“Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished. And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, ‘Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.’ After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests. And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.”

After taking a brief pause from Revelation during Palm Sunday and Easter, we resume our progress through the final book of the Bible, picking up in Revelation 15. To give a quick recap, as there have been a considerable number of moving parts, we currently find ourselves toward the end of the seven year tribulation period. We’ve seen the unleashed destruction of the seven seals, and the spiritual condition of the earth when after the sixth seal Revelation 6:15–17 tells us,

“Then the kings of the earth and the great ones and the generals and the rich and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, ‘Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who can stand?’”

To the world, this destruction, this upheaval of the existence as we know it was the wrath of God poured out – but they were wrong. The fact that in their peril they turn, not to God, but to the world, to the mountains and rocks to cover them, shield or kill them either way, shows us that they do not know God. They beg to be hidden from what they perceive as God’s wrath, failing to understand that what the Lamb is unleashing is actually His measured withdrawal. This is not a world suffering under the judgmental wrath of the Lord, but is one experiencing God’s common grace being reduced as He incrementally gives the world over to itself and its own desires. The seventh seal heralded the coming of the seven trumpets, and the seven trumpets brought forth a greater measure of unprecedented destruction upon the earth. We saw as creation was, not just shaken, but beginning to be unmade, destabilized and falling apart. The barrier between the physical world and the spiritual realm is disrupted and demonic forces – the torturing locusts with their terrifying appearances and painful tails, the monstrous horses with their breath of fire, smoke, and sulfur, and their serpent tails – are unleashed upon humanity. This again isn’t the direct wrath of God poured out on the world, but is another reduction of common grace, of the protection that a wicked and blaspheming world enjoys without ever acknowledging the mighty hand of God. After the sixth trumpet we again are given a summary of the condition of the world in Revelation 9:20–21,

“The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.”

Paul writes in Romans 5:3–5,

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”

We can get a deeper understanding of what he means concerning suffering by looking at his words in 2 Corinthians 7:9–10, addressing the conviction that his previous letter brought forth in the church at Corinth,

“As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting. For you felt a godly grief, so that you suffered no loss through us. For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”

There is a wealth of wonder in righteous suffering, there is endless blessing through hardship in the name of God, in grief that guides us to repentance. But if we suffer without God? If we endure pain and affliction with our hearts and minds far from our Creator? Then we only court death, we only invite further pain and condemnation upon ourselves – hating God and amplifying our agony, rather than loving Him and receiving deliverance. After the sixth trumpet we seem to move slightly outside of the timeline to address the two witnesses, and then we see the sounding of the seventh trumpet. After the seventh trumpet there’s a significant break, something more than the interlude we’ve seen previously. John sees the sign of a woman in heaven, representing Israel, and the image of the great red dragon, who is Satan. He sees the war that Satan wages against the angelic forces of good, and his defeat and banishment from the spiritual realm. There is then the rise of the first and second beasts, events that seem to overlap with what we’ve already read, though the exact points where they intersect aren’t explicitly described. We see as the world comes to worship Satan even more than they already do, as they honor the beast whose authority comes from the dragon, as they follow the message of the false prophet, who leads people to worship the beast and his image, and as the people take the mark of fallen, rebellious man upon themselves, permanently rejecting God. In Revelation 14 where we last left off, we saw that despite the wickedness that is flourishing upon the earth, the Lamb is still in a position of power and authority, over and above the chaos, His 144,000 by His side. We see in the messages of the three angels things that have come, and are to come – The judgment of God, the fall of the wicked world, and the punishment of the unrighteous. It is the first of these things that we’ll look at today, the coming of the true judgment. Because despite how glorious and terrible what we’ve seen previously has been, these were in many ways only birth pains, only the preamble of reduced grace before we see true wrath brought to bear. And what we’ll see as we go along is that, despite how destructive and violent things may seem, the words of the first warning angel hold true from Revelation 14:7,

“And he said with a loud voice, ‘Fear God and give him glory, because the hour of his judgment has come, and worship him who made heaven and earth, the sea and the springs of water.’”

