A Severe Mercy

I want to begin today’s message by making an absurd statement, and that is this: There is loving intent behind God’s judgment of sinful man. Now, I’d be the first to admit that it doesn’t make sense to us when we hear a statement like that. How is that possible? How can God love sinful people by pouring out His wrath upon them? This makes God sound sadistic, even evil, to say something like that. So how is it possible to see God’s loving intent behind His judgment of sinful man? Well, it has to do with His mercy.

God is merciful. And His mercy toward us finds its origin in His love for us. And the reason it finds its origin in His love for us has to do with our sinful condition. In other words, since every person has sinned against God, not one of us is worthy of pardon. Every person deserves only justice. And since God is just, He is bound by His holy nature to treat us as our sins deserve. And what we deserve, is death.

So, here’s where God’s love motivated Him to give mercy to unworthy sinners. Since there is nothing we can do to change our sin nature, God took it upon Himself to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He gave His Son Jesus to take the judgment we deserve, so that He could give us the righteousness of Jesus. The Bible says it this way: God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21.

God loved you so much that He gave His Son to die in your place so you would not have to die. So then, Jesus suffered the wrath of God for your sins, so that He could set you free from the penalty of death. Therefore, the death of Jesus reveals the severe mercy of God.

And it is this severe mercy that we’re going to see today as God begins pouring out His wrath on sinful mankind through the trumpet judgments of Revelation. In fact, if you brought your Bible with you today, I want to encourage you to find Revelation 8:6-13. For it is here that we’re going to see is how God’s judgment isn’t reckless anger, but an opportunity for mercy. We’re going to see how each judgment is God’s holy wake up call to turn away from sin and turn back to God. So, if you’ve found Revelation 8, let’s begin by recalling the background of these trumpet judgments.

Prior to the blowing of the First Trumpet, another angel had taken the prayers of all the saints, mixed them with incense and offered them on the golden altar before the throne of God. Once these prayers were accepted by God, we read that 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. Now the seven angels who had the seven trumpets prepared to blow them. Revelation 8:5-6 Now before the first trumpet is blown, there’s one more thing we need to understand. Each of these trumpet judgments are connected to the seal judgments of chapter 6. There are many scholars who teach that the trumpet judgments follow the seal judgments in a linear or historical progression; saying that the seal judgments come first, then they are followed by the trumpet judgments, which are then followed the bowl judgments. But that’s not what’s happening here.

Instead, with the trumpet judgments what we have is a parallel representation of similar scenes of judgment. G.K, Beale helps us understand the difference being emphasized here. He says, “The first five seals focused on the trials through which believers must pass, now the focus in the first six trumpets is on judgments which unbelievers, must endure.”

Here then is where we see the purpose of God’s severe mercy: These judgments will be poured out on sinful mankind to warn them of a greater judgment to come with the hopes that they will repent of their idolatrous and sinful ways. How do we know that this is the purpose of the trumpet judgments? At the end of Revelation 9, God’s Word summarizes sinful mankind’s refusal to repent. John records their response: 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. Revelation 9:20-21

So now as we come to the trumpet judgments, God is going to partially destroy the things sinful mankind trust in. And as He does, we are going to see similarities to the judgments God made against the gods of Egypt. So, let’s begin by looking now at

The first trumpet: 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. Revelation 8:7 There are two ways to look at this judgment. One is literally and the other symbolically. Literally, this judgment parallels God’s judgment of Egypt. In Exodus 9, we read of the plague of hail and fire that God inflicted on Egypt through Moses: “There was hail and fire…, such as had never been in all the land of Egypt… The hail struck down everything that was in the field in all of Egypt, both man and beast.” Exodus 9:24-25

Here, this trumpet judgment strikes not just one nation but the whole earth. If we take this literally, this judgment destroys a third of the earth’s surface. This is a devastating disaster that makes the Pacific Palisades fire look like a small brushfire. Grant Osbourne helps us see the devastating magnitude of such fires, saying: “We are supposed to picture one-third of all the great forests of the world (The Amazon, the Congo, Yosemite, Yellowstone) burned down. It is a natural disaster beyond anything imaginable. Think of all the firefighters of the world trying to stem fires thousands of times greater than anything ever known. God’s judgments in history not only will be destructive of the sources of life, but will be beyond what science, organization and human willpower can manage.” If these fires are literal, this will be a disaster of epic proportions as not just a third of our forests will vanish, but a third of our corn fields, hay and wheat fields, cotton and barely fields will be consumed by fire.

