Revelation 15:1-8

October 25, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 25:05 in the audio file.

Or, The Final Strains of Justice

Series: Just Conquer Part 42

Introduction

Imagine living in a world hostile to Christianity, in which not just friendships, but financial opportunities were lost because of being public about one’s faith. Imagine a world that lied about where real glory was, where political leaders portrayed themselves as saviors and tribes formed according to public loyalties. Imagine a world happy to call evil, good and to call good, evil.

If you can imagine that sort of world then you have crossed the chronological bridge to the first-century world in which John wrote and in which the churches lived. It also means that you can picture what it will be like in the last days. One of the reasons you probably didn’t even need to use a lot of creative gas is because our experience gets us pretty far. The present evil age is as evil as ever; evil is like a fountain that keeps on flowing.

John wrote for just such a day as this. While the majority of the unveiling is yet to occur in real time, it has, and has since he wrote it, had immediate relevance. Through John God has promised blessing to all who would read and keep the words of this prophecy, and we’re coming up on two millennia of application.

The suffering, marginalized, minority of Christians had reason not only to carry on but to conquer. They had it hard, and the visions saw it getting harder. There were heresies within, and governmental attacks without. And yet the visions that John shared showed them not only those who would hold on but those who would belt out in song.

Revelation 15 introduces us to the final series of seven judgments. All seven seals on the scroll have been broken open, from which the seven trumpets have been blown. The seventh trumpet leads to the handing over and pouring out of these bowls of God’s wrath. We meet the seven angels who are commissioned by God to dump out the bowls, and we learn that this is it, the end, and the windup of God’s wrath. In between we hear the saints singing.

The chapter has three “And I saw”s, with the focus on the middle one. Interrupting what verse 1 introduced, the center “saw” is the Song of Moses and the Song of the Lamb. These are the final strains (which has a perfect combination of meanings, with struggle of pulling tight and then the sound of stringed instruments) of justice. God will be glorified in praise and He will be praised for righteous deeds.

A Great and Marvelous Sign (verse 1)

There are only three “signs” called as such in the Apocalypse: the woman clothed with the sun (12:1), the red dragon (12:3), and here in 15:1. The woman was a “great sign,” the next sign was of a “great dragon,” but here John “saw another sign in heaven, great and (marvelous).” The same two adjectives describe the works of the Almighty Himself in verse 3.

The great and amazing sign in verse 1 is of “seven angels with seven last plagues,” and they are called the “last” “(because) the wrath of God is completed in them.”

We’re used to the sevens. There are so many sevens in the Apocalypse that many readers muddle them together, especially the seven seals, trumpets, and bowls. The seven plagues presented in chapter 15 are similar to the previous, but they are not identical.

Consider: the sevens have been presented in sequence, one following another. Is the counting just for emotional affect, or to unveil order? The sevens have increased in intensity; the bowl judgments affect all the earth, not merely a quarter or a third. Are the differences in ratios meant to be poetic alternatives, or to unveil escalation? In addition, nowhere has John (or an angel from heaven) explicitly connected them, “this (seal) is like this (trumpet/bowl)[...]