Word of Salvation – Vol.46 No.17 - May 2001

 

The Seven Bowls

 

Sermon by Rev L Douma on Revelation 15 & 16

Scripture Reading: Revelation 15 & 16

 

Beloved in the Lord...

As we read through our text, you may have sensed something familiar, a sense of having been here before.  John tells us (in Chapter 15:1) that seven angels are about to bring seven plagues on the earth.  These seven plagues, poured out of seven bowls are judgments of God.

Twice before John has taken us through the whole range of God’s judgments.  Remember the seven seals and the seven trumpets.  Each time John was telling us what goes on throughout human history and something of what will happen at the end of time.

Now he is doing it again.  But this time there is a difference, a sense of finality, a definite stress on these being the “last plagues” – with these God’s judgment is complete (cf Chapter 1).  The seven seals revealed God’s judgment for the first time.  The seven trumpets sounded a warning.  The purpose of the catastrophes and dreadful locusts was to have people repent and believe.

But these seven bowls pour out a wrath that no longer gives time for repentance.  Time’s up.  God executes His final justice.  That’s why John sees it as a “great and marvellous sign”.  Because with the outpouring of the bowls, the evil and wrong in the world will be gone.  The dragon and the beast will have been completely destroyed.

Now before John deals with the seven bowls in Chapter 16, he first makes some preliminary remarks here in Chapter 15, just as he did with the seals (heaven looks for one worthy to open the scroll) and the trumpets (the prayers of the saints before the altar in heaven).  John gives us a vision of the heavenly setting out of which the plagues are sent.  God’s judgment has a context, and that context is grace.

Notice how John saw (vs 2) “...what looked like a sea of glass mixed with fire and standing beside the sea those who had been victorious over the beast.”  This picture of the victors beside the sea, as well as the “song of Moses and the Lamb” they sing, reminds us of the Israelites going through the Red Sea.  For the Israelites it was the way of salvation.  But for the Egyptians who were about to annihilate them, it was the way of judgment.  God used the Red Sea to totally destroy them.

The redeemed people of God, standing on the water’s edge, seeing the terrible destruction, celebrated with song (Exodus 15 – the song of Moses and Miriam), praising God for His salvation, His justice, His power.  So here, now, the people of God who remained faithful to Jesus and did not follow the ways of the beast, they are described as looking at the terrible destruction caused by the seven bowls and singing.  They sing the song of Moses and the Lamb (vss.3-4).

The words bring out the same points that Moses’ song did in Exodus 15.  That God is Almighty, nothing can stop Him.  God is Holy, before whom all nations must come and worship.  God is just and true, His acts are righteous.  To save Israel He had to destroy Egypt.  The Exodus is a “picture” of God’s saving work through Jesus Christ.  Jesus delivers us from the power of sin and evil.

But we cannot be completely saved until sin and evil is destroyed.  That is what is shown in chapter 16 – sin and evil is destroyed.  That's why God's people celebrate in song.  You notice that they "held harps given them by God”.  Everything they have is from God.  Salvation is completely by grace.  God's people would never have remained faithful and "been victorious over the beast" unless God had kept them safe in Christ's work.

After the song, John sees the heavenly temple open and seven angels of devastation emerge.  Now you notice (vs 5) that the temple is described as “the tabernacle of the Testimony".  That's a reference to the time Israel was in the desert.  The tabernacle was the sign of God's presence.  So John is saying that these angels with the destruction in their hands come from the presence of God.  They have a divine commission.  This is God's doing.

You can tell also by their clothes.  Robes of linen, pure and shining, imply the sacredness of their office.  Golden girdles are symbolic of royal and priestly functions.  So their awesome task is not a dreadful evil.  It’s a task that is of a pure concern for justice, for what is right.

The bowls are handed to the seven angels by one of the four living creatures.  They have their place very close to God’s throne.  So they are given out with full divine sanction.  This is God’s will.  It’s His doing.  The bowls are “filled with the wrath of God”.  Nothing will stop His wrath being poured out.

We notice (vs 8) that the temple was filled with smoke from God’s glory and power and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed.  In other words, the time for intervention of judgment is over.  Nothing, absolutely nothing, will stop what God has now decided will happen.  The opportunities to repent and believe are done away.  God’s time has come!

The fact that it is time is seen in Chapter 16:1, where a “loud voice from the temple” says to the seven angels, “Go...!”  “Go, pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.”  We notice that the first four bowls, like with the first four trumpets, form a unit of catastrophes on the creation.  In fact they are parallel with the trumpets.  First the earth, then the sea and rivers and finally the sky are struck in turn, just as it was with the trumpets.  But what we need to see is that there is a progression as we go from the seven seals to the seven trumpets to the seven bowls.  With the seals the destruction and death rate was one quarter.  With the trumpets, it is a third of all things that are affected.  But now, with the bowls, God’s wrath is completely poured out.

