Today's Quick Word
TODAY’S QUICK WORD
Revelation 15:1-3 I saw in heaven another great and marvellous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues – last, because with them God’s wrath is completed. And I saw […]
Revelation 15:1-3 I saw in heaven another great and marvellous sign: seven angels with the seven last plagues – last, because with them God’s wrath is completed. And I saw what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire and, standing beside the sea, those who had been victorious over the beast and his image and over the number of his name. They held harps given them by God and sang the song of Moses the servant of God and the song of the Lamb: “Great and marvellous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages.
In this part of the Revelation, John is describing what he saw as God’s final wrath in judgement being poured out on a world that he loved so much, but that had turned against him. He loved us so much that he sent his one and only Son to die so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life (see John 3:16).
So this final outpouring of wrath comes neither easily nor cheaply. But because people in their rebellion and pride continue to refuse to acknowledge God and take hold of the refuge he has so graciously provided in Jesus, the only option left is for the full force of his wrath to fall upon them.
Modern man has no place in his thinking for this aspect of God’s character because he is totally blind to both the magnitude of God’s holiness and the enormity of human sin. However, God’s eternal character, that which makes him God, is not defined by man’s thinking!
Modern man thinks that ‘God’ is just a figment of human imagination, whereas God’s Word declares that it is the other way around – God thought us up, not we him! So John’s vision of the judgement is neither popular nor even acceptable today, and because of this we feel uncomfortable talking about it. Let us be encouraged by the fact that, hard as it seems to us now, when God hands out the harps to those who have taken refuge in Jesus we will be able to sing with feeling and understanding: “Great and marvellous are your deeds, Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways, King of the ages.”
