Holiness, Wrath, and Mercy
Ai Transcript
Mark Oshman (00:00.494)
Good morning. Good to see all your faces. feels maybe the overcast, you feel a little muted today. So I'm going to need you to help me out a little bit. Just a little. Give me a little bit more. Okay, so we're in Revelation, the last book of your Bible. If you have a Bible, you can begin to turn there. I'm going to read our passage this morning and then we will jump in. If you're just joining us, we're working our way through this last book.
as a encouragement to our souls. And so we're in Revelation chapter 15 and 16. I'll read chapter 15. It's just eight verses. As I read, ask you to listen carefully. This is God's Word.
John writes, Then I saw another sign in heaven, great and amazing, seven angels with seven plagues, which are the last for with them, the wrath of God is finished. 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.
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. Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify your name? For you alone are holy, and nations will come and worship you, for your righteous acts have been revealed. After this I looked, and the sanctuary of the Tent of Witness in heaven
was opened. And out of the sanctuary came the seven angels and the seven plagues clothed in pure white linen with golden sashes around their chests. And one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God who lives forever and ever. And the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power and
Mark Oshman (02:09.597)
No one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray. Father, now as we come under your word, I pray, Lord, that you would meet us in this space. Lord, you know every person here. You know every life circumstance they find themselves in. You know their past, present, and future.
And so Lord we ask now that you would give us what we have not. What we are not you would make us what we know not you would teach us for the glory of your name we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Well what do we do when we come once again to a passage that is hard or at least in our cultural moment and the cultural air that we breathe. What do we do with the hard passages. The passages that talk about.
God's wrath so openly and freely or what do you do with those passages maybe in the Old Testament that that are difficult to read and you kind of win said or or even the hard sayings of Jesus. You know we have a picture of Jesus in our mind but there are times in the Gospels where he says things and does things where you're like that doesn't seem very Christ like. What do you do with your Bible when it.
confronts your cultural narrative. I mean, I think there's some options that there is the option to ignore it, right? Like, let's just not go there. Let's you know, after all this, this book has a lot of words and and there's so many words and verses that that we do like we can throw them on t shirts and our coffee mugs, can go find them at Hobby Lobby. Not today. It's a Sunday, but you get the point, right? Like there's plenty here to just look at let's just kind of
Let's ignore that. The problem with that option is, well, the things that we do love, the words that we love, the phrases that we love, the sentences and verses that we love that talk about, for example, the mercy and the grace of God. you ignore the hard things and you just point to those, what actually happens is the mercy and grace of God gets muted. Those words actually lose their meaning. Mercy and grace and love, they lose their meaning.
Mark Oshman (04:35.804)
without some context. So I don't think we can ignore ignore them. so others will try to explain them away. They'll say things like, well, you know, God was different back then. You know, the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. He's he's come along a little bit. And maybe he's he's kind of progress. He's a progressive God. He's changed his view on things. He's adapted his sexual standards and all these things like that's a obviously a terrible option.
as well. We know God is unmutable. That means he's unchangeable. This book, Revelation, has told us on repeat that he is the Alpha and the Omega. He's the beginning and the end. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And so explaining away the verses and passes we don't like isn't helpful either. So what do we do? I think what we do is recognize that this word, all of it from beginning into end,
is God's Word. It is meant for us. It is actually for our good. And so we sometimes need to put in some work. We need to wrestle with that which kind of confronts us or confronts our own thoughts, our own desires for how we would want God to be and ask the question, well, why is God like this? Today I want to put in some work. We have been working our way through the book of Revelation and
If you're just joining us, it's this apocalypse in this apocalyptic genre. It talks about how the world is both past, present and future. But it does it in such a way as to reach us at a different level. So this book, Revelation, was written at the end of the first century to a church that was being persecuted, a church that was seeing family members dragged off and put to death because of their faith in Christ, a church that had
cultural pressure to compromise, to just go along with the flow so that they could get all the benefits and blessings of being in the Roman Empire. And so John gets this vision and he writes to churches to strengthen them, to show them there's actually a lot more going on than meets the eye. And the whole point of Revelation really is to give some strength, some encouragement to those Christians and all Christians throughout the ages and to you and to me.
