Four Bowls Rev, 16:1-9
Revelation 16:1-9 · Vern Peterman · Aug 4, 2002
Revelation (2001-03), No. 41
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262245554175

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. As we're going through the book of Revelation, believe it or not, we've completed 15 chapters. And so what I'd like to have us do is sort of look ahead. Now, the 15 chapters we've completed, you've got those down, right? So if somebody asks you about it, you can go through in great detail and tell them all that. Let's take a look. Here's kind of what's ahead here.

We'll be looking this morning at chapter 16, and starting off with that. And once we complete chapter 16, we're going to take an intentional but important detour here. We're going to be looking at Matthew, the end of chapter 23, and in Matthew 24 for a few weeks, and then coming back to the book of Revelation to finish up the series. Just like we took a detour to peace out of the book of Daniel some months back, We'll be at a juncture here. This will be a good time to to pull in the insights from Matthew 24 The next thing in chapter 17 and 18 Religious and economic Babylon will be addressed in those chapters and in 19 the return of the Saints with Christ. Okay, that's us. All right, and Chapter 20 addresses the Millennium judgments and then the end of this present earth and heaven and Chapters 21 and 22 is the New Heavens and the New Earth and the description of those.

So this morning as we proceed into Chapter 16, you have on your handout on page 1 there, you've got kind of a table and it's got seven judgments. I'm going to, for the sake of space and what we're addressing this morning, just put four of them on the overhead. These four will include the the first judgment that we're looking at here this morning that of of boils the next is the the sea turn to blood the next rivers turn to blood and The next is this intense heat, so we'll be looking at those first four judgments out of the seven with one of the things you'll notice is between the sixth and the seventh as with with each of the of judgments, the seal judgments, the trumpet judgments, and now the bowl judgments, there's an interlude between the sixth and the seventh.

Very systematic, you know. One of the things here to take a look at here, this all happens in the last half of the tribulation period. It's something we've talked about previously in terms of timing. This is all happening in the last half of the tribulation period.

Some, just because of the intensity of these judgments, have indicated that Perhaps these are even pushed to the very end of this last half, just because as we read through them, we'll see some of them are so intense it's almost difficult to imagine anybody surviving through them. And the Lord Himself even brings this out in Matthew and also Mark 13, 20. He says, unless the Lord had shortened these days, had put an end to them, cut them short, no life would be saved. So there is a survivability issue with these because these judgments get so intense.

One of the other things you'll notice, and it's also on the first page of your handout there, is that there is a great similarity between these judgments and the plagues that were put upon Egypt in the book of Exodus. And here I've got them highlighted with a green highlighting, but on your handout they show the reference there in the 16th chapter. What it turns out is of the ten plagues brought upon Egypt, four of them are similarly brought about, not on Egypt, but upon the whole world in this 16th chapter. Two of them in the passage we'll be looking at this morning, okay? This first one, water into blood, and the second one, the boil, 16-2. The other two we'll see next week as we get into those passages.

But one of the things that comes out is these plagues originally brought upon Egypt were a direct frontal attack on the supposed power of the Egyptian gods. And that's why these gods are specifically listed here. These were the things that these gods were supposed to help the Egyptians with, and the Lord just directly attacks them and says, your gods, Egypt, are powerless. What people are going to find out during this period of time that we call the Tribulation is that the Antichrist is powerless to stop these things. They're going to see, as the Egyptians found that their gods were powerless, they're going to see that the Antichrist is powerless.

With that as an introduction, oh, one more thing. You've got an asterisk here on a couple of your items there, and I think they're located here on this one. Those asterisks, those are also similar to earlier judgments that we've already been through, the seal and the trumpet judgments, and I'll leave it to you to look those up. Okay? That's your homework. All right. Next item. Let's take a look at verse one here. And then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God."

John here is speaking as a witness. He's taking it seriously, isn't he? He's taking it seriously because he sees that he is one who is testifying as if in a court of law. He's therefore taking what he's telling us very seriously. So he tells us about another loud voice or great voice here. Now, while I'm speaking about, but not with, a loud voice, I should point out something that doesn't immediately come out in all of our English translations.

Where it says loud or great, and sometimes a few similar words, in the Greek, those are all the same word, basically. It's megas. This word megas keeps coming through, and we've even adopted it, especially in our computer era, mega. We think of that means big, right? And that's where it comes from. Megas means big, huge, great, loud, intense.

