1. "Of the hundreds and thousands of people that drive or walk by this building every day, how many would be surprised to see this group that assembles here on Sunday mornings? How many, if they actually came into the building and saw who gathered here on Sunday morning, would be shocked at the number, at the age, at the racial diversity?"

2. "Our moral actions have involved us in making representations about God. We are made in His image. That means our very existence makes claims, true or false, about what God is like. And He has a vested interest in clearing up the story."

3. "If you are here today suffering because of the sins of another, you can be sure that God will repay them. The Bible teaches us not that our victory is obvious. Every day there are days when it can look and feel like Almighty God has forgotten us. But the truth of the matter is that He has not. Nor has He forgotten the wrongs that have been done to us."

4. "Friends, history is full of travesties being done in the name of justice. But good uses of human authority also exist, and they are like encouraging down payments of this future day depicted here, when all of God's justice shall be deployed."

5. "God's judgment of wrongdoers is not shameful, but praiseworthy, even glorious. His wrath brings Him glory. Just as the Israelites, delivered from the Red Sea, praised God in Exodus 15, so here in Revelation 15, the redeemed worship God for His wrath."

6. "We should work for justice and right in this world, but work as we may, this world will never be a place of satisfying, let alone perfect, justice. Some things are taken that can never be restored. Earthly penalties are insufficient. Our sight is short. Wrong is hidden. Most wrongs are beyond the scope of earthly laws."

7. "He who thinks little of sin will think little of the Savior. If you don't know something of the wrath you deserve and why you deserve it, then you don't know why Christ came and why He died."

8. "Getting the wrath of God right is essential to getting the gospel right. Do you see that with no understanding of the wrath of God, the cross slumps into a question mark? Saved from what?"

9. "When you or I mistreat another person, we are mistreating a representative of God himself, someone who's made in the image of God. Our sins become kinds of blasphemy that call out to be answered."

10. "The whole story of mankind can be summed up in these: holiness, sin, wrath, salvation - God's holiness, our sin, God's wrath, and then God's salvation of sinners through Christ. That's the story."

Observation Questions

1. In Revelation 15:1, what specific sign does John see, and what does it signify about God's wrath?

2. Looking at Revelation 15:2-4, what are the two songs mentioned, and who is singing them?

3. According to Revelation 15:5-6, where do the seven angels come from, and how are they described?

4. In Revelation 15:3-4, what specific attributes of God do the singers praise?

5. From Revelation 15:2, what characteristics identify those standing by the sea of glass?

6. Reading John 18:11, what does Jesus say about the "cup," and how does this connect to the theme of God's wrath?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that the angels with the bowls of wrath come from the sanctuary? How does this relate to God's character?

2. What does the imagery of the "sea of glass mingled with fire" (Rev 15:2) suggest about the relationship between God's judgment and His victory?

3. How does the song of Moses and the Lamb connect God's past acts of deliverance with His final judgment?

4. Why do you think the text emphasizes that these are the "last" plagues in which God's wrath is "finished"?

5. How does the description of the angels' clothing (pure bright linen, golden sashes) contribute to our understanding of God's judgment?

Application Questions

1. When was the last time you witnessed injustice that made you long for God's righteous judgment? How did you respond?

2. Think about a time when you tried to handle justice yourself rather than trusting God's timing. What did you learn from that experience?

3. In what specific area of your life do you need to trust that God sees hidden wrongs and will bring justice in His time?

4. When you consider God's perfect justice, what specific sins in your own life do you need to confess and turn from?

5. What person in your life needs to hear about Christ's sacrifice that delivers from God's wrath? What's keeping you from having that conversation?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Romans 1:18-32 - This passage expands our understanding of why God's wrath is revealed against human unrighteousness and how it manifests in society.

2. Psalm 73:1-28 - Asaph wrestles with the apparent prosperity of the wicked before finding perspective in God's ultimate justice, paralleling themes from our sermon.

3. Isaiah 53:4-12 - This prophetic text reveals how Christ bore God's wrath on our behalf, showing how divine justice and mercy meet at the cross.

4. 2 Peter 3:3-13 - Peter addresses skepticism about God's judgment, explaining why His timing differs from human expectations and how we should live in light of coming judgment.

