Kenny does. He doesn’t spill the water, but he crackles. Crackle.
That’s all right. Let’s pray.
Before we begin, we just look to You today, Lord. This is a terrifying message today, and I just pray that You would help us, Your people, to hear it, Lord, and to be blessed by it. In Your name, I pray. Amen.
Today, the message is on the wrath of the Lamb.
I was talking to someone at work—actually, my son Daniel—and he said, “Dad, why do you talk on something so hard?” I said, “I don’t know.”
But the wrath of the Lamb necessarily follows the holiness of God. It is in the same passage, so I felt like I would share on it. I was going to share on it last time, but I didn’t have time, so I guess we’ll do it now.
So turn to Revelation, please. We will be in Revelation 5 and 6, and a little bit in Revelation 7. Let us begin with Revelation 6:15-17, and then quickly look at Revelation 7:17. What a great contrast between the two.
Then the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the commanders, and the rich, and the strong, and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains;
and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb;
for the great day of their wrath is come, and who is able to stand?”
Then Revelation 7:17:
For the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and will guide them to springs of the water of life;
and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.
I’m glad I’m speaking to family, and to people who can pour out grace on me.
Have you ever been studying something in Scripture and found yourself arguing with God about it? “This is quite unpleasant, Lord.” Well, I found myself in a very unpleasant place.
I believe the Lord had me go to Isaiah 45. I will just read these verses to you:
Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker!
Will the clay say to the potter, “What are you doing?”
Isaiah 64:8 says:
But now, O Lord, You are our Father;
we are the clay, and You our potter;
and all of us are the work of Your hand.
You know, it is sort of humorous about the gods that people make—stone and whatever. They are fashioning God after what they like and what they want.
But I had to ask myself, “Do I do the same with my God? Have I fashioned a God that suits me?” I don’t readily want to admit that, but I found that I have been.
Many times you are brought up short by God’s Word. I said, “Lord, what You are saying here is just unsettling to me.” Then you come to find out that you had a wrong concept of who God was and what He is about, and you fashion your god according to what you want.
We do that by overemphasizing something. God’s love—it is wonderful. But we do not talk about what God hates. We talk about God’s holiness, but not His wrath.
Now, we know it is there, but it is like, “That is not really something I want to deal with.” As a result, what you think of God becomes skewed.
Even the worldly church, let’s put it that way, speaks only of God’s love and how He wants you to be who you want to be, and all this stuff—which none of it is true. They have fashioned a god who is not the God of the Bible.
And I have found that I have been doing the same. So, as I have gone through this study, I am just going to touch lightly on it. I found, at the end, a much greater settledness with the wrath of the Lamb than ever before, and much more appreciation for the gospel as a result.
Let us start reading in Revelation. I want to do a little bit of—let us do a lot of reading today. Turn back to Revelation 4.
A little review: last time I said that phrase, “Come up here.” Well, when you come up here, you see God for who He presents Himself to be. Quite often, it is different than what you thought down here. The Lord says, “Come up here, and I am going to show you who I am.”
We saw first, the last time I shared, the holiness of God—how unutterably holy He is. He is the thrice-holy God. The seraphim are calling back and forth, “Holy, holy, holy,” and the temple of God shook, and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. His train, His majesty, fills the temple, and His holiness is great.
The first song that we have in Revelation 4 is about His holiness. The second song is:
Worthy are You, Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power;
for You created all things,
and because of Your will they existed, and were created.
The second thing we see—the second song—is about the fact that He is the Creator. He is the Creator. That is why, I believe, the verses in Isaiah that I read say He is the Creator. We are not the creator.
As Creator, He has a right to declare what He is going to do and what He is not going to do. He has a right to judge according to the way He wants to judge. It is the way of His holiness that He judges.
Now we will start with Revelation 5:1:
I saw in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne a book written inside and on the back, sealed up with seven seals.
And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the book and to break its seals?”
And no one in heaven, or on the earth, or under the earth, was able to open the book, or to look into it.
Then I began to weep greatly because no one was found worthy to open the book or to look into it.
One of the elders said to me, “Stop weeping; behold, the Lion that is from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals.”
And I saw between the throne and the elders a Lamb standing, as if slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God, sent out into all the earth. And He came and took the book out of the right hand of Him who sat on the throne.
Then, when He took the book, there was great worship.
Now, this book—what is this book? I tried to find out, and I just gave up. There are a lot of different interpretations of it. Some say it is like an executor’s will; others say different things.
But the important thing about this book is that it has seven seals, and it is written inside and outside. It is in the right hand of Him who sat on the throne, whom I believe is the Father.
The question arises: who can open the book? Who can break the seals? Only one could do that, and we know that is our Lord Jesus.
