Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Everything that is happening today and will happen during the Great Tribulation are warnings from God to unbelieving man that God will one day unleash his judgment and wrath.

God has worked over all of time since the fall of man to call man to repentance because there is going to come a time known as the Great Day of the Lord when His mercy is going to expire and He will end evil and the world’s evil systems once and for all.

Historically, what we have seen is that man’s heart is rebellious toward the things of God and will continue to rebel against God unless there is a relenting and the heart is transformed by the saving power of Jesus Christ.

If you pay attention to the patterns here in Revelation, including the Bowl Judgements, the goal is to bring repentance.

The Bible is full of great messages of comfort, refreshment, peace, and God’s love.

There is so much that is affirming in Scripture, but to all of this is really an opposite.

If we understand love, it is because we understand hate.

If we understand truth, it is because we understand lies.

If we understand goodness, it is because we understand wickedness.

If we understand reward, it is because we understand punishment.

And God cannot love righteousness unless He hates sin and unbelief.

He cannot love truth unless He hates lies.

He cannot love goodness unless He hates wickedness.

He cannot reward unless He also punishes.

So while the Bible is a book of hope, it is also a book of judgment.

Tonight we are looking at Chapter 16 which gives us the picture of the final destruction from God’s wrath at the close of the Great Tribulation.

What we are studying tonight immediately precedes the return of Christ.

You say, “well wait a minute, the return of Christ isn’t until chapter 19.”

This is true, but chapter 17 and 18 go back over the Tribulation from another viewpoint.

Not everything in Revelation is chronological, but it backtracks.

Chapter 17 and 18 will go back into the Tribulation period and pick up some of the things from another perspective.

But chapter 16 really happens immediately prior to the return of Jesus Christ.

God’s Command to the Seven Angels

What we have here is the voice of God from His throne commanding the angels to commence with the pouring of the seven bowls.

This is God’s judgement and it is by His will these things are happening.

The angels are His emissaries to carry out the judgement.

As I mentioned earlier, this is based on God’s holiness and perfect character.

Twenty times in Revelation we’ve heard the words of God from his throne commanding the exercise of his judgment and the purpose has always been to awaken the sleeping or apostate church and awaken the sinner to repentance.

The First Bowl: Malignant Sores

Now what we must first realize are these terrible plagues can be compared to two other sets of plagues.

The first occurred in Egypt (Exodus chapters 7 through 12).

The second set of plagues are the seven trumpets which are recorded in Revelation chapter 8 through 11.

Notice there are some similarities and some differences.

The first set of plagues was local in the country of Egypt.

The trumpets, extended beyond any one nation and covered one third of the world.

The Bowls are not limited to a nation but they cover the whole globe.

Also, the plagues in Egypt involved water turned into blood, frogs, lice, flies, disease among the cattle, boils, thunder and hail, locusts, darkness, and the slaughter of the firstborn.

The Seven Trumpets involved hail, fire and blood, destroying a third of the trees and green grass – hail, fire and flood, I should say, destroying a third of the trees and green grass.

and a flaming mountain cast into the sea destroying a third of the sea, turning it into a blood-like substance, a third of the freshwater was poisonous and bitter, and then the smiting of the third of the sun and moon and stars bringing about darkness.

Then demons overrun the world, the loosing of the four angels found in the Euphrates and the coming of the great demonic army from the east.

And then in the announcement of the final victory of God, the seventh trumpet was blown.

Now when we come to the Bowls, they involve ulcerous sores on men, all the sea turned into blood, all the rivers and waters turned into blood, the sun becoming scorchingly hot, the whole world becoming dark, the Euphrates drying up and the pollution of the air and the accompanying terrors in nature, the thunder, the greatest earthquake in the history of the world, lightning and hail.

Now you can see some common features.

All three have hail, darkness, blood, and hordes, whether they be insects or demons.

But in Revelation there’s a very important difference and that difference needs to be pointed out.

It is the difference in that which is partial and that which is total.

What you have here in chapter 16 is a gathering of all the horrors and all the terrors that were most severe from all the history of the judgment of God in all the past plagues, only now not partial, but now completely inundating the entire world in total disaster.

Now, the first angel pours out the bowl on God’s command and painful malignant sores appear on men.

