Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily Life
Hope Alive: Applying God's Word to Your Daily Life
The Revelation 7:5-8 | Episode # 1046
October 13, 2025
Hope Alive: Applying God’s Word to Your Daily Life
The Revelation 7:5-8
I am Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and had been serving as a pastor for 25 years. I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life. The purpose of studying scripture is that you might know the character of Jesus Christ, and that you might see the world from the Father's perspective. That you gain wisdom that changes your life. I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open His word to you and allow you to see Him and to know Him. To know His will, that you might glorify Him and that you might walk in faith and power each day, especially today. In Jesus name.
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This is Chad Harrison, and you're listening to Hope Applying God's word to your daily life.
Hi, this is Chad Harrison, and I am the teaching pastor of Lake Community Church and have been serving as a pastor for 25 years.
I'm also a practicing attorney. This podcast is designed to help you study God's word and find God's will for your life.
I pray in the name of Jesus right now that God would open up his word to you and allow you to see him and to know him and to know his will, that you might glorify him and that you might walk in faith and power each and every day,
especially today,
in Jesus name.
All right,
so does God provide for that in the end times?
Well, yeah, he does.
He says, then I saw another angel ascending from the east,
having the seal of the living God.
And he cried out in a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea. Meaning he's telling these angels that are harming the earth and the sea, he cries out to them,
and this. This.
This angel's got a seal.
All right,
now I want you to hear me.
Old Testament and New Testament are not oftentimes. We want to make them totally different.
They are different,
but they're. But they're not totally different.
How? How do I know that I am a believe. How do I know that I'm.
I'm connected to God in the Old Testament.
Faith.
That's exactly right, Miles.
Exactly right. How do I know in the New Testament, I'm connected to God Faith. If I've got faith, that means I've heard from God,
I believed him, and I've acted. I've got it both. Both places.
All right.
In the Old Testament, I'm redeemed by what?
The blood. In the New Testament, I'm redeemed by the blood. In the Old Testament, the blood is a foreshadowing of the complete work of the New Testament of the blood.
All right, but are they the same? They're not the same.
They're not.
Why?
Because I have to trust God in the Old Testament by trusting in his law.
I trust God in the New Testament by trusting in the fulfillment of the law, which is his son, Jesus Christ.
Are you following me? It's not like they're disjointed and they have two totally different messages because they don't.
But one of them is not complete, and the other one is complete.
Okay, so understanding that is an important idea. It's important way to think through it.
As I'M thinking through the scripture. I need to think that way. I need to look at it.
He says, so then I saw another angel. This is a fifth angel,
and he was descending from the east, having a seal.
Now, this seal is the seal of God,
okay?
And by the way,
Isaiah,
there's lots of passages, especially in the New Testament, that talk about this. Ephesians 1:13, Ephesians 4, 30. I'm just giving you some verses. Second Corinthians 1, 21 and 22.
They talk about us as believers being sealed with the Holy Spirit.
Okay?
Being sealed by God.
Now,
why is that important?
Well, it's another one of those theology things, okay?
If I'm sealed by God,
who can break the seal?
What,
somebody talk that to you sometime?
Didn't we learn that about the seals On. On. The only. The only person that can break the seal is God or someone equivalent to God,
right? Jesus the Father.
All right, now I'm gonna let. Let me ask you something.
After we've studied through John, especially the end of John,
we've spent a lot of time. John six.
We spent a lot of time in John six after studying that. Does Jesus ever get rid of anybody that's his?
No. He says he does. Clear. I mean, it's in the red, right?
He says, I'm not letting you go.
You're not getting. So is Jesus going to break the seal?
Is the Father going to break the seal? Well, no, because the seal was placed by the Father.
He decided it.
So this seal that's being used here is a seal that goes back into.
Before metatalta.
Before metatalta.
It goes back to the church age.
It goes back to the times before.
So that seal's not gonna get broken.
It's not gonna be taken away by God.
All right?
He says here, he says here,
he cried out to a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea. He says, do not harm the earth, the sea, or the trees till we have sealed the servants of God on their foreheads.
I do not know what that means, okay? I don't know.
It's on their foreheads, okay? But I do know that it's important. And how do I know it's important?
Because anything that God does, Satan tries to counterfeit, and he tries to counterfeit this,
okay? He's going to counterfeit it later on. So anything God does, Satan, when he's trying to be, God, counterfeits it in some way. And by the way, that's what the book of the Revelation teaches us also the.
That's one of the overarching ideas. We've talked about several of the overarching ideas in Scripture. One of the overarching ideas of the book of the Revelation is Satan is trying to be God, and God is judging that.
Okay?