God is not an arbitrary destroyer, He is not some false pagan deity, jealous and petty and spiteful. He is perfect – perfect in His understanding, perfect in His restraint, and perfect in how He unfolds His wrath to deliver unfailing, unblemished justice. He is holy, righteous, glorious beyond comparison or comprehension, and there is nothing that we see from Him that is not good. Revelation is a book that above all is about Christ, a recorded unveiling that we might better understand and glorify Him. In Christ we are given the image of the invisible, unknowable God. God’s wrath is not a scare tactic, it’s not a nameless, faceless threat that comes without word or warning to the destruction of all. God’s wrath is terrifying in its power, it is personal in its delivery, and it is hope to the believer that our God is perfect and just in all His ways.

The Beginning of the End – The Goodness of the Wrath of God

1. Deliverance in the Wrath of God

“Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last, for with them the wrath of God is finished.”

As I mentioned before, we previously saw John use the language that a sign in heaven had appeared back in Revelation 12:1,

“And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars.”

This is almost immediately followed by another sign that is the great red dragon, Satan. However this new sign, seen in today’s passage eclipses both of these, called “great and amazing.” The time of withdrawal is coming to an end, the time of God permitting things to happen on the earth is closing, as His hand is poised to move in a new and disastrous way against all unrighteousness. John sees as seven angels come forward – remember that seven reflects the number of completion, and also remember what an “angel” truly is. I’m not saying that these aren’t supernatural, heavenly beings, it seems quite clear that they are, but because of common representations of angels we can often forget or overlook that this isn’t all they are – to be an angel, first and foremost is to be a messenger. When we see figures in the Old Testament addressed as an “angel of the LORD,” this is a messenger sent to deliver the words of God – no additional thoughts or commentary, the angel doesn’t put a spin on what he’s been sent to say. What we see is a faithful and uncompromising messenger, serving the words of the Master. In remembering these figures as messengers the number seven is relevant in that it points to them delivering a complete message. Scripture first establishes seven as reflecting completion through the seven day creation period, but it’s displayed again and again throughout Scripture as has been a recurring theme as we’ve gone through Revelation – the seven churches, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven eyes of the Lamb that are also seen in the seven burning torches before the throne that are the seven spirits of God. We see the stars of the seven churches, their seven messengers, and the seven spirits mentioned side by side in Revelation 3:1,

“And to the angel of the church in Sardis write: ‘The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars…”

The seven angels of the seven churches point to Christ, the seven spirits of God are manifest in Christ, and as we see these seven angels come forth in today’s passage, we’re again aimed back to Christ. They are the fulfillment of the will of God, they are blessed to bring forth His righteous wrath upon the world, and at the completion of this wrath, at the end of the seven bowls, after the fall of Babylon and in the midst of the rejoicing in heaven, in Revelation 19 we have the arrival of Christ. To the world this is a fearful thing, to wretched humanity that is destined for destruction the finished wrath of God is unspeakably terrifying – but to the believer, this is our hope, our deliverance. We are not forgotten or abandoned behind enemy lines, we are not forsaken and left to be devoured, but are blessed to persevere and be vindicated by the righteous judgment of our Father in heaven.

“And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—and also those who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name, standing beside the sea of glass with harps of God in their hands.”

With the seven angels the wrath of God is not just playing out, but is finished, it’s complete. The next thing that John notes after these angels is the sea of glass, which calls us back to Revelation 4:6,

“… and before the throne there was as it were a sea of glass, like crystal…”

This sea of glass shows us in part the overwhelming glory of God, this glassy expanse, crystal clear stretched out before the throne, a sharp contrast to the deep unknown that is our earthly ocean. But now with the approaching wrath, there’s a new element to the glass sea, this appearance of being mingled with fire. There are a few ways that we could understand this – one would be that the glorious wrath of God, building and about to be poured out sheds a different light on the scene of the heavenly throne room. It takes us back, as fire associated with God always does, to the pillar of fire that led His people by night through the wilderness after the exodus. It points to His power and His glory. Another way to see this is to note a change in the relationship between God and the world. John describes the sea of glass in Revelation 4 as seen from inside the throne room, while Ezekiel describes it as seen from below in Ezekiel 1:22, 26,

“Over the heads of the living creatures there was the likeness of an expanse, shining like awe-inspiring crystal, spread out above their heads.” … “And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance.”