Sermon Main Topics

I. The Surprising Vitality of the Church and Modern Disbelief

II. God’s Wrath is Personal (Revelation 15)

III. God’s Wrath is Certain (Revelation 15)

IV. God’s Wrath is Inescapable (Revelation 15)

V. God’s Wrath is Good (Revelation 15)

VI. God’s Wrath is Limited by the Lamb (Revelation 15)

VII. The Urgent Call to Trust in Christ for Salvation

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Detailed Sermon Outline

of the hundreds and thousands of people that drive or walk by this building every day, how many would be surprised to see this group that assembles here on Sunday mornings? How many if they actually came into the building and saw who gathered here on Sunday morning would be shocked? At the number, at the age, at the racial diversity.

I know from comments I get at the door on the way out by visitors that these things surprise many people. Those of us who've been here for years, even decades, take for granted this assembly. It's what we're used to. It's what Sunday mornings are. There are so many people in our district who are not themselves religious, maybe have no ill will toward the religious, but they assume it's kind of like clubs of buggy builders getting together.

It's something from the past. Maybe a few older folks are there to hold on some family endowment, but there's nothing really vital going on in these churches. Doesn't really include what people today are thinking about. Organized self-conscious disbelief certainly has grown in the last few decades, really even in the last few centuries. Here's how Louis Lapham put it some years ago in Harper's.

As an unbaptized child raised in a family that went to church only for weddings and funerals, I didn't encounter the problem of religious belief until I reached Yale College in the 1950s where I was informed by the liberal arts faculty that it wasn't pressing because God was dead. What remained to be discussed was the autopsy report. Apparently there was still some confusion about the cause and time of death. And the undergraduate surveys of Western civilization offered a wide range of options, a wide range of options. God disemboweled by Machiavelli in 16th century Florence, assassinated in 18th century Paris by agents of the French Enlightenment, lost at sea in 1834 while on a voyage to the Galapagos Islands, blown to pieces by German artillery at Verdun, garretted by Friedrich Nietzsche on a Swiss alp, and the body laid to rest in the consulting rooms of Sigmund Freud.

I wonder what you think about Christianity this morning. Are you done with organized religion? Do you find it irrational, artificial, uncompelling, hypocritical? If so, I wonder if it is especially the idea of God and His wrath. That troubles you.

Perhaps if we talk about God as loving, that seems attractive, even if not compelling or convincing for others. But talk about His wrath and judgment, and people start dropping away.

By the middle of the 20th century, among Protestants, H. Richard Niebuhr could summarize the message basically as this, quote, A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.

What does the Bible really teach about God's wrath? In our study of the book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, We come now to one of the clearest sections in the Bible on the wrath of God, Revelation chapters 15 to 18. No surprise that as we get to the end of the Bible, there's actually a significant portion communicated about God's wrath. We're looking this morning merely at the introduction to that section, chapter 15. We'll say chapter 16, the seven bowls of God's wrath, for Easter.

Let's turn now to Revelation chapter 15. If you're looking at one of the Bibles provided, you'll find it on page 1036, page 1036. And I encourage you, if you want to survive this sermon awake, open a Bible and have it in front of you. If you're not used to looking at one, the larger numbers are the chapter numbers. We're in chapter 15 of Revelation.

The smaller numbers are the verse numbers. There are eight verses in this chapter. It's just a few pages before the back cover, very easy to find. So far in the book of Revelation, we've learned that the aged Christian apostle John has been exiled to the Greek island of Patmos and there God has given him a vision of history including God's plans for the end. And this morning in our passage we come to the final series of seven that are in this book.

So the middle of the book of Revelation is taken up with three series of sevens. There are the seven seals that are opened as the future is revealed and begins in chapters 6 to 8. And then the seven trumpets where this future is being proclaimed and spoken out. That's chapters 8 through 11. And so the judgments of God have been revealed in the seven seals, proclaimed in the seven trumpets.

This morning we come to the vision of their being prepared to be poured out.

In the seven bowls. So let's read this passage together now, Revelation chapter 15.

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.

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. 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. Will not fear, O Lord, and glorify youy name. For your alone are holy.

