“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 worshiped its image. The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and 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, O 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 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 gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds. The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east.”

Many people, both within and outside of the church, think of Revelation as a book of judgment and fear. There is some symbolism and poetic language, which can be confusing, there are some descriptions that can be uncomfortable to imagine, and so for many people the book is chalked up as too difficult to understand or too terrible to comprehend, and avoided altogether. On the other side of that fence, the prophecy that the book contains and the information surrounding the end of this world becomes an obsessive curiosity. People become bogged down in the particulars concerning the return of Christ, the timeline of the tribulation, and in far too many cases, how they can force the current condition of the world upon the text of Revelation and find themselves in the know, regardless of how it may misconstrue what the book actually says. It’s not that these aren’t worthy conversations to have, but if Revelation is a dark and scary boogeyman sitting at the end of your Bible and forcibly ignored, or if it’s a prophetic conspiracy theory that you’re bent on picking to death, then you have completely missed, not just the overall point, but literally what the book is saying. People become fixated on “apocalypse,” whether out of fear or fascination, and either ignore or never knew to begin with that what our culture has done with that word is not an accurate reflection of what is means – because the Greek word “apokalypsis” where we get apocalypse from is simply another word for revelation. People will act like the book is fire and brimstone from the first page, but we’re beginning chapter sixteen in a verse-by-verse study, and you know this is not what we’ve read. From the very beginning, chapter one, verse one, this is the revelation – not of the fallen world, not of the wicked enemy, not of the righteous judgment, or the end of time – this book is the revealing of Jesus Christ. We don’t open to the four horsemen, or the world being shaken apart, Revelation 1:1 is not Satan being cast down defeated from heaven, or the rise of the beast – it’s Jesus, the book starts with Him. The opening of Revelation shows us our glorious and triumphant Savior, coming in all His authority and power to John, His disciple and friend, comforting him in his exile, and then offering both prophetic comfort and warning to His people. It is important as we read each line of Revelation, from the glorious throne room of God and eternal hope of the new heaven and earth, to the rise of the beast and the ultimate destruction of reality as we know it, that we have, at the forefront of our minds, Christ. Psalm 46:1–3 tells us,

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way, though the mountains be moved into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains tremble at its swelling.”

And Proverbs 18:10 offers the simple comfort,

“The name of the LORD is a strong tower; the righteous man runs into it and is safe.”

God is our Creator, our Lord and Master, He is infinite, holy and unknowable, and et in the person of Jesus Christ we have the image of the Living God. Jesus, who came into the world and contended with every temptation of man and lived blamelessly, who suffered, not simply on par with, but to a greater degree than any human has ever suffered, and did so, not for His own sake, not out of His own necessity, but for us. These are things we should carry with us into our daily lives, points of truth that we should meditate on constantly, but I bring them all up today because we’ve arrived at what is arguably one of the harshest parts of Revelation as we see the beginning of the administering of the seven bowls of wrath. Mike Tyson quite famously said that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Everyone can start reading Revelation with the intent of remaining focused on Christ, it’s easy to read of the Lamb standing upon Mount Zion with His 144,000 and think, “Oh yeah, this book is about Jesus.” But sometimes, demonic locusts come flying up from the abyss to plague humanity, armies of demon horses breathing sulfurous flames slaughter a third of mankind, we read of the winepress of the wrath of God, we read of the seven bowls of wrath, of the final judgment and the lake of fire, and it can be like a punch in the face. We lose sight of the image of Christ that is worked into every page, we forget the glory that is dripping from every word of this book, and we see only destruction on an incomprehensible scale – this cannot happen. This book does not exist apart from Christ and there is nothing in it that can be seen but through the lens of His Truth. Bearing this in mind, let’s move forward into the beginning of the seven bowls of wrath. Last week we looked at the goodness of God’s wrath in its coming, in the process of it building up to be poured out. Now we look at the goodness and glory of His wrath unfolding. Is it intense? Absolutely. Something to be approached lightly or handled without care? Certainly not. But then tell me, what part of Scripture do you imagine can be handled carelessly? This is not an arbitrary act, not some violent outburst of unknowable origin or cause, but is the perfectly measured and precisely poured out wrath of Holy God. Read these words and know that they are right, look upon what is said through the lens of Christ and see that this is not a cause for fear, doubt, or anxiety. God is on the throne, His control is unwavering, and the unimaginable hope that we have through our Father in heaven is constant, that in all things we might see His goodness and rejoice.

The Commanded Wrath of God

1. A Sinful World Revealed

“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.’”

