Sermon Tone Analysis

| *The Temple of Doom \\ (Revelation 15:1–8)* |

*Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels who had seven plagues, which are the last, because in them the wrath of God is finished.*

*And I saw something like a sea of glass mixed with fire, and those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and the number of his name, standing on the sea of glass, holding harps of God.

And they sang the song of Moses, the bond-servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,*

*/“Great and marvelous are Your works,/*

*/O Lord God, the Almighty;/*

*/Righteous and true are Your ways,/*

*/King of the nations!/*

*/Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Your name?/*

*/For You alone are holy;/*

*/For all the nations will come and worship before You,/*

*/For Your righteous acts have been revealed.”/*

*After these things I looked, and the temple of the tabernacle of testimony in heaven was opened, and the seven angels who had the seven plagues came out of the temple, clothed in linen, clean and bright, and girded around their chests with golden sashes.

Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God, who lives forever and ever.

And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from His power; and no one was able to enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.

*(15:1–8)

 

*Intro*: When they think about the future, people worry about many things.

* The destruction of the environment, global warming, political unrest and instability, terrorism, crime, economic and financial collapse, and the continual decline in moral values that destroy all relationships are all causes for concern.

* A further cause for anxiety is the sense of forlorn emptiness fostered by the anti-God philosophy of humanism.

* For those who believe there is no personal God, there is no one home in the universe, so they have nowhere to turn for ultimate answers, help, or meaning.

* But what is truly frightening about the future is not any of those things; what should stop the heart of sinners is what God will do.

God’s judgmental anger and fury is a terrifying reality that looms just over the horizon of human history (cf.

Pss.

96:13; 98:9; 110:6; Joel 3:2, 12; Acts 17:31; 2 Tim.

4:1).

* Because they willfully ignore that reality, people do not fear what they should fear.

Jesus exhorted people to /“fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell”/ (Matt.

10:28), because /“God is a just judge, and God is angry with the wicked every day/” (Ps.

7:11 nkjv).

The writer of Hebrews adds, /“It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God”/ (Heb.

10:31).

* Throughout human history God has poured out His wrath in judgment on sinners.

* Adam’s sin in Eden brought the entire human race under judgment (Rom.

5:12).

By Noah’s day, people had become so wicked that God sent the cataclysmic judgment of the Flood to destroy the world (cf.

Gen. 6:5–8).

* Only Noah and those with him on the ark were spared.

* Centuries of disobedience by the Jewish people ultimately led to their judgment, as first the northern kingdom of Israel and then the southern kingdom of Judah went into captivity.

* God’s wrath and judgment were the constant themes of the Old Testament prophets.

They frequently warned of the coming Day of the Lord, whether an imminent historical judgment, or the final eschatological Day of the Lord.

* All the historical Day of the Lord judgments were previews of the last and most terrible Day of the Lord.

·         Isaiah warned of God’s coming judgment:

 

/Wail, for the day of the Lord is near!/

/It will come as destruction from the Almighty./

/Therefore all hands will fall limp,/

/And every man’s heart will melt./

/They will be terrified,/

/Pains and anguish will take hold of them;/

/They will writhe like a woman in labor,/

/They will look at one another in astonishment,/

/Their faces aflame./

/Behold, the day of the Lord is coming,/

/Cruel, with fury and burning anger,/

/To make the land a desolation;/

/And He will exterminate its sinners from it.

(Isa.

13:6–9)/

·         Ezekiel described the Day of the Lord as “/a time of doom for the nations”/ (Ezek.

30:3).

·         Joel exclaimed, /“Alas for the day!

For the day of the Lord is near, and it will come as destruction from the Almighty”/ (Joel 1:15).

·         Amos cried out to sinners in Israel, “/Prepare to meet your God”/ (Amos 4:12).

·         The prophet Zephaniah gave the following frightening description of the Day of the Lord:

/Near is the great day of the Lord,/

/Near and coming very quickly;/

/Listen, the day of the Lord!/

/In it the warrior cries out bitterly./

/A day of wrath is that day,/

/A day of trouble and distress,/

/A day of destruction and desolation,/

/A day of darkness and gloom,/

/A day of clouds and thick darkness,/

/A day of trumpet and battle cry/

/Against the fortified cities/

/And the high corner towers./

/I will bring distress on men/

/So that they will walk like the blind,/

/Because they have sinned against the Lord;/

/And their blood will be poured out like dust/

/And their flesh like dung./

/Neither their silver nor their gold/

/Will be able to deliver them/

/On the day of the Lord’s wrath;/

/And all the earth will be devoured/

/In the fire of His jealousy,/

/For He will make a complete end,/

/Indeed a terrifying one,/

/Of all the inhabitants of the earth./

/(Zeph.

1:14–18)/

* Job warned that /“the wicked is reserved for the day of calamity; they will be led forth at the day of fury”/ (Job 21:30).

* The historical outpourings of God’s wrath fall into several categories.

1.         First is what might be called “*/sowing and reaping” wrath/*.

People sin and suffer the logical consequences of that sin; “Those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble harvest it” (Job 4:8; cf.

Gal.

6:7–8).

2.       A second kind of wrath is */cataclysmic wrath,/* when God sends massive, destructive judgment.

a)       That judgment may engulf the entire world, as it did with the Flood (Gen.

6–8),

b)       or a smaller region, as when God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen.

19:1–29).

c)       Romans chapter 1 reveals God’s wrath of abandonment when Paul three times used the phrase “/God gave them over/” to demonstrate God’s judicial abandonment of sinners, removing restraint to the deadly consequences of their sinful choices (vv.

24, 26, 28).

d)       Hosea 4:17 declares, “/Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone.”/

3.        As previously noted, God’s temporal judgment is poured out in historical Day of the Lord judgments.

4.       Finally, there is eternal wrath, God’s eschatological wrath that will in the future be poured out on the whole world (1 Thess.

1:10; 5:9).

The ultimate result of eternal wrath will be the sentencing of all unrepentant sinners to hell forever.

5.

But throughout the entire historical outpouring of God’s wrath, from Eden to the final explosion of His eschatological wrath, a strange paradox exists: God is busily working to save sinners from His own wrath.

a)       God’s nature encompasses not only righteousness and holiness, but also grace and mercy.

b)       Even during the devastating judgments of the Tribulation, God will call sinners to salvation.

He will do so using the 144,000 Jewish evangelists (7:2–8; 14:1–5), the two witnesses (11:3–13), a host of redeemed Gentiles and Jews (7:9–17), even an angel flying in the sky (14:6–7).