Revelation 15:1-4

1 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. 2 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. 3 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! 4 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.”

Lets Pray

Revelation 15:1 ESV

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.

This verse marks a transition in our study.

the book is structured in cycles of seven visions…

7 churches

7 seals

7 trumpets

7 signs

and now we are transitioning into 7 visions of 7 bowls Of the wrath of God.

Each series of sevens has told the story of the world,

It’s told the story as an unfolding drama that ends with God will ultimately holding the world accountable for their sin.

We are going to save a detailed analysis of these visions for the next few weeks…,

but for now I just want to make this one point from verse 1.

So if you are a note taker write this down.

Truth #1 God Will Conquer Every Evil

This next set of 7 visions is going to be the most intense imagery of God’s wrath against sin thus far.., ,

and these bowl visions will climax in a final and future judgment where as verse 1 says…,

the wrath of God will be finished…,

that means it will be fully poured out on those who rebel against God…,

and who take the side of God’s enemies…,

The book of Revelation very much reveals the nature of God.

He is a Holy Judge

He will exercise his judgment on sinners…,

He is totally and completely good…,

which means he must be a God who is totally and completely against anything that is evil…,

and the hope of Revelation is that one day God will in fact overcome everything and everyone who is evil…,

There will be a TOTAL conquering of every evil force on the last day..,

The 7 bowls of wrath in this apocalyptic vision will depict God’s judgment

on all evil in the world…, ,

They manifest themselves much like the plagues of Egypt that God unleashed upon the evil empire, but this time it is global.

Now the scary thing about all that is that we are all evil.

We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

We all have listened to the lies of Satan and his workers of iniquity…,

we all have worshipped little gods of our own making instead of the one true God…,

BUT before the text turns to those visions of Final Judgment…,

The book of Revelation does something which it so helpfully does over and over again.

the book takes breaks from the ongoing spiritual war

it takes a break from all the talk of wrath To come..,

and

it directs our eyes to the heavenly experience of those who will not be conquered…,

but to those who will join Jesus in the conquering.…,

Before this next round of visions that depict the terror of God’s TOTAL conquering of all evil…,

Our eyes are drawn to those who will be standing by his side singing a song of victory…

those whom Revelation calls conquerors…

Revelation 15:2–3 (ESV)

2 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. 3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb…..

Now for those who haven’t been with us, lets makes sure to identify a few of the characters.

The beast has been identified as the accomplice of Satan..,

In earlier chapters we have identified the beast as representative of:

firstly, evil empires of the world persecuting God’s people,

and secondly, the false teachers of the world attempting to deceive God’s people.

The image is the symbol of false gods that the beast tries to get people to worship…,

and the number of the beasts name…,

is that symbol that people take upon themselves when they pledge their allegiance to the false gods rather than the true god…,

But now John sees those who conquered…,

those who did not worship the false gods…,

those who did not pledge allegiance to the evil empires and false teachers of the world.

He sees a vision of the Christians as conquerors.

The apostle John is seeing all these visions from exile…

He has suffered greatly for his faith in Jesus…,

He has been persecuted by the beastly Roman Empire..,

He has been taunted and tempted and tested by the enemies of God…,

and he has seen the churches suffer greatly..,

but in the moment of his own suffering…,

he looks through the window of time by the power of the Holy Spirit…,

and he sees a scene that is both familiar to him and distinct from anything he has ever experienced.

He sees a scene in heaven that bears similarity to a story in the Bible that he had read time and time again since he was a little boy..,

He sees something that resembles Exodus Chapter 15.

for centuries the people of God had retold this story…,

Its the story of God’s deliverance of the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt..,

If your unfamiliar, let me give the cliff notes..…

The Israelites were enslaved for 400 years in Egypt.

Pharaoh mistreated them,

He beat them,

over worked them,

and even killed their children as a means of population control…,

and GOD SAVED them..,

He sent plagues of his wrath Upon Egypt one after another.…,

much like we will read about in the later visions of Revelation 15 and 16.

the 10th plague was a death angel who passed over all of Egypt..,

For this plague.., God commanded that a spotless lamb be sacrificed

and its blood be put on the door post of every believing family.

For every Israelite family who trusted God’s word,

and sacrificed the spotless lamb,

and put the blood on their door..,

the death angel would pass over them..,

It was that deadly plague…, that finally drove Pharaoh to let the people go..,

Shortly after, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened so much that he pursued the people of God..,

Pharaoh came bearing down with his army upon the Israelites as they encamped by the red sea…,

Perhaps you know this part of the story well..

God miraculously parts the Red Sea so that the Israelites could walk through on dry ground…,

The enemies of God chase after the people of God…,

and once God’s people made it to the other side…,

they turned to see the waters of the Red Sea literally crush the Pharaoh and all of his army…,

swallowing them in their rebellion and un-repentance.

Listen as Exodus describes the moment…,

Exodus 14:23–30 ESV

23 The Egyptians pursued and went in after them into the midst of the sea, all Pharaoh’s horses, his chariots, and his horsemen. 24 And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, 25 clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.” 26 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots, and upon their horsemen.” 27 So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the sea returned to its normal course when the morning appeared. And as the Egyptians fled into it, the Lord threw the Egyptians into the midst of the sea. 28 The waters returned and covered the chariots and the horsemen; of all the host of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea, not one of them remained. 29 But the people of Israel walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left. 30 Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.

What a great salvation…,

What a great conquering of such a powerful evil force that had tormented God’s people for so long..,

Exodus 14 is a remarkable display of victory…,

and what do you do when God works that kind of Victory on your behalf!?

You sing!

The overwhelming nature of your joy and thanksgiving bubbles up and overflows into song.

That’s what they do Exodus 15.

They sing what becomes known as the song of Moses..,

Exodus 15:1 ESV

Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying, “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.

Now…,

John has read that story his whole life…,

the story of the people of God singing the song of Moses on the seashore as they gaze upon the waters covering their enemies.

and now he looks forward to a vision of a future day..,

Revelation 15:2 (ESV)

And I saw what appeared to be a sea of glass mingled with fire—

This is not the waters of the red sea that John sees…,

This is the sea of God’s firey wrath…,

that has now fully and finally covered the enemies of God…,

the persecutors of his people…,

the rebels against his kingdom…,

the evil empires of the world…,

Satan himself…,

and all his demons..,

and even death itself will be covered by the waters of God’s firey wrath on the last day…,

Every corruption and distortion of God’s good creation will be crushed by the cascading weight of God’s wrath..,

and just like the people of God who walked safely through by the grace of God…,

We Christians will stand on the other side of those eternal waves…

and we will gaze upon the glassy stillness of the waters that have just swallowed up our greatest enemies…,

We will stand as victors over the greatest evil powers to have every existed…,

and we will SING with the harps of God in our hands…,

We will sing the song of Moses…,

the song of the servant of God…,

Our joy will be uncontainable…,

but notice how the song takes on a new name in heaven…,

This moment has similarities to the victory at the Red Sea.., but it is also different.

This is the song of the LAMB…,

The victory over evil is the victory of the LAMB…,

And our conquering on the last day is wrapped up in HIS conquering…,

The LAMB is the one who makes this final victory possible.

Truth #2 We Share in the Victory that Jesus Won

The whole Exodus Story was pointing to this greater story…,

Exodus is all about how God saved his people from the reign of Pharaoh…,

But the greater story it was pointing to is how God saves his people from the reign of:

Satan

Sin

and of Death

The reality of the world is this:

We were all enslaved to our own sin…,

We were all destined to pay the death penalty we deserved…,

We we were all enslaved to the tyranny of evil…,

But Jesus came…,

God the Son born in human flesh…,

He came to resist every temptation thrown at him..

He came to overpower sin with is own righteous life…,

and he came to die the death,

and pay the penalty sin deserves,

like a spotless lamb given for us…, he made a way for the wrath of God to pass over us…,

and THEN he defeated our greatest enemy…,

He defeated death itself…,

Today we celebrate this fact…,

that Jesus is victorious over all of our enemies…,

he is victorious over our greatest enemy death ifself…

he conquers the unconquerable…,

and here is the beauty of it…,

Just like God invited the Israelites to enjoy and to share in the blessings of conquering Egypt…,

God has invited us to enjoy and to share in the blessings of conquering Satan, sin, and death itself…,

This is Christianity…,

Through faith in Jesus..,

you are invited to conquer with Jesus forever the very things that plague you here and now…,

Death will not have victory over you…,

because it could not have victory over Christ...

1 Corinthians 15:55–57 ESV

55 “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. 57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Thats Christianity in a nut shell…,

God gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We are more than conquerors…,

but we contributed as much to our salvation as the Israelites contributed to theirs…,

NOTHING…,

In fact…, this was the instruction given to the Israelites just before they crossed the Red Sea…,

the people were panicking because of the Egyptians closing in on them.

