Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning London!

It’s a wonderful privilege for me to be here sharing with you today.

If this is your first week with us, whether you are here in the room or joining us online, then I’m sorry.

This is a tough message to jump into on your first Sunday but God has brought us all together for such a time as this.

No one in the room or online is here by accident - we believe that God has a purpose for everyone of us here today.

Amen?

Amen.

For the last six weeks, we have been going through the book of Revelation in our teaching times in a series called Unveiled Hope, because hope is one of the major themes of this often misunderstood book of the Bible.

Today, we are going to look at the seven bowls of God’s wrath.

So I’d like to invite Paul to come up and preach this instead.

Or Matt?

Or Trish?

Or Barry?

Josh?

Jordan?

Wanda?Melanie?

Somebody else come do this!

Well, since none of them are coming up, I guess I’ll do it.

But this is a hard passage!

We talk in church a lot about God’s love but we rarely ever speak of God’s wrath.

I wonder if too many soap-box or fire-and-brimstone preachers have soured us from this topic?

But it’s in our scriptures and so we have to wrestle with it and understand it.

In fact, it’s a theme throughout ALL of our scriptures.

SLIDE 2 - You can see it’s in the psalms and the prophets, that Jesus talks about it in the gospels and Paul’s letters talk about it as well.

It’s everywhere throughout the Bible and even though we may not like talking about it, we need to.

What I hope to show you today is that the wrath of God is actually good news.

That’s hard to believe, isn’t it?

Well, let’s start by reading in revelation, chapter 15, starting in verse 5: SLIDE 3

Pray.

In our passage, each of the seven angels receive a bowl filled with the wrath of God.

So before we get into some observations I have of this passage and of chapter 16, where they pour the bowls out, I think it’s important that we understand what God’s wrath actually is because I don’t know about you, but when I think of wrath, I think of the Incredible Hulk losing his mind and smashing everything.

I think of rage and revenge when I think of wrath.

How about you?

What do you think of when you think of wrath?

As I was studying this passage this week, I came across this definition of the wrath of God from Biblical scholar and author Leon Morris : SLIDE 4 “The wrath of God is God’s strong and settled opposition to all that is evil.”

The wrath of God isn’t an uncontrolled, violent explosion, like it is in so many of us.

From God, it is a controlled and measured response to the evil that humanity has done and continues to do in the world.

So with that definition in mind, here are three observations about the outpouring of God’s wrath in revelation:

1. God’s wrath comes from his character

The temple was a symbol for the nation of Israel of the presence of God.

When Moses and the people of Israel wandered in the desert, the temple was a special tent that went with them wherever they went.

After Israel was established as a nation under King David, his son Solomon built a temple to be a symbol that God was with Israel permanently.

But the temple on earth was always a copy, a shadow as the book of Hebrews puts it, of the temple in Heaven, where God dwelt.

So in our passage in Revelation, we see the angels carrying bowls of God’s wrath out of the temple - out of the character and presence of God.

This means that the wrath of God comes out of God’s character.

Well, what is God’s character?

Thomas Jefferson said, “The Christian god is a being of terrific character - cruel, vindictive, capricious and unjust.”

Atheist evangelist and author Richard Dawkins says, ““The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Are they right?

Is that how God is?

In Christianity, we believe strongly that our God IS love: SLIDE 5

So everything about God flows from his love.

Our salvation in Jesus flows from his love.

His creating of all life flows from his love.

And his just judgment against evil flows out of his love for his people.

He loves us so much, that he cannot abide injustice forever.

He holds back his judgment for a time so we can repent and experience his mercy, but because he is just and he loves us, he executes justice against evil in this world.

See, I told you.

The wrath of God - his measured response to evil is actually good news because we all like justice.

How many of you - show of hands - have been passed by a crazy speeder who then gets caught by the police?

And how did you feel about that?

You feel this sense of triumph and satisfaction, don’t you?

And if you haven’t been passed like that, then you’re probably the one passing others and you need to slow down.

We love justice, don’t we?

Well, we love justice for everyone else.

We despise it when it’s against us.

But this is the good news of our faith.

God shows his people mercy through their faith in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and he executes justice against all who oppose the way the lamb and who do evil in our world.

The first observation I have is that God’s wrath flows from his loving character.

The second observation I have is that God’s wrath isn’t capricious - it’s just.

2. God’s wrath isn’t capricious - it’s just.

To show you this, let’s now read about the first four bowls that are poured out in chapter 16 of Revelation - SLIDE 6

Notice in this who are the recipients of the first bowl of God’s wrath - it’s those who have deliberately chosen to take the mark of the beast and worship him.

It’s those who maliciously and knowingly rejected the lamb who was slain for the sin of the world and now worship this evil impostor.

And in the second and third bowls, the water of earth turns to blood, which is declared just by an angel because it’s recompense for how evil people have killed God’s holy people over the centuries.

They spilled the blood of God’s children, so God gave them blood to drink.

It’s not capricious or mean, it’s punishment for evil.

And in the fourth bowl of God’s wrath the people still reject the mercy of God and refuse to repent, even though they know that these plagues are from God.

Instead of submission, they choose to double down on their obstinacy.

Whenever God exercises his wrath it is not because he enjoys cruelty.

Despite the protests of some people who view God’s interactions with humanity as evil, the truth is that God always acts in a loving manner and out of his love for humanity, he has set morals and laws for us to follow.

When humanity violates those morals and laws, just like when we violate the speed limit and suffer the consequence of a ticket, there have to be consequences for in order for there to be justice.

We’ve seen that God’s wrath flows from his loving character and that it isn’t capricious - it is just because humanity turns their back on God.

The third thing I notice in our passage is that God’s wrath targets his enemies.

Let’s finish reading chapter 16.

SLIDE 7 AND 8

3. God’s wrath targets his enemies

The fifth bowl of God’s wrath is poured out on the throne of the beast who has set himself up as a false God to be worshiped and it affects his kingdom and his subjects.

And in the sixth bowl, we see the evil spirits from the dragon, the beast and the false prophet - an unholy Trinity enters into human leaders so as to wage war against God in a battle called Armageddon - a battle that never actually happens.

A lot of people think of Armageddon as either a bit of a cheesy movie with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck or as a military event that plunges the world into a nuclear wasteland.

But Armageddon is a event where evil will gather as a last stand against God before the coming of the new creation.

Amazingly, chapter 19 of Revelation tells us that the battle is never fought.

Jesus just shows up and it’s all over.

One person, the lamb who was slain, shows up on a white horse and with a word wipes out this great army of blasphemous God-haters.

God’s true enemy is Satan and his two beasts and the bowls are poured out on them and those who follow them.

it’s a great reminder, one that Matt gave us last week, that everything in our lives is rooted in the spiritual battle that rages around us.

This passage re-enforces what Paul writes in the book of Ephesians when he says: SLIDE 9

When we look at the wrath of God, church, let us not despair or be fearful because God’s wrath is reserved for his enemies - For Satan, his two beasts and all who follow them.

Like every other sermon any of us have done in the book of Revelation, there is so much more we could unpack.

But before we close, I want to quickly look at three takeaways I think the seven bowls of God’s wrath teaches us.