Mark Oshman (07:02.744)
Book of Revelation was meant to help us persevere to the very end. And the way John does it, I already said, is through this genre of apocalyptic literature. And it's just this way of using symbols and imageries that that teach us stuff that the Bible teaches us everywhere, but in a way that goes past just our our mental ability to understand and into our hearts and our emotions and our imaginations. And so there's all sorts of this graphic and visual
imagery that we're seeing. And again, we see that here today. And one of the ways that John does this is through what's called recursive parallelism. Recursive parallelism. is this, if you've been with us, there's been several times already where it seems like we've gotten to the very end. Jesus is on the throne. All the saints are gathered. They're worshiping God. You think it's over, only to start over again and again. It's recursive parallelism. So if you've ever seen
the movie Groundhog Day. That's recursive parallelism. It comes back to the same day, February 2nd, Bill Murray, but with nuance and there's some development even in the same day. Tolkien does this in The Lord of the Rings. You have these epic battles, but then they're retold through different people's perspectives. And just when you think it's over, the battle at home, Steve is good, Frodo slips out the back and here we go again. like, it's been like six hours. What's going on? Here we go again. Or...
The best example I can think of is the movie Inception. If you ever went to the movie Inception, you didn't know about recursive parallelism. Your brain just hurt and you came out. You're like, I don't know what just happened there. Welcome to the Book of Revelation. Right. It is again just going deeper and deeper, illuminating more. But again, this is happening. And so we're in this these sections. There are these three sections of seven judgments or wrath from God. And we saw the seals.
the trumpets, today we come to the bowls. Now they're not one after the other. They actually go back in and retell it from a different perspective. So the seven seals were from the perspective of the church that Jesus, the lamb of God, is worthy to open the seals and he's showing the church who is under persecution that God sees and God cares and God is actually at work. Even though it seems like Rome is winning, God is at work behind the scenes.
Mark Oshman (09:29.795)
And then we saw the trumpets. The trumpets are from the perspective of the unbelieving world, where they're experiencing the wrath of God. And instead of like turning to God in repentance, they continue in their rebellion. And so God pours out his wrath. But today, today we get to see the bowls. And if you were to take the bowls and put them right over the trumpets, if you put them in a table, you'd see, these are actually the same things, but different and more complete. In fact,
totally complete. And the perspective of the bulls is from the throne room of heaven. What does heaven think about these judgments? What does God think about them? What does the redeemed people of God in heaven? What do the angels think about these judgments? we see far from being like, an unnecessary part of the story. They actually delight in them. Like this is good. We are so
happy. Did you pick that up at all in this? We're going to kind of look at this. One of the things I want us to see today in Chapter 15 and 16, these get poured out in 17, 18 and 19. They get explained more. So we're not going to try to explain the bulls now, but I want you to see the backdrop behind all this. The thing that we have to begin to understand and wrap our minds around so it all can start to make sense. There is something going on.
behind the scenes that if we understood that we would see these bulls this wrath of God from God's perspective and we too would rejoice. Did you notice how they rejoiced. So the rescued and redeemed saints in heaven they're rejoicing in in chapter three they're they're saying great and amazing are your deeds O Lord God Almighty. Just and true are your ways O King of the nations who will not fear O Lord.
and glorify your name for you alone are holy. All nations will come and worship you and your righteous acts have been revealed. They're celebrating. It's this celebration of the song of Moses and the lamb. The Book of Exodus was a foreshadow of our Exodus into heaven. But in Chapter 16, we see angels are also excited about all this. They sing some songs down in verse five when the angel sings, Just are you, O Holy One.
Mark Oshman (11:56.435)
who is and who was for you brought these judgments for they have shed the blood of the saints and the prophets and you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve. And I heard the altar saying yes Lord God the Almighty true and just are your judgments. Again they are excited about this but they give us a clue why they are excited both the saints and the angels. Did you pick it up.
In the Song of the Saints, they said, For you alone are holy. In the Song of the Angels, it starts out, Just are you, O Holy One. This is the clue. In fact, in our chapter, we see again what John does so often. He reaches back to Old Testament imagery to bring truth to us. So in verse five of chapter 15, says, After this I looked and the sanctuary
of the tent of witness in heaven was open. The sanctuary of the tent of witness. And if you were a first century Christian reading this, you would immediately think of some passages in the Old Testament. You would think of the tabernacle and the temple, the sanctuary of the tent of witness. So after the Exodus, when God is with his people, he instructs his people to create a tabernacle. And the tabernacle and the temple are actually
just shadows of the ultimate reality that God is on his throne in heaven. But the shadow teaches us some things. What happened in the tabernacle? That's what we should ask. What was going on there? There's a few things that we need to recognize what's going on there. So in Exodus chapter 40, verse 30, sorry, verse 34 and 35, I'll put it on the screen. It says this. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting.
And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it. And the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. So you have this manifest glory of God coming down and dwelling in this place. And it's so overwhelming that Moses can't go in. No one can go in. We see this at the dedication of the temple as well. The glory comes down.