What is the importance of what is written? I would like to take this opportunity to speak very quickly about the written Word of God, because what is written is very important to God.
Turn to Romans 1:2:
Which He promised beforehand through His prophets in the holy Scriptures.
Let’s not do that. Everybody turning in your book—okay? Thank you. I am sorry about that. I should have asked you not to.
Then turn to Luke 24:44:
Now He said to them, “These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”
There is a sense in Scripture that what is written is holy, especially these holy Scriptures that we have. Whenever it says, “What is written,” there is a sense that it is going to be fulfilled. Something is going to happen. It must be fulfilled.
That is what we find in Revelation. When it says it is written on, each seal has something that is written. When it is opened, something must be fulfilled. We see that there is only One who can open the seals.
Revelation 5:8 says that when He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. They sang a new song, saying:
Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals.
We will come back to the rest of this a little later. But only the Lord Jesus was able to take the book in His hand and break the seals.
We are coming to our main text, so that is why I am hurrying through this. But the point is, the Lamb of God is the One who is going to break the seals. The Lamb of God—the Lord Jesus, whom we know and love—is the One who is going to break the seals. And we know what happens when He breaks the seals.
Look at Revelation 6. When the Lamb broke one of the seven seals, there was conquering.
When the Lamb broke the second seal, there was war. When He broke the third seal, there was famine. When He broke the fourth seal, there was death. The fifth seal is in Revelation 6:9, and the sixth seal, in Revelation 6:12, is terror.
This is the Lamb of God who breaks these seals. And here is the part that really unsettled me.
Revelation 6:16 says:
They said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.”
You see, the Lamb is in charge of breaking the seals at His time. It is under His authority that the seals are broken, and it is with His approval that these things are happening.
Jack asked, “What is this sermon about, or message about?” I said, “The wrath of the Lamb.” He said, “It is like an oxymoron. The wrath of the Lamb?”
The Lamb of God received the wrath to become the Lamb. But here is the wrath of the Lamb. So, what is wrath? What is wrath?
We are going to consider a little bit of the Old Testament. Wrath is an expression of God’s holiness. Wrath, defined, means to become heated up, to burn with fury. It is a burning, fierce anger.
So whenever we speak of the wrath of God, the wrath of the Lamb, it is a burning, fierce, intense anger. It is lethal. It is fatal fury. It is an intense anger and fury ready to be released.
Wrath, all the way through Scripture, is mentioned in different ways, but you get the sense that it is an intense anger.
Let us turn to a few references. I would like for you to turn there. These will be in Psalms.
Psalm 2:12:
Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way;
for His wrath may soon be kindled.
How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!
There is that sense of fire being kindled.
Psalm 5:4-6:
For You are not a God who takes pleasure in wickedness;
no evil dwells with You.
The boastful shall not stand before Your eyes;
You hate all who do iniquity.
You destroy those who speak falsehood;
the Lord abhors the man of bloodshed and deceit.
God hates. He takes no pleasure in wickedness. We are getting a picture of who this God is—who our God is—not one we often see.
Psalm 7:11-13:
God is a righteous judge,
and a God who has indignation every day.
If a man does not repent, He will sharpen His sword;
He has bent His bow and made it ready.
He has also prepared for Himself deadly weapons;
He makes His arrows fiery shafts.
Psalm 11:4-6:
The Lord is in His holy temple;
the Lord’s throne is in heaven.
His eyes behold, His eyelids test the sons of men.
The Lord tests the righteous and the wicked,
and the one who loves violence His soul hates.
The last one for this section is Psalm 110:
The Lord is at Your right hand;
He will shatter kings in the day of His wrath.
He will judge among the nations,
He will fill them with corpses;
He will shatter the chief men over a broad country.
Our brother read this morning from Ezekiel 5. Let us turn there. I asked him what the reference was. He said, “Ezekiel 5:13.”
Thus My anger will be spent and I will satisfy My wrath on them, and I will be appeased; then they will know that I, the Lord, have spoken in My zeal when I have spent My wrath upon them.
You get the idea that this is just a small portion of our God’s wrath. It is an intense anger that rises up within our God at evildoers, at the wickedness of men.
We need your help in the Old Testament. Where do you see instances of the wrath of God poured out?
Sodom and Gomorrah. That comes to mind first. Someone else?
The days of Noah. Continue.
The rebellion of Korah. You know, we have been teaching the children, and we come across these sections of God’s wrath. It is really hard for them to understand: “How can my God do this?”
There are many other examples—the wrath of God even on His own people, poured out on His own people: plagues that He unleashed on His own people, famines.
The wrath of God is a terrible thing. It does burn with fury and anger against evil and evil people.