That's the communication. That word is used over 80 times in the book of Revelation. And it's just one of those places where it shows up. And I think one of the reasons why we see that keep showing up, what John is describing is intense. The voices are all loud. the lights that he sees are all bright, everything is very intense, and he's trying to get that across to the people who are reading here. What he's seeing is overwhelming. It must have been awesome for John to go through this, and so he's trying to convey that as he writes to us here.

So here he's describing the heavenly temple, as we saw at the end of last week, here is the heavenly temple filled with the smoke from God's glory, And as John writes to us here, this loud voice booms from the temple to these seven angels, Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God. Now, let's take a look here and get an insight.

One of the insights is this word bowl or vial in some of the translations, especially King James. It shows up in certainly this verse, but also 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, and 17. The Greek word behind that is phiale. This word phiale, here it sounds like vial, and the way it came through to the English, that's why some of the earlier translations just simply translated it as vial. But the actual Greek word means a large open bowl or basin. This word is used in the Greek Old Testament, in Exodus, and in numbers, for basins that were large bowls used in the temple service.

The idea is a large open bowl, sometimes with handles in order to be able to be sure to carry it, and the idea was that you could have something full of a liquid and you could pour it out easily. Now, it's interesting, just to kind of give us an example, here is a fiale from the time.

This particular one actually originally belonged to the Romans. The Jews stole it. Okay? Because they didn't like the Romans. And they took it when they started losing their rebellion against the Romans. They took it and hid it in a cave and it was discovered about 1960. This one has a picture in it. But just an example, this is what we call a fiale, a large open bowl with some handles on it.

So when you hear, think of these bowls. This is what John is thinking of when he writes. Okay? Now, someone might point out, wait a minute, Bowls aren't mentioned in the Bible previously as a container of God's wrath, and they might ask us, so why are they being used here? Well, what are we going to tell them if they ask that? I suggest we tell them this. It turns out that while bowls indeed were not used as a picture for pouring out God's wrath, the idea, however, of pouring out God's wrath is a frequent Old Testament picture.

As a matter of fact, here's several passages. One that I have here is from Jeremiah 10.25a. Pour out your wrath on the nations that do not know you. And then we have the other passages all the way from Psalms to Zephaniah where Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Hosea are in between. There are roughly a dozen or so passages that speak of this pouring out of the wrath of God. and even, as we see here in Jeremiah, among all the nations.

So the picture is very fitting. This idea of these bowls being poured out comes straight out of the Old Testament. This kind of fulfills what we've said before. Seventy percent of the book of Revelation is straight out of the Old Testament. Makes it easy to understand, right? It does, right? Okay, alright. Now, the next thing, we look in verse 2.

We say, So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and it became a loathsome and malignant sore on the people who had the mark of the beast and who worshipped his image. Now this is the first of the seven bowl judgments. Notice that it's poured out on the whole earth. All the earth gets this. But not, have you noticed this? Not everyone on earth receives the consequence from this bowl.

Did you notice the qualifier there in verse 2? It applied to those who had the mark. And where did they receive the mark? On their foreheads or the back of the hand. Those who had the mark of the beast and worshipped his image were the ones who were given this sore or boil. Now, as the people that John originally wrote this to heard this, they kind of got the picture.

Here's a for instance This is the seal of Augustus Caesar. It was dated about the same time as Mary and Joseph went back to the temple to find Jesus as a young man talking with the leaders there in the temple. This seal would be required on every purchase document to come out of the Roman imperial government. So what would happen is this seal would be tables turned. Nobody could buy anything without the seal.

You see the jump ahead there? So when people heard this, they would say, okay, I understand it, but now it's being conveyed to everyone and not just the Roman government. Okay. Now there's some other things to take a look at here. The next thing is the description of these swords.

In one translation, we hear it noisome and grievous sore. The Greek there is helkas kakon kaiponeron. And it basically means a foul or horrible, and the word is not medically specific, but it can be a boil or a sore or an ulcer, an abscess. It's that kind of thing. And the descriptions that he puts ahead of it are tough to bring into English is basically very bad and real nasty. To use kind of a colloquialism, this is not something mild. That's the impression that comes across. Some in even studying the use of that word in some context have said it even has the implication that the sore stinks, that it has a stench to it.

So at any rate, it's not nice. Now, just to carry across, you know, what this might be like, here's a for instance, some boils, I've had a few of them myself, wouldn't care to have any more, wouldn't volunteer. Basically, a very kind of a nuclear powered pimple. Okay, very awful.

