Key Verse:
Revelation 7:14 NKJV
14 I answered, “Sir, you know.”
And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
This used to be one of my grandmother’s favorite references in Scripture; The number that no man could number… they’d been washed, made eternally clean by the shed blood of the Lamb. Isn’t that good news?
Where to begin?
` While the lesson this week begins at verse nine of chapter seven of the Book of Revelation, we need to answer some questions on verses one through eight, which refer to the 144,000 children of Israel who receive the seal of God on their foreheads. Here is the text:
Revelation 7:1-8 NKJV
After these things I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, on the sea, or on any tree. 2 Then I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea, 3 saying, “Do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads.” 4 And I heard the number of those who were sealed. One hundred and forty-four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed:
5
of the tribe of Judah twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Gad twelve thousand were sealed;
6
of the tribe of Asher twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand were sealed;
7
of the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Levi twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand were sealed;
8
of the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand were sealed;
of the tribe of Benjamin twelve thousand were sealed.
I start here is because these verses immediately precede the lesson and there is some question as to the significance of the 144,000 souls in context to today’s lesson. I have never considered the 144,000 outside of what I’ve read; that they will be actual Israelites who are witnesses of the Kingdom of God during the tribulation, according to most dispensationalists. It's only now within the context of this lesson, that I’ve considered the real meaning of this passage. What message was John communicating?
1 Kings 12:28-30 NKJV
28 Therefore the king asked advice, made two calves of gold, and said to the people, “It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem. Here are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up from the land of Egypt!” 29 And he set up one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. 30 Now this thing became a sin, for the people went to worship before the one as far as Dan.
First, notice that each tribe of Israel is represented here, sans Joseph, Dan, and Ephraim. Joseph’s inheritance was divided between his two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim. That accounts for Joseph’s not being named. In the case of Ephraim and Dan, both followed after Jereboam, the first king of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and both fell into idolatry when they followed Jereboam into the worship of the two golden calves. This was an abomination to God and resulted in the tribes of Dan and Ephraim being rejected by God.
Revelation 14:1 NKJV
4 Then I looked, and behold, a Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His Father’s name written on their foreheads.
Concerning the 144,00, there are a few things of which to take note. First, each Tribe is named separately, with each being numbered at 12,000. Each is a symbolic number in each case. Twelve is God’s number for ‘completion of government or rule’. Think 3x4 =12, or rather (3 = God, or the Divine) x (4 = earth) equals Twelve or the complete establishment of God’s rule or government in the earth. The multiplier of 1000 in Scripture means ‘big’, or rather; ‘immense’, too vast to comprehend. Then, to take all of that and multiply it again by ‘twelve’ is to emphasize God’s intended message here. In essence, the correct statement of the equation is 12 squared x 1000, as if God intended to compound or overemphasize His point to the nth degree. One more thing about the numbers here. In the Roman military structure, the number 12,000 represented a legion of soldiers, a virtually undefeatable, contingent of Rome’s military. That God symbolically puts twelve legions on the table belies the overwhelming power of this group represented by the number: 144,000.
Here comes the big reveal. What God is showing us is “the Church”, the Ecclesia, the entirety of all who have ‘called on the name of the Lord”, both those who are living and those who are ‘asleep’. . Note what the verses immediately after verse one reveal...
Revelation 14:2-5 NKJV
2 And I heard a voice from heaven, like the voice of many waters, and like the voice of loud thunder. And I heard the sound of harpists playing their harps. 3 They sang as it were a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures, and the elders; and no one could learn that song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from the earth. 4 These are the ones who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb. 5 And in their mouth was found no deceit, for they are without fault before the throne of God.
The descriptions afforded in the Book of Revelation concerning the 144,000 match the descriptions of the Church of God. They are sealed by the Holy Spirit. They sing a new song; the song of the Redeemed. They are not defiled, they are (made) pure. They follow the Lamb wherever He leads them. They are without sin. No one is born like that in the flesh, but they are born into the Spirit completely sin-free and guiltless before God, having been redeemed by the precious Lamb of God. Beloved, the ‘144,000 children of Israel’ is symbolically representative of the Church of God, redeemed by the shed blood of Jesus Christ! Debate me.