All nations will come and worship youp, for your righteous acts have been revealed.

After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the tent of witness in heaven was opened, and out of the sanctuary came the seven angels. With the seven plagues, clothed in pure bright linen with golden sashes around their chests.

And 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 sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from His power. And no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished.

Well, I pray that this morning as we meditate on the coming wrath, we will all come to understand the truth about God and ourselves better, and I pray that no one within the sound of my voice will ever fall subject of God's wrath.

Five matters about God's wrath in this chapter for us to consider. Several of you at the door on the way out last Sunday said that one little paragraph where I mentioned five aspects of God's wrath in chapter 14 were useful. These are not exactly the same five, they're things we see here in this chapter, but I think they're important for us to notice and helpful. The first is just to consider how can these people be praising God for this? How can we come to understand God's wrath in such a way?

And I think the chapter supplies five answers to that question that can help us in that. First, we want to understand that God's wrath is personal. We want to understand that God's wrath is personal. I mentioned this last week when we looked at chapter 14. If you look back up in verse 19 of chapter 14, so just a few verses before, There we see mentioned the wrath of God.

Well twice more in our chapter 15, in verse 1, and then if you look down in verse 7, you see that this is the wrath specifically of God. Not the wrath of the angel, not the wrath of John, this is the wrath of God. And in verse 7, it says if John wants to be extra clear, he's speaking of the wrath of God. So you see how he says it, the wrath of God who lives forever and ever. So this is the one and only self-existent eternal creator God.

It's not just this language. They're in verses 5 and 6, when the seven angels with the seven bowls or pans full of God's wrath appear. Do you notice where they're coming from? Notice that detail. They're coming from the sanctuary.

They've been in the sanctuary. That is, they are coming from the very presence of none other than God Himself.

So let no one mistake whose wrath these angels are about to pour out.

It's the wrath of God. There have been generations of scholars who have been committed to muting and excising this teaching from Christianity. They have thought that a personal wrath is a moral flaw. That it's simply an anthropomorphic form of human anger, rarely one of the better traits of a person. They felt that it makes God seem too like an abusive human figure who can lose their temper.

But friends, the teaching of Scripture here is important. Let's consider this question on a couple of different levels. What is accurate and what is appropriate?

First, what is accurate? Well, it's accurate to say that the Bible presents truth as a kind of, or rather is it accurate to say, that the Bible presents truth as a kind of impersonal and ultimately inevitable force, like every science fiction movie seems to present it, or as a reflection of an attribute of a specific personal being. If the question is simply what does the Bible present to us, it is clear that the Bible presents God Himself as a personal being who Himself hates what is wrong. The whole Bible is shot through with such teaching. Let's take almost at random, Proverbs 23:17, Let not your heart envy sinners, but continue in the fear of the Lord.

The Lord all the day. Solomon knows that as you walk through life, as his son grows up, he'll be tempted to fear many things: popularity, poverty, powerful people, rivals, envies, those that he envies. And he says, Look, wisdom comes in none of those ways. Wisdom comes in fearing the Lord alone. Why would Solomon, why does Scripture throughout use this image of the fear of the Lord so fully so often because God himself is to be supremely regarded in part because he will so fully and ferociously oppose all that is wrong, like envying sinners.

In the New Testament a word which is much more accurately represented in English as propitiation, that is assuaging or satisfying wrath, is a word that we find in Romans. And elsewhere. So God's wrath is presented in Scripture as being not so much an impersonal principle, the way of the world, as it is being a personal attitude of the one who created and who will judge this world. But let's consider a second level of significance. Is speaking of the wrath of God appropriate?

It is. It is not, as some wrongly suggest, God's strange work. God Himself is a personal being who loves those whom He has made, and He hates all that is wrong. He opposes it because that opposes Him. It is right that He feels a complete and entire opposition to those who would oppose Him and who would harm those whom He loves.

As much as people are responsible actors, so much they are appropriate objects of our opposition and even our active wrath when they do that which is wrong. God's wrath is personal. That's biblical and it also makes sense. So much more we could say about all this, but a second matter about God's wrath that I want us to notice here, it is number two, certain. It is certain, John saw this sign in heaven about it.