And this and we don't know exactly because the Greek word is not specific, it could be open sore, it could be you know, something that is open and exposed for this period of time. But here's something very interesting. The Greek word, this word helkos, is singular. So here's this bowl, everybody who has this mark gets a sore, but it's singular. And what that's implying is this sore may in fact be something very specific to the mark. Perhaps the people who take the mark get the sore right there, wherever it is. Okay? But it's in the singular so that it comes across as this is not just some sort of general set of boils, but the implication being that there is a singular sore or ulcer or boil that comes across. Okay.

Now, one of the things that we find is this is similar to what the Lord told the Jews would happen to them if they did not obey Him. And look at the descriptions that come out there. The Lord will smite you with the boils of Egypt and with the tumors and with the scab and with the itch from which you cannot be healed. And we notice again there just a few verses later, the Lord will strike you on the knees and legs with sore boils from which you cannot be healed. So there's this implication you cannot be healed.

And what's very interesting as we look ahead here is that farther on in this passage, Several plagues later, it says they're still complaining about the boils. So apparently, the indication is that these boils don't just come and go. They appear to remain over into the next plagues. Staying with them. Chronic. Can't get rid of them. Awful. Terrible boils. Okay. Something else.

It comes upon those who worship. those who worship the beast. This word worship, proskuneo, means to kiss the hand. Those who kiss the hand of the beast. This would be, in the vernacular of John's time, this would be the way of worshipping and acknowledging a sovereign. Kissing the hand is the expression there. Proskuneo, it shows up. Now let's take a look at verse 3.

The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea, and it became blood like that of a dead man, and every living thing in the sea died." Now with this, the second plague, the sea is devastated. In the trumpet judgments that we've studied before, one-third of the sea was wrecked in that judgment. This destroys the remaining two-thirds.

The description John gives us is not long, is it? But it's ghastly. It's quite a description. The C's become blood. I believe that John may be using a metaphor here as he did previously. It is very like blood and the appearance is no less awful. Now here's something else that comes out of this. Where it says, blood like that of a dead man.

Haimahos nekruh. Blood like that of a dead one. It actually doesn't have the word man in the original Greek. As a matter of fact, because of the fact that the article is missing in the Greek, the emphasis in the Greek text is on the character. You could get the sense of this. Blood like that of deadness. Blood like that of deadness. The sense that you get here is that this rotten, putrid mass of blood in the entire seas have now become this rotten mass. The consequences there are horrible.

Here's, you know, we're thinking of the ocean and, you know, a lot of us, I enjoy going to the ocean. Colorado is a little bit distant from it, so it isn't something I do every day, but I enjoy going to the ocean. We look at an ocean scene like this and we say, well, that's beautiful. That's lovely. I wouldn't mind being there. I wouldn't mind enjoying that. It looks a little different in this shade, doesn't it? That's the picture.

Here you are and the oceans become like this. Furthermore, one of the things that comes across is that everything in the ocean dies. That's bad enough, but that's probably more like it. Everything in the ocean dies. It's a terrible scene. Verse 3 just lays it out. Everything is dead. Can you imagine? We can just begin to think about what are the ecological consequences? What are the economic consequences? What's going to happen as a result of this taking place?

This is a nasty, horrible event. but we're not done. Verse 4, Then the third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of waters, and they became blood. Now the second plague destroyed the life in the saltwater bodies, and this third plague moves on to the freshwater. It doesn't give us all the details that we might think of in terms of, well, does that affect swimming pools and, you know, covered tanks and, you know, the jug of water in my kitchen and those kinds of things. We don't have answers to that.

But certainly, a huge impact, no doubt, right? There are a lot of places where we would look at it and say, that's a great place to be, you know, here's a, you know, somebody out there, a nice scene along the creek, you know. Basically, it's a lot like this, you know. It's starting to look pretty ugly.

The thing that came to mind when I was thinking of this, and it doesn't explicitly say lakes, but it's really part of a river system. This is Lake Tahoe. That's where Nancy is close to right now. Nancy and I lived within 20 minutes of Lake Tahoe for 14 years. And it would turn something like this. So a whole different scene, isn't it? A whole different scene. Now, there are questions, frankly, that we might ask and we don't have answers for. The Bible doesn't give it.

