The Sun as a Stumbling Block: The Fourth Bowl Text: Revelation 16:8-9
Introduction: Judgment and the Grammar of Creation
We come now to the fourth bowl of God's wrath, poured out in rapid succession upon the great Harlot, the apostate city of Jerusalem. As we have seen, John is not giving us a far-flung prophecy about 21st-century microchips or a future European superstate. He is a pastor writing to suffering first-century Christians, telling them that God is about to act decisively. The old covenant world, centered on the Temple in Jerusalem, had rejected its Messiah and was therefore ripe for judgment. Jesus Himself had said that "this generation" would not pass away until all these things were fulfilled. The book of Revelation is the detailed record of that fulfillment, culminating in the cataclysm of A.D. 70.
These bowl judgments are not random acts of divine petulance. They are a meticulously structured covenantal lawsuit. They are a work of decreation, systematically undoing the created order for a people who had abandoned the Creator. And they are a direct echo of the plagues God poured out upon Egypt. This is not accidental. The Holy Spirit is making a profound theological point: apostate Jerusalem had become the new Egypt. The people who once were delivered from bondage had become the great oppressor of God's new people, the church. And so, God visits them with Egypt's curses, as He had long ago promised in Deuteronomy 28 for covenant rebellion.
The first bowl brought sores upon those with the mark of the beast, an echo of the boils of Egypt and a direct fulfillment of the curses threatened in Deuteronomy. The second and third bowls turned the sea and rivers to blood, another direct parallel to the first plague on the Nile. Now, in the fourth bowl, God turns His attention to the heavens. He takes a great creaturely good, the sun, and turns it into an instrument of torment. This is not arbitrary. It is a righteous judgment tailored precisely to the sin of idolatry. When men worship the creature rather than the Creator, God's righteous response is often to turn that very creature into their scourge.
What we are witnessing here is the terrifying reality of what happens when men's hearts are hardened. This is not a story about how a little more suffering might just nudge sinners toward repentance. It is a demonstration of total depravity. When God judges, the righteous see His glory and repent, but the reprobate are simply confirmed in their rebellion. They dig in their heels, curse God, and refuse to give Him glory. This passage is a stark warning: judgment does not soften a hard heart; it calcifies it.
The Text
And the fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun, and it was given to it to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with fierce heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has the authority over these plagues, and they did not repent so as to give Him glory.
(Revelation 16:8-9 LSB)
The Creature Weaponized (v. 8)
We begin with the action of the fourth angel:
"And the fourth angel poured out his bowl upon the sun, and it was given to it to scorch men with fire." (Revelation 16:8)
The target of this plague is the sun. We should immediately see the polemical nature of this judgment. Sun worship was a perennial temptation for Israel and a central feature of the pagan world they were constantly tempted to imitate. From the worship of Ra in Egypt to the cult of Sol Invictus in Rome, the sun was seen as a source of life, power, and divinity. By pouring a bowl of wrath upon the sun, God is demonstrating His absolute sovereignty over the highest and most glorious parts of His creation. The sun is not a god to be worshiped; it is a creature on a leash. It does nothing except what it is "given" to do by the God who made it.
This is a lesson straight from Romans 1. When men exchange the glory of the immortal God for images of created things, what does God do? He "gives them over." He hands them over to the consequences of their own disordered loves. Here, the logic is similar. The apostate generation in Jerusalem had rejected the true light of the world, Jesus Christ. They had cried out, "We have no king but Caesar!" thereby aligning themselves with the pagan idolatry of Rome, which was shot through with sun worship. They chose the creature over the Creator. So God, in a stroke of poetic justice, turns the creature into their tormentor.
The sun, which God created on the fourth day to give light and life, to mark seasons and to be a blessing, is now given authority to scorch men with fire. This is a partial decreation. The blessing is turned into a curse. The very thing that should make the crops grow is now burning the skin off the rebels. This is what God does. He takes the good gifts that men have idolized and He makes those gifts bitter in their mouths. He is showing them, in the most visceral way imaginable, the folly of worshiping the creation. The creation cannot save you. The creation will turn on you when its Master gives the command.