It is hard for me to hold, on one side, the love of the Lord Jesus, who gave His life for me, and His intense anger and wrath at mankind. But both are true. Both are true.
The wrath of God extends from His holiness. Scripture says that the foundation of the throne is righteousness and justice.
This is something upon which the modern church has failed. I was listening to some sermons on this by men who know what is going on in the church today, and this subject of the wrath of God is ignored and cast aside.
There is no such thing as sin. Sin is whatever you want it to be. Sin is not based upon God’s holiness. Therefore, God does not need to judge. Therefore, salvation is not really salvation anymore.
Man today has taken away the gospel—the true gospel of our Lord Jesus. But if you do not start with the holiness of God, and that He is angry at sin—
You see, God is not neutral concerning sin. He is not neutral about it. The wickedness that we see even today in our country and over the whole world—He has never, ever been neutral about it.
His anger burns with an intensity today as it did when this book was written two thousand years ago. It still burns. And it has been burning. Well, how long?
There is a companion passage in Isaiah. I want you to turn to Isaiah 2, speaking of the fear that the world will have with the wrath of the Lamb.
You see, in Revelation they wanted to hide from the terror of the Lamb of God.
Isaiah 2:10-11. Three times the terror of the Lord is mentioned in this chapter. I believe this is one of those mountaintop prophecies.
You know what a mountaintop prophecy is. God speaks the prophecy here in Isaiah, and there is a big valley, and then you see the same thing pop up there. You will see what I mean. That is what I call mountaintop prophecy.
This is talking about God’s universal reign:
Enter the rock and hide in the dust
from the terror of the Lord and from the splendor of His majesty.
The proud look of man will be abased,
and the loftiness of man will be humbled,
and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day.
Isaiah 2:17-19:
The pride of man will be humbled and the loftiness of men will be abased;
and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day,
but the idols will completely vanish.
Men will go into caves of the rocks and into holes of the ground
before the terror of the Lord and the splendor of His majesty,
when He arises to make the earth tremble.
You can see how that is speaking of Revelation.
Isaiah 2:21 says:
In order to go into the caverns of the rocks and the clefts of the cliffs
before the terror of the Lord and the splendor of His majesty,
when He arises to make the earth tremble.
Stop regarding man, whose breath of life is in his nostrils;
for why should he be esteemed?
So, what is the reaction in Revelation to the intense, burning wrath of the Lord? Men, small and great, want to hide in caves and under the rocks from the terror of the Lord. Their reaction is that they are full of fear and dread.
But brothers and sisters, what should your reaction—what should my reaction—be to this terror of the Lord, this burning wrath of the Lord?
Look at the martyrs. What are the martyrs saying to this wrath of the Lamb? That is Revelation 6:9, the fifth seal.
When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the Word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained;
and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?”
The martyrs here—the ones who have been slain over the centuries—are crying out for vengeance, for the wrath of God to come. They are crying out for justice.
I think all the children who have been murdered are under the throne also, crying out for justice. There is a continual cry going up before the Lord from the martyrs themselves, crying for justice and vengeance.
What is the reaction of those who witness the opening—the One who has the book in His hand? Well, we see great praise and worship. Great praise and worship.
You see, heaven is rejoicing that the Lamb’s wrath has come. Heaven is praising the Lamb of God.
After He took the book in His hand, they sang a new song:
Worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals;
for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God;
and they will reign upon the earth.
It continues in Revelation 5:12-13. So there is great rejoicing in heaven, brothers and sisters.
Excuse me, I need a tissue.
So, we have the reaction of the people who were there on the earth when the wrath of the Lamb had come: they hide, they run. We have the martyrs continuing before the throne, saying, “Lord, come quickly and judge the earth.” And we have those who saw the seals being broken: they are worshiping and praising God.
Turn to Revelation 19. Fourfold hallelujahs.
After these things I heard something like a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, “Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God;
because His judgments are true and righteous.”
His judgments are true and righteous. So heaven itself declares that the judgments of the Lamb of God are true, and they are righteous judgments.
Revelation 19:5 says:
Give praise to our God, all you His bond-servants,
you who fear Him, the small and the great.
Here is where it gets personal to me, and hopefully to you too. Can you worship the Lamb of God as the great Judge?
Can you say, when you read through the seals, the trumpets, and the bowls, and you see the wrath of God being poured out on the earth, “That is true. That is righteous. That is a just thing to do”?
Is your heart full of worship and praise because of it? Because our God is holy. He judges, and His judgments are true and right.
This is what got to me: “Lord, I have not worshiped You in that way.” I can worship You—you are the Lamb of God, and You are reigning—but also, can I worship Him for judging, for executing His wrath on this sinful world?
