A Storm

1. "Moral clarity is always a dangerous and fragile commodity for such morally compromised people as ourselves. Right and wrong, certainly justice and punishment usually live more fully in our detective stories or our kids cartoons than they do in our daily lives."

2. "Legal and illegal must never be treated as equivalents of right and wrong. Writers on jurisprudence have traditionally referred to moral demands being maximal, while the demands of the law are minimal. And it has to be so, because laws which are maximal, which are so strict as to be unenforceable, will do absolutely nothing in the long run but to bring the whole law into disrepute."

3. "How much of our lack of bringing others to account is actually an admission of our guilt rather than of another's innocence."

4. "With God there is no such thing finally as a sin committed in secret, they do not exist. The eternal presence of God underscores the reality of wrong, the difficulty of forgiveness and the righteousness of his judgments."

5. "Each time the judgment is mentioned again, it's more intense. Every time it's presented again, you have both this repetition so that you know what's coming, but you also have this intensification that makes it even more fearful than it was before."

6. "The way all of us have things that we would still wrongly defend, the way we have so much sympathy with other sinners and even ourselves, and so little with God Himself in His holiness and justice and love."

7. "None of us here and now know every real wrong done in every place, any time by everyone who has ever lived. Nor do we know the moral character, nor do we have rather the moral character to know how wrong wrong is. But the God of the Bible does."

8. "If you're asking why hell is eternal, Richard Sibbes said, because if thou couldst, thou wouldst sin eternally. And that is the reason. Sinners are punished eternally, because they would sin everlastingly."

9. "Our hearts may have trouble with this. I assume that this horrible judgment can only fully seem right to us in heaven. But I think that's not because of any problem with God. I think it's because of a problem with our own hearts."

10. "In one way, the closest thing that we've seen to the apocalyptic judgment in this vision is what? It's the death of Christ on the cross. It's God pouring out his wrath for man's sins on Christ, on the Lamb who was slain. We have deserved the punishment by our lives. He has taken it by his death."

Observation Questions

1. In Revelation 11:15, what happens when the seventh angel sounds his trumpet? What specific declarations are made about God's kingdom? (Revelation 11:15)

2. How do the twenty-four elders respond to this announcement of God's reign and judgment? What specific aspects of God's judgment do they praise? (Revelation 11:16-18)

3. What sequence of events follows the opening of God's temple in heaven? What physical manifestations accompany this revelation? (Revelation 11:19)

4. In Revelation 16:5-7, how do the angels describe God's judgments? What specific reasons do they give for declaring His judgments as just?

5. Throughout Revelation 6-16, what pattern emerges in how people respond to God's judgments? What specific responses are recorded in Revelation 16:9,11?

6. In the sequence of bowl judgments (Revelation 16), how does the intensity of the judgments progress? What happens in the final judgment?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why does Revelation present God's judgments in cycles (seals, trumpets, bowls) rather than a single sequence of events? What might this pattern teach us about God's character?

2. What is the significance of the number seven throughout these judgment sequences? How does this connect to other uses of seven in Scripture?

3. How does the imagery of natural disasters (earthquakes, hailstorms, etc.) help us understand the nature of God's judgment? What do these physical manifestations represent spiritually?

4. Why do people continue to curse God rather than repent even after experiencing His judgments? What does this reveal about human nature?

5. How does the Book of Revelation's portrayal of judgment relate to Jesus' role as both sacrificial lamb and righteous judge?

Application Questions

1. When was the last time you experienced a deep sense of injustice? How did that experience help you understand God's role as righteous judge?

2. In what areas of your life do you find yourself wanting to take justice into your own hands rather than trusting God's judgment? What specific steps can you take to surrender these situations to Him?

3. The sermon mentioned that our hesitancy to judge others might sometimes stem from our own guilt. When have you experienced this? How does this insight change your view of judgment?

4. How does understanding the certainty of God's judgment change the way you view current events and injustices in the world?

5. What aspects of God's judgment do you find most difficult to accept? How might these difficulties reveal areas where you need to grow in understanding God's character?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Psalm 96:10-13
   The psalmist celebrates God's coming judgment as good news. This passage helps us understand how God's judgment connects to His righteousness and truth.

2. Isaiah 66:15-24
   This prophetic passage presents similar imagery to Revelation's judgments, showing how God's judgment brings both purification and punishment. The passage helps us grasp the eternal consequences of divine judgment.

3. 2 Peter 3:3-13
   Peter explains why God's judgment seems delayed and how we should live in light of coming judgment. This passage connects judgment with God's patience and desire for repentance.

4. Romans 2:1-11
   Paul explains the principles of God's judgment and its impartial nature. This passage helps us understand how God's judgment relates to both Jews and Gentiles, showing its universal scope.

Sermon Main Topics

The Cultural Context of Moral Clarity and the Instinct for Justice

The Structure and Symbolism of Judgment in Revelation

The Certainty of God’s Judgment

The Finality of God’s Judgment

The Horror of God’s Judgment

The Rightness of God’s Judgment

The Hope of Deliverance Through Christ’s Sacrifice

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Detailed Sermon Outline

I. The Cultural Context of Moral Clarity and the Instinct for Justice

• A. Modern Revival of Moral Language

• 1. Public discourse increasingly uses terms like "evil" and "justice" (Washington Post article example).

• 2. Moral ambiguity is temporarily overshadowed by societal calls for moral clarity.

• B. Human Inadequacy in Justice

• 1. Human justice systems are fallible and uncertain (John Adams’ quote).

• 2. Legal systems only address minimal moral demands, not maximal ones.

• 3. Jesus’ warning against self-righteous judgment (John 8:7).

II. The Structure and Symbolism of Judgment in Revelation

• A. Overview of Revelation’s Judgment Cycles

• 1. Seven seals, trumpets, and bowls as progressive, intensifying judgments (Revelation 6–16).

• 2. Symbolic numbers:

  • a. 7 signifies completeness.

  • b. 3.5 (e.g., 42 months) signifies temporality (Revelation 11:2–3, 13:5).

• B. Interpretive Approaches to Revelation

• 1. Critique of preterist, futurist, and historicist views.

• 2. Emphasis on symbolic repetition and intensification (e.g., natural disasters escalating in severity).

• 3. The spiral pattern: recurring themes with heightened stakes.

III. The Certainty of God’s Judgment (Revelation 11:15–19)

• A. Unavoidable Divine Scrutiny

• 1. Natural and supernatural forces execute God’s will (Revelation 6:12–17, 8:7–12).

• 2. Death cannot hide anyone from judgment (Revelation 20:12–13).

