SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/9/2015
9:21 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
The Israelites Identified
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Revelation
7:4-8
Message of the
verses: “4 And I heard the number of
those who were sealed, one hundred and forty-four thousand sealed from every
tribe of the sons of Israel: 5 From the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were
sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from the tribe of Gad twelve
thousand, 6 from the tribe of Asher
twelve thousand, from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand, from the tribe of
Manasseh twelve thousand, 7 from the
tribe of Simeon twelve thousand, from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand, from
the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand, 8
from the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand, from the tribe of Joseph
twelve thousand, from the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed.”
I wish to begin this SD with a quote, an important quote
from John MacArthur: “Despite the plain
and unambiguous declaration of the text that the ‘one hundred and forty-four
thousand’ who are to be ‘sealed’ will come ‘from every tribe of the sons of
Israel,’ many persist in identifying them as the church. They cite several New Testament passages that
allegedly identify the church as Israel to support that interpretation. But the identification of Israel with the
church in those passages is tenuous and disputed. Thus, they can offer no support for such an identification
in the present passage. The fact is that
‘no clear-cut example of the church being called ‘Israel’ exists in the NT or
in ancient church writings until AD 160…This fact is crippling to any attempt
to identify Israel as the church in Rev. 7:4’ (Robert L. Thomas). Further, ‘such and attempt becomes even more
ridiculous because it necessitates typological interpretation that divides the
church into twelve tribes to coincide with the listing of Rev. 7:5-8, even with
all the irregularities in that list’ (Thomas, Revelation 1-7, 476). The term Israel must be interpreted in
accordance with its normal Old and New Testament usage as a reference to the
physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nor is there any exegetical reason not to
interpret the numbers 144,000 and 12,000 literally.” I think that after the reading of these
quotes that we can now move on to talk about these 144,000 Jewish evangelists
without begin bogged down with who they are.
When the plain sense of Scripture makes sense, seek no other sense.
What we see in this passage is the electiveness of God in
action, for it is God who is choosing these men to be sealed and to serve Him
in the Tribulation period. We can look
at this in no other way for we have the text right in from of us which tells us
that these men are sealed with a seal from the Lord. This is not random chance; this is God in His
elective purpose at work. When the
Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 AD the tribal records were destroyed, but to
say that we have no record of who is in what tribe of Israel certainly does not
mean that God does not know who belongs to what tribe. Some say that when the Kingdom of Israel was
divided into ten tribes in the Northern Kingdom and two tribes in the Southern
Kingdom that there are now no people left from those ten tribes. However after the division of the kingdom
many people left the Northern Kingdom and moved to the Southern Kingdom because
the temple was in the Southern Kingdom and a false religious system was set up
in the Northern Kingdom. There are no
lost tribes of Israel as some say today, for we can see in this passage that
none of the tribes were lost. Let us
look at some verses to give more evidence of this fact. Rev. 21:12 “It had a great and high wall,
with twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels; and names were written on
them, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel.” Matthew 19:28 “And Jesus said to them,
"Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration
when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon
twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Luke 22:30 “that you may eat and drink at My
table in My kingdom, and you will sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of
Israel.”
In the Old Testament there are several lists of the
tribes of Israel, from the time that each of the Patriarchs were born to when
Jacob was about to die is an example of the listing of the twelve tribes. We know that when Jacob was about to die that
he divided Joseph’s sons, making them equal with his sons, and then we also
have Levi listed in our passage in Rev. 7 and he was not counted when the land
was divided up as seen in Joshua for the Levites were the tribe where the
priests came from and so they were not given an inheritance like the other
tribes. So we see that there are some issues
that need to be cleared up as we look at these twelve tribes listed in our text
for today. The following is a quote from
a man named Thomas whom we looked at earlier in this SD as John MacArthur
quoted from his writings as seen in my quote from John MacArthur earlier. Thomas writes: “In the Old Testament lists, sometimes the
order of birth is followed (Gen. 29:32-35:18).
At other times, it is the order of Jacob’s blessing them (Gen. 49:3-27),
the order of encampment (Num. 2:3-31), the order of the census before the
invasion of Canaan (Num. 2:3-31(, the order of blessing and cursing (Deut.
