Rev 16:7, And I heard the altar saying, "Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgments." 
	In the course of our dealing with this Letter of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, we have read numerous chapters that have described the blasphemous attitude and behavior that will characterize those who choose to deny God. We have seen that man will call lies the truth and the truth lies. Many of us have probably wondered at the fact that God will allow this to take place. Our careful reading of every instance of the wickedness and the deceitfulness and the idolatry and the enslavement of the hearts of man by the dragon and the beast shows that it was only in place because it is given to them by God. He rules and overrules in every aspect of what takes place on this earth. 
	The reason that it may not seem to be right and just is because we, as human beings, as the creation, look at the working of God with minds that try to box Him into our concepts and our understanding. We try to force Him to fit into our limited ideas of right and wrong without realizing that we are corrupted and insulated by our own self-protection. Our very sinful human nature hides us in the lies that God is unjust and unfair in His dealings with humanity. It is the great lie of the garden, played out generation after generation in our hearts and minds. It is not until we are completely abandoned unto Christ Jesus, that we can see that God is absolutely and perfectly just in all His dealings, not only with us, but with the entirety of His creation. "Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgments." 
	When God deals with the corruption of His creation, He does so in His Holy and Righteous judgment. There will be no one and nothing that will be able to say that His dealings are anything less than faultless in the light of His Holiness and His Righteousness. We see this proclaimed in this morning’s reading leading up to our text. It is right that we should spend a few moments studying the perfection of His just and holy judgments, realizing that He is perfect in all that He does. His Omniscience, Omnipresence, and Omnipotence guide all His dealings with His creation. 
We must never let our fragmented and confused human sense of justice pervert the truth of His Righteousness and Devoutness. If anything seems to be going against the grain of our understanding and our sense of right and wrong, do not just accept it based on this study. Rather, ask the Lord to open His heart within each of us and show forth that which is in absolute line and correlation with the passage before us, "Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgments." It is not my interpretation or my perspective that matters; it is the Lord and His Word and His Truth that needs to move and to sway us away from our self-protective sentimentalism and emotionalism. 
The Psalmist has this wonderful sense of the ways of God in perfection as we read in Ps 19:7-11. The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the Lord are true; they are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb. Moreover, by them Thy servant is warned; In keeping them there is great reward. 
This is how we are to view the mighty working of God. We do not make Him fit into our patterns of behavior and psychologically appropriate reasoning. We learn to value what God does and the way He does them as right and perfect altogether. We recognize that His ways are not our ways. He is not limited by any human sense of fairness and justification of actions. Because He is God, everything He does is perfect and pure of heart and righteous in every detail. There are no mitigating circumstances, no gray areas of morality vs. practicality. God always does what is accurate and true and faultless! Always!
This will be absolutely seen in the eternal ages when mankind is rightly judged against the pure and perfect standard of Jesus Christ. Rev 15:3+4, And they sang the song of Moses the bond-servant of God and the song of the Lamb, saying, "Great and marvelous are Thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty; Righteous and true are Thy ways, Thou King of the nations. "Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? For Thou alone art holy; For all the nations will come and worship before Thee, For Thy righteous acts have been revealed." God’s glory will be evidenced in the fact of His righteous judgment of all creation. All that He does will be seen in the reality of His perfect nature which will cause the entire universe to give acclamation to Him.
 As well, in that holy justice of His perfection, the entirety of heaven will burst forth with praise unto Him. There will be evidenced the full course of what God has been doing throughout time. All the pieces of the puzzle, so to speak, will be put together in the vision of the Love of God in the giving of His only Begotten Son. The complete mosaic of human history will brilliantly, vibrantly, and abundantly declare the goodness of God. Rev 19:1+2, After these things I heard, as it were, a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, saying, "Hallelujah! Salvation and glory and power belong to our God; because His judgments are true and righteous; for He has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and He has avenged the blood of His bond-servants on her." All that he has done will be seen as righteous and true. The entire course of His Holiness will evidence only His Faithfulness and merciful dealings with a humanity that viciously reveled in sin and darkness and self-exaltation.
The perverseness of humanity is most clearly seen in our penchant for trying to make God accountable to our frail and feeble standard of fairness. Our sinful nature is adept at measuring everything, especially the immeasurable and uncontainable work of God, against our faulty and pathetic human ideology. We are so conceited as to try to judge God and His Wisdom and His Holiness and His Righteousness with our puny and worthless ideas of appropriateness. 
We utterly lack the ability to see that what we are truly measuring is how everything has its affect on us. If, for some reason, we are being left out of something, or not getting the recognition that we think we deserve, we cry foul. We call it unfair. We are so perverse as to treat God in this manner. If He does something that we do not perceive as in our best interest, if He allows something to take place that we do not fathom, in our mind, as just and right, then we blame Him. We cry out to Him that we are not being properly cared for in this situation. It is like a little child throwing a temper tantrum and stamping his feet because he is not getting his own way.
This is a human trait and characteristic born into us with our sinful nature. The Psalmist faced this attitude as we read in Ps 10:1-6. Why dost Thou stand afar off, O Lord? Why dost Thou hide Thyself in times of trouble? In pride the wicked hotly pursue the afflicted; Let them be caught in the plots which they have devised. For the wicked boasts of his heart's desire, And the greedy man curses and spurns the Lord. The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, "There is no God." His ways prosper at all times; Thy judgments are on high, out of his sight; As for all his adversaries, he snorts at them. He says to himself, "I shall not be moved; Throughout all generations I shall not be in adversity." 