I doubt if many believers can. But we should be able to. We should be able to worship the Lord, the Lamb, who judges.
There is a great change in viewpoint when you go to heaven and see from heaven’s viewpoint. Heaven views this earth in a far different way than we view the earth.
Heaven views the judgment that the earth deserves in a much larger way than we do. We do not like sin. God hates sin. We say, “Well, it is not quite that bad,” but God judges eternally the sin and wickedness of men.
We are about to get into the good part, okay?
It was Friday night, and we were studying about the apostles being sent out. They went out to the villages and the cities, and they preached the gospel of the kingdom.
If somebody accepted or rejected that gospel, what did they say? What did they do? I am looking at you here—not to knock the dog at every door.
They shook the dust off their feet. And what follows after that? It says, “In the day of judgment, God have mercy on this city because you have rejected the gospel of the kingdom.”
It seems to me this is a divine shaking off of the dust of the world, and God saying, “The world is kaput. It is finished. Judgment has fallen.”
One speaker that I listened to shared it like this: the Lamb of God has His hand up, stopping the tsunami of His own wrath. It gets bigger and bigger as the years go by, and with His other hand He beckons the sinner to come.
“My blood is spilled for you. My salvation is there.” But when that person, nation, or the world rejects it, there is a time when His hand goes down.
Then the Lamb who offers His life for the sinner—the world now sees His wrath—and it is the wrath of the Lamb. The wrath of the Lamb is a terrifying thing.
But then you have this wonderful interlude in Revelation 7. I am not going to get into all the eschatology of it. I think you lose a lot of what the Lord is trying to say here. Let us look at the last three verses of Revelation 7.
Well, let us start with Revelation 7:14:
And I said to him, “My lord, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
For this reason, they are before the throne of God; and they serve Him day and night in His temple; and He who sits on the throne will spread His tabernacle over them.”
Well, this is beautiful here:
They will hunger no longer, nor thirst anymore;
nor will the sun beat down on them, nor any heat.
Now, here is the Lamb again:
For the Lamb in the center of the throne will be their shepherd.
What a contrast.
And He will guide them to springs of the water of life;
and God will wipe every tear from their eyes.
Such tenderness of the Lord. His wrath is intense, burning rage against the sin of the world, and yet for you and me, He is the Lamb in the center of the throne as a Shepherd, as One who tenderly cares for us.
It is as if all around us there is wickedness—so wicked that we know our God hates it, and there is intense anger for that. Yet we, His people—He tabernacles over us. His presence is with us. He is our Shepherd.
You notice where other people hide from Him, these people do not hide from Him. They willingly are led by the Shepherd. Where others see death and destruction, these people are experiencing pastures and springs of living water.
You see the great contrast? And it is all from the same throne. The Shepherd is in the midst of the throne.
I mentioned before how, when I started this study, I was very upset about the wrath of the Lamb. As I began to see, the wrath of the Lamb is so intense because His holiness is so great. It is beyond our comprehension, and so is His wrath beyond our comprehension.
But yet, if you see it from God’s side, from the angels’ side, you begin to worship the Lord as worthy to judge.
Worthy of worship, worthy of all—we have songs about His worthiness. He is worthy to judge.
As you begin to worship Him as the great Judge, which we are to do, there is a great compassion that comes up in your heart, isn’t it? Compassion for those who are judged, for those who are the walking dead, who are under the wrath of God.
Brothers and sisters, somehow I think because we do not truly understand the wrath of God, we are not as evangelistic as we should be. Because if we understood the wrath of God that hangs over this world, I do not know. Perhaps.
May the Lord give us a real vision of the wrath of God.
I made a few mistakes here. I said we were getting into something good when we talked about the Shepherd, but actually, from heaven’s viewpoint, judgment is good too.
My dad used to say something when I was a kid which I really did not like. God gets as much glory—now, maybe he was quoting someone—God gets as much glory from a soul going to hell as from a soul going to heaven.
So, what in the world does he mean by that? It is because the righteous demands of God are met in judgment as well.
Let us pray.
Lord, I just want to thank You for readjusting me. I feel like You have done a good work in me, to really worship You and praise You as a righteous Judge.
Lord, I want to say with all of heaven that You are true, righteous, and Your judgments are good—they are correct.
Lord, I do pray that we would know the tenderness of the Shepherd’s care in this world that is so wicked and evil. Lord, that we might know You are leading us into green pastures. Lord, You are feeding us with Your good food.
Lord, that Your Spirit would be in our midst, that You would tabernacle with us. Lord, when we see these verses, we are not fearful of what the world may bring. We only want to have great compassion upon this world.
Lord, we do want to say, “You are the Lamb of God.” Blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus. Amen.