All of the land is affected by the first bowl as “ugly and painful sores broke out on the people.”  The entire sea is changed to blood with the second bowl.  It is the blood of a dead man, i.e., coagulated and stinking.  “Every living thing in the sea died” (vs.3).  Now all of the rivers and springs of water become blood and poisonous.  With the fourth bowl the sun scorches the (whole) earth.  The progression here gives us a message.  The events are not so much chronological, the seals, trumpets and bowls in sequence, one event after another.  They are more logical.  The seals tell us that, again and again, trouble will sweep the earth.  It’s part of living in a broken world.

From time to time God will cause immense suffering and tragedy, a result of the sin in the world.  They are to be seen as a warning, like saying – this is a taste of hell.  But if God’s warnings are not listened to, take note, He will in the end punish the unrepentant.  Throughout history God has been using all parts of His sin-cursed creation to bring warning.  And to bring judgment.  Many have not listened and have gone to hell.

But it must be said that the fulfilment of these seven bowls is at the end of time.  And how it will be then, at that time, and just what is meant by the sea turning to stinking blood, the sun scorching people, we cannot say with certainty.  But we can get a general idea of what is meant.

The first bowl affects the land.  It’s the earth that gives us human beings what we need for life – food, shelter, medicine.  The disaster on the land will be so bad that terrible disease breaks out over the whole earth.  There will be no drugs and medicine because they, too, come from the earth, which is now cursed and poisoned.

The sea will not provide what people need because it will have become a foul, stinking pool of blood.  Everything living in the sea will be dead.  The people will not be able to get a refreshing drink of water because all the fresh water sources are turned to blood.  All the comforts of life, all the necessities are gone.

To top it off, the sun’s heat is increased to such an extent that everything is scorched – people, animals, crops.  Nowhere in all creation is there comfort or help.  The whole world is filled with the “wrath of God.”

Now John tells us (vs 2) that this all occurs to “the people who had the mark of the beast and worshipped his image”.  The two beasts, remember, are government and false religion, ideologies, “world-views”, all done without God.  The beasts bring outward prosperity.  The people seem to have it all.  The beast is supreme.  Only those with the “mark of the beast” can buy and sell.  Those who are really faithful to Jesus can miss out on a lot.

But now with the “bowls” it makes clear that God is really the one who is supreme.  It’s not the beast who can determine, ultimately, who can buy and sell.  God is the one who determines who will enjoy His blessings.  God takes everything away from them.  Everything!  Just as the beast, the Antichrist, had done to God’s people, so now God in His justice does to them.  That is what the third angel makes clear.

John says he heard (vss.5-6) the angel say, “You are just in these judgments...for they have shed the blood of your saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink as they deserve”.  There is the sense of reaping what you sow.  If you want to have blood – then you can drink it – and drown in it.  If you want to live without God, then you shall – and this is what it is.

The reaction of the angel to God’s wrath is not one of commiseration, but it’s a recognition of divine justice.  If we find it all too awful and gruesome, unfair and dreadful, then we have not really understood the nature of sin, its wickedness, its rebellion against God.  As we said, there are no more warnings here.  The sin of the human race is coming home to roost.

What strikes us is that even though the unbelievers suffer this awful wrath of God, “they refused to repent and glorify God” (vs.9b).  In fact, they go on to curse God and rebel even more in the midst of their suffering.  What a terrible and solemn lesson this is.  It teaches clearly that absolutely nothing but the grace of God can break a sinner.  If the Spirit of God does not enter our lives and if the Word of God does not call us to Himself, then the warnings (trumpets) and the judgments (bowls) will only have the effect of hardening people in their sin.

Now, it’s not only the creation that gets hit with God’s wrath poured out of the bowls.  As with the fifth trumpet, so the fifth bowl turns up the screws.  God will punish the unrepentant by land and sea, by water and fire, but He will do more than this.  When the fifth bowl is poured out the entire human system is thrown into chaos.  That’s what it means when the fifth angel pours out his bowl on “the throne of the beast” (vs.10).

The beast, we said, was the government of the world that ruled under Satan’s direction.  That is Satan’s master stroke.  He took the good God created, like government, and perverted it to his own ends.  The second beast with the “two little horns, like a lamb” was the false religion, ideology, philosophy, all done in such a way that God is denied and man is supreme.  The two beasts together control all of life, science, the arts, commerce and industry, sport – all of life lived as if there is no God.  The world followed and worshipped the beast because (as we see with our economy and technology) he brought material prosperity, wealth, health – and a human arrogance of “we can do it”.