Romans 2:29 NKJV
29 but he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter; whose praise is not from men but from God.
Matthew 16:15-19 NKJV
15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”
16 Simon Peter answered and said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
17 Jesus answered and said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. 18 And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not [g]prevail against it. 19 And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth [h]will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”
The Lesson
Revelation 7:9a NKJV
9a After these things I looked,...
First things first: who is John and who is his audience? The writer, John is the last of the original twelve disciples who followed and were mentored by Christ during His earthly ministry. Originally, He was thought of as one of the primary disciples of Jesus followers; one of the ‘Sons of Thunder”. However, with age came great grace, such that by the time he wrote this letter, he had become known as the ‘Apostle of Love’. How greatly he was loved. Again, of note is the fact that indeed, he was the last remaining disciple. All of the rest had been martyred, including Paul and Peter, two of the most highly regarded of the Church fathers. Legend has it that the emperor, Domitian ordered John to be boiled in oil, but that the oil would not boil because an angel of God protected John. Whether true or not, John was certainly exiled to the Isle of Patmos, where he lived until near the end of his life. He is reported to have died in Ephesus.
John’s audience? John wrote to Christians who were being persecuted in Rome and throughout the Roman empire. From the crucifixion of Christ until Constantine, around 325 AD, estimates place the number of Christians martyred by Rome to be between 100,000 and 2 million. These were the conditions facing the Christians to whom John wrote. John, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote to encourage these same Christians, who were beleaguered and distraught by the persecution from Rome. John offered hope in his writing...
Here is where I must give well-deserved kudos to my good friend, Eric Wright. It was during our conversation that Eric brought to both of our remembrances that when reading the book of Revelation, there are two perspectives that one can observe, a perspective of Heaven from earth and a perspective of earth from Heaven. In conversation, we expanded on this thought in this way; when looking at the things transpiring on earth, you are viewing them from the perspective of time. When viewing the events of Heaven, you are viewing them from the eternal perspective, In essence, the Heavenly view is not directly tied to (in time) the events occurring on earth. Heaven is eternal, it is not bound by a timeline.
So then, immediately after John, gives us the earthly perspective of the immensely powerful and dynamic vision of God’s Church; the 144,000, in the earth its as though he turns his head and sees a concurrent, equivalent view of that self-same Church…
Revelation 7:9b NKJV
9b ...and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands,
In the same moment, as John turns his head (prophetically), his gaze shifts from the temporal to the eternal, from a heavenly view of a dynamic, powerful, overcoming entity on earth called ‘the Church’ to an earthy view of Heaven where that self-same entity is now revealed to John as a great multitude of people from every nation, creed, and language; a multitude so great that it cannot be numbered. These are not two competing views of the Church, but rather two complementary views of the Church, both given by God to a persecuted body of Christians suffering under Roman persecution. Both of these views provide great encouragement to John’s audience. One view depicts a majestic, powerful Church where they see a body diminished by persecution, feared to be in danger of extinction. In the second vision, a look into Heaven reveals a glorious, victorious Church that holds the to the promise of eternal life before the throne of the living God, whose peoples come from every walk of life and who have made clean and whole for all of eternity because of the shed blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus, the Messiah! In essence, a beautiful reminder to the persecuted Church that all of their sufferings would not be in vain. Hallelujah!
Before I move on, one other observation for my own future reference. If I am framing this stanza of John’s vision within the confines of the spiritual gifts referred to in the twelfth chapter of 1 Corinthians, then John’s vision of the Church on earth falls under the category of a Word of Wisdom, one of three spiritual gifts that ‘see’ something. The Word of Wisdom looks into the future to some event or revelation to come. John’s view into the throne room of God, where the Church is seen for the innumerable body of believers of vastly diverse backgrounds falls into the category of a Word of Knowledge. The Word of Knowledge sees a current event or reveals some present circumstance. In that, the events in Heaven are not governed by time, but by eternity, every moment in Heaven is ‘NOW’, as in ‘right now’. There is no past or future in Heaven, only NOW. Selah (take a moment to meditate here). When my grandmother used to read this verse to me, she would say, “Child, I want to be a part of that number!” Little did we know that we already were.
