Word of Encouragement (11/24/2021)

And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, “We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth” (Rev. 11:16-18).

In this praise, the prospect of rewards that believers will receive (in the middle of v. 18) is sandwiched between the two accounts of the judgment of the wicked: “The nations raged, but your wrath came” at the beginning of v. 18 and “for destroying the destroyers of the earth” at the end of v. 18. This shows that God’s judgment of the wicked is part of God’s reward to the saints. On behalf of His people, who are mistreated and persecuted by the wicked sinners, God will execute vengeance on them.

We also want to note the pattern of God’s judgment shown in the two descriptions of God’s judgment in v. 18. The first is, “The nations raged, but your wrath came.” Even in the English translation, we can see the close relationship between “raged” and “wrath”: rage and wrath are synonyms. This is more clearly shown in Greek: “raged” (ὀργίζω, orgizo) and “wrath” (ὀργή, orge): they share the same root. To show this connection, we can translate, “The nations raged, but your rage came.” You can see how God judges the nations’ sinful rage with His righteous rage. They are judged in kind. We see the same in the second description, “for destroying the destroyers of the earth.” The sinners are described as “the destroyers of the earth” and God’s judgment is described as “destroying” them.

Jesus puts this principle of judgment in this way: “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you” (Matt. 7:1-2). God will judge unrepentant sinners by giving them the taste of their own medicine. What did God do when the ten spies came back and gave a bad report about Israel’s prospect of taking possession of the promised land and the people of Israel blasphemed against God, saying, “Would that we had died in the land of Egypt! Or would that we had died in this wilderness! Why is the LORD bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword” (Num. 14:2-3)? God condemned the exodus generation to perish in the wilderness (Num. 14:22-23). Likewise, all those, who reject the goodness of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ, will be forever separated from God’s goodness and suffer under God’s wrath forever in hell. Hell is where sinners get the taste of their own medicine eternally.

This challenges us to examine how we view God, not just in our minds but also in our hearts, doesn’t it? It challenges us also to examine our hearts to see what it is that we want. To be saved is not just to have our final destination switched from hell to heaven, not just to have our status changed from condemned sinners to justified sinners; it is also to be born again as God’s children and have our hearts changed with new objects of love and desire. Shouldn’t heaven be the realization of our true and deepest longings rather than a disappointing surprise?

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