But now the fifth bowl is poured out on the beast, “and his kingdom is plunged into darkness”.  In other words, the beast’s glory wanes, he ceases to inspire, his authority is questioned.  The people used to worship him, but now they doubt what he can do.  With the dreadful disease everywhere, the sea and water, poisonous blood, the scorching sun – the beast can do nothing about it.  His so-called power and wisdom is not up to the task.

Cursing God and still refusing to repent – yet with a complete loss of hope in the beast as god – the people are left with no God, no object of hope and no meaning.  The fifth trumpet left people in “despair” and “wanting to die”.  Now with the fifth bowl they see their situation so hopeless that they “gnawed their tongues in agony.”  (Post-modernity??)

The sixth bowl is the next and last stage of God’s punishment.  We are told that when this bowl is poured out (vs.12) “the great river Euphrates, was dried up to prepare the way for the kings of the East”.  Remember the sixth trumpet showed how the horse and riders were released over the river and they killed a third of the people.  Same idea again – only now it’s the final punishment.  It is now a war of total destruction.

The “beast” does not refer to the Chinese, etc.  In John’s time it meant the warring nations outside the boundaries of Israel (and the Roman Empire).  With the river dried up, all obstacles are removed.  But ironically, we see that Satan also works towards God’s goal here.  There is a satanic agency at work, stirring up war (vs.13) - “three unclean spirits like frogs, coming out of the mouth of the dragon... the beast and... the false prophet.”  These three of course are Satan, anti-Christian government and the false religion.

The spirits are described as frogs, because, as slimy ugly creatures, and “unclean”, they were seen as evil in John’s day.  Coming out of the mouths of the rotten trio, they symbolise propaganda that stirs up hatred and anti-Christian, anti-God sentiment.  The devil is after a last ditch battle against God’s people.  But because of the lack of trust and hope in the beast, God uses these spirits to gather the nations for a great war.  Because the nations have lost faith in the beast there is a dreadful uprising against each other.  Satan gathers to destroy – and God says, “So you shall”.

But it is not the church that will be destroyed.  It’s the whole world that rebels against God that will be destroyed.  John says the place they gather for war is Armageddon.  There are many (strange) interpretations on what Armageddon is all about.  The best understanding is that Armageddon refers to the city of Megiddo, the ancient city lying on the north side of the Carmel ridge and commanding the strategic pass between the coastal plain and the valley of Esdraelon.  It is one of history’s famous battlefields, being on a strategic roadway between east and west.

It is here that Deborah led the Israelites against King Jabin and General Sisera.  The odds against Deborah and Israel were overwhelming.  But God Himself defeated the enemy.  So Armageddon is the symbol of every battle in salvation history in which, when the need was greatest and believers oppressed, God suddenly reveals his power, defeats the enemy and saves His people.  So in our text, as all the forces have come together, God deals with them all, completely, finally, on “the great day of God Almighty”  (vs.14b).  Armageddon is the end.

This is seen with the outpouring of the seventh bowl.  This is the climax.  Here we see utter destruction.  It is not said that all men will be killed.  They must still face God for judgment.  But this bowl does mean the complete destruction of earthly life.  The bowl is poured out into the air - which is the abode of the demons (Satan = “the ruler of the kingdom of the air”, Eph.2).  So they are attacked in their own element and destroyed.

John tells us that a great voice called out of the temple from the throne, “It is done” – “Finished”.  So Jesus had called from the cross after conquering hell.  Now it’s yelled out again: “Done”, “Finished”.  And, as if to demonstrate that there is the complete disintegration of the creation – lightning, thunder, severe earthquake as never seen before – the great city, Babylon, that which stood for human achievement, rebellion, pride, is completely shattered, split into three parts.  The world collapses as islands “fled away”, mountains “could not be found”, and hundred pound hailstones fell on people.

The outpouring of the last bowl sweeps away time and history and replaces them with eternity.  All sin and evil, human pride and arrogance is gone.  Justice is finally “done”.

This is what is to come.  Where Will you be on that day?  Are you ready for it?

You will notice the interjection I have not mentioned in verse 15.  Here it’s Jesus speaking.  He says “Behold I will come like a thief.  Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.”  Jesus says to us: don’t get caught with your pants down.  These happenings can come anytime now.

This call from Jesus brings us back to reality.  This vision is not just “pie in the sky”, some time long off.  We have to be ready now, today.  We have to come to Christ as Saviour and Lord – in repentance and faith.  And we have to discern what is going on around us now.  Because the signs are already here.  A world led by the beasts.  Are we living comfortably with their system?  Or are we praying, longing, ready – for justice?

Amen.