However, if we take this judgment “symbolically” then this fire and hail are figurative, and it simply tells us that a third of the world’s food supply will be wiped out. So, this judgment runs parallel to the famine of the third seal, where only some of the world’s food supplies are destroyed.

Whether this is a literal or figurative judgment, the result is the same. God is targeting man’s idol of self-sufficiency by causing massive food shortages to the world. Here is a perfect picture of God’s severe mercy. God is only punishing a third of the earth. In His mercy God is holding back His complete wrath against the physical resources of the world, so that man might repent and turn to God. But as we’ll soon see, humankind refuses to repent. That’s the first trumpet. Let’s look now at…
The second trumpet: 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 the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed. Revelation 8:8-9 Literally, this trumpet echoes the first of God’s plagues against Egypt, when Moses plunged his staff into the Nile River and made its waters turn to blood. As a result, the fish died, the water stank, and it could no longer be used for drinking. Likewise with this judgment, the seas no longer provide the economic resources on which the world depends, destroying a third of the fish and trading vessels.

However, the symbolic nature of this judgment finds its significance in the image of the vast mountain that’s set on fire and cast into the sea. This language comes from the book of Jeremiah, where the prophet refers to Babylon in this way. God calls Babylon a “destroying mountain… which destroys the whole earth” (Jeremiah 52:25). He then promises to “stretch out my hand against you… and make you a burnt mountain” (51:25), and then to destroy Babylon as though he had cast it into the sea (51:42).

The significance of this image of this burning mountain as representing Babylon; is that Babylon is symbolic of the evil world system of government that opposes God and seeks to have a hold over our lives. So, this judgment depicts God breaking the hold that these worldly powers hold over us so as to awaken us to the reality of the God who wants to set us free. But even though a third of the world’s governments fall under this judgment, humanity refuses to repent. They reject God’s wakeup call of severe mercy.

Which leads now to the blowing of The third trumpet: 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. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many people died from the water, because it had been made bitter. Revelation 8:10-11

As the third trumpet blows, a great, blazing star name “Wormwood” falls from heaven on a third of the rivers and springs. If we are to take this literally, a third of the world fresh water sources are poisoned, and many die as a result. This judgment is both a parallel to the first Egyptian plague that contaminated the fresh water supply and a reversal of the experience of the children of Israel in the wilderness at Marah, where the Lord made bitter water undrinkable.

But much weight is placed on the symbolic nature of this judgment. This time the fireball is a great star… burning like a torch. As a symbol it refers to an angelic being representative of an earthly person or kingdom. The picture goes back to Isaiah 14:12-15, where Babylon’s guardian angel is pictured as a star cast down from heaven into a pit.

The star is called “Wormwood,” and those reading this description would immediately recognize God was judging them for their sin. For the term “wormwood” is a biblical catchphrase for the consequences of sin in ruining all of life. God spoke this way in Jeremiah about the spiritual consequences of runaway sin. “I will feed this people with bitter food and give them poisonous water to drink.” Jeremiah 9:15

Again, this is the severe mercy of God. Here God is judging the idolatrous powers of the earthly leaders, whether they be Babylon, Rome, Nazi Germany, Communist Russia, or secularist America. But instead of seeing God’s judgment as an opportunity to repent, mankind grows increasingly bitter. Instead of taking their suffering as a wakeup call to turn back to God, their bitterness makes them double down in their hatred of God. God is merciful, but they refuse to come to Him to find mercy. So next God releases the fourth angel to blow…

The fourth trumpet: The fourth angel blew his trumpet, and a third of the sun was struck, and a third of the moon, and a third of the stars, so that a third of their light might be darkened, and a third of the day might be kept from shining, and likewise a third of the night. Revelation 8:12 As the fourth trumpet sounds, a third of the starry heavens are darkened with an accompanying effect of darkness on the earth. This plague looks back to the ninth plague in Egypt when God judged the greatest of Egypt’s gods, Ra, the sun God.