What about groundwater? How about the water in closed water tanks? Pipelines? Swimming pools? Things like that. So we aren't told the answer to every question, but even if you had some reserve, this is a tough scenario, isn't it? A very difficult situation. But let's take a look here, something to note as we look at this. You look at these judgments and you think, man, this is awful. This is nasty. The whole ocean, this putrid, stinking, rotten mess, that is terrible. But one of the things as we read through this, and you may have noticed it too, here we are in the 16th chapter, and what you don't read about, what you don't hear, are things like, hey Lord, cut that out. except for those people living on the earth. Or, Lord, it isn't quite fair. That's kind of enough, isn't it? Or, Lord, you've gone too far. That's enough, Lord. We don't hear that.

As a matter of fact, let's look at verses 5-7 and see what the response is. And I heard the angel of the water saying, Righteous are you who are and who were, O holy one, because you judged these things. For they poured out the blood of saints and prophets, and you have given them blood to drink. They deserve it. And I heard the altar saying, O yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are your judgments. So notice here in verse 5, the angel says, Righteous are you, or righteous are thou, with similar words in verse 7. The Greek here, Dikaios A, and what that's saying is, righteous you are by character. Lord, you are by character righteous.

This is beyond innocence. This is basic, total, righteous. This isn't just innocent. God is by character completely and totally righteous. He is the definition of what is righteous. The present tense here is in what's called the gnomic presence, and it means that God is always righteous by character. He always was. He is now. He always will be. That is always God's character. Then we have another insight here. This word judgments that comes out of here. That word judgments in the Greek, is telling us about these judgments as legal decisions. As legal decisions. These decisions have been made in a heavenly court.

The word translated judgments is the basis of our English word crisis. You see that in the similarity? The English word comes from the Greek with a view that a crisis is a judgment from God himself. Now, do people in our culture see a crisis that way? A judgment from God Himself? It's been a while since most people have thought that way. But that's where the word comes from. This word crisis means a judgment from God in the original source of the word.

Notice what the angel and the altar say. Notice the names of God that show up in verses 5-7. Notice what the character of God is said to be in these verses. Notice what the earthlings have said to have done, and what they deserve. You see that? When we look at these heavenly scenes in Revelation, we find the Lord has never warned not to do these things, but He does. You notice that? The angels say, Oh Lord, don't do that. That's terrible. Oh, please don't do that. Oh, that's too much. They don't do that. You don't get that sense.

What comes across instead is praise for the Lord. Lord, your character is righteous. Lord, you're faithful and true. Lord, you have saved us. You notice that? This is the nature of the appeals that come from heaven, from the angels, from those who have been saved.

In every instance, as we look at how they respond to what's coming about, their response is to look at God's character and to look at what God has done and to praise Him and thank Him. That's amazing because our human response might be to just kind of say, boy, that's awful much. I mean, isn't this kind of going overboard?

But the heavenly creatures always bring it back to the character of God. That's the issue. What is the character of God? What has God done? Let's look in verse 8 here. In verse 8 we come upon the fourth plague and there are some revelations about the character of man apart from God's restraint and transforming grace.

Verse 8 and 9 says this, The fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun and it was given to scorch men with fire. Men were scorched with fierce heat and they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over the plagues and they did not repent so as to give him glory. All of us have experienced various extremes of heat. We've been through it some this last summer.

Just to share an experience, some years back I used to work at an engineering consulting firm in Ukiah, California. Ukiah has summer temperatures in the range of 100 and 110 quite frequently. Hot enough by itself. But in the consulting work, we would frequently do consulting with Masonite Corporation. and they ran their plant on steam and the steam was released inside the plant so when I would go there to make various visits I'd go inside and here'd be these guys where it's 110 outside and inside it's releasing steam all over the place and it's hot and I'd be visiting and these guys would be just drenched just overwhelmed with heat and when the day's shift work is done and they're off and they'd always be glad for a night shift because they could avoid the heat, but everybody had to trade off on it.

So when I think about the intense heat, that's what comes to my mind. You can imagine, here are people experiencing this intense heat, and we aren't told exactly for what period of time, but here they are experiencing this intense heat, and can you imagine what are these people going to want to do to get some relief from the heat? They're going to want water. What's the problem with that? Short supply, and what there is, is not very desirable.

Now, here's the insights that come out of the Greek text there. This word scorch there, komatitso, it means to scorch so as to wither. It's a withering heat. The only other place in the New Testament where this is used in the parable of the sower, where the seed falls on different kinds of ground, and one of those kinds of ground is where the sprout is scorched and withers. The same word is brought forth. So this is a scorching heat. It's a withering heat that comes upon the earth.