It's the third sign mentioned in the book of Revelation. The first two are in chapter 12. It's the woman and the great dragon. And now here this. It's interesting when you see earlier in this book the seven seals in chapter 6, they're not accompanied by anything called a sign.

When you see the seven trumpets beginning in chapter 8, There's nothing accompanying the beginning there called a sign. But here, in this final and completing set of depictions of God's wrath, here there is a sign. Great solemnity is noted, sort of climaxing of this series of God's actions. Judging a fallen world are so introduced. There's no doubt about it.

These are promised. This is a significant, a significant event. Not only were these bowls of God's wrath promised, but we see here in verse 7 that they were prepared and distributed by one of the four living creatures mentioned throughout this book as attending closely upon God Himself. So having come from God, there is no question but that they would be poured out. This is His purpose for them.

We'll think about it more when we come to chapter 16, but the word used for bowl here was very poorly translated in the King James as vile, not vile V-I-L-E, but vile V-A-I-L, like a thin necked thing where, you know, it sort of trickles out. You know, the word here for bowl is like a pan, really. It's like, it's easily poured out in its entirety, just like that. And that's the picture that you see dramatically in the next chapter. Chapter 16, God's wrath will be poured out on the earth.

Certainly on people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped its image. God's wrath will be poured out into the sea and the rivers, the sources of the water, on those who shed the blood of the saints and the prophets and on people who cursed God's name. So from God's first response to the first sin in the Garden of Eden, was there any doubt that the serpent's head would be crushed? That the opposers of God's people would be ruined, that the breakers of God's laws would be broken, that the disbelievers of God's promises would be destroyed, that the haters of God would be punished. You see, even the history of the fallen world tends to show the truth of the fact that God will ultimately defeat all of His foes.

How is it the children's hymn goes? Oh let me ne'er forget that though the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet, this is My Father's world. God will not finally be frustrated in the expression of Himself or His will. And what could teach us this more clearly than the story of Jesus Himself, who though opposed, He overcame. And when He was crucified, He literally rose from the dead.

Beloved, if you are here today suffering because of the sins of another, you can be sure that God will repay them. The Bible teaches us not that our victory is obvious every day. There are days when it can look and feel like Almighty God has forgotten us. But the truth of the matter is that He has not, nor has He forgotten the wrongs that have been done to us. My non-Christian friend, don't be lulled into thinking that if you ignore God, He will never judge you.

Mounting deadlines and accumulating emails and your anxiety about them that determines your attention may reassure you that you're sort of too busy to be judged by God. But, friend, just think about that for a moment. It's kind of like the kid who closes his eyes and thinks that adults can't see him. They equate lack of worry with lack of danger, as if the only path to you of danger is through your worrying. If you're not anxious about it, if you're not worried, well, there can't be any problem.

They're fooling themselves. God will certainly pour out His wrath. Similar to the last point, but somewhat distinct, is the idea we see here that God's wrath is number three, inescapable. So certain, I'm concentrating more on the fact that God will act in this way. Inescapable, I'm now turning to each and every one of us as individuals, and realizing what this means for us.

You see that here in our chapter. I think we see it in verse one, that with this series of bowls depicted in chapter 16, God's wrath will be the word that's used is finished or completed. Only that all that which should be punished will be. There's no outstanding claim left which God has not answered. His justice being complete depends upon His wrath having been fully expressed against all that is wrong.

We see this in the great magnitude of these bowls depicted here in verse 7 as being full. And so when we come to chapter 16, All of the worshipers of the beast are punished. All the creatures of the sea die. All those who have killed God's people get what they deserve. All those who've cursed the name of God will themselves be cursed.

Even the repeated use of the number seven here in chapter 15 emphasizes the completeness of God's wrath, which means that there is no one left un dealt with who should have been. No one will be able to say to God, Hey, God, you forgot this one over here.

There will be none of that. What that means for you today is if you are thinking that you can hide from Him, think again. His eyes are wide open. He sees through indifference as easily as He sees through hypocrisy. You can think you can avoid Him by avoiding church, but friends, you can't avoid God.