These are sore or boils that appear all over the body.

The same term is used to describe the sores that appeared on the people in Exodus and the same is used to describe the sores that were on the beggar Lazarus in Luke 16:21.

Notice in verse 2 it says, “It will be upon the men,” that’s generic for men and women, “who had the mark of the beast and who worshiped his image.”

Here we find on those same people the fruition of that judgment.

They chose the beast to worship him.

They have rejected the warning and they chose the Antichrist over Christ.

The Second Bowl: The Sea Turns to Blood

We also see this kind of plague in Exodus 7:20-25, and during the Second Trumpet Judgment in Revelation 8:8.

This time as the Second Bowl is poured all of the sea becomes like blood and everything in the sea dies.

This could be God causing something known as red tide.

John Phillips comments, “From time to time, off the coast of California and elsewhere, a phenomenon known as “the red tide” occurs.

These red tides kill millions of fish and poison those who eat contaminated shellfish.

In 1949, one of these red tides hit the coast of Florida.

First the water turned yellow, but by midsummer it was thick and viscous with countless billions of dinoflagellates, tiny one-celled organisms.

Sixty-mile windrows of stinking fish fouled the beaches.

Much marine life was wiped out, even bait used by fishermen died upon the hooks.

Eventually the red tide subsided, only to appear again the following year.

Eating fish contaminated by the tide produced severe symptoms caused by a potent nerve poison, a few grams of which, distributed aright, could easily kill everyone in the world.

An unchecked population explosion of toxic dinoflagellates would kill all the fish in the sea.

(Exploring Revelation, rev.ed [Chicago: Moody, 1987; reprint, Neptune, N.J.: Loizeaux, 1991], 190-191).

The stench from the dead, decayed bodies would then cause everything in the sea to have died.

Dr. Morris writes: “In this toxic ocean nothing can survive, and soon all the billions of fishes and marine mammals and marine reptiles and the innumerable varieties of marine invertebrates will perish, thus still further poisoning the oceans and contaminating the sea shores of the world.

The oceans will have effectively completed their age-long function in the earth’s physical economy, and will die.

As God had created every living soul in the waters (Genesis 1:21), so now every living soul died in the sea.

(The Revelation Record [Wheaton, Ill.: Tyndale, 1983], 298).”

The Third Bowl: Fresh Water Becomes Blood

Where as the Second Bowl turns the seas into blood, the Third Bowl turns all the fresh water into blood.

What happened in Egypt in Exodus 7:19-21 is now happening all over the world.

So here the world is under the judgement of God with painful boils and there is no more clean water.

In Jewish thought it was thought that the elements of nature were held to be under the jurisdiction of appropriate angels to which Sweet points out, “In contemporary thought spiritual powers represented and controlled earthly realities.In Revelation 11:6 the two witnesses shut up the sky from rain during their prophetic ministry.

Also in Revelation 7:1 “1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, so that no wind would blow on the earth or on the sea or on any tree.”

It is a time of incredible drought.

Now some may say this is unfair or too harsh of God.

In contrast to the blasphemies coming forth from men (vv.9,11), the angel declares in Revelation 16:6-7 “6 for they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and You have given them blood to drink.

They deserve it.”

7 And I heard the altar saying, “Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Your judgments.”

God’s judgement is always perfect and just.

He is righteous and holy, He is just and virtuous.

This is an appropriate response to rejection.

It’s not as if they didn’t have an opportunity.

That populous bears heavy guilt and has repeatedly and for years spurned the gospel.

God always sets the standard for what is true and right.

He is the standard for morality.

He is the standard for holiness.

He is the standard for how we are to live. the righteous and the wicked try to establish their own rebellious standard and it is usually in rebellion to God.So when the world is hit with these incredible judgements, God is doing what is right at the right time and in the right manner.

The Fourth Bowl: The Sun Scorches Man

The sun since the fourth day of creation (Gen 1:14-19), given the world light, warmth and energy, becomes a deadly killer.

Searing heat will scorch men so that the atmosphere will seem to be on fire.

These people will be those, “people who had the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image” (V.2).

This judgment is reminiscent of Isaiah 24:4-6, “4 The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the exalted of the people of the earth languish.

5 The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they trespassed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant.