Revelation 15, we're jumping right back into Revelation now after we had a short little
study on the Gospels, which we might do again at some point in the future just for fun.
But we're back in Revelation chapter 15, starting this chapter now.
And I don't have my whiteboard here because I was preoccupied.
So this would be a good opportunity to have my whiteboard and make charts and everything,
but I'll get you one next week.
Okay, so you come prepared, I'll have you chart next week.
This is an interesting section of the book of Revelation.
The whole thing is interesting and oftentimes very complicated, and it's easy to get bogged
down in all the details and in the weeds of it all.
So we need to just kind of orient ourselves to what's going on here.
So as we come into Revelation 15, you remember there are three cycles of seven, right?
So there are seven seals and then there are seven trumpets and then there are seven bowls
of God's wrath.
And we said that these things are not linear or chronological, but they are cyclical.
These are things that are expected to happen throughout human history, and we will continue
to see them happen throughout human history until the end comes.
And the seventh thing, whether it's the seal, the trumpet, or the bowl, whatever the seventh
is, that always signifies the end of human history.
So the first six, they happen in human history, and then the seventh one is the end of all
human history.
And the Bible is going to say here that with the seventh or with the bowls of God's wrath,
comes the judgment, comes the end of all things.
You can see in Revelation 15, 1, John writes and says, 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.
So notice what he's saying here.
He's saying, with the seven plagues, which fill up these seven bowls to be poured out,
God's wrath is finished.
And so some people have said, hey, if we see evidences of these seven bowls in the world
today, that's an indication that the end is imminent, that the end is very soon.
And in one sense, that's right.
But what is soon to God?
The Bible says in 2 Peter 3, 8, but do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with
the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years is one day.
So what actually is soon to God?
It actually made me think about C.S.
Lewis's book, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
If y'all can't tell, I've gone back and reread the Chronicles of Narnia series recently,
so which is just, it's filled with all sorts of great nuggets that you can take home.
But there's this one scene at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where Aslan, who's
the Christ figure, he's a big lion, but he's the Christ figure, he's talking with Lucy
and Edmund, and Lucy is saying, hey, when do we get to come back to Narnia?
And he says, you're never coming back to Narnia.
This is your last time.
And she's upset, she starts basically crying, and she's all devastated.
And Aslan says, or she's upset, and she says, the worst part about never coming back is
not Narnia, it's you, we won't get to see you again.
And Aslan says, you're going to see me soon.
And Lucy asked him, she says, please, Aslan, what do you call soon?
And the great lion, Aslan, responds, and he says, I call all times soon.
And I thought that was great.
That's such a Lewis line to put in there, but it's so good because it conveys the character
of God to us.
Does it not?
God is outside of time.
He is not constrained by time or bound by time like all of us are.
We say soon if something's going to happen in a minute or five minutes, not if it's going
to happen in 50 years, because we experience time linearly and chronologically, but God
is outside of time.
And so every single time that has ever existed or will ever exist, they are all equally near
to God.
Now, I know that's hard for us to get our minds around, basically impossible, but it
is to say that with God, all times are soon.
So if we do see evidences of these seven bowls in our world today, yes, it does mean the
end is soon, but please keep in mind what we call soon and what God calls soon, those
are two totally different things.
And we don't like to be patient like that all the time, do we?
You know, there are basically three ways God answers prayer.
Sometimes says no, sometimes says yes, and sometimes he says yes, but you got to wait.
And then when you have to wait, it's never fun.
He says yes, he'll answer that prayer, but in his own timing.
And so we need to keep all of that in mind as we study this passage this evening, and
we need to understand where these judgments come from and what the goal is behind them.
So look at me at verse two, you'll see it on the screen.
John writes and says, 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.
Now again, we've said this many times, but it's good to ask you again to see if you're
paying attention because I know we've only been in revelation for a little bit of time,
and I promise you, we'll be done soon.
Okay, so where have we seen the sea of glass before?
Where have we seen the crystal sea before?
Yeah, heaven in the temple.
Yeah, so in Revelation chapter four, it talks about the throne room of God, and it says
before God's throne, there's a sea, like a sea of glass, and it's like crystal.
And you remember, I told you that in Hebrew thought, they actually believed that the sea
was the place from which evil came, and that was chaos and disorder and destruction.
So that was the place that gave birth to all the bad stuff in the world.
And so when the Bible portrays this crystal sea, it's the Bible's way of saying that
God is going to put an end to all of those things, that he is going to do away with the
evil in our world and all the chaos in our world, and he is going to bring order to what
is currently disorder.
And it says he did in creation, I mean you look back at creation, and there's this great
image, if you remember Genesis chapter one, verses one through two, going into verse three,
it talks about the primordial waters.
Do you remember this?
And the waters were restless over the face of the earth, and then what happens?
The Spirit of God is hovering over the waters, and he brings order to the chaos of the water.
He calms the sea, and then here at the very last book of the Bible, what do you have?
You have a sea that's been calmed before God, and it's again the Bible's way of saying
that he is going to make all things right.
And he does this in a very surprising way.
He does this, he brings about peace and stillness and calmness by bringing judgment upon the
world.
And that's counterintuitive, is it not?
I mean if you think about how we think about conflict and how we think about peace, we
tend to think about peace as the absence of conflict, right?
That's how we know we have peace.
If you think about a family get together, Thanksgiving, Christmas, I don't know if your
family's like mine, but we can always find something to argue about.
It doesn't take much.
I can just look at my memo, and I can set her off sometimes.
It's easy to have disagreements, but there are people in my family who believe differently
than I do.
And so if we get on certain topics, it's real easy to get into a fight or an argument or
a debate that's going to happen.
And if your mom is like my mom, and I can say this because she's not here tonight, she's
the type of mom who would say, just drop it.
Whatever it is, just drop it, doesn't matter.
I just want some peace for this meal, this one meal, right?
I've heard that a lot, I don't know if you can tell.
I've heard it a lot.
So that's our idea of peace.
If there's an argument, if there's a disagreement, you just drop it.
You let it go.
That's how you get peace, but is that really peace?
It's not peace.
You're just putting off a problem.
You're not actually dealing with it.
And so God does something that's counterintuitive to us.
He unleashes seven bowls full of His wrath upon the earth for the purpose of bringing
about peace.
This is how God deals with evil in the world.
This is how He deals with wickedness and unrighteousness and all the injustice of our world.
He brings about the wrath of God and unloads these seven bowls of His wrath, but not by
avoiding conflict or drop in the issue, but through judgment.
In other words, judgment is the path to true peace.
And I want you to notice who's with God here in verses three through four.
I talked about the saints in verse two and then in verse three and four, it says, and
they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God and the song of the lambs saying, great
and amazing are your deeds.
Oh Lord God, the almighty, just and true are your ways.
Oh king of the nations who will not fear.
Oh Lord and glorify your name for you alone or holy, all nations will come and worship
you for your righteous acts have been revealed.
Now if you have your Bible open and I encourage you to look down at your Bible, you're going
to notice something very interesting.
So look back at that whole song and I'm sure that's not the whole song, but just the stanza
or two.
Look at that song and tell me what is missing.
So the Bible just said, this is the song of Moses.
You're looking in your Bibles.
What's missing here?
I know I'm asking you to find something that's not there.
So let me help you out.
You should be noticing that there is no reference note, right?
In the Bible, whenever scripture quotes scripture, you're going to notice that oftentimes it's
going to say, here's a reference point and it'll put like the letter A or B or C and
it'll reference back to the Old Testament passage.
It's quoting, right?
That's how they work.
But notice, do you see that here?
Are there any reference notes at all?
Any footnotes at all?
Does it say what passage this comes from in scripture?
Do I see anything like that?
No.
And yet it's called the song of Moses.
It's not interesting.
Why is that?
It's because it's not actually quoting scripture.
So it's called the song of Moses, but we have no record of Moses ever singing this song
at all or saying these words at all.
It's not actually quoting scripture at all.
So my question is, why is it called the song of Moses?
Anybody want to take a guess?
Remember what happened?
Yeah, go ahead, Courtney.
Yeah, that's right.
That's actually it right on.
So you remember back in Exodus when God led the Israelites out of Egypt and he parted the
waters of the Red Sea and he led them through it.
As soon as the waters closed up, you read about this in Exodus chapter 15.
There's a whole song that's recorded that the Israelites sang to God to celebrate his
victory over Pharaoh in the Egyptians.
And you can read again that whole song in Exodus chapter 15.
It begins by saying, Ashira, Ashira, La'ata nai, Keeg, Oga.
So pretty easy to remember that if you're just taking notes there.
But it says, I will sing to the Lord for he has triumphed gloriously.
And it's really ironic that we're here now because if you just want some insight behind
the curtains of my life of my boys, we were singing the song of Moses last night in the
bath in Hebrew.
I was teaching it to him in Hebrew.
So we were singing it and Judah was like running out naked to mommy, mommy, Ashira, Ashira.
I was like, let's get some clothes on first.
But so that's what we do in our bath time.
I don't know about you.
But yeah, that's what was happening.
They were singing this song, but it's not the words that are recorded here.
It's a different song.
And so I ask again, why do you think it is that this is called the song of Moses?
Just as the Israelites sang a victory song to God after he delivered them from the Egyptians,
the Bible is saying all of the saints of God are going to be singing a similar song just
like the song of Moses, praising God for triumphing over the evils of this world.
Just as God overthrew Pharaoh, he's going to overthrow Satan and the beast and all the
rulers of this world, all the evil of this world.
And his saints will sing this victory song to him forever.
And you see that they're praising him for all that he has done for triumphing over evil
and for saving them from their sins.
And notice this when the song says here, all nations will come and worship you for your
righteous acts have been revealed.
I want you to notice that it's referring both to his righteous acts of judgment and salvation.
In other words, they're praising God for being saved for saving them from their sins, but
also for triumphing over the evils we see in the world.
And these two always go hand in hand.
I forget who said.
Yes, so that's how you couple.
So the song of Moses is mostly a victory song.
Praising with the lamb is a redemption song.
Praising God for his salvation and praising him.
Yeah, just like that.
There was a preacher one time and I don't know who said it.
I forgot his name, but he said that about God's judgment.
He said in the end, when God condemns the wicked and final judgment, even the most hardened
atheists will say, this is right.
I deserve this.
Because they are going to see the glory of the Lord for themselves and they're going
to know that all that they had believed was wrong.
All that God said was true and they're going to know this is what I deserve.
And even atheists today, they'll deny this.
They'll say, Hey, listen, I don't care what the Bible says.
I'm never praising God.
I'm never going to acknowledge him.
I don't believe in God.
And yet the Bible says in Philippians chapter two, verses nine through 10, talking of Jesus,
therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.
So did the name of Jesus, every knee should bow and in heaven and on earth and under the
earth.
So, so notice this, every single person on earth.
This is without exception, whether you believe in Jesus now, whether you deny Jesus now,
there is coming today at the final judgment when every single knee is going to bow and
proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God.
This is what's going to happen.
This is exactly what's going to happen because God says that it's going to happen.
And I think we should polls very quickly to say that we don't have to wait and should
not wait until glory to start singing the song of the redeemed now.
We as Christians should be singing the glories of God on a daily basis.
And this is especially true of our church services.
We need to make sure that our songs are actually about God and his wonderful works and what
he has done and the salvation that we have in Christ and not about us.
This is how a lot of people get it wrong these days.
There are a lot of songs these days.
If you pay attention to them, they're like, hold on a second, you never even said Jesus's
name.
Or it looks like a lot of songs today and I'll be critical for a second, even though I said
I wasn't going to do that this year, just for a second.
It looks like they took a Bible and they flipped open and they found one religious word and
they put it in the song and then they just coupled it with another religious word, even
though they don't go hand in hand at all.
They don't go together at all, but they put them together.
Or you'll have what I like to call the Jesus is my boyfriend songs where it's like you
could take Jesus's name out and put your boyfriend's name in there and the song doesn't
change.
That's a problem.
Okay.
If that song still works like that, that's a problem.
We need to make sure our songs are biblical, that they're rooted in Scripture and that they
talk about the grace of God in Christ, the salvation that is in Christ and the judgment
that is to come because God is even glorified in judgment.
You read the Bible and the Bible says that salvation and judgment go together.
You think about the cross and almost everybody thinks about the cross as purely a symbol
of salvation, but was it not also a picture of judgment?
God was judging Jesus for our sins.
He made him to be sin who knew no sin so that in him we might become the righteousness of
God.
And so that was an act of judgment and salvation at the same time because they go together.
And if you're not singing these songs now, if you're not praising God daily for what
he has done for us in Christ, I like to tell people like this.
If you are not singing the songs of the redeemed now, you should not expect to be singing them
later.
A lot of people think that, oh, I just believe in Jesus or I go to church sometimes so one
day I'm going to get to heaven and everything's going to change like that and all of a sudden
I'm going to love God a whole lot more than I think I do now.
That's not the way it works.
Folks, if you don't love God now, you're not going to love him then.
If you're not glorifying God now, you're not going to glorify him then.
If you're not singing these songs of praise now, you're not going to be part of that group
that sings it then.
But here's my question to you, another question to you.
Why else do you think the Bible is referencing Moses here?
What's the point with bringing Moses up?
He's the one who brought the people out of slavery.
Think about another connection here.
What is God about to unleash on the earth?
Michael, I look like you got it.
The Egyptian plagues, that's right.
So just as God brought about 10 plagues upon Egypt, he's going to bring seven plagues upon
the earth and so that's the connection of Moses there and next week the chart I have
for you is going to show how the seven seals, the seven bowls and the 10 plagues all align
in what they're doing.
And so you see that's the reason he's bringing it up here.
And I want to ask you, what is the relationship between the trumpets and the bowls?
What's the relationship?
We've talked about the trumpets.
Now we're about to talk about the bowls next week.
What's the relationship between the trumpets and the bowls?
Courtney?
Yep.
Okay.
And how did the two go together, do we think?
Okay.
What about the purpose?
Okay.
Yeah, Cayley, that's good.
The trumpet is the warning and the bowl is the finality.
That's how these two are working together.
If you read about the trumpets again, it's very clear that they serve as a warning of
the final judgment that is to come.
And people are still affected by the various calamities that come with the trumpets, but
the Bible says that their reach is only to a third of their domain.
However, the bowls are all encompassing.
Notice what it's saying here.
It's saying the bowls are all encompassing.
They utterly destroy all that they touch.
I do think that we see both of these things happening in history and playing out in history,
but here's what I want to make clear to you this evening.
What might be a trumpet to one person could very easily be a bowl to a different person.
In other words, since the events of the trumpets and the bowls are so similar, it's possible
that one is a warning call to someone, but it's a final act of judgment to another person.
And so it's possible that you can have one event and God is using that one event to warn
someone to turn from their sins because this is the judgment that is to come.
You still have time.
You need to repent.
You need to turn.
But for another person, that same event could be God saying your time is over.
This is your, you've had your time.
You had enough time to repent and now comes the judgment.
And this is exactly what we see throughout the Old Testament, right?
You read the Old Testament and God constantly draws a line in the sand and he says, hey,
if you cross this line, that's it.
There is no turning back from this.
God gives people a certain amount of time to repent and if they don't repent, he brings
judgment.
We saw that in our King's series over summer.
You remember the Amalekites?
Do we need to have another go at that passage where God said, hey, utterly destroy everyone
and devote them all to destruction?
You all remember that?
And people got kind of upset that God would do something like that.
But the whole point was that God had given them years and years and years to repent of
their sins, but instead they continued in the rebellion.
They continued in their sin.
They refused to repent.
And so God said, okay, your time's up.
This was the amount of time you had to repent.
You've exceeded that.
Now comes the judgment.
And so that's why he told Saul, devote them all to destruction.
And I think the same is true today, that God gives all people a certain amount of time
to repent and we don't know what amount of time that is for us.
But he sounds these trumpets as a warning and a taste of the final judgment that is to
come.
But when that warning is done, he's going to pour out the bowl of his wrath and that's
it.
And that's how we're going to go going back at that point.
And as I said, I do think we see examples of this in our world today.
And I'll just show you, just show you one.
If we can pull up Revelation chapter 8.
If you have your Bibles, you can turn there.
It'll be on the screen.
Revelation chapter 8, the verses 6 to 11.
I want to just show you how we might see these trumpet warnings in our world today.
The Bible says, now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them.
The first angel blew his trumpet and there followed hail and fire mixed with blood.
And these were thrown upon the earth and a third of the earth was burned up.
And a third of the trees were burned up and all green grass was burned up.
The second angel blew his trumpet and something like a great mountain burning with fire was
thrown into the sea.
And a third of the sea became blood.
A third of living creatures in the sea died and a third of the ships were destroyed.
And the third angel blew his trumpet and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like
a torch and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water.
The name of the star is wormwood, which just means bitter.
And a third of the waters became wormwood and many people died from the water because
it had been made bitter.
Now, if you'll remember when we studied that section together, I told you that I think
wildfires are a possible explanation for what we see here.
People often act like wildfires are just a natural disaster that happens.
And actually, I think very often, while some of them could just be natural disasters in
a fallen world, I think very often we're discounting what is clearly an act of God's
judgment upon a place for their sinful rebellion against him and his ways.
And I think, just to give you one example, might feel like I'm going to pick on for a
little bit, kind of am.
For instance, between the years of 2017 and 2020, California experienced some of its worst
wildfires in its entire history as a state.
And this was also the period of time, if you'll remember your political history, where California
went way off the rails politically.
I mean, this was the time when they were trying to get Christian books banned if those Christian
books told something other than the LGBT agenda or talked down about abortion or things like
that.
Anything that didn't align with their political values, they were literally trying to ban books
in their state that were going with the Bible.
You also remember a lot of policies they put forward at this time, becoming a sanctuary
state, all this kind of stuff, all sorts of stuff that sent them to the far left.
They're probably the farthest left state in the entire United States at this point.
And not only are they just doing things that are technically illegal and go against our
government, but clearly unbiblical and go against God.
I mean, this is a state that is an active rebellion against God, and the state's leaders
are in active rebellion against God.
And so notice what's happening here.
These verses describe a mountain burning with fire, the sea becoming like blood, and the
waters becoming bitter.
Mazzon, can you pull up?
I tried to include a picture here.
So this is a picture of California wildfires, and what you see is a mountain burning with
fire.
And picture two, Mazzon, this was another one, the atmosphere had been so affected by the
wildfires that not only is the sky red, but the water appears to be like blood while the
mountain burns.
And not only that, but there was a report that found that the drinking water in California
at this time had become so polluted by the wildfires that it was undrinkable.
They told people to stop drinking anything other than bottled water because it had become
contaminated and people died from drinking contaminated water, just as the Bible says
people would die by drinking the waters here because the fires had made them bitter.
Now here's what I want to happen, all right?
I'm going to make myself very, very clear here.
I'm not saying that California having wildfires is the fulfillment of Revelation 8.
Did everybody hear me say that because I'm not about to be put on YouTube or clipped
out of context, I'm not one of those preachers, right?
I'm not saying California wildfires are the fulfillment of Revelation 8, but what I am
saying is they are a fulfillment of Revelation 8.
So just to make this even more clear, God did not write this specifically for California,
but he certainly had California in mind when he inspired these words because he is sovereign
and he knew that one day they would be an active rebellion against him.
He knew that they would refuse to repent.
He knew that they would not heed any of the warning signs.
And so this is what a trumpet looks like in our world today, folks, a mountain burning,
sea looking like blood, water becoming contaminated and killing people and people chalk it up
to a natural disaster because they refuse to acknowledge God even though this is a clear
warning from God described in his word saying, turn from your sins, repent of your sins before
it's too late because one day this isn't going to be a trumpet.
One day this is going to be a bowl.
And when it's a bowl, that means there is no time for repentance left, but the time is
done.
So again, it's not the fulfillment, it's a fulfillment of what we see here and it's
something that they should heed.
And I think the reason I say that it's a trumpet rather than a bowl is again because the Bible
says that the trumpets affect a third of whatever they touch, their domain, whereas the bowl
is all-encompassing.