Mark Oshman (14:23.48)
No one can go in. I was thinking about this this week. How amazing it would be if we built our church building and then we just couldn't go into it for a week because the glory of God's in there. We can't go in there like it's too much. What's happening there. What's being communicated. Well there's a few things we need to think about and realize what's happening in there. So in this tabernacle or in the temple you go in it's the holy place but then you go in further into this inner sanctum.
the inner sanctuary, the inner holy place, the holy of holies and in there you might remember what's in there. There's the arc of the covenant that manifests presence of God on the earth is there and in the arc of the covenant is what? The tablets and on the tablets is the law of God, the standard, the holy standard of God. Now you need to know some things about the law of God. It is an exposition not an imposition. Let me explain that.
The law of God is an exposition on an imposition. So God created us. He created the universe. He's omnipotent. He's omniscient. He knows all things and it is his desire for his image bearers to flourish in the world. And he knows how he created us to flourish. And so God creates a law not to keep us from joy, not to keep us from happiness, but to give us a path to joy and
happiness. That's why I said it's not an imposition. We all, because of our sinful state, think it's an imposition. Why does God say, I can't do this? I want this. I go after that. We treat it as an imposition, but it's an exposition. It means this is the path to flourishing for my people. It is for your good. But of course, we know, we know all of us in thought, word, and deed have rejected that. We've all
gone down paths that are not for our good that lead not to our flourishing but to our destruction. The Apostle Paul put it this way in Romans chapter 1 saying essentially the same things he says this Romans 1 18 for the wrath of God and we're talking about wrath the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.
Mark Oshman (16:49.372)
Ultimately the problem that we have is that we have the truth but we suppress the truth. Paul will go on in Romans one and say for what could be known about God is plain to them. Since the beginning of creation what has been seen in creation both in our conscience and the light of creation that there has been truth revealed to us and what have we done with that truth? We've suppressed it. We've denied it to pursue our own thing.
We think God is holding out on me. And if I go after this thing, I will really be happy. And we've all done this in different ways. What is suppressing the truth look like for you? It looks like something for me. looks like something it can look like all sorts of things like I'm to go down this path. I'm going to have one drink, two drinks, five drinks. It's going to turn into a lot. What started out as kind of fun has now kind of dominated your life. That's a result of suppressing the truth.
I'm going to go after these things. I'm going to look at these images online and that's going to that's going to be joy for me. But but I'm to continue to give myself to those. I'm going to continue to suppress the truth. I know it's wrong but but I can't help myself. I'm to go down this line. And Paul says that's actually God handing us over to ourselves. And the wrath of God is coming in the brokenness of that path. We all go down those paths. It could be greed.
could be power, could be status, could be any number of things that we said, God, I don't believe you. I know what will make me happy. And we go down there and if you go further, far enough, you will feel the brokenness. So what do we do when we feel the brokenness? Well, what we see in chapter 16 of Revelation, what we do is we blame God. Three times in chapter 16, as God's wrath is revealed,
Look at verse nine. were scorched by the fiery heat and they cursed the name of God. They we curse God. Verse 11. They curse the God of heaven for their pain and sores. did not repent of their deeds. The very end verse 21 and great hailstones about 100 pounds each fell from heaven on people. Not that there are actual hailstones but this is a graphic apocalyptic image of giving ourselves to sin.
Mark Oshman (19:12.628)
wrath of God coming down, the brokenness that we've invited into our world coming. And it says, they cursed God for the plague and the hell stones because the plague was so severe. This is what we do. So that's the first thing about the tent of the sanctuary. Back in chapter 15, it says, and the sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power. And no one could enter the sanctuary until the seven plagues of the seven angels were there. The glory of God.
in the tabernacle and in the temple is where the manifest glory of God was. Now you and I were originally created to behold the glory of God. The problem is in our sinful state we can't possibly do that and survive. Like we are undone in that moment. In fact we'll see this in another scene where the glory of God comes into the temple in Isaiah chapter six. In Isaiah chapter six
says in the year King Uzziah died, Isaiah goes into the temple. What you need to know is Isaiah is the most righteous man in all of Israel, one of the most righteous men who has ever lived. And so he goes to do his priestly duty. He goes into the temple. And this day, something radically different has happened. In the year King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up. And the train of his robe
filled the temple above him stood to serve him each had six wings with two he covered his face and with two he covered his feet and with two he flew. there's these angelic beings who themselves are are glorious and and terrifying but but even then they have these wings they they cover their eyes that they cannot even look at the glory of God they cover their feet that they know that to even be in his presence there is
There is danger there. one called to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The backdrop by which we need to see everything and start to grasp is the absolute holiness of God. God is holy. Yes, we sing about it.
Mark Oshman (21:38.713)
But have you ever thought about it? Holy, holy, holy. In Hebrew and Greek, they didn't have exclamation points. The way you emphasize something is by repetition. You really wanted to make a point. You repeat it twice. Jesus would say, truly, truly, I tell you, when he says truly, truly buckle up, listen to what he's about to say. This is really important. You know, the only attribute of God that is thrice repeated in the scripture is his holiness for everything else proceeds.
from His holiness. He is holy, holy, holy. What is holiness? You might think of holiness as moral purity. That's true, but that's not essentially what holiness is. The word actually means to be set apart, to be distinct. There is nothing more distinct in all the universe than the Creator who stands apart. is
totally separate, totally other. He is holy, holy, holy in everything he says, does, and how he lived. The holiness and glory of God. We struggle with the wrath and judgment of God because we don't understand the holiness and glory of God. We don't get it, right? So we will say things or hear people say things or we might think things like
Man, I read this in the Bible and I saw this and man, you if I was God, I would do it differently. You're like, what? You would do it differently than the one who is eternal, the one who is omniscient, the one is omnipotent. You have some, you have some suggestions for God, right? You barely graduated high school, but you have suggestions for God. Now that's me. I'm the one that barely graduated high school. True story.
But because we don't understand the absolute blazing holiness and purity of God, we actually don't understand anything. We don't understand ourselves. If we don't come to have this kind of same experience that Isaiah has in some way, or form where we have just the briefest glimpse of God. In the moment that we get the briefest glimpse of the holiness of God, everything changes.
Mark Oshman (24:08.511)
moment we see God like that we actually see ourselves rightly for the first time. This is what what happens with Isaiah after he sees this he he isn't like that was awesome can't wait to run that back hopefully let's make a song about that no no he is terrified and rightly so says and the foundations of the threshold shook and the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke again we have an echo
of revelation 15 and he I said Isaiah said woe is me for I am lost again in the moment he sees God for who he is he sees himself for who he is again this is the most righteous man on the planet and in that moment he sees everything clearly your old translation might say I am undone that's a good translation I'm literally
unraveling at the seams. have seen God. In fact, that's what he says. For I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. When you see God as absolutely holy, holy, holy, it changes everything.
If the holiness of God is his intrinsic nature then the glory of God is God's holiness made visible and public. This is what we talk about when we say the glory of God holiness is what God is. Glory is what holiness looks like when it shines when it goes public. Let me give you two quotes. says when we understand God's holiness we'll begin to understand his wrath. So Leon Morris says this about the wrath of God one of the commentators I read this week he says the wrath of God.
is God's and settled opposition to all that is evil. His strong and settled opposition to all that is evil arising out of God's very nature. God's wrath is a burning zeal for the right coupled with a perfect hatred for everything that is evil. A burning zeal for the right coupled with a perfect hatred of everything that is evil.
Mark Oshman (26:31.307)
Another theologian, TF Torrance, puts it this way, the wrath which the angels are about to pour out upon the earth is a pure and sinless wrath, priestly in its function and golden in its integrity. No bestial passion, no spite, no hate, no anger of sin at all in it. It is perfect. This is why from the perspective of heaven, there is rejoicing that God is about to pour out wrath.
Again, though, remember the context to a church wondering, does God see, does God care that the idolatrous pagan Babylon, Rome, is dominating the people of God? Does God care at all? And the emphatic answer is yes, absolutely. God will deal with it. This is good news. Wrath is good news. Yesterday, my wife was
teaching in Montreal at a women's conference for church planting wives there and at the end of one of the sessions a woman came up to her. She introduced herself. She says I'm from Nigeria and she began to tell her story. Said I had to flee Nigeria because Boko Haram came into my village, took my daughter, murdered her. They went to the next village where my mother was and they burned her in her house.
and I barely escaped.
Mark Oshman (28:02.588)
One of the reasons why in the West we're like, I'm not comfortable with the wrath of God, because we're not confronted with absolute evil that often.
This is good news to that woman. God sees he will not leave any injustice hanging in the universe. But there is a problem. The problem is that God's standard is not our standard. His standard is absolute perfection. we want God to judge sin, just other people's sin. Not ours.
So we're in a predicament here, right? So we try to convince ourselves, well, I'm not that bad. I mean, I generally try to do good. And when we look around for morons, I'm better than him or her. I didn't mean to point at anyone here.