From an incredibly limited, human perspective, we could understand this as a vast window looking down from heaven upon the earth, through which God sees all. John initially says that it’s like a sea of glass and now says it appears as glass mingled with fire – consider what happens to glass when exposed to heat. While things like glass windows were still a luxury item, glass blowing gained significant prominence in the first century. The image of glass, cool and clear, then exposed to extreme heat and beginning to glow as if mingled with fire, now shifting and malleable would have been familiar to John and his readers in the early church. God does not change – He is constant, eternal and miraculously unchanging, but His position in regard to the world certainly shifts. Nothing about Him actually moves, but the way He is seen does. Isaiah 59:1–2 tells us,

“Behold, the LORD’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.”

The world is about to see the hand of God, they are about to witness the glory of His wrath. Those who have made themselves His enemies will curse Him for the justice leveled against them, but for those He calls His own there will be deliverance and blessings – while the wicked blaspheme and rage, the children of God sing with joy for the glory of the coming wrath. We see a gathering of saints before God and beside this fiery, glass-like sea, victorious over the beast, and sin, and death – not by their own might, but by the delivering Spirit of their Lord, prepared to sing, to give God the praise that He alone is due. This is the joy of the redeemed in the day of the wrath of the Lord.

2. Praise in the Wrath of God

“And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, ‘Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.’”

If you’ve never read the song of Moses, it’s in Deuteronomy 32:1-43, please, go read it now. If you have read it as I had before, primarily in the context of what is unfolding in Deuteronomy, and how it prophesies the repeated failings of the nation of Israel, please, go read it now and understand it in the context of what we’ve read in Revelation. It is a perfect picture of God is His pristine glory, of fallen man in his profound foolishness, and it carries the subtext that is a call to return, while explicitly stating the repercussions for remaining an enemy of God. Moses closes the song in Deuteronomy 32:43 saying,

“Rejoice with him, O heavens; bow down to him, all gods, for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries. He repays those who hate him and cleanses his people’s land.”

We then see right after in Deuteronomy 32:45–47,

“And when Moses had finished speaking all these words to all Israel, he said to them, ‘Take to heart all the words by which I am warning you today, that you may command them to your children, that they may be careful to do all the words of this law. For it is no empty word for you, but your very life, and by this word you shall live long in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.’”

What John sees the victorious chorus sing in today’s passage is a much shorter song, but it captures the same spirit and intent as the song of Moses.
“Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!”

The primary aim from the beginning is that God be glorified, that He be praised and revered as only He can be.

“Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

Who will not fear? No one. Who will not glorify His holy name? No one. As Paul wrote in Philippians 2:9–11,

“Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

This is no small thing, no empty word, but the true reality of life and death. You may bow with humble joy before your Savior and King, or you may bow in fear, and pain, and rage before your Judge and Destroyer, but you will bow. The righteousness of God will be revealed beyond the multitude of ways His glory is visible even now, His majesty unveiled in new and wonderful ways before humanity. As the response of a ship is to be raised and tossed by the sea, as the response of a kite is to be lifted and moved by the wind, so the response of man can only be to bow before the awesome might of the Living God. I hear people say things sometimes about what they anticipate our awareness in heaven to be like, things like, “We won’t see the final judgment,” or “we know anything about hell or the people there.” They seem to think of things like hell and judgment from an entirely earthly perspective. “These things are terrible, and destructive,” they say, “and how could heaven be a paradise if we know of terrible and destructive things?” But this isn’t what we see from any of the figures in heaven – angels, living creatures, or saints, what we see is a joy, a celebration even at the coming wrath of God. That’s not to say that it’s not serious, or that it’s not worthy of our fear, because it certainly is, but it’s also right, just, and glorious. I encourage no one to read any passage of Revelation from a place of callous superiority – we are all deserving of the wrath of God, and it is only by the blood of Christ that we are spared, set free from our sentence. But it’s a mistake to read of these things – the destruction of the world, and even the coming judgment of the Lord, and do so through squinted eyes, peeking at the pages. It’s not correct to imagine the saints in heaven turning their heads away because the sight is too terrible, when what we see are songs of praise before the coming wrath. This isn’t a place of terror, panic, or disgust, neither is it some unhinged bloodlust – they praise God because He is worthy to be praised. They celebrate the coming wrath because it is warranted, just and good. They sing in the same spirit as Moses who again closed his song saying,