The next thing is that this word translated men in most of your translations, It refers to humankind, to all human beings. So it isn't just something on one particular group of human beings. It isn't just males or some portion of the population. This is a global heat wave. And when you talk about global warming, we just haven't seen the start of it. This is global warming in the extreme.

And there'll be nothing legislatively that can be done about it. You can do whatever you want. It won't make any difference. But what's fascinating in this, maybe beyond fascinating, is look at man's response. Look at how men respond to this. The response is, and this is only a response, by the way, that comes out of the tribulation portions of the book of Revelation, is they did not repent.

So we look at these passages, both chapter 9, where we first saw this phrase come up, twice, and now here in chapter 16, and we'll jump ahead here on the overhead into verse 11, both places, the did not repent phrase comes up twice. But do you notice the difference between this and this? Chapter 9, the did not repent has in great part to do with the relationships between man to man. There was sin expressed man to man in chapter 9. Now, here in chapter 16, it says, did not repent. But do you notice what the lack of repentance is about?

It's focused on their rejection of God. It's focused on the rejection of God. That is at the core. Between the two, their lack of repentance impacts both their relationship to God as well as their relationship with other people. And that's really ultimately the way lack of repentance has its impact, doesn't it? There is an impact in relationship to God, and there is an impact in relationship to other people. Both are impacted. Both directions.

Alright, now. We've looked at these, and we've got the first four of these bold judgments behind us here. Three more to go. plus an interlude. And as you look at these, you know, perhaps we might be thinking, boy, I'm sure glad I won't have to go through that. And I suppose in one sense, we could just sort of leave it there. But you know, I think there's some things that we can draw out of this passage, aside from just boy, that's awful, and I'm glad I don't have to go through it. Some of the things that I think are important to note out of this passage are this. The angel expresses that the Lord is righteous, and therefore these judgments are consistent with the character of God. This is not some sort of an aberration. This is consistent with God's very character.

The other thing is, and the mass of mankind does not get this point, mankind chronically misunderstands how far short he falls of the glory of God. Man chronically misunderstands that. The other point that comes across as you see this, because as a human being we're tempted to look at this and just say, well, this is a horrible thing. Gosh, why is it even in the Bible, we might even think.

But the true character of sin can only be seen by the cross and what it costs the Father and the Son. is a big issue. It's not a minor issue. The Father had to judge the one whom He loved, whom He loved perfectly in all eternity past, and us with Him. It was a costly, costly event.

It's only when we understand the gravity of that, when we will also understand why God's response to sin is so extreme. God is righteous not as some sort of a partial characteristic. He is holy and completely righteous. And man's utter rejection of his path of grace has the consequence.

What people had done, and this passage underscores it, what people had done is they had rejected God's means of salvation and come up with their own. They say, but we've got our religion. Did you notice that? They worship the beast. They have a religion. They're religious. Doesn't that sound like a good thing? But religion that is man-designed, religion that is not God's provision, is something awful. And this passage brings that forth. It's real easy for us to just kind of group religion as sort of one massive thing.

God doesn't do that. The difference in God's view is day and night. When the love of God is rejected, it means Christ has been rejected. And so the only alternative is judgment. See that? God has provided a means through grace for men to escape this. And because they have rejected it, they've rejected the means that God's provided. God's only option is judgment. That's the result. God's grace was at a great price to himself. Rejecting God's grace comes at a great price to human beings. You see that? Either you're going to let God pay the price, or human beings will pay the price. It's one or the other. Is there any question as to which one is the better choice?

Can we see why God desires so greatly that we not only begin our Christian life by grace, but that we also walk it daily by grace? The difference between grace and not is no small issue. Not just in salvation, but in how we walk every single day. Grace is God's provision. Not just in our initial salvation, but in our daily lives. And the difference is radical, as radical as we see here in these judgments.

Let's pray. Lord, we give you thanks that as we look at these, and indeed, certainly we can be thankful that we won't be there. But Lord, if our belief is in you, not only will we not be there, but we'll be with you and beholding you. And all that's going on in this world will not even be a distraction. And Lord, we not only look to your grace to save us initially, but each day, Lord, we just pray that our hearts would be drawn to grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. In the name of Jesus, we pray these things. Amen.