Judgment! (Revelation 8:1-9:21)

Big Idea: If you don’t know Christ, repent because judgment is coming. If you do know Christ, rejoice because judgment is coming.

What is the hardest part of Revelation?

You would think that the hardest part of Revelation is understanding it. There are so many things that are hard to understand and interpret in Revelation. You have different interpretative grids:

• Preterists, who interpret Revelation in relation to first-century events
• Historicists, who see Revelation as a chronological description of church history from the first century to the end of time
• Futurists, who see most events as happening in the future, just before Christ's return
• Idealists, who emphasize spiritual lessons and principles rather than specific historical or future events
• And then people who blend all of these views

That’s not all. You also have different millennial views, what different numbers like 144,000 or 666 mean, how to interpret the symbolism we find in Revelation.

But I would argue that, although all of these are hard, they are not the hardest thing about Revelation. Ian Hales suggests that this is the hardest part of Revelation:

I would argue that it's the reality of what many think is an overly harsh reaction on the part of God.
The greatest struggle that people tend to have, not only with this book, but with God in general, is what we see right here. The unrelenting display of divine wrath and judgment on the world of unbelievers and idolaters… It shocks people. They can't comprehend that God would do something like this…
It's a hard concept to wrap our minds around. I mean, what kind of a God does this to the world that he created?

I agree. The most challenging aspect of Revelation is its harsh divine judgment, which conflicts with our understanding of God as loving.

Introducing Revelation 8-9

We’re continuing our series through Revelation. Revelation reveals what’s really happening in the world. In Revelation, we get a view of Jesus who reigns over all. Human governments aren’t in control; God is, and he’s executing his judgments, delivering his people, and will one day welcome them into his eternal home.

But today, we’re in the middle of the book, which is about God’s judgment. I want you to notice the repeated cycles of judgment in Revelation:

• In Revelation 6:1-8:1 we have the seven seals
• In Revelation 8:7-11:18 we have seven trumpets
• In Revelation 15:5-16:21 we have seven bowls

In each of these cycles, God brings his judgment on the world. In each of these cycles, there’s a similar pattern of seven: 4, followed by 2 with more detail, followed by 1. With both the seals and the trumpets, you have a long interlude between the sixth seal and trumpet and the seventh.

In other words, these seem to be parallel. Rather than seeing them as consecutive, one happening after the other, it seems that these are parallel, describing the same period but from different perspectives. They’re replays, as it were, showing the same thing from different perspectives, but each intensifying. Each shows us the same period, spanning from Christ's ascension to his glorious return.

We Need Judgment!

To really understand this passage, you have to understand how it piggybacks on an earlier story in the Bible.

In the book of Exodus, God’s people were in captivity. Things kept getting worse for them, so they cried out to God for relief from their captives. We read:

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew. (Exodus 2:23-25)

This is an incredibly comforting passage. In response to the prayers of God’s people, God heard them. What did he do? God began to execute judgment against the Egyptians through plagues. Why did he do this? Three reasons: to reveal himself as God, to save his people, and to judge the wicked.

He did this so Israel would know that he is God, and that Egypt would know that he is God.

The plagues showed God's power over different parts of creation and challenged the authority of Egyptian gods. The plagues increased in severity. In the end, God revealed himself, saved his people, and judged the wicked.

Why is this important as we look at Revelation 8 and 9? In the first five verses of Revelation 8, God’s people cry out to him for judgment:

And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. (8:3-4)

God’s people cry out to God for relief in this wicked world. And just like in Exodus, their cry for rescue came up to God. And God heard their groaning, God remembered his covenant. God saw, and God knew.

Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake. (8:5)

And what does he do? He sends plagues. Seven angels sound seven trumpets of warning:

• Trumpet 1 in 8:7 sends hail and fire on earth, and mirrors the seventh plague in Exodus in which God sends hail and fire on the earth (9:22–25).
• Trumpet 2 in 8:8-9 turns water into blood, leading to the loss of a third of the sea creatures and a third of ships. It mirrors the first plague in Exodus, in which God turned the water into blood (7:14-19).
• Trumpet 3 in 8:10-11 leads to water becoming contaminated and bitter, again mirroring the first plague in Exodus (7:14-19).
• Trumpet 4 in 8:12 leads to a third of the light from the sun, moon, and stars being darkened. It mirrors the ninth plague in Exodus that made it pitch dark in Egypt (10:21-23).