So when we read about the work of Satan in the book of the Revelation, what you're really reading is Satan trying to take the place of God.
Okay,
well, these seals that he's gonna place on these folks is important,
okay?
He says, we're not going to harm anything until God has sealed these people.
He says, and I heard the number of those who were sealed,
144,000. All the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed,
all right? So he seals 144,000 of them,
all right? And that's all they get to go to heaven. And. And we're going to sell magazines about it later on.
For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, there's a. There's a group that really bought into this 144,000 group.
Okay?
All right, the 144,000. That is important.
They are important, which means they have a seal from God.
Get this.
Who does the ceiling?
God does.
The angel comes down, the messenger of God. Angels only do what God says. Do and say what God says to say.
Okay, who does the ceiling?
Do the ones who got the seal on them do the ceiling?
Do the one who get the born againness? Do they do the born again?
No. God does it.
God chooses these. He decides on these.
There are 144,000 of them,
12,000 from each tribe.
All right?
Now this is important because as we go through history, people will run down rabbit trails, okay? One of the rabbit trails they'll run down for this is. And I actually spent about six hours one night going through Virginia and North Carolina, coming home from Princeton, listen to a guy trying to explain how the.
The Celts and the Irish in the British Isles were actually the lost tribes of Israel. And the whole time I was listening to him, it just didn't quite make sense.
But he was interested. He really believed it. That didn't mean he was right,
but he really believed it.
And oftentimes we get into that. And it made me wonder for a long, long time until I realized as I was reading through the Old Testament,
that when the Northern kingdom began to worship the God of the Canaanites, the peoples that they displaced and began to practice their practices which involved human sacrifice,
okay? When they began to do that,
many of the people of the northern tribes moved to the southern kingdom.
Are you following me?
So when we talk about modern day Jewry or Jewish peoples of today,
when we talk about them,
oftentimes people think that there's only two tribes that are left,
Judah and Benjamin. Because those were the two tribes in the southern kingdom. And if you. If purely from a land perspective, that would be true. The northern kingdom was taken into captivity by the Assyrians and were heard from no more.
Okay.
Why?
Because they began to worship the Canaanite gods that God told them not to worship, and they began to involve themselves in that sacrifice.
All right,
but when the north.
When the southern kingdom was taken into captivity in Babylon and promised that they'd be brought back,
it wasn't just the Benjamites and Benjamin,
the people from Benjamin,
it wasn't just them and the people from Judah. It was also other Jews from other tribes.
So when you run into someone, you can't just walk up to them say, are you from Benjamin or Judah? Because I really believe that in college, okay. Thankfully, I never asked a Jewish person that question, but I wanted to a couple of times.
I just never could bring myself to ask the question, are you from Judah, Benjamin? I.
I would have been utterly amazed to find out there's a strong likelihood they weren't from either.
Okay.
They were from one of the other 12 tribes.
All right.
Why. Why is that important? Well, because like I said, there's a whole group of people that you can go down that rabbit hole with and you'll begin to think that you're, you know,
a lost tribe if you're from Scotland or Ireland.
Are you with me?
I'm mostly Viking, so I'm just letting y' all know.
All right?
Anyway,
so I wasn't from there.
I worshiped other pagan gods, all right?
That's where my heritage comes from.
But if you could go down that rabbit hole. And like I said, this is a unique passage of scripture because there's a lot of rabbit holes that have been gone down reading through this, okay?
And one of them started a whole culture,
okay?
And, boy, if you study that one,
they are weird.
All right?
Not, not just weird, but it's weird. Who's in charge of them?
Because there's some reason to believe that there's some mainline Christians that are in charge of them,
which is kind of strange.
He said, he said, I heard the number of those who were sealed,
144,000 of all tribes of the children of Israel were sealed.
Okay?
Now he's going to begin to Name the tribes.
Are you with me?
But it's not going to be exactly like some of the other list of the tribes of Israel,
which is interesting.
Okay?
And anytime you run into that, by the way, the Old Testament is not always consistent in naming the tribes because they will replace a son for a father or they'll replace a tribe for a clan of that tribe.
And what's normally happening is when that happens is God is trying to give you a spiritual insight rather than just a physical insight. Not the 12 physical sons of Israel are named here, okay?
They're not named here.
And there's a reason why.
First one is of the tribe of Judah. 12,000.
Well, Judah is going to go in ascending order from oldest to youngest. Judah is not the oldest son of Jacob or Israel. Does anybody know who the oldest son of Jacob and Israel is?
Reuben. That's exactly right. Reuben is the oldest son. By the way, Reuben is what?
He's second.
All right.
Why?
Well,
in 1st Chronicles 5:12, he lost his firstborn rights, his firstborn status, because of his actions of having relations with his father's concubine,
and he was cursed.
