Revelation 16:5 Commentary and Bible Study

John hears heaven’s reaction to the judicial acts of God in the earth. The angels delight to see God reward sin and not leave it unpunished. There is not the slightest doubt in their minds that his response to evil is perfect. They have seen him forbid, they have seen him warn, they have seen him rebuke, and now they have seen him act. Sin is a reality, but so too is the wrath of God. The angels wait with expectation that God will not leave sin unopposed. His judgment when it comes will shed more light on his perfect character. His judgments teach us about the nature of sin; when he acts, he exposes the essence of the sin being judged. His judgments are always suitable, fitting, appropriate, never arbitrary or unrelated to the crime. This judgment is appropriate because it denies men that refreshment which was part of the original paradise. In a sense they have chosen their own punishment. Their sin is related to their punishment in a like for like manner. They persecuted the church, suppressed the voice of his messengers, and preferred polluted things. They shed the blood of the righteous and allowed that blood to run freely into the ground. Very well, says the Lord, the waterways, which were meant to be for your pleasure, will be a source of horror to you, reminding you of the terrible thing you have done. Here is that blood again that you thought you had secretly disposed of. Like the blood of Abel which cried to the Lord about Cain’s terrible act of fratricide, so the world will be reminded that God has not forgotten anything that they have done. The progressive severity of judgment in the book – first a quarter affected by the seals, then a third affected by the trumpets and now the whole earth – tells us that sin will get progressively worse and God will become progressively firmer in dealing with it. In the final days of this world, the most extreme forms of evil will be manifested and the most fearful outpourings of God’s wrath seen. Another angel praises the justice of God for his judgments. The angels are not squeamish as some Christians are about the fact that God judges the world. They see God’s head on confrontation of sin as proof of his holiness, and are glad that this will never change. The understand the reason for his long delay: ‘What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: ²³ And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory’ (Romans 9:22-23).