Notice that the wicked spurn God. All his thoughts are, "There is no God." How much are we surrounded in this day with the continual cries of humanity that there is no God. We do not have to be worried about the consequences of unrighteous behavior because there is no God to repay us for our evil doings. Man has so deluded himself in his wickedness that he will not see the Hand of God in all the miracles of God’s handiwork. Science has replaced God with the supposed superiority of human understanding, wisdom, and intellect. God’s precepts and laws are dismissed with the deception and the emotionalist’s lie that if there really was a God, why are so many people suffering? Humanity refuses to accept a Sovereign God in Whom rests all Holiness and uprightness, because to do so is to accept the truth of judgment that will surely follow!
Man would rather revel in sin and darkness for the mere decades of this transitory life than face the reality that God will bring forth His judgment on this earth. Ex 3:14+15, And God said to Moses, "I AM WHO I AM"; and He said, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'I AM has sent me to you.'" And God, furthermore, said to Moses, "Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, 'The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.' This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name to all generations. 
	Rather than face the reality that God is Who He states He is, mankind deludes himself with the falseness of his own imaginations. In that deceived line of fantasy, man convinces himself that there is no God. Then, in an effort to cover all bases, if there is a God, the lie is put forth that there is no way that a loving God will cast anyone into the fires of hell. The lies of the distorted human mind and intellect throw up the fog screens that such a God, clothed in Holiness and Righteousness, would surely release us from having to serve eternal punishment for our unbelief. Why would He create so many people just for the fires of hell? 
There is no understanding of the fact that it is because He is so Holy and Righteous and Faithful and Merciful and filled with Grace that He made the only way of salvation for mankind. An unjust God would have simply let all people suffer eternal damnation for all of eternity. But that is not the God Whom we serve and in Whom we take our delight. God knew our need for salvation and He met that need through the giving of Himself to take all our sins upon Himself at the Cross. He suffered the just penalty of sin for us and bore them unto death. Then, in gloriousness beyond all comprehension, He rose from the dead and brought us up out of that grave byh His resurrection power. He opened the door for us to eternal joy and life and glory in His very presence. 
This is the Just and Holy and Righteous God of both the New and the Old Testament. Many people try to distinguish them, almost as if there were two different gods. They envision the Old Testament God as a fierce and unforgiving God, Who threw down judgment upon man as if it were hail and lightning. Then somehow, God softened His approach to man in the New Testament. But God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever. He was ever dealing with man in the very nature of His character of Holiness and Righteousness. It is the understanding of man that has always been the issue. Because man does not want to see the nature of God in all His Holiness and Justice, we paint Him as being less lenient in the Old Testament and more loving in the New Testament. 
But man can never define God! He has always and will always deal with us in His nature of Being! He can do nothing else. He is God. He is not a person who matures and develops better understanding and manners of doing things as that maturity enlarges. He was not a less compassionate God Who developed into a more sympathetic God after His Son’s death and resurrection. The true nature of God has always been in evidence throughout both the Old and the New Testament. It is man who needs to give himself to look at the true character of God, as best as possible, with our limited human understanding. This will only be as we read and study and cherish His Word and ask the Holy Spirit to open Himself into us in life!
Ps 36:5-9, Thy lovingkindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens, Thy faithfulness reaches to the skies. Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God; Thy judgments are like a great deep. O Lord, Thou preservest man and beast. How precious is Thy lovingkindness, O God! And the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Thy wings. They drink their fill of the abundance of Thy house; And Thou dost give them to drink of the river of Thy delights. For with Thee is the fountain of life; In Thy light we see light. Notice that the Psalmist has a very clear understanding of the fact that God’s Righteousness and judgments are to be valued as pure and true and delightful. They are not oppressive and dreary and unreasonable, as we tend to declare them today.
Ps 48:8-14, As we have heard, so have we seen In the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city of our God; God will establish her forever. Selah. We have thought on Thy lovingkindness, O God, In the midst of Thy temple. As is Thy name, O God, So is Thy praise to the ends of the earth; Thy right hand is full of righteousness. Let Mount Zion be glad, Let the daughters of Judah rejoice, Because of Thy judgments. Walk about Zion, and go around her; Count her towers; Consider her ramparts; Go through her palaces; That you may tell it to the next generation. For such is God, Our God forever and ever; He will guide us until death. 
	How do we look at God in our hearts and with our minds? Do we allow ourselves to succumb to the lies and the deceptions of this age that declare that God and His Holiness and His Judgments are not to be valued? That they are to be ridiculed and mocked because they do not permit us the freedom to do the things that we would rather do in our sin and darkness of hiding from the truth? This is something that we need to take to heart in our personal dealings with God. Too many of us try to shelter our actions and our thoughts and our motivations on the basis that God will let us get away with those little things that are seemingly non-consequential. We are to value the Holiness and the righteousness of God’s judgments above all else in our hearts and in our minds. Let us ever more be in line with the heart of the Psalmist in consideration of Who God is and how He operates in the lives of His people. Seek for the Lord to make us rejoice in His goodness and to join wholeheartedly in the chorus of this morning’s text.
… "Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, true and righteous are Thy judgments." Amen.

								
This morning’s benediction is Rom 5:1+2. Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand; and we exult in hope of the glory of God. Amen.