MONDAY
This week we come to the three sets of seven judgments revealed in the book of Revelation. These judgments are described as seven seals, seven trumpets and seven bowls. These are difficult on a number of fronts:
- They talk a lot of death and destruction. This is always a difficult topic to stomach and to square with God, who is love, and Christ, who gave up his life in love to redeem the people of God.
- There are numerous interpretations as to how we should understand these passages.
Let’s address the first difficulty, today, and the second we will address, tomorrow.
Let’s begin with the big picture, here. This helps us not to lose the forest through the trees and helps us to find meaning even if we don’t have all the details figured out. (This is also just how my mind works). The big idea of these three sets of seven, that basically everyone agrees on, is God’s perfect, complete, final, just punishment of evil.
The problem of evil is a problem that every worldview has to account for. Evil is the most empirically verifiable aspect of our existence, as we all have this innate sense that this world is not as it should be. We are confronted daily with sickness and death. We see and experience the most heinous of evils like abuse, murder, rape, slavery, and human trafficking. How do we make sense of all of this? The Christian worldview, it seems to me, provides the most real and hopeful answer to the problem of evil.
Revelation isn’t giving us a complete treatment of the problem of evil, so we won’t here. It does, however, reveal the end of evil. God will eradicate evil from his good creation through acts of divine judgment and justice. This statement can elicit one of two wrong responses from us:
- Discomfort
- Pleasure
We may cringe at the thought of God’s judgment, viewing it as something unsettling or even wrong in itself. To be frank, this response reveals our privilege and position of power. One commentator writes, “Often it is difficult for persons who have not been hopeless to understand how precious hope (and judgment, that is, justice) can be for those without hope.” (Slater , found in Revelation for the Rest of Us, p. 115). Powerless people who have been victimized by evil and evildoers cry out for justice, with no power to enact it themselves. Most never get it in this life. God’s final judgment gives them hope that, one day, true justice will be done. This gives all of us hope that one day evil will be vanquished.
The first readers of Revelation were powerless and hopeless, facing up against the persecution of the powerful Roman empire. They resonated with the prayers of the martyred saints:
Revelation 6:9–11 (ESV)
9 When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. 10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
The oppressed cry out for justice. This is God’s answer to their cries.
If we are to experience the full goodness of creation described in Revelation 21 and 22, evil must be dealt with. Praise God for his just judgments.
It is problematic to find pleasure, not in the elimination of evil or in the enactment of God’s justice to usher in his goodness, but in the destruction of evildoers. Of course these two go hand in hand. When God destroys evil he will also destroy those who do evil, but this is not to take pleasure in, this is to be mourned. We will see later in the letter that even after God’s judgments, many will refuse to repent. This is tragic and we should mourn for them, wishing that they would repent and find the grace and mercy of God to escape his righteous wrath, yet submitting to God’s just decisions.
Ultimately we want God to be just and wrathful against evil. I would find it difficult if God were indifferent to the evil of this world.
What is the proper response to God’s just judgment? We must guard against the two responses above. We see glimpses of it in Revelation.
Revelation 15:2–4 (ESV)
2 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. 3 And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,
“Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty! Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations! 4 Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed.”
Revelation 16:4–7 (ESV)
4 The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. 5 And I heard the angel in charge of the waters say,
“Just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments. 6 For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!”
7 And I heard the altar saying, “Yes, Lord God the Almighty, true and just are your judgments!”
God’s judgments are just, righteous and true. God is holy and the only one who can enact perfect justice in his judgments. These texts give us hope that one day he will enact his judgments and eliminate the evil that plagues his good creation. God will do this. We are called to pursue justice, knowing that God will ultimately bring complete, perfect justice to creation.
These judgments are indeed what evildoers deserve, but apart from the grace and mercy of God in saving us, we are all under the wrath of God, staring his judgment in the face. So we respond in worship. Worship for God’s righteous, just judgments and his grace and mercy in sparing us from his judgments.
Reflection
Worship God for his just judgment and long for the day when he will eliminate evil from his good creation.