Even by dying. I remember watching an episode once of a show which made this clear that all the wrongs, whether done by the poorest man in Washington or by the president in the White House, would be noticed by God. You couldn't hide anything from Him. I was watching Leave It to Beaver when the mother of her younger son, Beaver, had clearly lied and he was having a hard time at six or seven understanding that this was wrong.

She tells him, even when you think you're getting away with it, God knows you're lying. I wish ABC would put on shows like that again. Beaver asks how? His mother responds, because God knows everything. He sees everything.

Beaver puzzles and looks up, and he says, Right through the roof? And his mother nods affirmatively and says, Right through the roof. And then he sits there for a moment, and he says, Right through the ceiling? And she says, Right through the ceiling.

And then he thinks and he says, Will God see me if I hide in the closet? Yes, Beaver, you see, God is everywhere. I love that. Reasoning from God's omniscience and His omnipresence. Friends, June Cleaver spoke the truth.

The God of the Bible doesn't let anyone get away with anything. Our moral actions have involved us in making representations about God. Let me just repeat that. Our moral actions have involved us in making representations about God. We are made in His image.

That means our very existence makes claims, true or false, about what God is like. And He has a vested interest in clearing up the story. And He will make sure that all the watching intelligences of creation, fallen and unfallen, see the truth about Himself and His nature and character vindicated and cleared. And part of that will involve His promotion of all that is good and right and His implacable opposition to all that is evil. Part of what's going on in the book of Revelation are these increasingly intense pictures of judgment.

If you go back and you look at the the seven seals, you see what the penalties are. And then you look at the seven trumpets, you see the penalties, they're more intense. Greater numbers are involved. And now you get to the seven bowls in the next chapter. They're the most intense of all.

And by the way, if you add them all together, it makes more than one. So that's a sign to us that we're not supposed to take these in a sort of mathematical way. But rather we're supposed to see the significance poetically against each other and see the intensifying as it goes on. So part of what we are to learn from that is that our having appeared to have gotten away with something yesterday should not lead us to conclude that we will get away with it again today. In fact, if anything, John's vision lets us know that God is coming after all wrongs and all those who've done them with all of his moral and metaphysical might and that we don't stand a chance against him.

Because his power is perfect and his claims are true, his knowledge is exact and his judgments unerring. At 6 p.m. last night while I was writing this, a crowd gathered in front of my house, not to adore the fact that I was writing a sermon to speak their gratitude, but rather Opal the cat had climbed the tree and she seemed stuck up there. She got pretty high up in that tree on East Capitol Street. Well, the end of the story was made certain by the cat's limited strength and the existence of gravity. Soon enough she came down and a passerby lifted her off the lowest branch and onto the ground where the Mergos girls found her and quickly made off with her.

Friend, we are all in dilemmas far worse than a cat in a tree. We are sinners in a moral universe. We need to find some way to make peace with God before our account is called by the Lord God Almighty. My Christian brothers and sisters, we should work for justice and right in this world, but work as we may, and this is a congregation which will do that almost uniquely among congregations I've ever preached to or known, this world will never be a place of satisfying, let alone perfect, justice.

Some things are taken that can never be restored. Earthly penalties are insufficient. Our sight is short. Wrong is hidden. Most wrongs are beyond the scope of earthly laws.

All are beyond the scope of receiving final justice here below. We should understand that. Certainly none of us here and now know every real wrong done in every place at every time by everyone who's ever lived. Nor do we have the moral character to understand how wrong wrong is. But the God of the Bible does.

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-just. Judge. This means that we should be patient in enduring wrongs ourselves. We should not slacken in our efforts to see justice at work in relationships, in our communities, but we should also not be finally discouraged because we recognize that God, the judge of all the earth, will do right.

So throughout our lives as Christians, as those who have been forgiven by God through Christ, as those who are confident of this coming day of judgment we read of here, we should be those who are freed from a desire to have revenge against those who wrong us. God knows all of the wrongs better than we do. God will act. Pray that that comfort you. With the knowledge that perfect justice will be done.

Yes, we do our limited kinds of justice as well as we can, and it's worth doing, but we don't imagine that that's the whole story. A day is coming when God's judgment will be complete because His wrath against those who do wrong is inescapable. Number four, it's also good. God's wrath is good. Do you notice that far from being the kind of thing that is shameful or to be hidden or make excuses for, God is praised here for His justice.

