Revelation 15:1-4 And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues… I. THE TRIUMPHANT CHOIR. He calls these triumphant choristers "conquerors out of the beast," which implies that victory over him is an escape from a dominion in which the conquerors before their victory were held. They have fought their way, as it were, out of the land of bondage, and have won their liberty. By Christ we conquer. Through faith, which lays hold on His power and victory, we too may conquer. II. THE POSITION OF THIS VICTORIOUS CHORUS. As Moses and the ransomed hosts stood on the shore of the Red Sea, so these conquerors are represented by anticipation as standing on the safe beach, and looking out upon this sea of glass mingled with fire, which, calm, crystal, clear, stable, and yet shot through and through with the red lines of retributive judgment, sleeps above the buried oppressors. Observe that besides its picturesque appropriateness and its historical allusion, this sea of glass has a distinct symbolical meaning. "Thy judgments are a mighty deep." "Oh! the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and of the knowledge of God; how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!" That great ocean of the judgment of God is crystalline — clear though it be deep. If we cannot look to its lowest depths, that is not because there is any mud or foulness there, but partly because the light from above fails before it reaches the abysses, and partly because our eyes are uneducated to search its depths. If it be clear as far as the eye can see, let us trust that beyond the reach of the eye the clearness is the same. And it is a crystal ocean as being calm. They who stand there have gotten the victory, and bear the image of the Master. By reason of their conquest, and by reason of their sympathy with Him, they see that what to us, tossing upon its surface, appears such a troubled and tempestuous ocean, is calm and still; and their vision, not ours, is the true one. It is a "sea of glass mingled with fire." Divine acts of retribution, as it were, flash through it, if I may so say, like those streaks of red that you see in Venice glass, or like some ocean smitten upon the one side of every wave by a fiery sunlight, while the other side of each is dark. So through that great depth of God's dealings there flashes the light of retribution. III. THE OCCASION OF THE SONG, AND THE SONG ITSELF. "They sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb." The "song of Moses" was a song of triumph over destructive judgment; the "song of the Lamb," says my text, is set in the same key. The one broad, general lesson to be drawn from this is the essential unity, in spite of all superficial diversities, of the revelation of God in the Old Covenant by law and miracle and retributive acts, and the revelation of God in the blew Covenant by the Cross and Passion of Jesus Christ. And there is another principle here, and that is the perfect harmony of the retributive acts of God's destructive dealings in this world, and the highest conception of His love and mercy which the gospel brings us. "When the wicked perish," says one of the old proverbs, "there is shouting." And so there ought to be. When some hoary oppression that has been deceiving mankind for centuries with its instruments and accomplices is swept off the face of the earth, the more men have entered into the meaning of Jesus Christ's mission and work, and the more they feel the pitying indignation which they ought to feel at seeing men led away by evil, and made miserable by oppression, the more they will rejoice. And the last thought that I would suggest to you is, that according to the teaching of my text, we may take that old, old story of the ransomed slaves and the baffled oppressor, and the Divine intervention, and the overwhelming ocean, as a prophecy full of radiant hope for the world. That is how it is used here. Pharaoh is the beast, the Red Sea is this "sea of glass mingled with fire," the ransomed Israelites are those that have conquered their way out of the dominion of the beast. And the "song of Moses and of the Lamb" is a song parallel to the cadences of the ancient triumphant chorus, and celebrating the annihilation of that power which drew the world away from God. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvellous, seven angels having the seven last plagues; for in them is filled up the wrath of God. |
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