Then you get an eagle flying overhead in 8:13, saying, “Woe, woe, woe to those who dwell on the earth, at the blasts of the other trumpets that the three angels are about to blow!” In the Hebrew Scriptures, eagles often serve as powerful symbols of impending destruction. Here, the eagle signals that the final three trumpets are especially bad, and indeed they are. They’re universal, strike directly at unbelievers rather than the environment, and involve demons.

• Trumpet 5 in 9:1-12 involves the abyss being opened, with demonic locusts tormenting people for five months. It parallels the eighth and ninth plagues in Exodus 10:12–15, 21–23.
• Trumpet 6 in 9:13–19 involves demonic angels killing a third of mankind along with a massive hostile cavalry of 200 million horses, a thousand times the size of Rome’s army at the time. It results in the death of a third of humanity.

God’s judgment is terrifying!

The seventh trumpet comes later, but first we get an explanation for all of these plagues in verses 20-21:

The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands nor give up worshiping demons and idols of gold and silver and bronze and stone and wood, which cannot see or hear or walk, nor did they repent of their murders or their sorceries or their sexual immorality or their thefts.

The reason God sent these plagues was to get people to repent of their wickedness, but they didn’t. When we planted a church, we found that the people who were open to God had faced some kind of tragedy. Their lives had fallen apart. They had been shaken to the core, and so they looked to God for help.

This is what these plagues were intended to do, but they clung stubbornly to their sin and missed out on the grace that could have been theirs.

Three Lessons

What do we learn from all of this? Three things.

First, you need a category for God as judge.

In this passage, we see an unrelenting display of divine wrath and judgment on the world of unbelievers and idolaters. The extent and intensity of what is described here shocks people. They can't comprehend that God would do something like this.

Earlier on I quoted Ian Hales. He asked, “What kind of God does this to the world that he created?” Here’s his answer: “Only a holy God… He is perfect, he is righteous. There is no sin or evil in him. God is good… God is only good because God is just.”

If you don’t have a category for God as a judge, you don’t have an accurate understanding of who God is. Can you see God as not just a Father and friend, but also as one who hates sin and will judge evil? Do you have a category for the wrath of God? A.W. Pink points out that there are more references in Scripture to the anger, fury, and wrath of God than to his love and tenderness.

2 Thessalonians 1 says that the Lord will appear “with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might” (2 Thessalonians 1:7–9). God will reveal his righteous judgment against sin. Our God is a consuming fire (Hebrews 12:29). Again, A.W. Pink says, “Our readiness or our reluctancy to meditate upon the wrath of God becomes a sure test of how our hearts really stand affected towards him.”

If you don’t understand the holy wrath of a just God who judges sin, let me suggest that you don’t really understand God.

Second lesson from this passage:

If you do know Christ, rejoice, because judgment is coming.

This passage tells us that God hears your prayers. Just as God heard the cry for rescue from slavery of his people in Egypt, just as he heard their groaning, remembered his covenant, just as he saw and knew, God hears your prayers as well and judges the world as a result of what you pray.

Sometimes it feels like our prayers don’t matter. Don’t ever believe that. God is attentive "to his people who cry out to him for justice and relief… He is not too busy to pause and take note of their plight. And though his answer may seem a long time in coming, according to his own wise timetable, he will not neglect their cries” (Buist M. Fanning).

As Jesus said:

Will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:7-8)

Rejoice that God has heard your prayers, that he will judge evil, that he will set the world right, and that you are completely safe in him because your faith and hope are in Jesus.

Third lesson:

If you don’t know Christ, repent because judgment is coming.

This passage has given you a clear view of God as the just judge who will judge all evil. It’s also given you a clear view of his intent: that you would turn from your sins and trust in Jesus and avoid the judgment that is still to come.

God’s judgment will come. Why not change? Why not put your trust in a Savior who came to deliver you from your sins and from the judgment to come? Turn to him today and live.