We noticed that last week in the eternal torment of the worshipers of the beast was done there in chapter 14 verse 10, in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. So God's justice redounds to His honor and glory to His name because it is and is seen to be good. Look there in chapter 15, beginning at verse 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. 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. Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy.

And nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed. And then you'll notice in verses 5 and 6, these seven angels that come from God's temple, this angelic procession that God's judgments proceed from, His holiness, just as surely as these angels are coming out of God's temple. And so He should be praised for His judgments. They are reflecting His character. They are good and right and appropriate.

God's judgment of wrongdoers is not shameful but praiseworthy, even glorious. His wrath brings him glory, just as the Israelites delivered from the Red Sea, praised God in Exodus 15 that we read earlier. So here in Revelation 15, the redeemed worship God for his wrath. They glorify God for his judgments, just like we have in our own singing this morning when we sang Holy, Holy, Holy. What he sang about the goodness of this God.

In our human courts, even those small percentages of human wrongs that are dealt with sometimes are mishandled. Legal is far too limited a concept ever to approach being a full reflection of moral.

Even the best of human judicial systems are incompetent to try matters on any basis other than the evidence that's discovered to them. And of course judgments are sometimes tragically wrong. The wrong person is punished or released. The right person is punished but too harshly or too lightly. If you want to think more about that, check out Matt Martin's book on the criminal justice system.

We could go on, but we understand to the trivial, to the most monumental matters, the justice of this world is seriously flawed. As Christians, we don't take our understanding of right and wrong from the shifting polls or from whoever is in office or from the opinion makers of culture. We understand that right and wrong are not finally determined by mathematics or science or philosophy or elections, rather true right and true wrong is a reflection of the character of God himself. We take our understanding of it from God's revelation of himself in his word. And we see that one of the most fundamental things that God teaches us is that we are all wrong.

That is, all people, though made in the image of God, are also morally bent and twisted. Augustine used the phrase, we're curved in on ourselves.

We just can't help but see things through some strange lens which makes whatever we've done seem not so bad and what others have done seem far worse. That's our human condition. And God is right to judge us and it is pointless to oppose Him. It is this innate idea of right and wrong that causes the use of authority to be so powerful in our lives. That's why the vision of the beast we thought of a couple of weeks ago in Revelation 13 balances what may be too rosy a view of human that's taken just by reading Romans 13.

Human government can go badly, badly wrong. If you have any, any temptation to not believe that, just force yourself to go read Supreme Court decisions from the past that have defined the grossest of evils as good, and they're taken to be the highest authority in our land. Friends, history is full of travesties being done in the name of justice.

But good uses of human authority also exist. And they are like encouraging down payments of this future day depicted here, when all of God's justice shall be deployed. So in this life, good authority blesses those under it. And reminds us that as the redeemed sing here, All God's ways are just, all His acts are righteous. His wrath is good.

Which brings us to one final thing we should notice from Revelation 15, and that is that God's wrath is number five, limited.

His wrath is limited. It's limited only by the Lamb.

That's why they were singing. Look again at verses 2 to 4. If you want to look at the Old Testament background for this song, look especially at Moses' song in Exodus 15 that we read part of about God's deliverance of His people from Egypt. Lord willing, we'll think about that more tonight with help of Christian Barnes. And then look at Psalm 86 that Hannah read us part of.

The way David picks up the hope of forgiveness in the Scriptures and he sees it providing a way of reconciliation for peoples far beyond merely the nation of Israel. It's in that spirit that we hear what John saw. Verse 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. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and amazing things.

Are your deeds, O Lord God, the Almighty. Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations. Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For your alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.

What can allow those who are fallen children of Adam to sing like this? About the justice of God. They are those we read here in verse 2 who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name. So who are these? Some would say that they are only those who are the martyrs, those who died at a particular point in refusing the temptation to idolatry.

I think a better understanding of it is that these certainly include those martyred believers. But they're not only those martyrs, but they are all who persevere in faithfulness till the world ends. Thus you'll see in verse 2 they all have these harps from God. Well, where else have we seen these harps? Back in chapter 14 where the redeemed have these harps and they're singing to God.

