The Hardness of the Unjudged Heart Text: Revelation 9:13-21
Introduction: Judgment is a Severe Mercy
We live in a soft age, an age that has forgotten what sin is, and consequently, has no category for what judgment is. We think of judgment as something mean-spirited, something an enlightened deity would never resort to. But the God of the Bible is not the milquetoast, grandfatherly abstraction of modern therapeutic religion. He is a consuming fire. And because He is good, He hates evil. Because He is just, He punishes sin. And because He is merciful, His judgments in history are designed as a clanging alarm bell, a divine summons to repent before the final judgment falls.
The book of Revelation is not, as many imagine, a complex cryptogram about future geopolitical events, allowing evangelicals to read the newspaper in one hand and their Bible in the other, looking for signs of helicopter gunships and the European Union. That approach misses the entire point. Revelation was written to first-century Christians to fortify them for the tribulation that was about to come upon them, and to explain the theological meaning of the cataclysmic event that would define their generation: the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. It is an unveiling of the spiritual realities behind that great judgment.
The passage before us is one of the most terrifying in all of Scripture. It describes the second of three "woes," a demonic invasion of immense and horrific proportions. But the true horror of the passage is not found in the description of the monstrous cavalry. The true horror is found in the last two verses. The true terror is the hardness of the human heart that can endure such a cataclysm and remain utterly unrepentant. This is not just a story about the first century. It is a story about us. It is a diagnosis of the spiritual condition of every man, every woman, and every nation that sets its face against the living God.
The Text
Then the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, one saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, "Release the four angels who have been bound at the great river Euphrates." And the four angels were released, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, so that they would kill a third of mankind. And the number of the armies of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them. And this is how I saw in the vision the horses and those who sit on them: the riders had breastplates the color of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone; and the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths come fire and smoke and brimstone. A third of mankind was killed by these three plagues, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone which came out of their mouths. For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads, and with them they do harm. And the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their sexual immorality nor of their thefts.
(Revelation 9:13-21 LSB)
Liturgical Judgment from the Borderlands (vv. 13-15)
The judgment begins with a command from the very center of heavenly worship.
"Then the sixth angel sounded, and I heard a voice from the four horns of the golden altar which is before God, one saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet, 'Release the four angels who have been bound at the great river Euphrates.' And the four angels were released, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, so that they would kill a third of mankind." (Revelation 9:13-15)
Notice where the command originates: "from the four horns of the golden altar." This is the altar of incense. We have already seen that this altar is where the prayers of the saints are offered up to God (Rev. 8:3-4). This tells us that the horrific judgment about to be unleashed is not some random, chaotic outbreak of evil. It is a direct, divine answer to the prayers of the persecuted church. The martyrs under the altar have been crying out, "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth?" (Rev. 6:10). This is the answer. God's judgments are liturgical. They are righteous responses to the pleas of His people for justice.
The command is to release four angels bound at the Euphrates River. For any first-century Jew, this was loaded with covenantal significance. The Euphrates was the northern border of the Promised Land. It was the place from which God's instruments of judgment, like Assyria and Babylon, had come to punish a faithless Israel in the Old Testament. This is not a reference to modern geopolitics in the Middle East. It is a symbolic pointer, telling the original readers that God is once again summoning a terrifying, foreign power to execute His covenant lawsuit against the land of apostate Israel, the generation that had crucified the Messiah.
And this is not a chaotic accident. These angels, these agents of destruction, were "prepared for the hour and day and month and year." God's sovereignty is meticulous and absolute. History is not a series of unfortunate events. It is a story being written by a sovereign author. The timing of this judgment is not a coincidence; it is an appointment. God had set the time for the Roman armies to descend upon Judea, and when that moment arrived, nothing could stop it.
A Vision of Hell on Earth (vv. 16-19)
John then describes the army that is unleashed. The description is not meant to be a literal photograph, but a theological portrait of its nature.
"And the number of the armies of the horsemen was two hundred million; I heard the number of them... And this is how I saw in the vision the horses and those who sit on them: the riders had breastplates the color of fire and of hyacinth and of brimstone; and the heads of the horses are like the heads of lions; and out of their mouths come fire and smoke and brimstone... For the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, having heads, and with them they do harm." (Revelation 9:16-19)
The number, two hundred million, is symbolic of an overwhelmingly vast and numberless horde. John says he "heard" the number, indicating that this is revealed truth about the army's nature, not a literal census. The point is that it is unstoppable, a force beyond human comprehension or resistance.