27:12-13), the order of Moses’ blessing (Deut. 33:6-25), the order of ‘the
princes’ (Num. 1:5-15), the order of inheritance (Josh. 13:7-22:34), the order
by the wives and concubines (1 Chron. 2:1-8:40), and the order of the gates of
the city (Ezek. 48:31-34).”
In our text from today’s SD we see that Judah was listed
as first while Ruben who was actually the first born was listed second. Let us look at Genesis 49 to help clear this
up: “3 “Reuben, you are my firstborn; My
might and the beginning of my strength, Preeminent in dignity and preeminent in
power. 4 “Uncontrolled as water, you shall not have preeminence, Because you
went up to your father’s bed; Then you defiled it-he went up to my couch.” Now the following is a list of Scripture
verses that speak of the section from the end of verse four where it says “Then
you defiled it-he went up to my couch” “Ge 35:22 It came
about while Israel was dwelling in that land, that Reuben went and lay with
Bilhah his father’s concubine, and Israel heard of it. Now there were twelve
sons of Jacob- De 5:21 ’You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall
not desire your neighbor’s house, his field or his male servant or his female
servant, his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.’ De 27:20
’Cursed is he who lies with his father’s wife, because he has uncovered his
father’s skirt.’ And all the people shall say, ’Amen.’ 1Ch 5:1 Now the sons of
Reuben the firstborn of Israel (for he was the firstborn, but because he
defiled his father’s bed, his birthright was given to the sons of Joseph the
son of Israel; so that he is not enrolled in the genealogy according to the
birthright. 1Co 5:1 It is actually reported that there is immorality among you,
and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that
someone has his father’s wife.” What
we see here from these verses is that something that God has made holy is often
used by people to make something awful out of it. As I look over where my Spiritual Diaries are
read throughout the world and then look at which ones are looked at the most
there has been one SD that in recent times has been looked at a lot and it
comes from January 14, 2013 and the title of it is “Sexual Sin is Gradually
Destructive PT-1” and the text is from Proverbs 6:20-24. I bring this up because Sexual sins are
prominent not only in our world today, but also since man first sinned in the
garden. It was because of Ruben’s sin
that he lost his birthright which affected every one of the people that were
born from his tribe. I am sure that
sexual sin has caused problems in every family in our world as Satan uses this
temptation to cause many to have great troubles in our world today. Now back to our test in Revelation.
There are other issues that we need to look at and the
next one is that the tribe of Dan is not mentioned in our text, and also the
priestly tribe of Levi is mentioned.
MacArthur writes “Dan was evidently omitted due to the tribe’s penchant
for idolatry (cf. Deut. 29:18-21)—which was even worse than that of the rest of
the nation (cf. Judg. 18; Amos 8:14).”
This is probably the reason that Levi is mentioned and Dan is not,
however Dan will share in the millennial blessings (Ezek. 48:1-2, 32). God surely has His reasons for what He does
and perhaps the reasons that we have listed here shows why the tribes in the
passage we are looking at were the one’s God chose.
John MacArthur finishes his commentary on this subject
with the following: “This critical
passage reinforces the biblical truth that God is not through with the nation
of Israel (cf. Rom. 9-11). Though Israel
failed in its mission to be a witness nation in the Old Testament, that will
not be the case in the future. From the
Jewish people will come the greatest missionary force the world has ever
known. The result of their effort will
be a redeemed Israel, as promised by God, and innumerable redeemed Gentiles.” For that I can only say Praise the Lord!
Spiritual meaning
for my life today: I am thankful for
this passage from the book of Revelation for the Lord has given me a great love
for the people of Israel and even though our nation is showing signs of turning
their backs on Israel I will always support them for they truly are the apple
of God’s eye.
My Steps of Faith for Today: I desire to love the Lord with all of my
heart, soul, mind, and strength and to have a better understand of how to live
in the love of the Lord each day.
Answer to yesterday’s Bible
question: “Three (son of Zebedee, son of
Alphaeus, Brother of Jesus).”
Today’s Bible
question: “What was Huldah’s occupation?”
Answer in our next SD.
4/9/2015 10:43 AM
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