They were singing the same song that only the redeemed could learn. So what makes this the Song of the Lamb? Well, it's a song of the Lamb in a slightly different way than it's a song of Moses. It's a song of Moses in that it seems like part of the song that Moses sang, that he wrote, that he originated about God's deliverance of his people. But the Song of the Lamb, well, yes, it was a song originated by the Lamb in a different sense, but it wasn't just a song that was originated by the Lamb.

It's the whole deliverance was originated about the Lamb. Are by the Lamb. So this is a song of the Lamb in the sense of a song about the Lamb. So it's a song by Moses, a song about the Lamb, about what the Lamb had done. Because the greatest deed and the most amazing act was the incarnation, life of obedience, the crucifixion and the resurrection from the dead of the Son of God.

So justice and truth were established, so God's name was glorified, God's holiness was magnified, so a way was made for all nations to come and worship God. No greater act of righteousness was ever done. What do we read in Hebrews 1312? Jesus suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. The Lamb of God bore the sins of the world, all of us who would ever turn and trust in him.

My friend, that could be you today. You may have come here with a correct burden for your sins. Maybe some that are well known to those around you, so well known that they're surprised you're here, maybe others unknown, unknown to anyone for years, but known to you. Friend, whatever those sins are that you've brought with you here today, those are sins for which you can find forgiveness from God. His wrath having been dealt with in Christ on the cross for all who would turn from their sins and trust in him.

Will you do that today? Friend, could you imagine receiving from God exactly what you deserve? That's what would happen to each one of us were it not for the Lamb. This is the Lamb that was slain from the creation of the world who purchased men for God A great multitude that no man could count from every nation, tribe, people, and language. And the Lamb did this by shedding His own blood for us.

Through His blood we have been clothed in the clean white garments of His own righteousness. So Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, took upon Himself our sins on the cross of Calvary and bore the punishment for everyone who would believe in Him and confess Him as Savior and Lord. How else would you avoid the punishment that you deserve. You'll never work enough or well enough to justify yourself to God. You'll never be good enough that Jesus will say, All is forgiven.

We depend upon Christ alone and totally. He is the basis for all of our praises, all of our songs, all of our hopes, all of our prayers. This is why we preach the gospel from this pulpit again and again. Caleb Murrell's new book, A Light on the Hill, is about to come out about the history of this church. One of the consistencies that Caleb has so well noted in the book is that this same good news I'm giving to you right now is the same thing that has been preached here for 150 years.

It's this exact same message about Jesus. He is our only hope. The very ordinances Christ commanded us to follow show it. From the cleansing of baptism, to His blood being spilled for us in the Lord's Supper, the Lamb is the only hope we have of averting God's righteous wrath against us. It is God's own wrath from which we need to be saved.

What did Paul say in Romans 5:9? Since we have been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath? Through Jesus Christ. The whole story of mankind can be summed up in these words: holiness, sin, wrath, salvation. God's holiness, our sin, God's wrath, and then God's salvation of sinners through Christ.

That's the story. And you see how this all hangs together. I just have to say, as a pastor again and again, I'm not surprised that modern Christians who spend so little time considering their own sin or the sinfulness of sins what makes it so bad, they seem less and less concerned about Christ's substitutionary death on the cross. He who thinks little of sin will think little of the Savior. If you don't know something of the wrath you deserve and why you deserve it, then you don't know why Christ came and why He died.

In the Old Testament, the Lord said to His people through Jeremiah that they were to take the cup filled with His wrath and that they were to make the nations drink it. But in the New Testament, you know what we see? Those who worship the beast are supposed to drink it. We see in Revelation 14 in the last chapter, Drink the wine of God's fury which has been poured out full strength into the cup of His wrath. He will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb.

But of course, Jesus came to die. Why? He came to drink the cup of God's wrath. In John 18:11, after Peter had attempted to defend Jesus with force that last night, Jesus commanded Peter, Put your sword away. Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given Me?

As the hymn writer says, Dearly, dearly has He loved. God's wrath is limited by the Lamb who took God's wrath for all of us who believe.