• B. Application to Believers and Skeptics

• 1. Assurance for the oppressed: God will ultimately rectify injustice.

• 2. Warning to the unrepentant: No evasion of divine accountability.

IV. The Finality of God’s Judgment (Revelation 11:15–18)

• A. Eternal Consequences

• 1. God’s reign is permanent: “He will reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).

• 2. Judgment concludes history; no appeals or delays (Revelation 10:6).

• B. Dual Implications

• 1. Hope for believers: Suffering is temporary.

• 2. Finality for the unrepentant: No second chances.

V. The Horror of God’s Judgment (Revelation 16:1–21)

• A. Terrifying Imagery

• 1. Cataclysmic events: hailstorms, earthquakes, plagues (Revelation 16:18–21).

• 2. Unrepentant humanity curses God despite judgments (Revelation 16:9, 11).

• B. Theological Reflection

• 1. Hell’s eternity reflects unyielding human rebellion (Revelation 20:10).

• 2. Contrast with human sentiment: God’s holiness demands severe justice.

VI. The Rightness of God’s Judgment (Revelation 15:3–4, 16:5–7)

• A. Divine Justice as Perfect

• 1. God’s judgments are accurate and comprehensive (Revelation 15:3–4).

• 2. Praise from heavenly beings: “You are just in these judgments” (Revelation 16:5–7).

• B. Vindication for the Oppressed

• 1. Martyrs’ cries answered (Revelation 6:9–11).

• 2. Ultimate restoration of moral order (Revelation 21:4).

VII. The Hope of Deliverance Through Christ’s Sacrifice

• A. Christ as the Innocent Judge

• 1. Jesus’ sinlessness qualifies Him to judge (John 8:7–11; Revelation 5:6–10).

• 2. His death absorbs wrath for believers (1 Peter 2:24).

• B. Call to Repentance and Faith

• 1. Urgency to flee divine wrath through Christ (Acts 17:30–31).

• 2. Christmas as a reminder of Christ’s first coming and the hope of His return.

• C. Assurance for Believers

• 1. Eternal security in Christ’s righteousness (2 Corinthians 5:21).

• 2. Motivation for gratitude and evangelism.

Moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has said that today in America, we live after Virtue. It's the name of a book he published in 1981. It's been republished and been celebrated in his field After Virtue. What does he mean by that? Well, he says that today, and I quote, all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling.

While I appreciate some of the grounds of his skepticism and suspicion, one of the phenomena that's been truly amazing today of late has been the revival of public language about right and wrong. I'm sure you've noticed it on the tv, in the news media, in the newspapers. Evil has once again become a common word in every sphere, from political speeches to board games. Margaret Webb Pressler, in an article in the Washington Post a couple of weeks ago, called this Christmas season a season of good versus evil because of parents renewed understanding of good and evil as they use the language to explain events to their children and as they choose even games which have good versus evil, right versus wrong themes to buy as toys and gifts for their children. The old categories are tried and true, begging to be used.

Moral ambiguity is, for the moment anyway, eclipsed by the sudden return of moral clarity. Of course, moral clarity is always a dangerous and fragile commodity for such morally compromised people as ourselves. Right and wrong, certainly justice and punishment usually live more fully in our detective stories or our kids cartoons than they do in our daily lives.

We are not so comfortable with giving straightforward yes and no answers to many issues, many questions that arise. Are we? We'd rather not say, at least not so straightforwardly. Then again, Secretary Rumsfeld said this week, didn't he? He spoke up very loudly and plainly.

If you're asking would an arrangement with Omar where he could live in dignity in the Kandahar area or some other place in Afghanistan be consistent with what I have said, the answer is no. And in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, Attorney General Ascroft too explained and defended the propriety and effectiveness of military tribunals to try and judge non citizens taken in the field. We do have an instinctive sense of justice, don't we? Whether it's by providing a military tribunal or in an unprecedentedly long New York Times editorial questioning it, both parties are concerned that people get what they deserve. And so we say about someone apparently able to evade responsibility for for some of their actions, he could get away with murder.

They are able to evade responsibilities even for very pointed actions, even if a few academics don't. Most of us prefer stories on television or Films or novels where the bad guys get their comeuppance and the good guys are rewarded. Criminals being brought to justice is an ever popular political slogan. And yet again, even where there's still a consensus of values in our society, there's often not a consensus on how those values should be enforced. So, for example, on the question of what to do with wrongdoers once you've gotten them, the idea of retribution for wrongdoing has long been replaced in the minds of most of our social theorists with the idea of rehabilitation for wrongdoers.

If not for Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden, at least for most of the folks who are waiting and who are found wanting in the scales of justice. I recall hearing a speaker who talked repeatedly about rescuing those who do wrong, but with no idea presented that they should, in any other fashion, answer for the wrong they had done. Perhaps this discomfort is due in part, at least, to the inadequacies of human justice, even in our republic. Early on, John Adams defended the idea that it was better that many guilty persons should escape punishment than that one innocent person should be punished. And the reason is, he argued, because it's of more importance to community that innocence should be protected than it is that guilt should be punished.

If you want to see a film about this and talk about these issues with a friend, you can see an old film by Alfred Hitchcock called the Wrong man, starring Henry Fonda, which raises exactly this question. Our justice, we have to admit, is, after all, uncertain. Often we can't even get those who we know are guilty, and our justice is only a stopgap measure. Often. There is certainly a problem, a huge problem, with what's called recidivism, that is, people returning to crime after they've already been in prison.

And so many feel that the focus on punishing them is simply to harden them against society and to stop them from being able to reintegrate into a more normal life. On the other hand, the justice we do execute, the punishments we do mete out, often seem insufficient. Some even object to punishing perpetrators of certain crimes because the sentence would seem to place some value on the suffering of the victim, which, of course, is impossible to do in so many cases. And there is the point that we just so often get it wrong. We are fallible humans.

And so, in the heat of the moment, innocent people are sentenced and justice is. Is mocked by its own lieutenants. How often do we read of someone spending months or even years imprisoned and then someone on their deathbed confessing to the crime that this Other person had been wrongly imprisoned for rarely, but still too often.

If we are honest, we have to admit that we often know too little to be able to judge aright. And even when we have some confidence in judging rightly, we are uncertain about being able to pass an appropriate sentence. And even when we think we might have an agreed upon sentence, so many things which we feel are wrong are just not legal offenses. Have you thought of that? Do you understand what I mean?

Consider this. How many of the wrongs that you have suffered in your life from others could be remedied by the good offices of the court?

