Joy in Judgment

One of the happiest songs in American cinema is about someone dying.

Dorothy’s house falls out of the sky and lands on the Wicked Witch of the East. When the Munchkins discover the witch is dead, they do not observe a moment of silence. They celebrate. They dance. They sing, “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead.” To the Munchkins, the witch’s death means freedom. The one who held them in bondage can no longer hurt them, so they sing.

We understand that kind of joy. We want oppression to end, evil defeated, and people who have lived in fear to finally be free. And yet, rejoicing over judgment can make us uncomfortable. Can we really celebrate the judgment of the wicked without becoming cruel ourselves?

Revelation 15 confronts us with that question. The chapter begins and ends with the coming wrath of God. Seven angels prepare to pour out seven final plagues, bringing God’s judgment to its appointed goal. But between those two descriptions of judgment, John hears something unexpected: a song.

For the redeemed, even the wrath of God is a reason to sing. Not because Christians delight in the suffering of the wicked, but because God’s judgment reveals His character. Revelation 15 gives us four reasons the redeemed can rejoice even in the face of judgment: God’s wrath reveals His power, His justice, His holiness, and His mercy.

God’s Wrath Reveals His Power

The Munchkins were hardly the first people to sing when an enemy was defeated. Long before the land of Oz was imagined, God’s people stood beside the Red Sea and sang.

After generations of slavery in Egypt, God rescued Israel from Pharaoh. He sent ten plagues displaying His power, brought His people safely through the sea, and then destroyed the army pursuing them. So Moses and the Israelites sang about the greatness of their God.

Revelation 15 deliberately echoes that scene. John sees those who have “conquered the beast” standing beside a sea of glass and singing “the song of Moses” and “the song of the Lamb.” Their song begins, “Great and amazing are your deeds, O Lord God the Almighty!”

From our vantage point, it often looks as though evil is winning. The beasts of Revelation represent Satan’s power to persecute and persuade—to force some into submission and fool others into worship. Christians may suffer, lose opportunities, face persecution, and even die for their faith.

But Revelation shows us the end of the story: Jesus wins.

The song of the redeemed is therefore not about their own strength. They do not sing about how impressive their perseverance was. They sing about the “great and amazing” deeds of the Almighty God. Even those who died at the hands of the beast ultimately conquered because death itself could not take away the victory Jesus had secured for them.

That truth should shape how we respond to our fears now. One of the clearest indicators of whether we actually believe in God’s power is our willingness to bring our fears to Him in prayer and leave them in His hands. We may not be Moses, but the God of Moses is still God. Whatever sea stands in front of us and whatever army seems to be closing in behind us, the Almighty has not changed.

God’s Wrath Reveals His Justice

We all want justice when we are the ones who have been wronged. We want the truth known, the guilty held accountable, and wrongs made right. Yet human justice is painfully imperfect. Juries can get things wrong. Judges can be biased. Evidence can be incomplete. Sometimes justice never comes at all.

God’s people can sing because none of those limitations apply to God.

The redeemed declare, “Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations!” God never judges wrongly or disproportionately. His wrath is not an emotional outburst. He never flies off the handle or makes a decision without all the facts. He knows every action, every word, every thought, and every motivation. His judgment is always perfectly just and perfectly true.

The Munchkins’ celebration becomes more complicated when Wicked retells the story from the witch’s perspective. Suddenly we wonder whether the original story gave us all the facts. That suspicion is appropriate when human beings judge because we rarely know the whole story.

But God is not a fallible narrator.

That truth has practical implications when someone sins against us. Our instinct is often to make the offender pay. We replay the argument, imagine their humiliation, and wait for an opportunity to hurt them as they hurt us. But Romans 12:19 tells Christians to leave vengeance to God precisely because He has promised, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”

Trusting God’s justice does not require pretending the wrong was insignificant, nor does it prevent us from seeking protection or appropriate accountability. But it does free us from revenge. We can entrust our case to the Judge who knows the whole story and even pray that those who have hurt us will repent and receive the same mercy we desperately need.

God’s Wrath Reveals His Holiness

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to rejoicing in God’s judgment is the conviction that a loving God should never be wrathful. But God’s love and His judgment are not contradictions.

God does not delight in cruelty. His heart is for sinners to repent and receive mercy. Yet because He is holy, He cannot simply shrug at evil. Revelation 15:4 declares, “You alone are holy.” God is utterly pure, unique, uncompromised, and incapable of approving evil or leaving it finally unaddressed.

The problem is that we tend to underestimate our own sin. We are remarkably skilled at giving respectable names to ugly realities. We call it confidence when it is really pride. We call it financial wisdom when it is greed. We call it venting when it is gossip.

God’s wrath shows us how seriously He takes the sins we have learned to excuse.

So Revelation 15 should lead us to examine ourselves. Where have we become comfortable with something God calls sin? How do we speak to our families when frustrated? What do we willingly entertain when nobody else is watching? What resentment do we continue feeding because we believe another person deserves it?

The proper response to God’s holiness is not vague regret but specific repentance. Instead of merely saying, “Lord, forgive me for falling short,” we learn to confess what we actually did and why we did it. Then we take whatever steps repentance requires—correcting the lie, asking forgiveness without excuses, or removing whatever has been feeding our sin.

We cannot sing about God’s holy judgment while making peace with the very evil He judges.

And if seeing God’s holiness leaves us thinking, Then I desperately need mercy, we are finally beginning to see clearly.

God’s Wrath Reveals His Mercy

The song ends with an astonishing picture: “All nations will come and worship you.”

How can that be? If we are all sinners deserving God’s judgment, how can anyone stand beside the sea and sing?

The answer is hidden in the name of their song. They sing “the song of Moses” and “the song of the Lamb.”

Before Israel sang beside the Red Sea, something had happened in Egypt. Before there was a song, there was a lamb.

On the night of the first Passover, God’s judgment was coming upon Egypt. Israel was not spared because the people wrote their good deeds on their doors or proved themselves morally superior to the Egyptians. God instructed them to sacrifice a spotless lamb and place its blood on their doorposts. His promise was simple: “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

The only reason Israel could sing beside the Red Sea was because they had first been rescued by the blood of the lamb.

The same is true of the multitude in Revelation. We do not have the right to sing because of our morality, upbringing, or religious accomplishments. We can sing because the spotless Lamb of God endured the wrath of God in our place on the cross.

And that means the strength of our faith is not what saves us. The Savior we trust is who saves us. One Christian may face death with remarkable confidence while another trembles with fear. But God did not promise salvation to those whose faith never trembles. Salvation rests upon Christ and His blood.

Your faith may tremble. His promise does not.

The Reason We Can Sing

That is how people who deserve judgment become people who sing.

The redeemed standing beside the sea know what evil has done. Some have suffered terribly beneath its power. They also know the sin that once lived—and still battled for mastery—in their own hearts. Yet there they stand: delivered, forgiven, and praising God.

This is the future every Christian can count on. God’s power will overcome every enemy. His justice will answer every wrong. His holiness will bring an end to evil. And His mercy will bring His people safely home.

So yes, the redeemed can rejoice even in judgment. Not because we enjoy seeing sinners suffer, but because judgment means evil will not last forever. Every enemy of God will finally be defeated, every wrong will be made right, and every stain of sin will be removed.

Most importantly, we rejoice because the judgment we deserved has already fallen upon Another.

Before there was a song, there was a Lamb.

And He is the reason we can sing.