Revelation 16 Almighty, Holy, True, and Just

You're listening to the podcast of the Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches through his series, Thy Kingdom Come, taking us through the book of Revelation. Let's listen in.

Worshiping God Together and the Need for Community

Well, good morning.

Welcome to Recast Church. I'm glad that you're here. I'm Don Filsak, I'm the lead pastor. And I just wanna point out what a beautiful thing it is when God's people gather together to pay attention to him.

That's a really cool thing. So I'm glad that you've taken time out of your week to do that. Worshiping God is really important. Do you agree with that? Is that a pretty important thing? And then I would also say that together is an important thing.

And so when you put those two together, togetherness with God's people and worshiping him, that's a very, very vital part of our life and growth spiritually. So I'm glad that you're here. I love the weekly reminder that I'm not alone in this journey.

I hope you agree with me on that, that recognition that you're not, you don't have to go it alone, but there are others on this same journey in your community with you who are here together, running together, holding each other accountable, walking and doing life together.

I'd encourage you to think in terms this week of not being ashamed to lean on others. Don't be, I'd encourage you to lean on others and even to just think in terms of maybe calling one another this week, to share your story with others, to do life together.

I think in terms of who needs your encouragement. I think a lot of times we're so busy in our week that we don't really think outside of ourselves to that extent to say, who needs my encouragement this week?

But then equally to think in terms of who should I reach out to for encouragement this week? Sometimes we tend to either be really good on the side of others need me because we can be that arrogant and we can be that proud and we can be that self-confident that others of course need me, but then there's the other side of the equation that is I need others.

And so a good walk with God is a good balance in that keeping both of those intention. I both need others and others need me. And I hope that you are intentionally working to grow in community. Here at Recast Church, we have small groups.

Now in the summertime, those tend to kind of fall off and they pick up again in the spring. I would encourage you, if you are interested in a small group, please do me a favor and when you fill out that connection card, even if you've been here for a while, you got one of those in the worship folder, check that box that you're interested.

This would be a great time here before, we've got a little bit of time to put small groups together for the fall. And so if you're here and you're not currently connected in a small group community where you can do life together, this would be a great time to check that box and we can get in touch with you before the fall and get that connected.

We live in a culture where it's natural to drift away from relationships. Identify that? The natural drift in my life is toward isolation. Just being honest. Like it's, everything seems to move us toward self, self, self, but God is calling us to alter that drift and continue to grow together.

The Final Cycle of God's Wrath in Revelation 16

And this morning as we dive into Revelation chapter 16, we're gonna be looking at the final cycle of God's judgment, his wrath in the book of Revelation. This is the final of those cycles. We've seen the seals, we saw the trumpets, and now we're coming to the text about the bowls poured out of God's wrath in the end.

It really is a text, as you're gonna see when we read it here in a moment, it's a text that covers the very clear, very, very clear wrath of God poured out on those who will oppose him in the end. And as we encounter this text, I would suggest to you that we need each other when we come to places like this.

We actually need each other to come to places like this, texts like this. We need encouragement, accountability, and relationships that will regularly remind us of who our great God is. Without a people of faith around us, we may quickly slip into wrong-minded thoughts about who God is.

Without a gathering where we open up our Bibles and tax our brains to understand the revelation of the Almighty together, we may never even turn to these difficult texts of the Bible. We might stick to the places of Scripture that we're comfortable with, and that's one of the reasons I personally am committed to taking you there, to taking you to these texts that make us uncomfortable, where we might just skim over them really quickly.

Here in the gathering of God's people, we have the opportunity to dive in a little bit deeper, to take them on, to think through them, to wrestle with them, and let them form us, let them change us, because we encounter God in the pages of his text.

So this morning in Revelation 16, we're gonna see the text provide some answers to some pretty fundamental questions, questions that you probably have asked at some level at some point in your life, but questions that are important whether you've asked them or not.

The first is, how stubborn and broken is the human heart when it is set against God? This text is gonna give us a pretty clear picture of what the human heart looks like when it is set against God. The second question is, what is the judgment of God against that rebellion look like?

So if there is indeed human rebellion that we're gonna see clearly spelled out in the text, then what is his judgment of that look like? The third question, what kind of protection does our modern technology afford us in the end?

Now you might kinda look at that and go, well, where's that in the text? But you think in terms of, we are a culture and a people who like to science our way out of things, right, science our way out of difficulties.

We believe in some kind of sense, whether we would admit it or not, there's some sense in the back of our mind that things will just continue to get better. We will continue to be more and more comfortable.

Things will continue to improve. We will fight and continue to fight against the effects of the fall. And even some would have thought a while ago that we're gonna continue to just usher in an era of utopia where everything is just peaceful and good and we're gonna get it figured out on our own.

We'll see kinda what this text indicates about that. And lastly, we're gonna consider how we should respond in light of the coming wrath that God is bringing to the world. How should we respond in the here and now?

God has recorded for us that the end is coming. So in that sense, I feel like the guy on the corner with the bullhorn, only I happen to be standing up here, but I should be wearing a sandwich board that says the end is coming because that's what this text is kind of all about.

But he did not do that and record this for us just for the people of the end times so that they could go, oh, this must be the end times because A, B, and C has happened. And a lot of times we look at the text that way and I've mentioned many times that that is not the case for this text.

He has written this to you and I here in Madawan in 2016 that we might be changed and transformed by coming to know him in the fullness of his revelation, not just in the parts that we like, not just in the text that make us comfortable or make us feel good about ourselves or even just the text that make us feel super warm and fuzzy about God.

Because believe me, when we read this here in a second, this is not a text that makes you feel warm and fuzzy about God. If anything, it might move you to fear him. It might move you to kind of tremble a little bit at the notion of what his wrath towards sin looks like.

And we need that. We need that balance for each and every one of us so that you and I might be changed because of the text of scripture. So let's open our Bibles, if you're not already there, to Revelation 16 and read about God's just wrath against rebellious humanity.

Revelation 16, if you don't have a Bible on your lap or a means to navigate to a Bible, please raise your hand. And Mike Rogers has some Bibles back here and you can grab one if you need one so you can follow along in Revelation chapter 16.

It's a little bit of a longer text of scripture but I'm gonna read it in its entirety. And I want you to remember that as we come to worship, I'm gonna read this and we're gonna pray and then we're gonna go right into worship this morning.

And I wanna remind you that we do not worship God despite this text. Like some people might have the attitude that when you read this and you look at the things that God is gonna do in the end, you go, well, but we can still worship him even though he does these things.

But every indication is that we should worship him because he does these things, because he is just, not despite the fact that he does these things. So listen in. Then I, this is the apostle John speaking and you remember he's receiving these visions.

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God. So the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth and harmful and painful sores came upon the people who bore the mark of the beast and worshiped its image.

The second angel poured out his bowl into the sea and it became like the blood of a corpse. And every living thing died that was in the sea. The third angel poured out his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water and they became blood.

And I heard the angel in charge of the water say, just are you, O Holy One, who is and who was, for you brought these judgments, for they have shed the blood of saints and prophets and you have given them blood to drink.

It is what they deserve. And I heard the altar saying, yes, Lord God, the Almighty, true and just are your judgments. The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun and it was allowed to scorch people with fire.

They were scorched by the fierce heat and they cursed the name of God who had power over these plagues. They did not repent and give him glory. The fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast and its kingdom was plunged into darkness.

People gnawed their tongues in anguish and cursed the God of heaven for their pain and sores. They did not repent of their deeds. The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the east.

And I saw it coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs, for they are demonic spirits performing signs who go abroad to the kings of the whole world to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.

Behold, I'm coming like a thief. Blessed is the one who stays awake keeping his garments on that he may not go about naked and be seen exposed. And they assembled them at the place that is in Hebrew is called Armageddon.

The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air and a loud voice came out of the temple from the throne saying, it is done. And there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a great earthquake such as there has never been since man was on the earth.

So great was that earthquake. The great city was split into three parts and the cities of the nations fell. And God remembered Babylon the great to make her drain the cup of the wine of the fury of his wrath.

And every island fled away and no mountains were to be found. And great hail stones, about 100 pounds each, fell from heaven on people and they cursed God for the plague of the hail because the plague was so severe.

Let's pray. Father, we recognize the need for justice. We praise you that you are just. And we praise you that sin never goes unpunished. And I pray that we would be a people who recognize that and believe that and trust that and see that as truth from your word.

And yet, as we contemplate and consider the wrath that is coming, we also know a wrath that's already been spent. A wrath that you poured out on your son on our behalf that we might stand righteous before you.

What amazing grace is this? What glorious truth is this? That we need not face your wrath any longer because Jesus took that for us. And every sin that we've ever committed has indeed been punished by death.

But in your justice and in your great mercy and in your great love, you poured that out on your son. Worthy of that. So Father, I confess I am not worthy of that. And may we lift our voices as the redeemed, as those who praise your name, because even though we recognize your justice is rolling down and we long for the day when things will be made right, when there will indeed be true justice and righteousness, and we will walk as we were intended to walk as your children.

There's a lot that's gonna change between now and then. So Father, may we raise our voices and may we bring more to raise their voices. May we seek out more worshipers for your name. Even this week, Father, give us opportunities as we lift our voices together.

Thank you for together. Thank you that we're not alone in this, in Jesus' name. Amen. I encourage you to get comfortable, as comfortable as possible while we speak about God's divine wrath against humanity's rebellion.

So, I mean, just try your best. But remember if any time during the message you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donuts or whatever, or get up in the back to stretch out, that's available for you there.

So you're not gonna distract me by doing any of that. So make yourself comfortable as possible. And keep your Bibles open, by the way, to Revelation chapter 16, so you can see the progression as we walk through the text that the things that I'm saying, it really is the structure, it really is the outline for the sermon this morning.

And just to set the stage and reminding us where we've already been, last week's preparation, last week's text in chapter 15, preparations were made for the final cycle of God's judgment on the kingdoms of this world.

And so seven angels were issued seven bowls that were filled with undiluted wrath of God Almighty. The saints of God sang songs to him of how awesome he is, how just, awesome, holy, and altogether righteous is our God.

And so we talked a lot about worship last week in the context of these bowls coming down, of this wrath coming down, still worship is the focus. But at the end of our text last week, we saw God literally shut himself up in the temple.

At the end, it said he went into the temple, his glory was so magnificent and his power so demonstrated that none could enter the temple until this act is done. Until this final act, he basically isolates himself for a period of time, which is just kind of like, whoa, there's something significant, whether that's just symbolism or imagery is a little bit unclear.

How does God stand alone? I mean, he is in all places at once and we know that. But at the same time, that's intentionally mentioned in the text that none can enter his presence during this final cycle of the final wrapping up of his wrath.

Verse one begins with God's voice then. Remember, he's the only one in the temple, so when you hear a voice coming out of the temple, God's voice, okay? So God is the one who's speaking from the temple and he commands, he says, let it commence, let it begin.

The seven angels are to begin pouring out their bowls of wrath on the planet. We're gonna go through these one at a time. That's really the structure of the text this morning is to talk about each one independently and kind of think it through.

In verse two, the first bowl is poured out and what we see is, if you look at the text, so the first angel went and poured out his bowl on the earth and the ESV translates, harmful and painful sores begin to break out on those who belong to the beast, those who've been marked by his mark of ownership.

The interesting thing is the word harmful there can equally be translated in Greek and maybe even more picturesque is ugly. So ugly and painful sores is another way to translate this. This is a nasty disease.

This is a difficult, painful, pain-inflicting illness that breaks out on the skin of those who have taken, have basically bowed their knee to the evil one, to the Antichrist and to Satan who empowers him.

The interesting thing that it really is important to point out is that who breaks out in these sores? It's a specific segment of people. It is not all people. These punishments are not carried out against God's people but against those who oppose him.

I want to quickly remind everyone that every indication in scripture is that Jesus Christ himself has borne the wrath of God on behalf of anyone who believes in him and trusts him to be the rightful king and has bowed their knee to him.

He's basically said, I owe allegiance to you and I pledge my allegiance to the son of God and then have asked him to save them. So that really is the movement of scripture of salvation is bowing the knee before the king and acknowledging that he is the king and then humbly asking him to save you on the basis of the work that he did for you.

Faith in Christ therefore means loyalty to him and a humble request for his protection from the wrath of the father which was provided through the sacrificial death. So as we march through these bowls, the wrath of God is not on those who are his children by faith in Jesus.

It's important for you to understand where are these bowls being poured out and they're poured out on sinful, rebellious humanity who is not in with Jesus. And the first bowl, you see it there in the text, it's painful.

It's painful to all who are opposed to God. And I'm sure that you've noticed how physical pain has a way of spoiling the recipe for a good life. Have you ever identified, have you ever been in pain? Raise your hand if you've been in pain at some point in your life.

You're just kind of like, yeah. Just this past week, it was really ironic. I'm preaching on this and I had a really bad toothache. And it's funny how you can have a toothache and it can just kind of get into everything.

It gets into my relationship with my wife. It gets into my relationship with my kids and the way that I drive. And do you know what I'm talking about? You have that and it can really spoil things pretty quickly.

And I mean, that kind of betrays something about my personality and I'm sure it does to you too. I mean, at some point you kind of go, man, how easily am I bothered? How frail is my emotional state that a toothache can set me off?

But we recognize that pain is a significant source of grabbing our attention, right? And it's gonna be so in the end. This is a significant first bowl. The second bowl is poured out in verse three and the seas are turned to blood.

And it says this in the text, all living things in the sea died. Now, many pastors and theologians who are committed to trying to explain all of these plagues in Revelation in some kind of a scientific method or some kind of scientific, what could really be going on here?

You know, and that's the idea. When somebody says, what's really going on? Well, sometimes it is just the face value. Maybe God just really turns the seas into blood. Maybe it's literally like if you took it and did a scientific analysis, maybe it really is blood, I don't know.

But many have thought of this as maybe a red algae bloom and it would be caused by global warming. So you can actually see if this picture, I don't know if it's up, it's not working back there, but this is a picture of a red algae bloom.

And it kind of, if you look at it, it kind of looks like blood. So some people have said, well, that's probably what's going on. The use of the word lake, the blood of a corpse, allows this kind of interpretation.

It could be something that just colors it red or makes it unusable to us or something to that effect. But on the other hand, maybe Al Gore is right, okay? We'll see a better reason to believe in global warming come verse four, okay?

I believe in global warming. You're gonna see that here in verse four. The question is, who causes it? And the text is gonna say, God is going to bring it. God is going to bring global warming. It's gonna happen.

But it's not until the fourth bowl we'll see here. But remember that I've been working hard to make sure that we don't get lost in the details and slide off into speculation so much that we miss the point.

What was the point? Whether it's blood, real blood or not. How could we be discussing that in light of what the text has clearly revealed to us? What we know is not figurative, and that is that all living creatures in the sea died.

Like, do you see how we can get so spun off into these side thoughts and side concerns that we can miss the force, the impact that the text is meant to have on us? The death of all sea creatures is like a partial reversal of the fifth day of creation.

God created all of those animals in the sea and called it good. God, who delighted to create these things and called it all good, will bring to an end that good creation. Why? Because the caretaker, humanity, who is responsible for this place to care for it, we've broke it through our sin and through our rebellion against our creator.

And it needs a major overhaul to get back to what it was originally meant to be. And that's what we see happening here in the book of Revelation. We see this entire movement of an overhaul that is coming upon the earth to usher in the kingdom of his son that will indeed be with justice and glory and beauty and majesty and sinless and pain-free for eternity.

Now, I don't know about you. I love watching the Nature Channel. Anybody with me on that? You love watching Nature Channel or you like watching those documentaries? There's a new channel that I just picked up and it's a BBC channel.

And every once in a while, I haven't figured out the pattern yet, but every once in a while they're showing shows that are the ocean ones or whatever or the jungles or whatever. And I mean, how can you get past that British accent, right?

You know, the one I'm talking, you know, I mean, it's just like, oh, it's mesmerizing and eventually you're snoring or whatever. But I mean, but it's still really cool to see the different creatures that God has created.

And I love that Adam, my oldest son and I are hoping to get some diving classes soon so that we can get scuba certified and take on some of this. Like, I really look forward to that. And I have to confess that the thought of the loss of ocean life is devastating.

Is that devastating to you? Isn't that just, and I mean, just think about what an upheaval. That's kind of like, I think of it like the point of no return. I mean, when that really literally happens on the face of this planet, how many of you are thinking going, people are like, build the rocket and get to the next planet, right?

Like, it's time to get to Pandora, it's Avatar time, right? Like, we got to get out there to another inhabitable, some of, two, three of you knew what I was even talking about there? Couple of sci-fi geeks in here.

But other than that, yeah, I mean, I think people are gonna be like, it's over. Like, we freak out at the thought that a species, out of the bazillions of species, that's a technical scientific designation, a bazillion species on the face of the planet, and the thought that one of them might go extinct, we freak out, right?

I think reasonably, I think it's a terrible thought that we would cause the extinction of any kind of animal, minus the mosquito. I mean, well, I wouldn't mind that going away, but anyways, that's another story.

But we think about how the ecological system would be impacted by this devastating, irreversible kind of damage done to our ecology on this planet. And here we are in the second bowl, the second bowl of God's wrath.

The ecosystems and the economies of this planet will be in complete and utter upheaval and turmoil. And then the third bowl turns over to the fresh water, and it is stricken as well and turned to blood.

Again, the imagery of blood is used, and it's quite within the scope of God's power to make the water turn into literal blood. And I think we kind of just look at the current technologies that we have.

Could you filter water out of blood? Yeah, we could, but imagine the psychological toll of this bowl judgment, and it's gruesome, and it's intention of what it's meant to communicate to us. And at this point, we encounter a mini interlude, a little bit of an interlude here.

We're not just boom, boom, boom, bowl, bowl, bowl, but right here at the end of the third bowl, an angel's gonna speak up. The angel speaks up to remind us of God's character. Now, the timing is good, because we're almost halfway through this list already, and we may be getting uncomfortable with God's actions.

How many of you are kind of uncomfortable with the thought of all the sea creatures dying? Like, I'm kind of uncomfortable with that. It doesn't make me really joyful and skippy that all of this stuff is gonna go down and people are gonna have blood to drink.

So we might feel just as skosh if we're honest. Now, it's not very popular to admit this, but we might feel a skosh like God is being unfair to the world. Like, we could feel that. And I would suggest to you that you probably, at this point, are intended to feel that way.

Like, there's a force in the text that you're kind of supposed to go, well, really? Okay, now you're going over the top. But the angel speaks up at the right point at the right time, where we might be questioning and wondering, God, what are you doing?

And it says, the angel over the waters spoke up. Well, he seems to be qualified. He's the guy who just got unemployed, okay? So he seems to be qualified to talk about God's justice in this because he's called the angel over the waters.

And I think it's a funny thought that there is a cosmological, there's a cosmic ordering, not cosmological, but cosmic ordering going on behind the scenes that we don't routinely think about. We were introduced to the angel over the fires in an earlier text, just a couple chapters ago, and now we hear about an angel over the waters.

Do you think, in those terms, there's an angel who's over the water? Like, I don't, I hardly even know what that means. And it's in the text, and there's some kind of a relationship between a specific angel and water.

I don't know how that works. But he has just now, as of the pouring out of this bowl of God's wrath, been unemployed. And I wonder if he feels relieved. Like, man, this has been a tough gig, you know, since the very beginning, controlling the waters and making the waves flow and doing all this.

And now I get a break. Or does he feel like he let the world down? You know, I mean, I was over the waters, and now, I mean, we've let this all go, and now it's blood, and. But seriously, what he speaks is some very important words.

This angel, over the waters, all the waters now turn to blood, says these three words. God is just. God is just. Further, he identifies God is the holy one. God is the holy one. Nobody has holiness in and of themselves.

Only God can rightly be declared to be holy, a word that means distinct, set apart from all else. You see, all other things that you ever have encountered or ever will encounter are in one category lumped together.

Rocks, trees, amoebas, galaxies, and humans are all created. Not God. He's different. He's altogether holy, completely other than anything you ever encounter. Distinct, different. And what he does is always just.

What he does is always just. And here the angel points out that God has made the punishment fit the crime in an ironic twist. In verse six, we see they have shed the blood of saints and prophets. They have been murderers.

They are the bloody people. They are the people of slaughter who have declared open season on the people of God. They have slit throats and spilled their share of the blood of God's people. So God is giving them now in the end what they deserve.

In essence saying, if they enjoy blood so much, let them have it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Let them have blood to drink. And I don't believe these angels' words are just strictly vindictive or ironic.

Like whoa, God just threw it in there just to kind of add a little bit of a twist to it. But instead they serve a point in the text to remind us of just the sliver, just one sliver of the guilt of those who are punished.

He focuses on murder and the taking of life, which is very significant, but there's more sin that's been committed that's stacked up on top of that. It's just one sliver of the cause of the judgment and the wrath of God on humanity.

God is not exacting vengeance on poor and innocent, ignorant people. He is judging those who have hated him and murdered his people, even murdered his son. The fourth bowl is poured out in verse eight.

And the sun somehow expands and we get some serious global warming. This is not saying that in the end people will get some, you know, you're gonna be laying out at the beach and you're gonna have to lay out less to get a suntan.

Just be a quick suntan, or, you know, you're gonna have to be cautious about getting sunburns. The literal words are burning with flames. It's a, I don't know what the actual mechanism is here, but people will literally die from sun exposure in significant ways.

And again, anybody with a more scientific mind, some of you are already thinking through life cycle of stars and what that looks like and what that implies for this. And that can be fun thinking through like, what is this, you know, is this a super giant?

Is this, what does it do? How does it expand? And do all of that kind of stuff and trying to figure all of that out. But again, we can miss the point that it is God who is doing this. It's not science that is doing this.

It's God who is doing it. Our planet will not fall victim to a chance and unfortunate failure of our star to remain stable. Now, I think a lot of people in our culture believe that, that are not Christians, and some Christians even believe that.

But there's a fear that, man, if our sun gets unstable, it's over, it could expand. I've seen charts and graphs of, man, if it goes, if it gets out into one of these, you know, super giants or something like that, it could extend all the way out to the orbits of Saturn or Jupiter.

And, man, it'd just be pretty massive and it would just engulf the earth pretty quickly in that expansion process. And so, man, we're just, you know, just live it up. I don't know, what's your application to that?

If that's your mindset, if that's the, you know, what do you do if that's the way you think it's all gonna go down in the end? Man, that would be a devastating, fearful existence that's just kind of like, just live for yourself and it's all gonna be over.

But our planet is not gonna fall victim to chance. God has power over these plagues, and it seems, according to verse nine, that the people enduring these plagues, hear it carefully, they know who to blame.

They don't blame science. They don't blame the star. They're not angry at the S-U-N sun. I find it ironic that these atheists or antagonists to God seem to always know who to blame. You notice that in our culture?

You notice that in our media? A hurricane strikes in Louisiana, and who do those who don't believe in God blame for it? Who do they indict for that occurrence? A tsunami hits on Christmas. Who do the atheists blame for that?

I thought it was supposed to just be random chance. I thought it was supposed to just be the activities of a planet that is just unstable and not really solid for us. The atheists know who to blame. To be honest, that's the point of what I would call, and I mean, maybe it was your favorite movie on the planet.

I thought it was kind of cheesy, but had some good points. God's Not Dead, any of you see that movie? It kind of felt a little hallmark. It's intended to make you cry or make you get emotional or something.

In that, spoiler alert, plug your ears if you're playing. If you've got it, rent it at home and you haven't watched it yet. But the atheist professor is angry at the God he claims to not believe in because he took his mother.

Do you hear the ironic twist in that? Who's he blaming? The God he claims to not believe in. He really believes in him. The victims of these plagues curse and blaspheme the name of the Almighty. He is truly the one, according to this text, who has the power over these plagues.

But rather than cry out to him for mercy, they stack up against themselves more wrath by further insulting him. They refuse to repent, which is a word that just simply means to turn from one direction and head in the other.

In a biblical sense, all humans are born in a state of needing to repent. The natural trajectory of a human life since the fall of Adam is to eternal death. That's the natural trajectory. It is to sin that leads to death.

That is the pathway that all humans are bound to and unless there is a turn somewhere in there to God, that our trajectory would be changed by the Almighty to move toward God and to come to him for mercy and that trajectory results in eternal life.