Probably very few of them, but that doesn't mean they're not genuinely wrong. Now, in our society, we've always realized that not everything which we consider illegal is. Is in and of itself immoral. And certainly not everything which we consider immoral is appropriately made illegal. There are many issues which no court in the land will ever have the competence to judge.

And yet, does that mean that there is no right and wrong in such matters?

Legal and illegal must never be treated as equivalents of right and wrong.

Writers on jurisprudence have traditionally referred to moral demands, moral demands being maximal, while the demands of the law are minimal. Minimal. And it has to be so, because laws which are maximal, which are so strict as to be unenforceable, will do absolutely nothing in the long run but to bring the whole law into disrepute. This is why not all things which are considered immoral are also illegal. So in our society, at least, to decriminalize something is not to say that it is necessarily all right, but simply that our legal system cannot effectively enforce this action or that prohibition.

At the root of it all, though, perhaps, I think our hesitancy to advocate punishment for wrong is at least related to our own vulnerability to accusation. How much of our lack of bringing others to account is actually an admission of our guilt rather than of another's innocence. Didn't Jesus himself suggest that at least sometimes we're not morally able to judge?

Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

These words of Jesus reminded those present that they were liable to the claims of justice, even as that woman caught in adultery before them was. Now, if that popular story was all that we had, the only thing we had of Jesus, perhaps we wouldn't know what becomes clear to us if we read the rest of his words, that he was the one without sin. He was the one who was actually able to cast that stone, and that though he did, as he said, come to save that time, he would Come again only the second time. His coming would be to bring justice. That's what we want to look at this morning in the Book of Revelation as we see that instinctive call for justice which we all possess, finally met by a judge who shares none of our judicial incapacities and inadequacies, who knows all the facts down to the point thoughts of the heart, who precisely knows right from wrong, and who is able to execute his judgments perfectly.

That's the God we consider this morning in the Book of Revelation. Now, the vision which we looked at last week in chapters four and five of the serene majesty of God in his court, surrounded by the worshipping angelic beings, gives way in chapter six of the Book of Revelation to storms of judgment which issue from the heavenly court as the Lamb breaks the seals on the scroll of God's decrees. Now, I would like to ask you how many of you who were here last week actually read through the Book of Revelation this week as I asked you to? But I won't ask you that. Let me just ask you that rhetorically, not to be answered with the raising of hands.

So I wonder how many of you read through the Book of Revelation this last week as I asked you to? Fortunately, I know a number of you did because a number of you had questions for me. You said, hey, I've just sat down and read through the book. Some of you have done it more than once. You'll find it takes an hour, a little bit less to do it.

Sit down, turn off the tv, turn off the radio. It's a much better way to spend an hour. Just take one hour, read through the Book of Revelation. I find it helpful to have one of these outlines. You'll notice in your bulletin we presented a.

An outline for you. Yes, someplace here in the bulletin. Yep, there it is. Page four. You have the outline of the Book of Revelation.

Or you could take this one on page five, judgment in the Book of Revelation that we'll be looking at this morning, and lay it there just to the side of your Bible and keep your finger where you are as you read through. And you might be amazed how that helps you to sort of keep your place and remember the big story. You might even have a notepad next to it that you write down some questions or things you notice as you're reading through. Well, to begin our study this morning, let me read to you just two passages from the Revelation in which you'll see a storm. What does the future hold?

Well, according to this Book of Revelation, it holds a storm. Revelation 8 beginning at verse 1. If you're new to finding your way around the Bible, Revelation is the last book in the whole Bible. So you can pick up the pew Bible in front of you, pull it out, just go to the end. And the last book there is Revelation, chapter eight.

That's the large numbers number eight. Maybe just begin reading at the very beginning of chapter eight of the book of Revelation.

When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.

And I saw the seven angels who stand before God and to them were given seven trumpets. Another angel who had a golden censer came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of the saints, went up before God from the angel's hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar and hurled it on the earth.

And there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. Now if we go over to chapter 11, let's look just the last part of chapter 11. Beginning at verse 15, the seventh angel sounded his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven which said, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. And the 24 elders who were seated on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God saying, we give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. The nations were angry and your wrath has come.

The time has come for judging the dead and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and your saints, and those who reverence your name, both small and great, and for destroying those who destroy the earth. Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm.

Well, I think you'll be helped if you leave your Bible open. We'll be jumping around a good bit in this middle section of Revelation as we consider this theme of judgment in the Book of Revelation this morning, we want a little bit unusually to look first simply at this overview. We want to take this overview that's provided in your bulletin called Judgment in the Book of Revelation. We want to look through it, and then we'll consider four things that we learn from these judgments. First, let's consider this overview of judgment in the Book of Revelation, as I say, you find it printed there on your bulletin on page five.

If you take just a moment to find it, you look down and see the way we've set it up. We've just gone starting at chapter six, because chapter one is that introductory vision we considered a couple of weeks ago. Chapters two and three are the letters Jesus dictated to the seven churches. Chapters four and five is the great throne room scene that we looked at last week. And from that throne issues history, the decrees of God, his judgments.

And that's what we find in the rest of the book. And it begins here at chapter six and goes on really till the end. You'll see chapters six through 21 listed there. And I've tried to keep it very uniform. When you see the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven bowls later down, so you can just look down, scan down that and get a sense of the order in the book.

One thing we always have to remember when we come to this book is the importance of symbolism in the book of Revelation. And it's not as arbitrary as it may seem when you first study it. You know, sometimes people can tell jokes about, oh, such and such, stands for such and such, and it just seems absurd. Well, it's not really like that. When you're seriously studying, you find there are some things that repeatedly seem to stand for the same things.

And for some reasons that even make sense, even the numbers here come to have clear significances when you study them. Four seems to be a reference to something being universal. I could take time to demonstrate that, but I won't. You can look it up in your concordance and find that 10 seems to show power. 12 and its multiples, either 12 or 24, like the 24 elders or 144, seems to show fullness.

And of course, the most famous number, probably seven, shows completeness. So in this book, it is no coincidence that we find seven churches addressed and seven spirits, seven lamps and lampstands, seven stars, seven seals and trumpets and bowls here in this outline. Seven angels and thunders, seven heads and plagues and hills and kings. I mean, this vision is a vision of the end of the story when it's all complete. And so summations appear in all of these sevens.

And this is most clear, I think, in this series of seven judgments of God that you have here. You see again in the outline, the seven seals, the seven trumpets and the seven bowls. On the other hand, there are numbers which fall short of completion. And these are also significant. Probably the most famous number in the Book of Revelation is found in chapter 13, verse 18, revelation, chapter 13, verse 18, where we find that the number of the beast is what John calls man's number, 666, a triune number, three digits, but each falling short of seven.