Okay,
now you go.
Why does that matter here? Well,
I want you to see that when we get to the very end,
God is going to take all of the Old Testament and all the stories of the Old Testament and he's going to bring them into.
He's going to bring them spiritually into the right place,
okay? And so he's going to. Anything that happened in the Old Testament that deals with the tribes and their positions and who they are,
you're going to see it set right here.
And these are the tribes that God sees as the 12 tribes. From now on,
he goes on and he says,
you got. In verse 6, you've got the tribe of.
In verse 5, you end up with Gad, with 12,000.
Then in chapter 6, in verse 6, you've got Asher and Naphtali and Manasseh. And then in verse seven, you've got Simeon and Levi and Issachar. And then in verse eight, you've got the tribe of Zebulun.
And then you have the tribe of Joseph.
Okay?
Now when you're reading about the tribes of Israel in the Old Testament,
Joseph was a son of Jacob.
But usually his two sons are named as tribes. His two offspring are named. Named as tribe.
Huh?
Rachel's sons. That's exactly right. They're named as the two tribes.
All right?
Not here.
Jacob takes his rightful position as a son in the list of tribal order. The tribe of Jacob Is a. Is.
I mean, Joseph,
Jacob,
son Joseph is a tribe.
Okay?
All right, he takes his rightful position,
then you have the tribe, and then at the end of that, you have. And by the way,
who is left out? Does anybody know?
No. Naphtali's there?
Yeah, it's Ephraim.
Ephraim's left out.
All right.
Do y' all know why Ephraim's left out? Well, because. Because Ephraim worshiped idols.
He.
He was cursed because of his worship of idols, of idolatry. All right, so Ephraim is left out.
All right.
Anybody got question?
Yes.
Dan is left out also. And Dan is left out because he joined Ephraim in worship. Worshiping of idols.
Okay?
All right.
And. And by the way, those curses are in the Old Testament,
so you've got 12,000.
Now, you got to hear this,
because oftentimes,
and it's important, and you'll hear people talking about, especially in evangelical Christianity, they'll talk about the importance of Israel.
Okay?
I want you to hear me.
Every promise that God made Israel is still in effect.
You need to hear that he didn't take them away.
And that's important principle from God. Anyway.
Bible says that the gift and the call of God. And by the way,
a promise is a gift,
okay? The gifts and the call of God are what?
Irrevocable.
Okay.
And that's a legal term.
Okay.
What that means is God can't revoke it if I make an offer to you,
okay? And anytime before you accept that offer,
I can revoke that offer, and it doesn't exist.
All right, you go. Why is that important? Well, because God deals in contracts. In fact, the covenants are contracts. They're spiritual contracts with eternal value.
Okay?
God's promises are contracts.
Okay?
And. And who swears by the contract? Who enforces the contract? God himself. That's exactly right.
All right.
God himself, Hebrews teaches us that he enforces the contracts. God does.
Okay?
All right.
If God enforces the contracts,
that means any offer made by God will never be revoked,
because in order for an offer to be revoked by God,
he would have to change his mind.
But that's because of the actions of people. That's not because of Him.
And you got to get that.
God does not change his offers. He doesn't change his promises. He doesn't change his giftings.
His giftings and callings are not changed.
It would be totally against his nature.
That's right. That's exactly right, Michelle. His nature is unchanging.
His nature, his very existence. Who he is, is unchanging.
All right?
And so when we deal with these giftings and these calls,
the Old Testament is important. By the way, there is a heresy that diminishes the Old Testament that was dealt with with by the early church.
I want to say it's monism, but I don't think that's it.
All right?
And the idea is, is that really the New Testament is all that matters. And you don't really worry about the.
Old Testament, all right?
It's a heresy, okay? The, the Old Testament's important. In fact, the New Testament is built on the Old Testament.
You can't separate them, all right? So God's promises to the Jewish people are still there,
all right? Now, don't you hear me?
In the kingdom and even in heaven, they do not take the preeminent role.
They don't.
Why?
Because they're the children of God and we're the bride of Christ, okay? We're the bride, they're the children.
All right?
Understanding that there's a difference, okay? And there's a difference between them and us and what's God's going to do here. And I can't go into a whole lot of detail about it because I don't quite understand it,
but there's something different that's going on here.
Why?
Because God's sealing 12,000 to do something.
He's sealing these 12,000 up from each tribe, 144,000 in total. He's sealing them up to do something. What are they. What is he sealing them up to do?
As you go today, I pray that.
The Lord will bless you and keep you you. That he'll make his face to shine upon you and that he will give you hope and peace today in Jesus name.