Revelation 16

Our text today will show us that everything will eventually break. While this points to the end of all things, we can still ask the question about who we look to when things break.

Why does it matter how we perceive the end of all things? Why does it matter now?

First take a look at a number of shows that actually deal with apocolyptic qualities. FOr the last 5 or so years our culture has loved shows that deal with the end of all things.

The Good Place. Deals with the afterlife

Upload. Deals with a digital afterlife

Good Omens. Angels and Demons

Why is there such a highlight on dealing with eternal, and apocolyptic ideas and themes?

So there is an interest in the eternal.

That is what we are doing now. Looking at what is beyond us. Past us. Looking at what Husserl calls the Absolute.

We reach out because we are asking questions about who to trust, what to trust. Why trust?

We want to trust something. We ultimately will look to trust something.

we all will create something to trust if there is nothing given too Us. We can trust the god we create or we can trust the God who has been revealed in Christ

Jacques Ellul writes that a world without God is a world full of gods. We are asking who can we trust all the time.

And trusting anything that promises something bigger than us.

but what happens when that bigger than us something or someone makes a promise about how they will act and then they break that promise, what do we do with that mountain of broken actions and coercions?

Anything or one that makes a false promise has to account for what they promised and to whom. All these things pile up in human history and have to account before God.

Revelation 17 deals with justice by judgement against these promises, coercions and rebellions against God.

Judgement reveals that we need mercy now.

We are surrounded at this point with God undoing through judgement all the things that humanity has set up against Him.

Our empires

Our economic systems

Our rebellion

So this morning we are going to look at the church in the midst of the world systems and the human ordering of life that will, in the end clash into Christ.

How can a God offer mercy and judgement? Justice links that together

water and how you engage with it.

If we come on our terms we will break against Him

If we come on His terms we are offered mercy

Judgement is the final word that our actions are unjust. We need mercy now.

judgment is the solution to injustice

It is really for those who sit under injustice. When God does something in justice it is not simply to correct wrongdoing, it is to bring freedom to the persecuted.

judgement is not Gods default mode, it is the mode that comes when humanity comes on our terms against Him

An institution built outside of Christ will eventually fall.

Revelation 16:7–9 ESV

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.

We see 7 judgments each against an image of the earth. But they connect to the economic systems of the world, the operating systems of the world. The way in which humanity has tried to find their own way past God Himself.

Because Rev 16 reminds us of Exodus, let’s look at how God brings judgment in Exodus

Exodus 3:7–8 ESV

Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

God is going to bring judgment upon the those who inflict persecution upon the other. Pharaoh becomes the target of that influence.

God sends plagues to deal with Pharaoh after asking a multitude of times to let His people go. Pharaoh doesn’t listen and God gets intimately involved.

The plagues were sent against the powers of that day that were oppressing others.

This chapter is to remind us of that oppression. But instead of one pharaoh with a hardened heart, we have a near infinite amount of pharaoh’s.

We all have a pharaoh’s heart. And for those who have called upon Christ, that heart has broken against His mercy rather than His judgement.

For the pharoah, his heart broke against God’s judgement.

Judgement is the final word that all is not yet fixed. Mercy responds to that now.

Even in the middle of these plagues and evil kings and the talk of another battle, called the Armageddon.

But in the middle of all this, an ensuing chaos, there is a call for the church. We see all this action and then there is a call to those who belong to Christ.

Revelation 16:15 ESV

(“Behold, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake, keeping his garments on, that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed!”)

Christ is not telling the church that He will come back sometime He is telling the church that He will come back anytime. That He will come back unexpectedly.

And the call of the church is to not be naked. Meaning that we are to be prepared, called to remain in Christ.

John 15:1–5 ESV

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

What is the church looking and waiting for?

are we waiting or are we distracted?

things are not yet fixed. We confess that. And we wait for the One who can restore .

What are we hoping for?

It is easy for us to get caught up in the specifics of Revelation.

Revelation 16:19–21 ESV

The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell, and God remembered Babylon the great, to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath. And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found. And great hailstones, about one hundred pounds each, fell from heaven on people; and they cursed God for the plague of the hail, because the plague was so severe.

what does it mean for every island to flee and that there are no mountains to be found?

While I’m not always sure exactly what Revelation is saying, I can tell you exactly where Revelation is pointing to.

Every created thing, every creation of the created order will have to eventually contend with Christ.

And while this is some wild imagery the challenge is to be able to look deeply at what it is you believe.

Will what you believe be enough when faced with difficulty ?

One of the things I love about this book is that it forces us to contend with who really is Lord?

Judgment reveals that mercy is available now

The church represents people bought back by God through Christ whose hearts have been broken and renewed.

The world, as it stands now, can break against the mercy of God or against the judgement of God.

Our attempt to define independence on our own creates problems we cannot solve.

There are forces we have created that we cannot master. They lead humanity to places we do not want to go.

Look at the current issue with AI. some of the people who have been at the center of technological development have tried to write and sign a petition to slow the growth of AI within companies because they fear what happens if it grows too fast. There is a real fear of not being able to control our own technological development.

We create the technology but then can’t take the consequences.

This is why we need justice and this is why judgment becomes necessary.

We can’t even handle our own choices.

We are caught within our own creation.

Revelation shows us how tangled that is and how these judgements are ways to untangle injustice and set things right.

This is why the church is so important.

Because we represent the mercy and the justice and the kindness of God right now. We are the outpost for the working of God in the world.

That is why the church is visible and actionable. We proclaim who Christ is until He comes again. And we proclaim the invitation to know Him in His mercy.

Christ is bringing freedom. We can’t forget that even within judgement Christ is offering oil. He is offering mercy, He is offering a way through. But just like Moses and the Israelites, the way through comes in the form of a lamb.

Luke 4:18–19 ESV

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

This is the offer on the table. This is what Christ is offering. There will be a time when God will bring justice through judgement but right now we experience justice through mercy.

The judgement chapters in Revelation remind us of the need to invite people into the mercy of Christ.

To experience Christ, who is always working to untangle our sin now through forgiveness before it can’t be untangled unless it uses justice.

We are going to transition into communion as an expression of mercy.

We will partake of the body and the blood of the Lord. To remember the Christ who has died for us.

This remembrance, together, is an act of mercy.

If you know Christ, you know this mercy.

If this morning, you haven’t experienced the mercy of Christ, it is offered. All of the grace and the mercy of God is offered.

You are invited to the table to celebrate with Christ. If you trust Him.