Before we even get to the bowls themselves, it merits stopping to look at these first words and the command that is given. Again, in the risk of missing the forest for the trees, sometimes we see the destruction unfolding and neglect to see the source. We are not reading an account of angels who, of their own accord, set about unleashing destruction upon the earth. There is a loud voice, a command given from within the temple, the temple that is filled with the presence of God. We must also remember, as we discussed last week, that an angel is a messenger, a servant – these seven are sent forth on a righteous mission, it is God working through them. Consider what the two angels sent to destroy Sodom say to Lot in Genesis 19:12–13,

“… Have you anyone else here? Sons-in-law, sons, daughters, or anyone you have in the city, bring them out of the place. For we are about to destroy this place, because the outcry against its people has become great before the LORD, and the LORD has sent us to destroy it.”

But then we read shortly after in Genesis 19:24–25

“Then the LORD rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the LORD out of heaven. And he overthrew those cities, and all the valley, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and what grew on the ground.”

So did God destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, or did His angels? Yes. To imagine one apart from the other – specifically that the work of God’s messenger is not the work of God Himself completely misunderstands the text. So when we read of the seven bowls, of the angels who pour them out upon the world, remember where the angels came from, remember whose voice they obey, and remember whose wrath it is that they administer, and see the glorious work of God unfold.

“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 worshiped its image.”

Job 2:7 says,

“So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.”

Job is a fascinating and often misrepresented account of a man who suffered to the glory of God, who endured much, not out of punishment, but in a process of sanctification. When Job loses essentially everything from his livelihood, to his children, to, as we read here, his health, we find him sitting in what is essentially the city landfill, scraping his sores with a broken piece of pottery. It is here that Job’s friends find him and attempt to comfort him. But their “comfort,” however genteel at first, eventually leads to the pointed assumption that his suffering is a reflection of his deeds, that he must have transgressed against God in some way and because of that he is being punished. They’re wrong of course, but this is something that we see in other places in the Bible, the Jewish thinking that your sin, or even the sin of your parents would result in physical repercussions, which is something that’s even loosely seen in the vaguely karmic way many secular people view the world. We get to see this illustrated clearly in John 9:1–3,

“As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.’”

It’s important that we understand this – that the leper is not automatically a sinner, that the person who has lost their job or their home is not necessarily suffering because they’ve transgressed against God. Bearing this in mind, we also need to understand that that’s not what’s happening under the first bowl of wrath. Paul writes in Romans 5:1–5,

“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. 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.”

And James tells us in James 1:2–4,

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”

But here’s the thing – this is speaking of Godly suffering, trials faced by those who are children of God. The people we are reading of, suffering these harmful, painful sores under the first bowl are not experiencing the suffering that leads to righteousness, it’s the suffering of the guilty. Remember the words of the third angel, declared in Revelation 14:9–11

“… If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.”

These people aren’t suffering a trial that leads to repentance (as we’ll see displayed quite clearly), but are suffering the beginnings of a just punishment, and so there’s something that we can see in what’s happening to them that differs greatly from examples of those who suffer for righteousness sake. In taking the mark of the beast, in bearing this sign of proud corruption upon their flesh they have already consigned themselves to the path that leads to hell, they have chosen to make themselves permanent and eternal enemies of God. The first bowl and the sores it brings aren’t some mysterious plight that has befallen these people, it’s giving them the thing they chose, and in many ways it’s an unveiling of their true nature and condition. There’s a line somewhere between the will of God and the will of man, though finding this line often proves to be difficult if not impossible. But what we can see played out again and again in Scripture is how God’s providence endures, while He also gives man exactly what he seeks. Jesus teaches during the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 7:7–11,

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!”

This overall has a positive aim, it reemphasizes what He just taught in Matthew 6:33,

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.”

God calls humanity to Him, through creation, through His Spirit, through divine revelation. The three angels that shout their messages in Revelation 14:6-11 don’t just communicate to believers, but to the world at large. Romans 1:20 tells us,

“For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

God is not hiding, and yet there are still many, many people who reject Him – and He permits this. God didn’t force Adam and Eve to sin in the beginning. He gave them a paradise, gave them abundant freedom within that paradise, and also commanded them to obedience, giving them one clear guideline – and they chose to break it. Enticed by sin, they yielded to temptation, and God gave them what they’d sought. The world was broken, death had taken up residence with man, and that paradise was spoiled. People place great emphasis, sometimes vilifying God over the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in Exodus. They will claim that it’s not fair, they ask, “how could Pharaoh have done the right thing if God is intervening in his free will?” This is asked, presumably, by people who haven’t actually read Exodus. What they ignore is that, before we ever read the words, “the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh,” we see multiple occasions of Pharaoh hardening his own heart. You might wonder why, or maybe it’s obvious – it’s because of his desire. Pharaoh didn’t want to let the Jews leave Egypt to worship God, not just because of a reluctance to liberate his slaves, but because that would require honoring God. Pharaoh had a choice, just like hundreds of years in the future, king Nebuchadnezzar would have a choice. When the ruler of Babylon has Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego throw into the fiery furnace for refusing to worship his golden image and the three men emerge unharmed, having been divinely protected, Nebuchadnezzar has two options – he could double down, he could say, “the fire didn’t work, let’s try drowning them,” or “someone find me three nooses and let’s see if that does the job.” Or, he could acknowledge that he messed up and confess God’s sovereignty, which is exactly what he does in Daniel 3:28, saying,

“… Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who has sent his angel and delivered his servants, who trusted in him, and set aside the king’s command, and yielded up their bodies rather than serve and worship any god except their own God.”

Now, Nebuchadnezzar doesn’t have a clean slate from here – we later see him humbled greatly for glorifying himself, driven out of his mind and made to live as an animal among the beasts of the field. But even at the end of this, we see him relent and repent, not elevating himself but glorifying God, saying in Daniel 4:34–35,

“At the end of the days I, Nebuchadnezzar, lifted my eyes to heaven, and my reason returned to me, and I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’”

Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar were, ethically and spiritually faced with the same question – will you harden your heart and cling to the lie that you’re an all-powerful god-king, or will you relent of your foolish stubbornness and glorify God, who truly is all-powerful? None of us hold the worldly power or sway of kings or emperors, and yet we have to give the same account that they did, we must answer the very same question – me or God? Is my ultimate aim, my greatest desire that my will be done, or that His will be done? Is my father found in the enemy, or is He enthroned in heaven? Who do I serve? And the answer to this question will determine eternity, it will dictate how and why you suffer, and it will lead to liberation, or judgment. And so what we see with the sores of the first bowl is a righting of things, a revelation of the true condition of those who have taken the mark of the beast. They are wicked, suffering in their sin. Their flesh is corrupt, and they have committed themselves to that corruption for eternity, forsaken the path to new life, and they can now be clearly seen as the bitter and agonizing enemies of God, suffering for their transgressions.

“The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and 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.”

At the sounding of the second trumpet in Revelation 8:8-9 something like a burning mountain was thrown into the sea, a third of the water is turned to blood, a third of the creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. Immediately following this the third trumpet is blown and the star named Wormwood falls upon a third of the rivers and streams, making them bitter and toxic. We now see an intensification of both these things under the judgment of the second bowl of wrath, and again, more of the world’s condition is revealed. A third of sea life dying puts us in numbers beyond proper reckoning, blowing past billions and trillions to numbers that are so enormous they almost sound fake (how on earth do you imagine the scope of a quadrillion of anything?). That number, however vast, is now eclipsed. There is nothing left living in the sea, it has become a literal ocean of blood – and not even fresh blood, which carries associations with life and vitality. It’s the blood of a corpse. The rivers and streams as well have become blood – there is nothing left living in the sea, and there is no fresh water left to drink. This is horrible to imagine, and it’s a terrifying position to imagine yourself in, but ultimately, what does it tell us? Roughly 71% of the earth’s surface is covered by water, and that has now become spoiled, decaying blood. If the sores upon those who have taken the mark of the beast revealed something about their true condition, what does this tell us about the earth? Paul writes of our future glory and addresses the condition of creation itself, saying in Romans 8:19–21,

“For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”

There is hope for creation, just as there is hope for us – a new heaven and new earth, entirely free from the stain of sin. But at present, because of the dominion we were gifted and the path of sin we subsequently chose, the ruler of this world is Satan, the population that we see in Revelation flocks after the beast, they adopt his mark, and they boldly blaspheme across all creation. And the retribution is reflected, not just in the individuals, but in the planet itself, a true display of the extent of this world’s brokenness. In seeing these things, the deeper meaning tied to the sores of the wicked and the sea of blood that covers the fallen earth, we need not look on and despair. These are bad things in an objective sense, it’s not something that you would desire to experience – but these are not evil things. Conversely, they’re just, they are right, righteous judgments brought against a wicked, corrupt, rebellious world for just reasons, executed to perfection. This is the way things truly are, it is the punishment that the sinful world has begged greedily for, and in the judgments we can plainly see the goodness of Holy God.

