The Uncountable 144,000

The Uncountable 144,000

Sermon Manuscript for Green Lake Church of Seventh-day Adventists

Sabbath, April 20, 2013, International Sabbath

Revelation 7 describes a very, very special group of people. They are the treasures of the kingdom of heaven, the jewels of family of God. Against a backdrop of doom and despair, John describes the secret heroes of the book of Revelation.

Then I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds so they did not blow on the earth or the sea, or even on any tree. And I saw another angel coming up from the east, carrying the seal of the living God. And he shouted to those four angels, who had been given power to harm land and sea, "Wait! Don't harm the land or the sea or the trees until we have placed the seal of God on the foreheads of his servants." And I heard how many were marked with the seal of God—144,000 were sealed from all the tribes of Israel:

This special group, the 144,000, receive extraordinary protection by the angels of God. God marks them with his own special tattoo. Don't anyone mess with these people. They are God's special friends.

The specialness of this group is highlighted by the context John sets them in. The reason they need protection is they are surrounded by doom. Notice what John wrote just before introducing this group:

Then everyone—the kings of the earth, the rulers, the generals, the wealthy, the powerful, and every slave and free person—all hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains. And they cried to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of the one who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb. For the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to survive?" Revelation 6:15-17

It's the end of the world. Everyone is doomed. Everyone—kings and servants, big shots and little people, rich people and poor people. It's all over. The doom is so severe, so all encompassing, the prophet asks what appears to be a rhetorical question: Who could possibly survive? It seems no one. Then John introduces the 144,000. Not everyone is doomed. Not all is lost. God has a special group of people that are protected through the grand cataclysm.

One way to understand how special this group is is to calculate percentages. 144,000 is only about 16 thousandths of one percent. (If I did my math right. You should always double check my arithmetic.)

Another mark of their status: They are Jews. And, of course, the Jewish people are God's special people all through the Bible from the days of Abraham on. Naturally, here in at the end of the Bible they are still pictured as enjoying the benefits of being God's special people.

Further, they are not “Jews” in general. They are carefully enumerated by their tribes. 12,000 from each tribe.

But this is where the vision gets tricky. The angel announces to John the precise numbers for each of the twelve tribes making up this 144,000 who will be spared the great doom. The funny thing about these tribes is that nine of them had become extinct hundreds of years before John's day. When the angel tells John that God going to protect 2,000 individuals from the tribe of Issachar, John immediately wonders, how is he going to do that? They are already extinct? This is crazy.

How can God protect people who are extinct?

The answer comes in verse 9. John has been told about this group. He has heard the number, 144,000. Now he is invite to see the group. When he looks, he does not see 144,000 people neatly divided into twelve groups.

After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. Revelation 7:9

It turns out that the 144,000, the special people from the special tribes of Israel are actually symbols of an uncountable crowd. The number-144,000-turns out to be not a measure not of their number but of their specialness to God. Who are the people God prizes and protects? People “from every nation and tribe and people and language.”

The number is not meant to scare us because it is small compared to the billions who live on earth. It is meant to reassure us because most of the people it includes are invisible except to the eyes of faith. Humanly speaking the tribes of Issachar and Zebulum are beyond hope. They are extinct. But not to God. God is still watching and counting for the purpose of including.

It is one of the important messages we can draw from the Bible.

Jesus spoke to the Jewish people, people specially chosen by God and tried to teach them that their special status did not set them the rest of humanity. Instead their special status was intended as a message to the rest of humanity of God's true intentions.

God showed his special concern for Israel by sending them prophets. Two of the most famous in the Old Testament were Elijah and Elisha. Their ministries greatly enriched the life of the Jewish people in the northern kingdom of Israel. Still some of their most dramatic miracles were for foreigners. Jesus reminded his audiences of that fact. How many lepers were there in the land back in the days of the Prophet Elisha? Jesus asked. No one cited a number, but the assumption was that there were a bunch of them. And who was the only leper Elisha healed? Naaman the Syrian. There were many widows in the days of Elijah the prophet, but the only widow associated with Elijah's ministry was a pagan widow from the non-Jewish town of Zarephath.

God's care for Israel was a sign of God's regard for all humanity. The Prophet Isaiah wrote that the temple in Jerusalem was to be called a house of prayer for all nations (Isaiah 56:7).

The temple was a special place. God promised to be present there in a special way. Is special presence in the Jerusalem temple was a sign of invitation. It meant that the temple belonged not to the Jews but to humanity. This truth is highlighted in Psalm 87.

On the holy mountain stands the city founded by the LORD. He loves the city of Jerusalem more than any other city in Israel. O city of God, what glorious things are said of you! Interlude I will count Egypt and Babylon among those who know me— also Philistia and Tyre, and even distant Ethiopia. They have all become citizens of Jerusalem! Regarding Jerusalem, it will be said, "Everyone enjoys the rights of citizenship there." And the Most High will personally bless this city. When the LORD registers the nations, he will say, "They have all become citizens of Jerusalem." The people will play flutes and sing, "The source of my life springs from Jerusalem!"

Thinking internationally this psalm teaches us to see Russians and Finns, Chinese and North Koreans, Iraqis and Iranians, Saudis and Brazilians, Somalis and Kenyans, Chechens and Brits as all the special people of God.

Thinking more locally, this psalm teaches us to include Democrats and Republicans, Paul Ryan and President Obama among the people of God.

As Adventists we think of ourselves as the remnant of God, as God's special people. To the extent that that is true, to the extent that the specialness of Jerusalem applies to us, it is a call to remember that just as God promised in Psalm 87 to ultimately regard Babylonians, Egyptians and Philistines as native-born citizens of Jerusalem, so we can expect that God will include our theological opponents, our social opponents, perhaps even our moral opponents as native-born Adventists.

To the extent that this is the church of God, we are not the owners, we are the custodians, the trustees, charged with making clear to every tribe, language and people the welcome of God.