“Rejoice with him, O heavens; bow down to him, all gods, for he avenges the blood of his children and takes vengeance on his adversaries. He repays those who hate him and cleanses his people’s land.”

3. Presence in the Wrath of God

“After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels with the seven plagues, clothed in pure, bright linen, with golden sashes around their chests.”

As we discussed previously, these seven angels aren’t just angels, but are an embodiment of the will of God. John first wrote that they appeared as a sign in heaven, but now with more detail we can see their role emphasized by where they come from, emerging from the sanctuary of the tent of witness, also translated as the tent of testimony. We saw the temple in heaven after the seventh trumpet was blown in Revelation 11:19,

“Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.”

We also saw in Revelation 14 how two angels came forth from the temple to fulfill their roles in the harvest of the world. But this wording – not a temple, but a tent, calls us back to a time before Solomon built the first temple, to the tabernacle that was commissioned by God through Moses and first raised in the wilderness, a time when God’s presence was continually visible before His people, and His judgment on their rebellion was swift. We can also see the purpose of these seven angels, coming forth from the tent of witness in how they’re dressed, which mirrors the description of Jesus in Revelation 1:13,

“… and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest.”

As we’ve discussed before, these are not agents that God has outsourced his righteous wrath through, He’s not stepping back and passing the task off to someone else – these are His angels, coming from His tabernacle, dressed in His glory, to the execution of His perfect will. God is active, He is present, He is open and engaged in what is unfolding, and this is displayed to an even greater degree in what we read next.

“And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.”

If the relevance of the song of Moses and the mention of the tent of witness before didn’t connect the dots thoroughly enough for you, we now see that after one of the living creatures gives the bowls of God’s wrath to the seven angels, there is a display of God’s presence, a degree of revealing of His glory and power, where the description takes us back to Exodus 40:34–38,

“Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle. Throughout all their journeys, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the people of Israel would set out. But if the cloud was not taken up, then they did not set out till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the LORD was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in it by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys.”

How can we read of the destruction of the world and find joy? How can we read of the terrible and terrifying wrath of God and see hope? Because this world is not your home, and its destruction is right and just. Because the wrath of God is not intended for you as a believer, and only stands to glorify God. We can draw hope – we must draw hope from the fact that our God is not absent, He’s not distant, He’s here, His will is perfect and upon us, and whether our days are pleasant or filled with suffering, He is good, and we are not forsaken. Psalm 34:15–22 tells us,

“The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. Affliction will slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned. The LORD redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned.”

If you don’t have a relationship with God, if you have not acknowledged the transgression of your sin, your desperate need for a savior, and Jesus’ role as the only One who can give this, then be afraid – be absolutely terrified of what we read here. This isn’t a scare tactic, it’s the truth, it’s not some “the carrot or the stick,” manipulation, it’s just the reality of your position, and it would be no different for anyone else who finds themselves in a state of open rebellion with the Lord. Hebrews 10:31 tells us quite simply,

“It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

Be afraid, be grieved by your sin, and in your grief, repent. Repent and let that fear leave – not the fear of the Lord Himself, not an absence of awe, wonder, and reverence that is due to God and God alone, that all who worship Him hold, but rather the fear of His wrath. Know that as a child of God, His wrath is awesome, and mighty, and just, and not for you. Look and see that God delivers His own, that He is worthy of all praise, and that He is not far, but rather His hand is upon us all to the fulfillment of His will – to the eternal blessing of those who are His children, and the eternal destruction of those who would make themselves His enemies.

Pastor Jake’s sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbhtOEbae3I