2. A Sinful World Judged

“And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say, ‘Just are you, O 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!’”

Jesus says in John 8:17–18,

“In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me.”

A man may require another man to substantiate a claim, to offer a testimony of validation, but God requires no such thing. He is perfect, holy, and true and requires no testimony, no approval by consensus, no admission of agreement to validate His Truth. Even so, He is given one. While God does not require it in the slightest, we and our angelic brethren for that matter, are only right in acknowledging the righteous Truth of God. He is worthy to be praised, and to speak of His justice and rightness in action is just another form of glorifying His mighty works. First, we see an angel speak, and it’s interesting that it is the angel in charge of the waters. You could read that and infer that if he has authority over the waters, his entire domain was just spoiled. One minute, he’s presiding over the oceans, rivers, and streams, the next, everything’s been turned to blood and anything that was alive is now dead. The human response would be outrage and indignation, but that’s not even close to what we see. The angel praises God, he glorifies the eternal Holy One and the justice of His judgment. There’s no possessiveness, no selfishness, no complaint about everything that was under his charge getting turned upside down – if the angel is in charge of the waters, it’s not because he made them, it’s because God has placed him over them. He’s there to fulfill the will of God, not his own designs, and so his only response is to testify, to give right validation despite the fact that the judgment stands regardless. The earth’s water turning to blood is not some angry outburst by some unhinged cosmic force, and the angel draws the lines to help us see the purpose and rationale behind the act. The wicked have killed God’s children, and so death has come to them, they have shed the blood of His servants, and so blood is what they will have to sustain themselves, they have chosen violence, and so they will receive the violence that rebels are due. This is right, because in God there is no wrong – but we’re not left with something we can’t make logical sense of, and the angel’s testimony helps us to see that and give praise to God as is only right.

“And I heard the altar saying, ‘Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments!’”

The angel testifies and the truth of his words glorify God – and then the altar speaks. This is something that we could just blow right past, it fits with the message of the angel, it fits with the theme of glorifying God and His righteous judgment, but to understand the full weight of this, we need to stop and give attention to where this praise comes from. Revelation 6:9–11 showed us when the fifth seal was broken, saying,

“When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?’ Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.”

Later, after the silence of the seventh seal but before the seven trumpets begin, we read in Revelation 8:3–5,

“And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.”

What comes up from the altar are the prayers of the saints, the petitions of the martyrs, the pleasing aroma of surrender before the Lord. And now, as the wrath of God has begun to be truly poured out on the world, and the final judgment grows ever nearer, what we see from the altar is praise. It is an easy response to praise God for His blessings, to open our eyes on a new day, to see the ways He’s allowed us to serve Him, the people He’s brought into our lives, the protection He’s placed over us, and to thank Him for these things. It should also be a natural response to glorify the Lord for His judgment, to praise Him for the righteous justice He delivers, to join our voices and glorify Him not just for some, but for all things. Psalm 104:31–35 displays this broad spectrum of praise, saying,

“May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works, who looks on the earth and it trembles, who touches the mountains and they smoke! I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being. May my meditation be pleasing to him, for I rejoice in the LORD. Let sinners be consumed from the earth, and let the wicked be no more! Bless the LORD, O my soul! Praise the LORD!”

A sinful world is judged, and the angel presiding over the waters, and the voice of the altar are of one accord – God is good, His judgment is just, and He is in this, as in all things, worthy of all praise.

3. A Sinful World Unrepentant

“The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch 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 gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds.”

I’ve heard the question put forth as to why hell is an eternal punishment, why it’s not a temporary sentence from which, after you’ve served your time, you’re freed. The world does a fantastic job of mischaracterizing hell – it ends up being described as a place with structure, somewhere where the idea of suffering and darkness is mitigated, and the idea of freedom is somehow emphasized. There’s a dark fascination with the satanic idea that it is better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven – this is pure, wicked foolishness. Satan is not a king, a leader of a band of reveling rebels, triumphant in hell because they didn’t want to be in heaven anyway. He is a prisoner, one exiled to the outer darkness along with everyone who is consigned to eternal damnation, and there is no repentance found in them, as we see no repentance under the weight of the bowls of wrath. When someone asks, “why is hell eternal?” one thing they’re assuming (completely forgetting that the damned have rejected the redeeming blood of Christ) is that those who are judged and cast away from God don’t continue to sin. But what we see in today’s passage is a clear indicator – those who are committed to their rebellion against God, those who are driven by the spirit of the enemy don’t repent, regardless of circumstance. They hated God when they thought themselves in power, when the marveled at the beast and worshiped his image, when they slaughtered the saints, and partook of every dark debauchery that the fallen world had to offer – and they continue to hate God as they suffer in their wickedness, as their skin is covered in lesions, as their water turns to putrid blood, as they’re plunged into disarray and burned in a sort of prelude to the eternity that awaits them. There is no repentance in the face of what is, not arbitrary torture but just punishment, only a doubling down. Scripture shows us again and again the pattern of the sinner, not simply sinning once (as though that were not enough), but progressively increasing in their sin. Jeremiah 19:3–6 provides an example of this, saying,

