The Righteousness and Wrath of God

Last week, we came to the end of chapter five of the book of Revelation.

It's an eternal and exclusive song. Not just for this moment or this song—but forever and ever. (Revelation 5:13)

The thing that gets consumed? All other praise. It's all silenced by this song—to Him who sits on the throne and the lamb.

Crown him with many crowns,

the Lamb upon his throne.

Hark! How the heavenly anthem drowns

all music but its own.

Awake, my soul, and sing

of him who died for thee,

and hail him as thy matchless king

through all eternity.

In heaven, our playlists are going to get shorter. Some of the music isn't going to make it through the all-consuming fire. The anthem of heaven drowns out everything else.

Am I good with the exclusivity and the eternity of the praise of the One who sits on the throne and to the lamb?

Is that my life? My heart? My ambition?

We turn the page from the glorious worship anthem to Revelation 6-8 to see that the seals are broken.

In this moment, observed in Revelation, the prayers of the saints usher in God's judgment on all wickedness.

This is where people stop reading. We love the Holy, Holy, Holy, and we love Worthy is the Lamb, but now we see God's wrath.

The reckoning and the reward—the seals are broken. God's plan is unfolding, and there is going to be a reckoning for every person who turned their back on Him and a reward for every person who was faithful to Him.

It's both grace and wrath. If wrath unsettles you, it begs the question, do you have wrath?

If you've had horrible things happen to you, you know what it's like to want to avenge what has been done to you. You take it up to the holiness of God—a God who has completely sacrificed His very best for all of humanity—and had it shoved back in his face.

How do you get right with God? Because God gives us righteousness through faith. We don't earn or achieve it; we receive it as a gift.

Romans 1:16-17—we can have the free gift of righteousness because of our faith.

But the cross is not neutral—it's consequential for those who believe in it and for those who reject it. It is everyone's consequence.

Romans 1:18-20—we can open our eyes and minds to the complexity of everything around us and understand that there is a Creator.

Romans 1:21-23—they did not understand the first command that God wrote on the stone (Exodus 20:3-5)

Dominoes are already falling. But there is one last domino that Revelation is referring to where we can be sure of a few things:

1. Jesus is Lord.
2. For believers, heaven will be realized.
3. Satan will be bound
4. The unrighteousness gets its due.

The Gospel has consequences.

There is a heavy emphasis on the Lamb and His crucifixion—highlighting His worthiness because He was slain.

The sequence of seals: Crucifixion—crown of thorns, kill one another, famine (I thirst), death/hades, martyrs (lamb), dark sky (black with stars out), earthquake, mountains (Hosea), God’s judgment hurled down on Him.

In Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection, He set in motion the end of the age. The crucifixion landed squarely on the innocent Son of God, and the Lamb is setting in motion the consequence of the cross.

We need to learn to embrace wrath in its proximity to grace.

Wrath is what happens when the Holy collides with the unholy. Wrath is the brightness and purity of righteousness, justly obliterating all wrong.

We should want to spend forever where there is no wrong. This place is coming because of the wrath of God, which is being poured out on all unrighteousness. So, the message today is to repent and turn to Jesus.

How do we make sense of all of this?

Theologians, scholars, preachers, and teachers are all over the place about what will happen. But we can all lift up the main point: Matthew 24:14.

Matthew 24:36 says that no one will know when, but we do know what—it's going to be really bad, and then Jesus is going to come, and the last domino is going to fall, and Jesus is going to be Lord, and all unrighteousness will be punished.

We do not know when, but we know that Jesus is going to come.

So, we look to Matthew 24:42—keep watch—and Matthew 24:46—be found doing. When God comes, you want to be found doing what He gave us to do. And we want to keep watching.

When God's wrath is poured out, we want to cling to Jesus, who is Lord.