This fourth plague confirms that we are not to seek a literalistic fulfillment of these trumpets, since the idea of only part of the sun and moon shining, together with a third of the day and night, does not make sense of the physical world. Some have sought to link this plague to a great eclipse, or volcanic ash covering the sun. But this is not what the fourth trumpet describes.

So, if we are to take it symbolically, what does this darkness mean? Well, for the Jews, they interpreted the plague of darkness in Exodus symbolically in this way: as a spiritual, cultural, or mental darkness. A darkness characterized by fear, terror, hopelessness and depression.
And that makes sense, for darkness is specifically associated in the Bible with God’s abandonment. So, when a judgment sign of darkness comes it indicates His removal of Himself from a situation for blessing. Since God is light, and light is life, when God abandons, all that is left is darkness and death. That is why darkness it is such a severe sign of His judgment.

But with this particular judgment God is only shrouding mankind in partial darkness… with the hope that it will plunge mankind into such a deep sense of despair that they will see the futility of their sin and idolatry; turn away from their sin and turn to God. So, indeed this darkness will cause fear, despair and depression. But this judgment is not final. It is only meant to warn mankind of a coming day when the darkness of HIs judgment will be total. That’s why it’s so severe. And that is why there is loving intent behind God’s judgment of sinful man. Because God doesn’t want anyone to face His final judgment. Scripture is clear on this. Peter wrote it this way: God is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9

So let me just say this. The fact that God’s judgment of darkness is only partial is actually the good news in this passage. For if darkness is the absence of God and His blessing, then this partial judgment tells us that there is hope for idolatrous, sinful and rebellious people. God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. That’s why God sent Jesus to rescue us. For Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” John 8:12 So when you turn from your sin and trust in Jesus, you don’t just get rescued from the darkness, you don’t’ just get removed from God’s wrath, you are welcomed into the kingdom of light. And that’s not just good news, it’s great news, and it’s found in Jesus!

Now, you would think my message would end right here. But God’s message doesn’t end here. It concludes with what I would call The Trumpet’s Summoning: So, let’s see what that’s all about: Then I looked, and I heard an eagle crying with a loud voice as it flew directly overhead, “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! Revelation 8:13 What we have here is an interlude between the first four trumpets and the final three trumpets – the final three woes coming upon sinful man. The image of the eagle flying above the world, circling for prey like a vulture, cries out with another warning. And that warning is that these judgments to come will be far more intense and are sent to warn mankind of the consequences of their continued rebellion to God.

But as we close with the eagle’s warnings of the woes yet to come, the warnings of the four trumpet judgments in this passage make three things vividly clear for us:

First, We can be certain that God will judge sin, but His judgments always leave room for mercy. In other words, God takes sin seriously and will do whatever it takes to get our attention to get us to repent of our sin. If that means destroying all the things we put our trust in order to get our attention – this passage shows how He will do that. And yet at the same time this passage shows His compassion for our sinful condition, revealing that our God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

Secondly. God is determined to deliver us from worldly oppression. With the second and third trumpet judgments, we see how much God hates the evil world system and the worldly leaders who seek to hold us captive and ruin our lives with sin. So, we have learned today, that these judgments aren’t just meant to destroy these powers, but are meant to free us from the oppression of idolatry and sin.

Finally, in the angel’s trumpet blasts we hear our own call to arms. Just as the trumpets of Joshua summoned God’s people to knock down the walls of Jericho, these trumpet blasts remind us to keep on living by faith under God’s rule in a world that’s not our home. They remind us to keep on lifting our hearts in worship, no matter what restrictions the world may place on us. And they remind us to keep on loving one another, so that we might shine our light in the midst of this present darkness.

So yes, even though the judgments of God poured out through these four trumpets are harsh, catastrophic and destructive; what we’ve seen today is not the reckless anger of God, but a holy wake up call to turn back to the God who loves us.

That’s the heart of the Gospel. And why God sent His Son to take the punishment you deserve. For the Bible says, Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:3-5
Perhaps today, these trumpet judgments are a good reminder of what God has saved you from. But they are also a reminder of what God has saved you for. For we have the good news our world needs, so they can be rescued from the domain of darkness and brought into the kingdom of light through faith in Jesus. So let us be thankful for God’s severe mercy. But let us remember those who are still lost in the darkness and bring them God’s light.