“You shall say, ‘Hear the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem. Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold, I am bringing such disaster upon this place that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle. Because the people have forsaken me and have profaned this place by making offerings in it to other gods whom neither they nor their fathers nor the kings of Judah have known; and because they have filled this place with the blood of innocents, and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, which I did not command or decree, nor did it come into my mind—therefore, behold, days are coming, declares the LORD, when this place shall no more be called Topheth, or the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, but the Valley of Slaughter.’”

They worshiped other gods, they killed the innocent, they burned their children, and they suffered judgement. God does not punish without cause, He is not cruel, sadistic, or unfair – if anything is not “fair” it’s that He affords us the opportunity to repent and be forgiven, if there’s anything we don’t deserve, it’s that. But we see that the world follows the path of wickedness illustrated by Judah in Jeremiah’s time – their transgressions are bold and open, and divine judgment has come for them. Their wickedness only breeds more wickedness as they somehow dig a bottomless pit even deeper, and despite their complete lack of repentance they have only themselves to blame for their agony.

“The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, to prepare the way for the kings from the east.”

When we looked at the seven seals we could see a sort of unmaking of the world. God withdraws, He in many ways hands the world over to itself, and what happens? The illusion of peace dissolves, the global economy collapses, nature begins to behave unpredictably and discordantly, the sky breaks, the world is shaken apart. The seven trumpets continue the pattern as land is burned up, waters are turned to blood, then sun, moon, and stars, already so obscured, become even more unstable, and the rift between the natural and supernatural worlds is breached. It was after the sixth trumpet that we read 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.”

As we’ve read today, the spirit of unrepentance has continued to flourish among mankind – not only do they not repent, but they openly curse God for the righteous judgment they’ve been dealt, and the unmaking of the world continues. After the other bowls of wrath, the sixth may seem a bit confusing. After all, how does the contamination of the entire ocean compare to the drying up of a single river? There is the obvious implication spelled out in the text, that the drying up of the Euphrates is what prepares the way for the kings of the east, an obstacle removed for an advancing army. There’s a lot of information around the Euphrates – being a 1,700 mile long river, starting in Turkey and cutting diagonally across the middle east as we know it today, it was a relevant feature for a number of various empires, be it a position of defense as it was for the Babylonians and Assyrians, or a point of demarcation as it was for Rome, forming their eastern border. It makes sense that, after all its militaristic relevance throughout time, God would remove it in the final days, a barrier erased that the enemy might attempt his vain rebellion before being utterly destroyed. But there’s something else I’d like to consider as it relates to the world being unmade. Genesis 2:10–14 tells us,

“A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.”

The Pishon and the Gihon are lost to time. It’s possible that they’ve dried up, but it’s also possible that we simply know them by different names and have no record of what they were originally called. The Tigris and the Euphrates on the other hand are both known and highly relevant in the world today. They originate from similar places and run parallel to one another across most of western Asia before joining and emptying into the Persian Gulf. And now, under the sixth bowl of wrath, this massive river that has flowed since the beginning, a landmark and source of sustenance present since before God first breathed life into the lungs of man, is gone. The world is given over to destruction, it fragments and breaks under the weight of the judgment of the Living God, and what we see is that despite how deeply sinful man has deserved this, deserved to lose everything, there is no repentance, and so again we can see for ourselves that the judgment is just. The world has everything to lose in that it has already lost, but we do not suffer as they suffer, and we do not mourn as they mourn. Though the loss of what is familiar may be unsettling, this world is not our home, and their rebellion and unrepentance has no place in the hearts of the children of God. The seas may spoil, the sun may burn, darkness may fall and a river as old as creation may dry up to nothing, but we are called to a greater hope and an eternal glory that eclipses all these things. Psalm 46:4–7 tells us,

“There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved; God will help her when morning dawns. The nations rage, the kingdoms totter; he utters his voice, the earth melts. The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.”

The world will face its just judgment, but we know our eternity with certainty, to the glory of God, and the good of His children.

Pastor Chris’ sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfWO4UK2DNA