Exodus 14:11–12 ESV

11 They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

Listen to the response…

Exodus 14:13–14 ESV

13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

Maybe you are here today and you are panicking,

you are frantic about your own weakness,

and your own short comings,

and your own failures,

and your own sin,

and your own inability to be good enough,

or to measure up,

or to have victory over sin and Satan..,

and just life…,

and your thinking maybe it would just be better to give up..,

Hear the word of the Lord…,

“Be silent.., the Lord will fight for you..”

We are called to trust a God who fights for us…,

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

1 Corinthians 1:30–31 ESV

30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”

If you are not a Christian this morning what do you need to do?

Repent of trusting yourself for your own salvation…,

and trust God…,

Trust that Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.

We get it share in Jesus Christ’s conquering for eternity…,

but we do not get any of the glory..,

turn your attention now to the lyrics of this song that they are singing in heaven…,

and notice who the main character is,

the believers in Jesus are called conquerors…,

but they are not mentioned as having done anything at all in this song..,

Revelation 15:3–4 (ESV)

3 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!

4 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.”

Truth #3 God Gets All the Glory

Spurgeon commented on this text in this way..,

he says,

“Dear friends, the last song in this world, the song of triumph, shall be full of God, and no one else.” - Spurgeon

Even way back in Exodus 15…, its often referred to as Moses’ song…, but Moses’ name is never mentioned…,

The Israelites are not praised for any good work of their own…,

Moses is not praised for his leadership…,

God is praised

and so it is with the Song of the Lamb…

you will receive no credit for your own salvation from sin, and death…,

God will be praised.

And our joy will be made full as we proclaim together that it was his mighty deeds that made us conquerors with him.

We will praise God for his actual acts… the things that he has done…,

WE will praise him for his work of creation…,

and his work of redemption…,

and his work of bringing our salvation to completion…,

We will praise God for his justice…,

Revelation 15:3 (ESV)

Just and true are your ways,

O King of the nations!

Even now in our fleshly state we can sometimes feel that God is harsh..,

or unfair…,

or that he is ruling in some way that we disagree with..,

but one day all his ways will appear to us as they really are..,

just and true…,

We will see clearly.

We will know his perfect holiness,

we will know the severity and seriousness of every sin..,

we will know his perfect timing and his perfect patience…,

we will understand him to be the rightful King over all things.

and even the display of his wrath will seem good and right to us in his presence..,

We will be overwhelmed by how just and true his ways were even with our individual lives…,

We will see our own suffering, and rejoicing, and trials and tribulations as the meticulous work of his providence for our good and for his glory…,

God’s holiness…,

and his righteous acts to save…

will be for us fuel to the fire of our worship and our enjoyment of all of his promises…,

One of the wonderful things about heaven…,

will be a total freedom to worship God as God deserves to be worshipped. .

This morning we enjoy small tastes of worship.., but they are like small samplings of the overflowing joy we have been promised…,

One day our worship will be perfected because our vision Of God will be perfected…,

We will no longer get distracted,

we will no longer be deceived,

we will no longer be self-absorbed,

we will no longer be seeking our own glory

In fact all of that glory seeking will appear so foolish to us we can hardly believe that any being ever did such a thing.

We will ask the question almost bewildered that any one could have ever failed to worship God…

Revelation 15:4 (ESV)

Who will not fear, O Lord,

and glorify your name?

Becoming a Christian frees us to worship God in a way that was impossible before our eyes were opened to his truth…,

but one day we will worship in perfection..,

And God will receive all the glory he deserves for all eternity...

but for today…, we practice…,

the more we worship the LorD today..,

the more we live our lives in line with what is the truest and most precious reality…,

One day our jobs will be over..,

all our evangelism will be done..,

all my preaching days will be behind me…,

all our disciple making,

and missions,

and church planting will be over…,

but this will remain…, our enjoyment of our worship of the glory of our God…,

that is the ultimate purpose of all things..,

and it should be the purpose of our lives…,

nothing else will matter at the end of all things…,

#1 God Will Conquer Every Evil

#2 We Share in the Victory that Jesus Won

#3 God Gets All the Glory

Now in Conclusion:

I want to get ask a few questions…,

these verses pull back the curtain on the real end of all things - God’s glory…,

but the question is whether we are living our lives in light of that coming end…,

or whether we are living for something else…

something of option glory instead of Gods.

So I want to ask four simple questions to get at some ways we may be living out of step with this heavenly scene.

