard as it may be.
It is good for us to understand your justice and your holiness and your
righteousness and
Lord, we pray for
the salvation of many before the great day of wrath comes. We pray that we would
be mindful of our friends and neighbors who are facing this coming day,
and that we might know how to wisely and carefully warn them and call them to
repent and not be hard -hearted against the God who loves them,
who created them, and who offered his son to die for them.
And Lord, if there's anyone here this morning who does not know you, anyone here
who has never humbled himself before you, who has bought into the world as the
source of joy and hope and peace rather than turning and submitting to you. I pray
that today he would hear you. She would hear you and he or she would not harden
his heart.
I I ask these things in your name.