You see what I'm saying? We try to, oh, let's lower the bar as far as possible and then just hop over that. Yeah, see? I didn't murder anyone. I didn't commit adultery. I was a good dad. Like we do all these things to try to put our resume forward and Isaiah, Isaiah, who actually saw the glory of God, what does he say? He says, there's none who are righteous. No, not one. No one seeks after God. No one.
He says later on he'll say, even our good deeds, the ones that we think are actually good, they're helping people out, they're doing all these things. He says they're like filthy rags before a holy God. So we have a problem.
Mark Oshman (29:39.802)
On one hand God's holy wrath is absolutely perfect and good on the other hand we are under it. But even in Chapter 15 and 16 we see there is good news. It's bracketed actually maybe you saw it in the first verse there of Chapter 15. So then I saw another sign in heaven great and amazing seven angels with seven plagues which are the last for with them the wrath.
of God is finished. then in chapter 16 verse 17 says the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air and the loud voice came out of the temple from the throne saying it is done or your translation might say it is finished.
How is the wrath of God finished? It is finished. It is finished. Where have we heard this echo before? John the apocalypse writer is now calling back to John the gospel writer. John chapter 19. Jesus on the cross. Look what Jesus says as Jesus goes willingly in our place. He's put on flesh. God had veiled in veiled in flesh.
The one who is the glorious one, the one who spoke the universe into existence, puts on our flesh and willingly goes to the cross and willingly invites the sin of man on himself. He became sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God. He goes on the cross and on the cross he is bearing the full weight of the wrath of God. And in verse 28 of John chapter 19 it says this, after this Jesus knowing that all was now finished.
said to fulfill the scriptures, I thirst a jar full of sour wine. Or your translation might say bitter wine. Think about the wrath of God and the wine of God. The sour wine stood there and they put a sponge full of this sour bitter wine on a hissa branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour bitter wine, he said, it is finished. And he bowed his head and gave up.
Mark Oshman (32:00.449)
Spirit. See, even in this passage about the wrath of God, that there is this offer, there is mercy and grace on the table for you and for me this morning. See, when we see God as holy, holy, holy, how much more glorious are concepts like grace and mercy. It's not until you understand what you actually deserve
that grace and mercy mean anything. We presume upon the grace and mercy of God. God doesn't owe any of us grace or mercy. God would still be God. He'd still be holy, holy, holy if there was no grace and mercy, if there was no Jesus on the cross. But there is a Jesus on the cross and there is an offer of grace and mercy. You mean to tell me that though I deserve the wrath of God, that Jesus took it in my place? Grace, grace, grace, praise God. You mean to tell me
that I deserve the bowls of wrath on my head, but Jesus took those in my place. Praise God. This is why grace and mercy are so glorious because God is holy. Our sins, are many. His mercy is more. His mercy is more in your life today. So I want to pray in a minute. I'll invite the worship team to come back up here now.
But there's two people, two groups of people I want to just talk to about. So where's the worship team? Come on up here now. They weren't, I didn't tell them ahead of time, but because I'm about to pray. But I do want to just take a moment and give you a chance to respond. So you might not be a believer here. The Bible will call you a suppressor of the truth.
If you are someone who are realizing maybe for the first time that yeah I have suppressed the truth. I have gone down paths that I thought would lead to life and have only led to death. There's mercy on the table for you this morning. I'm going to in a moment I'm going to pray but you can pray with me and and turn your life to Christ. And the Bible says that in the moment you do that you will become a new creation. Today you can become a new creation.
Mark Oshman (34:24.317)
And the moment you do that, when you stop suppressing the truth and turn to Christ in faith, the Bible says that God will transfer you from the domain of darkness and bring you into the kingdom of the Son he loves. He will put his Holy Spirit in you to live a life that honors and glorifies him. You don't have to be a suppressor. There's mercy on the table. So in a minute, I'll deal with that. The other one is for Christians. If you're a follower of Jesus.
My heart for you as your pastor is that you would recognize our sins. There are many. His mercy is more. I think so many of us live, though we're Christians, we live like we're still under wrath. We live defeated lives. We live bound up. We live kind of frustrated in our souls. when our head hits the pillow at night, we don't feel mercy and grace. We feel condemnation and struggle and brokenness and sin.
What I want you to do this morning is just to realize His mercy is new every morning. Amen. Every morning. That's good news because we spend it every day. I do. I already have this morning a little bit. I've had to go to God and be like, thank you for your mercy. Like the ocean waves just coming in rolling after after one after your other after another. I want to live out of that reality that I'm not under wrath. I'm under
Mercy because of what Jesus has done because it is finished. So again, I want to pray for us in this moment. I want to pray for suppressors. I want to pray for those that need mercy and just give you an opportunity to in your seat respond. So let's bow our heads and pray.