We should also see the contrast here with the promise of Malachi. For those who fear the Lord's name, the "Sun of righteousness" will arise with healing in His wings (Mal. 4:2). Christ is that Sun. His coming brings light, warmth, and healing to His people. But for those who reject Him, that same solar power becomes a scorching, consuming fire. For the apostate Jews of the first century, the dawning of the new covenant age in Christ was not healing, but a fierce heat, a judgment that would burn up the chaff of the old covenant world.
The Hardness of a Blasphemous Heart (v. 9)
The result of this plague is not what our modern, sentimental age would expect. There is no crying out for mercy. There is only rage.
"And men were scorched with fierce heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has the authority over these plagues, and they did not repent so as to give Him glory." (Revelation 16:9 LSB)
Notice the chain of logic here. First, they were scorched. The pain was real, intense, and inescapable. Second, they knew exactly who was responsible. They "blasphemed the name of God who has the authority over these plagues." There is no atheism in this foxhole. Their suffering does not drive them to doubt God's existence; it confirms His power. They know precisely who holds the thermostat of the universe. They are not ignorant; they are rebellious.
Their response to this knowledge is blasphemy. To blaspheme is to speak injuriously of God, to slander His character. They are being judged for their wickedness, and their response is to accuse the judge of injustice. Instead of looking inward at their own sin, they look upward with a clenched fist. This is the very nature of a hardened heart. It is the logic of Hell. The damned do not repent; they simply continue their rebellion against the manifest reality of God's holiness and power, forever.
This is a terrifying picture of what theologians call judicial hardening. It is what God did to Pharaoh. After numerous opportunities to repent, God finally gave Pharaoh over to the sin he loved. He hardened his heart. This is one of the most fearful judgments God can visit upon a person or a people in this life. When God withdraws His restraining grace and allows a sinner to have what he wants, the result is not freedom, but a complete and total enslavement to sin. The heart becomes incapable of repentance. It is not that they want to repent and cannot; it is that they will not. Their will is set like flint against God.
And John tells us the result explicitly: "they did not repent so as to give Him glory." Repentance is not merely about feeling sorry for your sins. True, biblical repentance is a turning from sin to God that has as its ultimate goal the glory of God. It is agreeing with God about your sin and agreeing with God about His righteousness. It is a restoration of proper worship. But these men refuse. To repent would be to admit that God is right and they are wrong. It would be to give Him glory. And that is the one thing their pride will not allow them to do. They would rather be scorched by the sun under their own miserable authority than to be healed by the Son under His glorious authority.
Conclusion: The Only Refuge from the Heat
This passage is a bucket of ice water for any theology that believes man is basically good, or that suffering naturally produces piety. It teaches us the opposite. Left to ourselves, we are not seekers of God. We are haters of God. And when confronted with His righteous judgment, our natural instinct is not to fall on our faces in repentance, but to stand up and curse Him.
The men being scorched here are the covenant people who had received every blessing. They had the law, the prophets, the temple, the promises. But they exchanged it all for a lie. They rejected the Son, the true Sun, and so they were handed over to be judged by a lesser sun, a mere creature.
This is a picture of the final judgment, but it was also a picture of the temporal, historical judgment that fell on that generation in A.D. 70. The fire and heat that fell on Jerusalem during the Roman siege was a literal fulfillment of this kind of scorching wrath. But the principle is timeless. All who reject the light of Christ will one day face the fire of His judgment.
There is only one place of refuge from this heat. There is only one place to hide from the wrath of God, and that is in the shadow of the cross. On the cross, the Son of God absorbed the full, scorching heat of God's wrath against our sin. He was scorched that we might be healed. He endured the fire of judgment so that the Sun of righteousness could rise upon us with healing in His wings. He took the curse that we might receive the blessing.
Therefore, the question this text puts to every one of us is this: what will you do with the light? Will you, like these men, reject the true Sun and find yourself one day scorched by the fire of His holiness? Or will you flee to Him for refuge, hide yourself in His wounds, and find that for you, He is not a consuming fire, but a healing light? Do not harden your heart. Repent, and give Him glory, before the heat is turned up.