Use Your God-Given Time Well (Revelation 15:1-8; 16:1-21) Series

Today's going to be a bit of an odd sermon. I'm going to spend most of my time giving us a framework for reading a pretty big chunk of scripture. Basically, I'm going to try to give you a pair of glasses, so that you read it in a particular way, seeing the main points it makes. But this pair of glasses is going to take a bit of work to explain, and we are both going to have to work at this today.

As we've worked through the book of Revelation, we've maybe come to notice that there are kind of three different types of material. What John "hears" and "sees" can be divided up into three different groups. If you were good on a computer, you could enter them into an Excel spreadsheet as you go. If you aren't, you could set out three jars, and put Bible verses in each one as they show up. There's overlap between them; the groups can't always be cleanly divided. And it's not like the entire book can be split into three categories, I don't think (Revelation 12 doesn't nicely fit here). But I think, today, that it'd be helpful to set these out for you (put in outline):

(1) Group #1 would include passages that describe how God is right now, currently, judging the world. His wrath is actively being poured out on the world, right now, in his attempt to call people to repentance (Revelation 6:1-11; Revelation 8-9, esp. 20-21). These judgments have two distinctive features. (1) The first, is that they aren't as harsh as they could be (they are mitigated). God shows restraint, because God's goal with these judgments isn't to repay people for what they've done. And the reason God shows restraint, is because of their second distinctive feature: (2) The goal of these judgments is to come out of their compromise, and sin, and idolatry, and turn to him (Revelation 9:20-21; 14:7). So in chapter 6 (6:8), with the seven seals, we saw Death riding a pale horse. Death was given authority (divine passive) over a fourth of the earth to kill by the sword, famine, plague, and wild animals. It's a gory, terrible scene. But it could be worse. We are talking about fourths, and not everything. In the trumpets, in chapter 8, we see a heightening of judgments. It moves from fourths, to thirds (Revelation 8:6-13). That's even worse, but it's still not everything. But what we see, again, is that God is actively judging the world, in a way that doesn't simply kill everyone off. God's judgments, right now, are often softened to give people a chance to repent.

(2) Group #2 would include passages that describe the final day of judgment. A final carrying out of the wrath of God and of the Lamb. We've seen several pictures of this, as well (Revelation 6:12-17). God's wrath is bad now, but it will be far worse later (Revelation 14:9-20).

(3) Group #3 would include passages that describe the future for God's faithful people. Those who don't compromise, who are faithful and obedient, end up with Jesus, worshipping before the throne in heaven (Revelation 7; 11:15-19; 14:1-5, 12-13).

We can tell that Revelation isn't chronological, because these three groups have shown up repeatedly, out of "order." The point of Revelation isn't to explain in detail how the future will unfold, one step at a time. The point of Revelation is to encourage us to be faithful now. To be willing to suffer. To openly tell people about Jesus. To avoid giving our allegiance to the Beast, or bowing down to an idol.

So those are kind of the three main types of passages we read in Revelation. Last week, in chapter 14, we read about God's final judgment. Group #2 type passages. Those who worship the Beast will drink from the wine of God's fury (Revelation 14:10). They will suffer forever, in a never-ending Sodom and Gomorrah, with fire, sulfur, and smoke (Revelation 14:11). They will be harvested like grapes, with their blood flowing out from God's winepress (Revelation 14:19).

This week, we find ourselves traveling back in time, to the present, for a single verse. This is a Group #1 passage.

Let's read verse 1:

(1) And I saw another sign in heaven-- great and marvelous:

seven angels having seven plagues-- the last ones--

because by/with them the wrath of God was finished,

So we've seen seven seals (Rev. 6; 8:1), and seven trumpets (8:2-9:21), and seven thunders (Rev. 10:4). Here, we find out that there will also be seven last plagues. In the earlier examples, we saw how Revelation reloops back on itself, covering the same time period, but reaching a little farther, in different ways. They are more intense.

And verse 1 tells us that this is happening again. This series of seven plagues, will mark the end, for real this time, of the pictures of God's wrath. We will see that we are no longer talking about 1/4, or 1/3. God's judgments are described as affecting all of creation.