SCRIPTURE: Revelation 15-16
“But they refused to repent and glorify him… but they refused to repent of what they had done. (Revelation 15:9,11)
John’s vision continues to pick up images from the OT, here the plagues against Pharoah and Egypt.
These plagues are not final judgments, but invitations of tough love for hardened sinners.
‘Can’t you see, you cannot defy God without paying the consequences!’
Not because God is mean, but because God is life; without God there can be no life.
You cannot defy gravity, or oxygen, or the sun; these are fixed realities that we live by.
It is not God’s hardness, but the hardness of those who refuse to give in to God, that leads to misery.
“He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)
The multiple plagues are God’s persistent attempts to help people see, to repent.
Again and again and again, God is appealing to the hardened and close-minded, ‘change your minds!’
C.S.Lewis observed: “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened.”
As our world sees disasters and plagues, crises and catastrophes, God is still calling us to turn to Him.
But it is a choice, a decision, and we have the ability to receive, or to refuse.
May my epitaph not read, ‘but he refused to repent…’
What do you sense the Lord saying to you?
PRAYER
Lord, forgive us for viewing Your tough love as mean. Please keep on patiently calling us to repentance, while there is still time.