Bible Commentaries

The Song of Triumph

Revelation 15:3

I. The life of the redeemed is here represented as a "Service of Song". This will afford matter neither for merriment nor surprise, if we reflect for a moment or two on the function of song. Music is a language, and frequently the only language that can give expression to the highest thoughts of the mind, or the deepest feelings of the heart. For words cannot utter what is greatest in us. Looks may dp it, glances, gestures, smiles and tears may do it, but it is never so well or so effectually done as when the gifted sons and daughters of song come to our aid. (1) It is further to be noticed that all life, as it approaches perfection, becomes melodious. (2) There is no music like the music of triumph, and no songs like those which celebrate deliverance.

II. I take it as beautifully significant, that the burden of this song should be what it Revelation 15:3

Compare a sentence written by Mrs. H. B. Stowe during the dark hours of the war between the South and North: "If this struggle is to be prolonged till there be not a home in the land where there is not one dead, till all the treasure amassed by the unpaid labour of the slave shall be wasted, till every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be atoned by blood drawn by the sword, we can only bow and say, "Just and true are thy ways, thou King of Saints"."

References.—XV:3.—H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No1656 , p289. H. Alford, Quebec Chapel Sermons, vol. ii. p295. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. iii. No136. Expositor (6th Series), vol. v. p137.

Revelation 15:3-4

Dr. John Brown, in his letter to Dr. Cairns, tells of his uncle "astonishing us all with a sudden burst. It was a sermon upon the apparent plus of evil in this world, and he had driven himself and us all to despair—so much sin, so much misery—when, taking advantage of the chapter he had read, the account of the uproar at Ephesus in the Theatre, he said, "Ah, sirs! what if some of the men who, for about the space of two hours cried out, Great is Diana of the Revelation 15:3-6

I. In the text we hear of those songs and of that music, of those victors, those happy palm bearers, who are keeping the true Feast of Tabernacles; who with joy and gladness have been brought and have entered into the King's palace. And we hear too of the mighty tribulation through which they passed; how they got the victory over the fourfold enemy, over the wild beast and over his image and over his Revelation 15:4; Revelation 18:7

These are the only two passages in which the word glorify is used in the book of Revelation; once, to describe the Christian, once, to describe the pagan, attitude. For the latter see R. W. Church's Cathedral and University Sermons, pp25 f. ("Can we believe that He whose words were so terrible against the pride of Egypt and Babylon, against that haughty insolence in men, on which not only Hebrew prophet, but the heathen poets of Greece looked with such peculiar and profound alarm—that He will not visit it on those who, in their measure, are responsible for its words and temper, when it takes possession of a Christian nation?")