Less well known, but no less significant, I think, are all the references, particularly in the middle chapters of chapters 12 to 14 to 12, 60 days or 42 months, which are both three and a half years, or just the references to three and a half years outright, or three and a half days. These are all presentations of something which is not complete, which will not be enduring, which is not eternal. It is. It won't go on forever. So if you look in chapters chapter 13, say verse 5, you'll see this.

Whether it's. Whether it's. When the beast has authority to blaspheme God, we find that in chapter 13, verse 5, it goes on for 42 months. That's three and a half years. That means it won't last forever.

Or if you look back in chapter 11 at how long the witnesses, the two witnesses that are talked about are dead, well, it's three and a half days again, it means their death won't be permanent. There's several other examples we could go to in these two chapters, but I leave them to you, all of which seem to point to the instruction that we read at the end of verse or at the. In chapter 13 and verse 10, where it says this calls for patient endurance and faithfulness on the part of the saints. Now, a couple of weeks ago, we thought of four different ways that this book of Revelation has been understood. Let's think again.

Specifically that now, as it relates to these judgments depicted in this vision that John was given, the first way, you may remember I said, was the way of viewing it. It's called the preterist way, or seeing everything as in the past having already taken place, taking place generally. It's seen in the first century, during John's lifetime, that that way of looking at this book would see all of these things as simply symbols representing what was going on then in the church, all being fulfilled then, of course, these are right to say, I think that this book had to mean something important for the Christians that John was writing to. That's certainly correct. There's no way that wouldn't be the case.

However, we understand this. I think we can't forget though, that John's readers in reading this were to get hope and warning and instruction. Yep. But its language, I find, as I read it, is just too clearly future. It's too sweeping, it's too cataclysmic for all of this to be taken as symbols for just things that have already happened and we're all still sitting here.

If all of the things that are written about in the Book of Revelation had already happened, I don't see how we could be sitting here. So if you do, I leave that up to you. We can talk about it afterwards if you want. But I anyway don't find that predators reading persuasive. Understanding the Book of Revelation Others would say that everything in the Book of Revelation is to happen in the future.

And, and just right at the very end. It's called the futurist understanding. It says that all these tribes are describing what will happen at the very end of time, immediately before and along with the second coming of Christ. And this is, this is the view that we picked on anytime you see, say, like a television special, because they will make it sound weird and eerie and, and they'll have the strange music and they'll get into all kinds of obscure parts of verses, trying to make it sound like it's some mysterious Kabbalah that you interpret with the special things on your eyes to understand what's going on. Well, certainly, once again, of course, it's right to say that this book is focused on the future.

There's no question about that when you read it. But it does also have relevance for us today. You can't read through here and see the injunctions that are given and think that God didn't mean this book of Revelation to be something that you could pick up today and read and understand more about him and understand how you are to live the Christian life because of it. This book was sent out, after all, to these seven churches at the time, as we were considering just a moment ago. Well, it would seem to have some kind of immediate relevance to them.

Still others have argued that the Book of Revelation shows the judgment of God progressing linearly throughout history. All right, now these, these are arguably the most interesting ones to read, where they take the Book of Revelation and they literally try to lay it over a timeline of history from Jesus to now, so that perhaps then we should be able to say that we are in chapter 16, ready for bowl six, or that bowl three happened in 1920 or some such thing. Well, this has a very obvious advantage of being very relevant for John's age and our own age and for every age in between, in writing, between its writing in Christ's coming. And this way of reading history has been perennially popular. We could fill up the rest of this sanctuary if I started announcing that I was reading the book of Revelation and teaching it in that way, you know, telling you what the headline we got on Friday meant right here and interpreting it in a terribly specific way, you could do that.

And there are people who do. I have to say for myself, I have not seen a really convincing presentation of this way of reading Revelation. This kind of interpretation seems beset by the problem of pressing details too much in order to fit a certain course of history. And usually I have to say it's European history. It's like, what, the church isn't existing in India.

There's no church in Central Asia, there's no church in Africa. It's always going along with whatever culture that writer has been a part of. And usually that's a European culture. Well, now, as somebody who's descended from European stock, I'm all in favor of the gospel in European culture. That's great.

But that's not all of what God's done. And God's word is not just for one culture. God's word is for the world. So if your way of reading the book of Revelation has just traced history just through one culture, you can guess that actually you probably haven't exhausted the way God intends this word to be read and understood. It seems to me terribly subjective and seems to be a lot more of our imposing a meaning on the text than our exposing the meaning of the text.

How many books in the middle of the last century were written because of the establishment of the state of Israel? How many sermons were preached? How many sermons did I hear? You know, at first, a generation was 20 years. So we need to be very really watching the late 1960s.

And then when that didn't happen, okay, a generation biblically is 25 years, then it's 30, then it's 33. Okay, now we're a little over 50. What's a generation? I feel like we're Jehovah's Witnesses all of a sudden. I mean, that's.

We don't need to be flexible like that with God's truth. He knows what he's inspired here. It is true. We don't need to sweat it. What we need to do is to try to understand what God has meant by his Word.

And that means we need to look clear, closely and see what these visions are saying. And I, as I look at them, see that they don't intend us to see them in a strictly chronological or sequential order. I don't think you can read them that Way, at least not accurately. I mean, there's all kinds of examples. I could give you this.

If you read through, you'll see what I mean. Did you notice, for example, that if you take the visions this way, the sun is blackened more than once and once in chapter six as a part of the sixth seal, then again in chapter eight during the fourth trumpet. There's the fact that they're recurrent summaries. So the end of the seventh seal, the end of the seventh trumpet, the end of the seventh bowl. I mean, each time we seem to come to the end, and I mean the end, capital T, capital E.

But then the book goes on, right? The mountains and the islands, I think, are one of the best ways to show we should not try to read the book this way. It wasn't meant that way. The mountains and the islands fly away in this book, before we read, Babylon is defeated. Well, then where is Babylon?

You know, if the world, the earth, has fled away. I mean, go to chapter six. Let me give you a particular. Go to chapter six, verse 14.

Chapter six. Verse 14 says. And if you look, if you correlate this with your little outline here of judgment in the book of Revelation, you can see right here we're in chapter six, where in verse 14, the sky receded like a scroll rolling up and every mountain and island was removed from its place. Okay, well, then look at verse 15 then. The kings of the earth and the princes, the generals, the rich, the mighty, and every slave and every free man hid in caves among the rocks of the mountains.

But. But wait, every mountain was just removed from its place? Well, yes. Now, I don't think verse 14 is an error and that 15 got it right. And I don't think verse 15 is an error and verse 14 is really just what we should stick with.

I think both are true. The way we are meant to read this book is as a series of visions. So we can keep reading it and we go on in chapter 16. And you find then in verse 20 of chapter 16, about this time of judging Babylon or getting ready for it, every island fled away and the mountains could not be found.

I could do this again and again. You can do this yourself as you try to read the Revelation. These visions are not meant to be pressed into strict chronological sequential order. That is not how they are meant to be read.

Others have said this is the fourth way of reading it, that it shows cyclically God's judgment throughout history, really recapitulating the same thing again and again and again. And usually the writers who Write this, suggest there are seven presentations of the end, and as you read through the book, it's presented seven times. This is what William Hendrickson's ever popular commentary More than Conquerors says. And I do think this is getting a bit closer to the truth. But I think if the previous explanation pushes the details too far, this one seems to almost ignore them.

So I wouldn't want to quite just say it's a circle repeating the same things again and again with different words. So how are we to read this vision? Well, two things that I think we should note in order to understand this vision are the repetition and the intensification as the vision goes on. I think sort of, if you, if you deal honestly with it, you have to notice both of these things. Symbols, of course, often stand for more than one thing.

This is typical in this kind of highly suggestive, impressionistic writing. Sometimes it even says so in the text. For example, example in chapter 17, in that section where Babylon is being judged, the city is first described. And then in chapter 17, verse 9, we read, this calls for a mind with wisdom. The seven heads are seven hills on which the woman sits.

The woman is this city of Babylon. They are also seven kings. All right, so you've got the seven hills and they stand, or rather the seven heads. But these seven heads aren't really meant to be heads. They're meant to stand for things.

They meant to stand for hills. Oh, but they're also meant to stand for kings. Now, we don't need to worry about the particulars of this one thing right here now, but simply notice, if you will, the multiple meanings that symbols have sometimes like this in the Bible, one vision can have a reference to more than one reality or happening. And of course, as Christians, we should know that that's the pattern we find with the Old Testament prophecies. They're prophecies in the.

In the Old Testament prophets that seem to be about an earthly king of Israel. But wait, you know, in another way, when you look at it like this, it seems to be about Christ in his coming. But then when you look at it still another way, it seems to be about the second coming. And yet all of those can be intended in the mind of the divine author. Anyway, I found that reading over this vision again and again, there seems to be a progression, an intensification of the judgments presented, especially in these three most prominent series of sevens, from the seven seals to the seven trumpets to the seven bowls.

And you can see this intensification many ways. The last chapter or the last Verse of chapter eight is typical. The last verse of chapter eight, after we've had four angels fly out sounding trumpets announcing terrible divine judgments in the first four trumpets, as if they weren't bad enough in themselves, we read here in chapter 8, verse 13, as I watched, I heard an eagle that was flying in midair call out in a loud voice, woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth. Because of the trumpet blast about to be sounded by the other three angels. I mean, as if the first four weren't terrifying enough, God is deliberately ratcheting up the tension, making his judgment appropriately, of course, seem even more ominous, more forbidding, more terrible.

If you look down these judgments in this outline that's on page five of your bulletin, you'll see the details of what happens shows, I think, both this. The fact that the same events seem to be repeated in these visions. And yet at the same time, it's not just a simple repetition. I mean, each time it gets more intense. Every time the judgment is mentioned again, it's more intense.

So, for example, you might notice that in the trumpets, one third of the sea is turned to blood, one third of water is turned bitter. But down in the bowls, toward the end, all of the sea and all of the waters are turned to blood. Or again, in the trumpets, one third of the sea creatures died. Well, in the bowls, all of them die. In the opening of the sixth seal, it leads to natural disasters and judgment.

There in chapter six, verses 12 to 17. Well, but the pouring out of the seventh bowl brings about unprecedented natural disasters which seem similar but even more severe. You find that at the end of chapter 16, in the seals, one quarter of the world's population is killed. In the trumpets, many plus at least a third plus all who have received the mark of the beast are being tortured for five months. And then in the bowls that leads to the final judgment of all mankind.

Even in the very images themselves used to describe these judgments, you see both repetition and intensification. All right, first you have the opening of the seals. And these seals were on the scroll that we thought about last week, which we said was God's decree of history. And it seems that these judgments are simply foreshadowing, foreshadowings of those which are contained in the book. So what's written after this last seal is broken in chapter eight?

Well, that's what we can take to be the contents of the scroll. But even when a seal is broken on the scroll, these tremendous judgments of God reverberate out. But then when the scroll is actually opened, all the seals have been broken, and it begins to be proclaimed, you know, with a trumpet. Then you find this promulgation of the decrees. And with the seven trumpets, it seems we have God's preliminary judgments before God's final and full judgment is poured out in the bowls.

So you see the seals where it's written on the scroll, the trumpets proclaiming it, and the bowls even pouring it out. And each one of those series intended to be more intense as we see God's judgment executed upon history. Now, given, all of this, is perhaps the image we want to have in our minds when we read through this book, and especially this main body, this great, big, great vision is a kind of combination of the line, that linear way of looking at it, and of the cyclical way of looking at it. Sort of a spiral. Okay, It.

It. I don't. I didn't know how to write that down and put that in your bulletin. So there it is. You know, it's.

It's a spiral. It's. It's the same thing. Similar things revisited, but intensified. You find that again and again in this book as this vision presents images which seem to recall previous images.

Wait, didn't I read that before? But they. It's being done, I think, as if to underscore and sort of push a bit further some kind of judgment which has already been mentioned in all of this. It's as if John, or really God, who's giving John this vision, is screwing up the sense of anticipation. Each one of these.

These series of judgments begins with the heavenly court. You got chapter four and five with the great throne room. And then the seven seals. And then in the beginning of chapter eight, the first five verses, you have the silence, which again, I would take to be you're in the presence of God. And then the seven trumpets.

And then all of chapter 15, which is really just preparation. And then the seven bowls. And with each one, you have the pauses, the delays, if you'll notice, between the 6th and the 7th. The 6 come right in a row, and then there's a pause, and then you have the seventh. It's like the big da dum, you know, in a movement.

I mean, it's. It's finishing it off. Well, that's what you have. You have three movements, if you will, three large movements representing God's judgment, showing it to us to serve. They serve to punctuate, I think, and to dramatize the measured, unerring procession toward the final judgment by God of all of his creation.

I think the more you read and study this book, the more you'll see very much that that's what is being presented. It is the picture of God's judging this world.

Now we should turn to what we learn from these pictures of God's judgment. And I have to say there is much that is still uncertain in my own mind about what's revealed here. But there are some things which we've come across clearly, I think, and with great force, to me, anyway, as I look at this expression of judgment in the Book of Revelation. Let's look particularly again at those verses from the end of chapter 11. I think they summarize a lot of things that we see.

Chapter 11, verse 15.

The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven which said, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. And the 24 elders who were seated on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, we give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. The nations were angry, and your wrath has come. The time has come for judging the dead and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and your saints, and those who reverence your name, both small and great, and for destroying those who destroy the earth. Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant.

And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peels of thunder, an earthquake, and a great hailstorm. I want to point out four things that we learn about God's judgment from this book of Revelation and this series of judgments. And first, notice the certainty of God's judgment. Notice the certainty of God's judgment. No power on earth can prevent it, hinder it, delay it in any way.

As the psalmist says, the kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Messiah in vain. We saw that earlier this fall when we looked at Psalm 2. The natural and social forces of the world are at God's disposal. Famine and plague do his bidding. All creation, from untamed animals to earthquakes, are his servants in bringing about his judgment.

So complete, in fact, is his power presented that even his extraterrestrial creation acts in concert to bring about his judgment. His judgment on earth. The sun is blackened, the moon turns red, the stars fall. More than once, the fixed points of this world, the skies, the mountains, the islands, are presented as being removed, as fleeing away. As we read here in chapter 11 and verse 18, the time has come for judging the dead.

Not even death itself can hide us from the searching judgment of God. Now, if the heavens above and the earth beneath are subject to him, how could John's readers, reading this in the first century even begin to think that those presently persecuting them, enforcing idolatry could escape? They would know they couldn't escape. They could be certain, even confident, that there would be no circumstances which would ever finally overwhelm them, no persecutors that would ever torment them, regardless of how powerful, or apparently beyond the reach of true justice, without answering to the God of heaven for it. That's the certainty that John was giving his readers.

And what about for us this morning? Is there anyone within the sound of my voice who thinks that you can avoid God's scrutiny, that you can avoid God's assessment, his judgment of you? You cannot. If you recall, the reason the Bible calls you and me to lay aside revenge is because of the confidence we can have in knowing that God will sort things out, that there will be justice. As we read last week from Acts 17, he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed.

Friend, do you doubt that that's the great proclamation that we find here? Are there perhaps situations that you've known of, perhaps you've read of in the papers or maybe you've seen at work, maybe you've heard of in our families, perhaps even that you've experienced in your own life, situations which seem wrong, which seem like they will never go answered, they will always go unanswered. But this passage should make it quite clear to us that. That it will not always be so. As surely as we are sitting here this morning, God will draw a line under it all and say, enough.

God's judgment is certain. Of this we can be confident.

Furthermore, a second thing we can learn about God's judgment.

Notice the finality of of God's judgment. God's judgment is final. There is no court of appeal from the judgment of God. When God judges, the response is the silence of assent and the songs of worship. The opposition clearly presented in this book eventually provokes the statement in chapter 10 that there will be no more delay.

And so we read here in this passage in chapter 11, verse 15. The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ. And he will reign forever and ever. He will reign forever and ever. And that is the same duration which is presented time and again in this book.

For the Judgments of God in chapters 14 and 18 and 19 and 20 and 21. His judgments will stand forever.

Now, the first readers of this book would have gotten a double message from this. I think one they may well have understood from this that things will get worse. They thought they were bad now and they may have been, but they should know that they're not as bad as they would get. But the other thing that they should know is that there would be an end to their troubles and that that end would be as permanent and lasting as as the rule of God himself. What a wonderful ground for hope is that that at the very end of it all is God's judgment.

And once his judgment had been completely poured out, there would be no more prospects of terror for these believers. The same message of the finality of God's judgment should affect different ones of us different ways. Some of you here this morning may never even consider this. The last thing you may have ever thought turning up to church during Christmas season. See to hear a sermon on God's judgment.

Maybe you've never reflected much on God's judgment. Well, to you, you need to understand that the reason we get so happy at Christmas is because we understand why Christ's coming was so important and his coming was so important because God's judgment is so real. And that's what's presented here in this book. You need to prepare yourself to face God's judgment. You need to be prepared by turning from your sins and turning to Christ, finding forgiveness and new life in him.

If you've never thought about that before, please talk to me about it afterwards. I'll be standing at the door at the back. I would love to talk to you or talk to a Christian friend if you came with one. Surely this must give some others of us here this morning peace to know that life is not simply a never ending circle of struggling and suffering, of joys which end and sorrows which endure. We can have peace knowing that there's purpose, knowing that there's a reason.

One thing which separates Christianity from many of the world's religions is just this. Knowing that history is not merely a recycling of ourselves again and again on an everlasting treadmill, but that it actually has a point in time, a focus in history, finally around the throne of God, where his judgment is final.

A third thing we should learn about the judgment of God.

Let us do the horror of God's judgment. I wondered what word to use. Terror, Fearfulness. You can use any of those words, but I think we can't avoid Using something like one of those words, we really need go no further than the images of natural disaster used here in chapter 11. Look at that last verse, verse 19.

There came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake and a great hailstorm. Let's just take one of those images, the earthquake. How often do we hear of an earthquake in Central America or California or Japan or China or Turkey? A fearful event that suddenly takes the lives of many people. The accounts are always appalling to read.

I mean, the apparent randomness of sudden death, the strange dilemmas in which people are left when parts of their world that they had assumed suddenly just vanish. The fear it seems to leave in people. I remember after one earthquake a few years ago, reading of a child asking her mother, mommy, are we going to have another one tonight? Just the fear it leaves there. God's judgments are fearful.

They are fearful like that. They will cause unmitigated terror. And not the kind of safe mock terror that gives us a Russian movie theaters. That is not what I mean. No, I mean the kind of terror that perhaps some of us have known when we felt ourselves genuinely to be in grave or imminent danger.

That is the kind of terror that the book of Revelation presents as accompanying the judgments of God. In the last verse of chapter 16, we read from the sky. Huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds fell upon men, and they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the plague was so terrible. The images used throughout this book, from supernatural prisons to the abyss, to judgments of plagues and earthquakes and even Hades and an eternal lake of fire, they are all unimaginably horrible. If they're not horrible to you, if you almost kind of enjoy reading about them, you need to question why that is.

You need to wonder how much empathy you have with yourself, understanding your own sinfulness, and how much you understand of God's holiness. These are unimaginably horrible. Some Christians have even called these images unbearable, and I can understand why. I remember one time a student in England, as we were walking along, telling me that he didn't like to think about these things being just like they were written, like an eternal lake of fire or everlasting torment. He liked to think of them in ways that gave him less trouble in thinking about God, thinking that God wouldn't do anything like that.

And my response to him was simply, but if you believe God's judgment is true, why would you ever want to make it seem any less terrible? Certainly it's a thing to be avoided. You don't want to try to negotiate a vision of God that you will find acceptable, as if he doesn't really exist. He's just some product that you, at this moment in time, have happen to be able to see fully enough that you'll accept. Surely if you think God really exists, what you want to do is know what he's like.

And if his judgment is at all terrible, then don't worry about people exaggerating the terribleness of the judgment, because I'm sure it is much worse than anything the worst of us can imagine to be judged by Almighty God, our maker and Creator, for our sins, fully and terribly. Looking at the horrendous nature of this judgment presented in this book, the Cambridge New Testament scholar C.H. dodd wrote that the God of the Apocalypse of Revelation can hardly be recognized as the father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Dodd isn't the only New Testament scholar to have written things like that. And yet, though sometimes in academic circles, Paul or others are presented as having the final shaping influence on Christian doctrine, the place where you can find the closest parallels in the New Testament to the kinds of words about judgment we find in the Book of Revelation are not in the letters of Paul or the letters of Peter.

They are on the lips of Jesus, the loving lamb of God slain for our sins. He is the one who speaks most chillingly, perhaps even more chillingly than this book of revelation about the judgment of God.

You know, when Jonathan Edwards preached his now famous sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, in Enfield, Connecticut, those listening began to cry out for God's mercy. They imagined themselves slipping into hell. Some shrieked and literally clung on to their pews or to the columns in the church we read. Others simply wept and prayed. So powerful is the mere contemplation, the careful reflection on God's judgments.

What must have been the reaction of these early believers to John's vision recorded here? They'd never heard it before. They'd never read it before. And for the first time ever, someone reads an account of this vision of God.

And doesn't this book, even in our overstimulated imaginations, from Star wars to Lord of the Rings, doesn't this book still bring about awe in those of us who gather here this morning who really believe? Friends, we will see these things. If you're here as a Christian, you know the truth of that. It's not a movie. It's not pretend.

It's not a story to garner, gain and keep interest. It's God's truth about how he will judge the world. That he has made. Christ himself is the judge who will pronounce that final malediction. Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and and his angels.

Surely our response, as we see God's holiness displayed and lightning flashes of his judgments will be like the response of Moses to hide, or Isaiah, or these elders earlier on in the book, to fall on our faces. Or like Job who said at the end of it all, my eyes had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes. God's judgment is horrible.

And finally, though we have to say in reflecting on this book, that God's judgment is right. God's judgment is right. Here in chapter 11. Notice these words of praise from the elders around the throne when this tremendous vision is given.

We give thanks to you. Verse 17. We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was. Because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. That's why it doesn't say who was and is and is to come like normally is.

There's no who is to come there, because it's now come, the reign has begun. Who was and who is? Because you have taken your great power and have begun to reign. The nations were angry and you'd wrath has come, and the time has come for judging the dead and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and your saints, and all those who reverence your name, both small and great, and for destroying those who destroy the earth. There is no question of God's judgments being uncertain or ineffective or inadequate.

There is not any sense in which God's judgments will be wrong. His judgment is right in every sense of the word that we can conceive of it. God's judgment is complete. No claim is left unmet. If you look at the fifth seal there in chapter six, verse 10, you'll find the souls of those.

We sang about it earlier in one of our hymns, the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God calling out, how long, sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood. We don't read that they defended themselves, but rather they entrusted themselves to him who judges justly, as Peter said of Christ in first Peter. Then in chapter 15, verse 1, we read, with the seven last plagues, God's wrath is completed. The whole pattern of these visions here represents and underscores the completeness of God's judgment. The whole fact that there are three series of these Seven judgments is just making it even clear, each of them being composed of seven, like the seven days of creation.

So here there is judgment leading to the new creation. God's judgment is complete. Just like holy, holy, holy shows the highest of holiness, so judgment, judgment, judgment, judgment. Each in series of sevens shows the most complete judgment you could imagine. God's judgment is right in that it's completed, is also right in the sense that it's accurate.

No malefactor is left unpunished. No innocent person, on the other hand, is menaced by God's judgment. You need not worry about the innocent. The innocent will always be fine. You merely need to find if you are one of them.

And God's judgment is right in the sense that it's appropriate. No further injustice is done by God's punishments. It's not like vendettas of medieval Corsica, the family blood feuds that would lay waste to families and even villages sometimes, where each act of retribution for a past wrong would then spawn another one for the future. No, there's nothing like that here. It's appropriate.

One thing I was particularly struck by in reading over the book is the response of the people to God's judgments. When Seal 6 is opened, you see back at the end of chapter six, the people flee after trumpet six. In chapter nine, the rest of mankind still did not repent. You see that in chapter nine, verse 20, the rest of mankind that were not killed by these plagues still did not repent of the work of their hands. They did not stop worshipping demons and idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone and wood, idols that cannot see or hear or walk.

Nor did they repent of their murders, their magic arts, their sexual immorality, or their thefts. As you keep reading through the book, you find this bizarre refrain again and again. Under the very judgments of God, some do not repent. It's true, after bowl five and six, or four and five, rather, if you look over in chapter 16, verse nine, they were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God who had control over these plagues. But they refused to repent and glorify him.

Then two verses down, verse 11, men gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refused to repent of what they had done. And then after bowl six, they gathered for further rebellion. And then after bowl seven, we read down in verse 21, the verse I've read before. From the sky, huge hailstones of about a hundred pounds each fell upon men. And they cursed God.

On account of the plague of hell, they cursed God. Why is hell eternal, people ask? Well, Richard Sibbes said, because if thou couldst, thou wouldst sin eternally. And that is the reason. Sinners are punished eternally, because they would sin everlastingly.

It is their will to do so. That seems to be the picture we see of people's continuing sinful and remorseless responses to God's judgments, his punishments. So it is that we read the angel pouring out the third bowl of God's judgment in chapter 16 up in verse 5. And as he pours it out, he says he praises God for his judgment. Chapter 16, verse 5.

You are just in these judgments, you who are and who were the Holy One, because you have so judged. For they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve. God should repay those opposing him in his creation. It was right, and it is right. And these visions told John's readers that God would do just that.

