The Seven Bowls Part 5

REVELATION 16 v 10-21

Is people’s refusal to repent the end of them?

• There are people around each of us who refuse to repent because of pride, selfishness, self-righteousness, etc...
• These people need Jesus and His love just as much as anyone else, but what if they haven’t accepted it by the time the bowl judgments happen?
• Here is a process which people go through, it is just a question of at what point do the heed the warning signs and turn to God.
• Exodus 8 v 12-14 - "¹² After Moses and Aaron left Pharaoh, Moses cried out to the LORD about the frogs he had brought on Pharaoh. ¹³ And the LORD did what Moses asked. The frogs died in the houses, in the courtyards and in the fields. ¹⁴ They were piled into heaps, and the land reeked of them. ¹⁵ But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the LORD had said."
• Pharaoh was about to change heart but then he hardened it again. Pharaoh choice was not the same of a non-believer today but it is the same process. 
• People's hearts begin to soften when hard times come or someone impacts their life with love, but something else happens which distracts them and takes them back to square 1.
• With Pharaoh it was plagues stopping each time which turned his heart hard again. But it took till catastrophic destruction was brought the land till he changed his heart.
• Exodus 12 v 29-32 - "²⁹ At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. ³⁰ Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead. ³¹ During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested. ³² Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me.”"
• Pharaoh's final warning changed his heart and he let the people go but even then his heart hardened again.
• Do we ever wait till the last moment or warning?
• People are never sure if people or God in this case will follow through with the threats and warnings. For Pharaoh this was a dangerous place to be with his thought.
• Pharaoh changes his mind again and God destroys him and his men in the sea after Moses and the people have crossed it. 
• We all know hard hearted people who have been tarnished by a church or may be just hate church because they have already formed an opinion about it. 
• We can't just change their opinion by telling what they should believe; we should show them what our beliefs mean to us through word and deed.
• In Revelation the warning signs have been and gone, now is the final destruction. I don't want the people I love and know to be in the hindsight position where they have refused to repent.
• How can you be what you believe, through word and deed?
• What opportunities do you have to overflow the love of God from our lives?
• If you think - well I'm not full of the love of God, and then ask God to increase your desire for Him and your love for Him.
• How can God use you to impact people who refuse to repent?