So after all of this, my question is to you, friend, is this liberal theology of last century's Protestant mainline, the current theology in many of our evangelical churches, and our sermons and songs and our prayers and conversations, Jesus as example, much talk of kingdom, little talk of judgment, sensitive to people by not mentioning their sins, speaking of God but not of His wrath. Friends, when you leave wrath out of your picture of God, you begin to lose the biblical picture. From the second century heretic Marcion on, it seems people have been making the same error by pitting the wrathful God of the Old Testament against the loving God of the New Testament, which just means they haven't read the Old or the New. Very accurately. But it is in the New Testament that we read Paul's words to the Ephesians about their sins and some who were teaching them that God wouldn't judge them for their sins.

And about them Paul wrote in Ephesians 5, Let no one deceive you with empty words. For because of such things, God's wrath comes on those who are disobedient. Friend, do not be deceived. God hates sin. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Praise God that in Christ he delivers us from this wrath. The more you study, the more you see that the wrath of God is not a topic for the narrow-minded or the hard-hearted. Getting the wrath of God right is essential to getting the gospel right. Do you see that? With no understanding of the wrath of God, the cross slumps into a question mark.

Saved from what? From God. From God's own wrath against our sins, from God's personal, certain, inescapable and good wrath. It is God's own wrath from which we need to be saved. What did Paul say to the Romans?

Since we have now been justified by His blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through Him? I remember once doing an interview for membership with a friend. Loved the church, he'd been coming here for maybe eight or nine months, but he didn't really like the idea of hell being eternal. And so he didn't like the way our statement of faith put it. But he said he was happy to be taught that.

I said, well, then you can't really sign this, you can't really join. But don't leave, you know, are you willing to think about this more? He said, yes. So I gave him a couple of things to read. Well, sure enough, about two months later, he came back and he'd resolved the issues he had on God's wrath as he'd read and studied and thought more about it.

And he made the interesting comment to me that he said, the readings that he did made God seem more holy. It made his sins seem worse, made God's love seem more amazing and surprising, and made the cross more precious to him. Friends, can we be surprised if that was his experience? To understand the cross of Christ, you have to understand something of the wrath of God. You have to understand what Ephesians 2 says, All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh, following its desires and thoughts.

Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But it was this wrath that Christ drank for us fully if we are his.

Christ became a propitiation for our sins. He became the sacrifice bearing God's wrath for us. And to understand this world we live in and make sense of it, you must understand something of the wrath of God. What of all the injustices done in God's world? The unjustly spurned spouse, the falsely accused and slandered employee, the robbed elderly person, The people who've been bought and sold, who've been illicitly caressed, who've been wrongly treated, exploited.

The parents who've been wrongly disobeyed. The children who've been abused. What of the murdered child?

What of the wrongs represented on the front pages of your own newspaper this very day, let alone those larger crimes? Dying Ukrainians and Jewish hostages and Palestinian babies killed and countless people who have lost their lives in opposition to the military rulers of Myanmar and Chinese Uighurs in concentration camps and Christians who lay dead from sinful, murderous actions of just the last few decades of human history. What of millions enslaved and racial prejudice and Hatred and violence and killings. I mean, friend, I could go on and on.

About all of this, is nothing to be done? Is that justice? Is that right? A cool response of composure and acceptance?

Is that anything other than immorality and nihilism?

Finally, It's not these crimes against humanity alone as great as they are, but it is the offense against God that calls out to be answered. When you or I mistreat another person, we are mistreating a representative of God Himself, someone who's made in the image of God. Our sins become kinds of blasphemy that call out to be answered, and they will be. God's wrath will fall. The only question for you is, will God's wrath, His personal, certain, inescapable and good wrath for your sins, will it fall on you?

Or has it fallen on Christ?

If you trust in Christ alone, it has fallen on Him, and you are saved from the wrath of God.

If not, it will fall on you.

Let's pray.

Oh God, we thank youk for the cross where youe paid the price for the sins of all of us who would repent of our sins and turn in trust to youo.

O Lord, we have heard of youf fame, we stand in awe of youf deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day. In our time, make them known in wrath, remember mercy. We ask in Jesus Christ's name, Amen.