And what about us today? Well, if the idea of temporal punishment in human jails and prisons is unpopular, you can just imagine the kind of reaction which many people have today when they read the Book of Revelation. They find it absolutely horrendous. I mean, this book is complete with supernatural prisons, abysses, judgments of plagues and earthquakes and even Hades and an eternal lake of fire. I mean, to many people, this is frankly repulsive.

Alan Bernstein, a medieval historian at University of Arizona, wrote a book a few years ago called the Formation of Hell.

In this book, Bernstein puts forward the idea, as the title might suggest, that the Christian doctrine of hell was gradually formed. The New Testament writers, he suggests, made their descriptions of hell more harrowing the more external opposition and internal strife they faced. I guess then it's no surprise to find that Bernstein concludes by suggesting that Christians today, I quote, make hell otherwise than it's traditionally been presented. The main problem he suggests with what has become the traditional Christian idea of hell, which is what we find here in the Book of Revelation, is not its torments, because of course, he assumes that's not true. It's the menace, the simple menace that the mere existence of the idea is.

He doesn't even want anyone anywhere thinking it. And so he calls on us as Christians to change our ideas of hell. As I say, it's not too surprising a conclusion for one to come to. It doesn't assume the reality of God's judgment as it's presented in the Bible. But, you know, having said that, People who are poor or oppressed, who understand their problems to come from a corrupt ruler or an unjust boss or an abusive father or a tyrannical landholder who seem beyond their reach, they often have a clear desire for justice.

I remember one friend telling me about taking some American students overseas. And the people that they were going to preach the gospel to in this village in a very remote rural area had seen before what the American Christians consider this terribly hokey and tasteless and even offensive video that some independent Baptist preacher had made on hell. And these American students were embarrassed by it. They didn't want to show it. But the Christians there, in that little village who'd come to know Christ wanted to see was what they asked for first and most insistently.

And at first the students couldn't understand why. And then the more they looked into their lives, they saw the circumstances of their life, the way injustices were again and again impossible to address in this life. The more they understood why these people had such a clear thirst for justice. Friends, when even our poor are among the world's rich, I'm not surprised we think we have little sympathy for justice. One thing Christians have traditionally longed for during this time of year is justice, the justice which will be brought with the second coming of the Messiah.

While many of us may find this strange, you may be sure that many Christians around the world this morning do not at all. They understand the desire for justice that is part of the image of God in us, I admit. Still, our hearts may have trouble with this. I assume that this horrible judgment can only fully seem right to us in heaven. But I think that's not because of any problem with God.

I think it's because of a problem with our own hearts. The way all of us have things that we would still wrongly defend, the way we have so much sympathy with other sinners and even ourselves, and so little with God Himself in His holiness and justice and love. Certainly none of us here and now know every real wrong done in every place, any time by everyone who has ever lived. Nor do we know the moral character, nor do we have rather the moral character to know how wrong wrong is. But the God of the Bible does.

He knows all of those things, and he is like that. And as long as he is alive, the crucial witness to every act of wickedness and injustice committed in the history of the world lives and calls for justice. He stands as an eternal, ever present, ever truthful witness, and an ever wise, ever merciful, ever, ever just judge. I remember as a school child being interested by a teacher in the question of whether or not a tree falling in a forest with no one to hear it made a sound. With God there is no such thing finally as a sin committed in secret, they do not exist.

The eternal presence of God underscores the reality of wrong, the difficulty of forgiveness and the righteousness of his judgments.

You know, the social usefulness of this kind of teaching about God's ultimate judgment hasn't been lost on people. People have often noted, well, you know, if you believe that's going to happen after life, it will affect the way you live. And some people have it like that. People like Karl Marx, of course, Marx believed it to be false. Others, like Thomas More, have loved it, believing it to be true.

In Thomas More's famous tale Utopia, the fictitious traveler Raphael Hithloday reported three things that must be taken by all people as being true who lived in this utopia. One, the immortality of the soul. Two, the reward of punishment after death, reward and punishment after death. And three, the existence of Providence. Moore wrote, anyone who thinks differently has, in their view, forfeited his right to be classed as a human being by degrading his immortal soul to the level of an animal's body.

Still less do they regard him as a utopian citizen. They say a person like that doesn't really care for the utopian way of life, only he's too frightened to say so. For it stands to reason, if you're not afraid of anything but prosecution and have no hopes of anything after you're dead, you'll always be trying to evade or break the laws of your country in order to gain your own private ends. It's true, isn't it? The message of God's judgment coming on those who sin is the message not merely of revelation.

You haven't just happened to accidentally hit upon that one strange part of the Bible that talks about this. The message of God's judgment upon sin is the message of the whole Bible. There are terrible judgments throughout the Bible, from the expulsion of the garden at the very beginning to the coming of death by the sin of Adam, to the flood and the Tower of Babel, to the Exodus judgment on Egypt and the exile judgment on Israel. And of course, there's one more, in some ways the greatest judgment of all, which we'll think about more next week, Lord willing, as we look at chapter 14, particularly in one way, the closest thing that we've seen to the apocalyptic judgment in this vision is what? It's the death of Christ on the cross.

It's God pouring out his wrath for man's sins on Christ, on the Lamb who was slain. We have deserved the punishment by our lives. He has taken it by his death. As the Apostle Peter said, writing to some early Christians, he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.

It is only Jesus, Paul says, who can rescue us from this coming wrath, only Jesus who can give us freedom from sin and life and call us into the life that we are made to live and to have. By repenting from our sins and trusting in what God has done in Christ, we then find forgiveness and true escape from this just judgment and a new life with God. The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. This is our great hope in the face of God's judgment.

This is our only hope in the face of God's judgment. Is it your hope? Is it your hope? I pray that it is. Let's pray together.

Dear God, as we consider with our abilities only the slightest parts of your just response to our sin, we pray that you would expand the scope of our gratitude, that you would deepen our love for you as we see the deliverance that you provided for us in Christ, as we see the one who is innocent, who had no sins, bearing our sins and transgressions in his love for us, as we see him acting to justify the ungodly. O God, we place ourselves among those who are ungodly. We confess that we are those who rightly stand under your judgment, whom justice would bring down. And yet we give you praise for the Lord Jesus, for the way he was willing to be made low for us to come and live a life on this earth and die even the death of the cross so that we might live. We give you praise, Lord.

We pray that in this season of the year where the world around us so mindlessly celebrates Christmas, we pray that you would give us wisdom. We pray that you would give us a depth of gratitude in our hearts that overflows in our words so that people can understand something of the depths of the joy that we have in you, in the greatest of all gifts, the gift that you have given us in the Lord Jesus Christ. And we pray this for the glory of his name's sake. Amen.