The appearance of this army is explicitly demonic. The colors of their breastplates, fire, hyacinth (a smoky blue), and brimstone (sulfur), are the colors of the lake of fire. This is a hellish army. God is using demonic forces to execute His judgment. This is a terrifying thought, but a biblical one. God can and does use wicked men and even fallen angels as the rod of His anger (Isaiah 10:5).
Their destructive power comes from their mouths: fire, smoke, and brimstone. These three plagues kill a third of mankind. A "third" is a recurring fraction of judgment in Revelation, indicating a massive but still partial destruction. This was fulfilled in the staggering death toll of the Jewish-Roman war, where a huge portion of the population of Judea perished. But the power is not only in their mouths. Their tails are like serpents with heads. The serpent is the ancient deceiver. This means the army brings not only overt, frontal destruction (the mouth) but also deceptive, venomous, and satanic injury (the tail). It is a complete spiritual and physical assault.
The Unrepentant Heart (vv. 20-21)
After this devastating woe, this taste of hell on earth, we come to the most shocking part of the passage. It is the theological climax.
"And the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk. And they did not repent of their murders nor of their sorceries nor of their sexual immorality nor of their thefts." (Revelation 9:20-21)
This is the central point. The judgment was a severe mercy. It was a divine megaphone screaming at the survivors to turn back. But they refused. The judgment did not soften their hearts; it hardened them. This reveals the profound truth of total depravity. Left to ourselves, even God's most fearsome judgments will not lead us to repentance. We will simply curse God and double down on our sin.
And what is the root of their sin? John tells us plainly. It is idolatry. They "did not repent of the works of their hands." They continued to worship demons and idols made of created things. This is a direct quotation from the Psalms, mocking idols as dead, blind, and mute (Psalm 115:4-7). When you worship something you have made, you become like it. You become spiritually dead, blind, and mute. This is the ultimate folly: to be judged by the living God, and to respond by clinging to dead gods.
And this central sin of idolatry gives birth to a whole brood of other sins. They did not repent of their murders, sorceries (the Greek is pharmakeia, which includes drug use and occult practices), sexual immorality, or thefts. This is always the way it works. Bad theology, which is idolatry, always leads to bad ethics. When you get God wrong, you will get everything else wrong. A society that abandons the worship of the true God will inevitably descend into a cesspool of violence, debauchery, and corruption. This was a perfect description of the moral state of apostate Jerusalem, and it is a perfect description of the moral trajectory of our own nation.
Conclusion: The Only Refuge from the Fire
This passage presents us with a grim reality. The unregenerate heart is incorrigible. It is so hard that not even a preview of hell is enough to make it crack. The men described here saw the fire, smoke, and brimstone, and they loved the darkness still. This is why the gospel is not a message of self-improvement. It is a message of resurrection.
We are all, by nature, like these unrepentant men. We are idolaters. We fashion gods out of our careers, our politics, our lusts, our possessions. And when God brings judgment into our lives, our natural tendency is not to repent, but to grow bitter, to complain, and to cling to our idols even more tightly.
What can break such a heart? Only one thing. The fire, smoke, and brimstone that this demonic army breathed is a picture of the wrath of God against sin. And that very wrath was poured out in its full, undiluted, infinite measure upon one man, at one point in history. On the cross, Jesus Christ endured the ultimate woe. He faced the full demonic assault. He drank the cup of God's fiery judgment down to the dregs.
He did this so that the judgment would not have to fall on us. The only escape from the fire of judgment is to flee to the one who absorbed the fire of judgment. Repentance is not something we do to earn God's favor. Repentance is the gift God gives us when He opens our blind eyes to see the horror of our sin and the beauty of our Savior. It is turning from our dead idols to the living God who, for Christ's sake, can look at us, rebels who deserve nothing but brimstone, and declare us righteous.
The plagues described in this chapter are a warning. Our world is filled with the same idolatry and the same rebellion. The judgments are falling, though we refuse to see them as such. The only question is whether we will be like the unrepentant who harden their hearts, or whether we will hear the warning, confess our idolatry, and flee for refuge to the cross of Jesus Christ, the only place in the universe where justice and mercy meet.