Revelations 7:10 NKJV
10 and crying out with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Allow me to turn now to the topic of today’s lesson which is centered around praise. This innumerable company of saints are standing before the throne of God, waving palm branches and crying out in praise of God and of Jesus Christ. They are praising God for so great a gift as salvation and praising Christ for being the vehicle and the embodiment of so great a gift as eternal life in God’s glorious Presence.
Revelation 7:11 NKJV
11 All the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,
Joining the Redeemed of God in the ‘Song of the Redeemed’, the other inhabitants of Heaven now assemble around the throne in this holiest of moments. There are innumerable angels there. The twenty-four elders are there (another multiple of twelve, and another, future lesson (Revelation 21:12-14 and 1 Chronicles 24:1-19)). And the four living creatures are there; the cherubim who are always before the throne of God. These are the most powerful beings in all of Creation, except for the Godhead. All, including the Redeemed saints of God, are now prostrate before God and before the Lamb in worship.
There’s another thing to take note of here: there are no worship leaders in this heavenly scene. In the past few weeks, the lessons have been focused primarily in the Book of Psalm, with one lesson from the Book of Exodus. All of the lessons up to this point identify authors, song leaders, or worship leaders who lead God’s people to and in worship. Here, there is no requirement for a leader in worship. In the presence of the Godhead, worship is spontaneous. This new song, this ‘Song of the Redeemed’ just naturally flows from the heart of the saints in Heaven in the same way that electricity flows from an outlet. In this case, the power comes from the throne. All power comes from the throne of God.
Revelation 7:12 NKJV
12 ...saying:
“Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom,
Thanksgiving and honor and power and might,
Be to our God forever and ever.
Amen.”
And this is the song of the redeemed. No personal testimonies here. No songs about what we were were delivered from. No songs about our enemies, or our victories, or what we’ve overcome. No, this is all about God: His Blessing, His glory, His wisdom, His power, His might. It’s all about giving Him all the honor, all of the thanks, and all of the praise. All! It’s all about God all of the time. Such is the ‘Song of the Redeemed”.
Revelation 7:13 NKJV
13 Then one of the elders answered, saying to me, “Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?”
One of the twenty-four elders asks John a question in much the same way that God often posed questions to the prophets of the Old Testament and in the same way that Jesus often posed questions to His disciples or to His opponents.
Revelation 7:14 NKJV
14 And I said to him, “Sir, you know.”
Much like Ezekiel’s response to God, when asked if ‘dry bones’ could be made to live, in Chapter 37 of the Book of Ezekiel, John dares not guess at the answer. Rather, he defers to the elder who posed the question for the answer. This speaks to the humility present in the character of this aged apostle. In his youth, he may have blurted out a spurious response based on some highly fanciful, imagined, and ultimately, quite presumptuous response, based entirely on fantasy and completely devoid of fact. Humility is learned. In ninety some-odd years, John knows what he can … and can’t do. John takes the way of humility.
Revelation 7:15 NKJV
15 Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them.
What does service to God look like? Worship. We are to present ourselves as living sacrifices to our God. That is our reasonable, expected service to God. And He will ever dwell among us.
Romans 12:1-2 NKJV
1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your [b]reasonable service. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
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Revelation 7:16 NKJV
16 They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any heat;
I’m reminded here, of the poor, the fatherless, the immigrants, the homeless, the widowed, the elderly, and the enslaved. All of these, regarded as the least in many societies, especially the more capitalist or feudal communities. In Heaven, those that are regarded as the least among us will be great in the Kingdom of Heaven. They will not suffer ever again.
Revelation 7:17 NKJV
17 for the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to [c]living fountains of waters. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
For the Lamb of God, Jesus, our great Shepherd will wipe away all of our tears. We are the sheep of His pasture (Psalm 100), and He will lead us beside still waters (promised to us in Psalm 23). Forever, we abide with Him and forever we will abide with Him.
Selah,
wb
Hebrews 12:22-24 NKJV
22 But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, 23 to the [j]general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.
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