So here's just another little interesting fact for you to chew on about this whole topic.
Although statistics vary, it's generally agreed that since California became a state approximately
20 to 30% of its total land mass has been burned up by wildfires.
Now here's where it gets even more interesting.
California is setting a record pace this year for wildfires.
According to an article in the LA Times just earlier this month, they reported that California
wildfires up to this point have burned up 20 times as much land this year as at the same
time last year.
The article goes on to say that if California continues, the wildfires continue at this pace
for the remainder of wildfire season, California is projected to lose approximately 5% of their
total land mass due to wildfires this year.
And if you're keeping track at home, that would put the total amount of land burned
up in California since they became a state at between 25 to 35%, which is approximately
a third.
So again, I'm not saying anything, I'm just putting statistics and data in front of you
and I'm going to let you draw your own conclusions.
But what I want you to see is that these things are happening.
I know we like to look at revelation and there's so many people who look at revelation, they
say, that's some time in the way for our future.
That's going to be hundreds of years from now.
And I'm trying to get you to open your eyes and see this is going on now.
The trumpets are already sounding.
God is warning people all around the world today to repent of their sins, turn from their
sins and trust in Him because one day it's not going to be a trumpet anymore.
One day it's going to be a bowl.
And so let me tell you what that means for us, just to tie this back together.
For you, it means you need to make sure you heed the trumpets warning.
Personally, yeah, you need to pay attention.
You need to heed the warning of the trumpet and you need to make sure that you're repenting
of your own sins, that you're turning from your sins and that you are clinging to Christ
with everything that you have.
You need to make sure that your hope is not misplaced, that you're not trusting in something
that you do or your own good works, but that every bit of your trust and hope and faith
is in Christ alone.
But then we need to make sure we're telling other people what these trumpets mean because
we can't expect an unbelieving world to know what these signs mean.
I mean, just think about like a hospital room, right?
I've been in a lot of hospital rooms and you've probably been in some too and you know that
you're in a hospital room.
I've been in them before where all of a sudden alarm, some sort of an alarm will start going
off and I immediately start panicking because I'm like, I don't know what that means.
I don't know if the machine's breaking down, if this person's dying right in front of me.
And then thankfully a doctor or a nurse will come in and they'll comfort me by telling
me what the sound actually means and most of the time it's just a normal sound that
the machine makes.
But I would have no way of knowing that because I'm not a doctor.
So I need someone who understands what that means to tell me what that means.
Do you get where I'm going with this?
When we see this type of thing as a Christian, we should see this and go, God is sounding
in his trumpets.
He is warning the world and the nation and you could say, was COVID a plague from God
and was that a trumpet sound from God trying to get people to repent?
And he put that especially on America because we're a corrupt nation who's far from God.
We're a godless nation.
Maybe that's a conversation for another day.
But yes, possibly when we see these things though, we can recognize them because God
has given us his word and we read his word, but we cannot expect an unbelieving world
to recognize the sound of a trumpet that they don't know anything about.
It's up to us to go and tell them.
It's up to us when we're having conversations with our family members at those get-togethers
or our coworkers or our friends and they're making comments about California wildfires
or coronavirus or all these sorts of things we see in our world today.
And they just think, man, the world's kind of messed up.
You say, no, this is the judgment of God upon an unbelieving, rebellious people who refuse
to repent of their sins.
That's what we have to tell them.
We have to tell them that so that they know that.
And then we have to tell them to repent of their sins and to turn to Christ before it's
too late because everybody has a time period.
And we don't know what that is.
I don't know what my time period is.
Praise the Lord that I repented within that time period and God honored that.
But we don't know what it is for unbelievers.
You don't know what it is for your unbelieving friends or family members or people that you
have in your life who are your loved ones.
We don't know.
And so we need to tell them to repent before it's too late because one day that trumpet
is going to be a bowl.
And at that point, that's the end.
Are we good?
Everybody got it?
Sweet.
We'll jump into Revelation 16 next week.
I promise to have you a nice little chart that you'll probably throw away after this,
but I do encourage you to keep them because they take a little bit of time to make.
All right, Mike.