Question #1 Do You Self-Glory in Your Self-Sufficiency

There is a type of person in this room whose primary problem is that they do not think they need the victory that Jesus won…,

They do not feel the weight of this reality that their sin separates them from a holy God…

They feel as if they have nothing to confess…,

nothing to repent of…,

nothing to be thankful for.., as if they sort of brought themselves to life and will go on living their life without the help of anyone else…,

to the non-Christians Beware…,

if you have never felt any personal gratitude for your forgiveness through the death and resurrection of Jesus…,

it is doubtful that you are a Christian..,

Saving faith is impossible if you feel as though you don’t need saving from anything…,

To the Christians…, beware…,

Satan would love to render you useless to the Kingdom of God…, by convincing you that you don’t need God…,

you don’t need prayer,

or his word,

or his church,

for the battle you are in.

Satan loves your confidence in yourself

for the glory of you.

In fact, Satan wants you to glory in your own self-sufficiency and in your own success...

Question #2 Do You Self-Glory in Your Success?

Satan wants you to live your life as if the song on the last day is going to be about you…,

He wants me to labor as a pastor of this church as if I am trying to earn a spot in a lyric of the last day song…,

One of the reasons that our worship in this life may be stunted…,

is that we are so desperately longing for others to worship us…

we want to build great big towers to heaven like the tower of babel built to make a great name for ourselves…,

beware brothers and sisters of endeavors that begin with good intentions and slowly transform into monuments of self-glory…,

your business,

your career,

your looks,

your reputation,

and even your ministry

they can all shift subtly and slowly to be

glory thieves

every week we come in this place we are fighting against the sinful urge we face

to put ourselves in the place of God

on thrones built on whatever version of success we idolize.

But maybe thats not you…,

maybe your way of self-glory is more humble looking.

Question #3 Do You Self-Glory in Your Struggle?

There are those who glory in themselves by their not needing anything…,

There are those who glory in themselves with all that they accomplish…,

And there are those who glory in themselves by thinking that everyone else owes them everything because of how hard their life is…,

There are those who wallow in their own hurt..,

They thrive in being wronged by other people…, because in it…,

they feel righteous…,

There are those who make an identity out of their own trauma and pain and difficulty.

They speak about their struggles almost constantly…

almost as a badge of honor…,

or a hall pass for their own sins.

There is a kind of self-glory when we live in a world defined by everyone else’s failure to treat us as we think we should be treated.

There is a kind of self-glory in the defeatist attitude..,

and the traumatized identity…,

but brothers and sisters…,

Jesus is the only truly righteous sufferer to have every lived and died…,

And Jesus is alive..,

he has made you a conqueror ….,

death itself will give way to the power of Jesus Christ who lives in you..,

Romans 8:10–11 ESV

10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

Your difficult marriage doesn’t define you..,

Your past abuse doesn’t define you..,

Your cancer doesn’t define you..,

Your identity does not come from how others mistreat you,

or how your left out,

or how hard your job is,

or how busy you are,

or how lonely you are…,

You have the Spirit of the living Christ dwelling in your body and one day every perceived struggle will be cast into the sea…,

and you will sing a song of victory…,

Yes the battle is hard…,

yes the war is ravaging on in and through our lives…,

But the tomb is empty…,

and Jesus is alive…,

and we are marching onward to a certain victory…,

Its why

day by day

and week by week

we gather to fight for joy in the present war because victory is our future …

May we not look for glory and attention in our defeats in this life…,

but rather lets fight to glory in our savior.

#4 Do You Glory in Your Savior?

I want you to close your eyes now in prayer..,

and I want you to simply praise God through these words from Revelation 15.

“Great and amazing are your deeds,

O Lord God the Almighty.”

think about the mighty deeds of God in the Exodus.

the mighty deeds of God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

the mighty deeds God did so that you would hear the gospel message and believe the gospel message…,

“Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations”

think about how high and lifted up Jesus was as King over all Creation…, and how low he was brought to accomplish your salvation

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

think about the mission God has invited us into.… how one day we will worship along with people from every nation …

thank him for including you in that mission…

thank him for including you in that future…

“for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

think about the fact that God has revealed himself at all…,

that he revealed himself in Scripture

that he revealed himself in the person and work of Jesus…,

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

Great and amazing are your deeds,

O Lord God the Almighty…,

Now let the joy and the thanksgiving of our hearts overflow into singing…

lets join the song of heaven together.

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