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Today in the Word is a Ministry of Calvary Chapel Caldwell where Bob Larson is the teaching pastor. You can hear Today in the Word each weekday at 5:45 PM MST on KSPD, 790 AM and 94.5 FM Boise's Solid Talk.
911 Everett St.,
Caldwell, ID 83605
208-453-9653
Services Times:
Wednesdays: 7:00 p.m.
Saturdays: 7:00 p.m.
Sundays: 9:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m.
Mailing Address
PO Box 234
Caldwell, ID 83606
https://calvarycaldwell.com/
Podcast website: https://www.790kspd.com/today-in-the-word/
Today is the day you have.
Welcome to Today in the Word with Pastor Bob Larson,
of Calvary Chapel Caldwell.
Pastor Bob will be with us in just a few minutes,
but first we'd like to let you know
that Calvary Chapel is located on the corner of 10th
and Everett across from the library in downtown Caldwell.
We have two Sunday morning services at 9.30 and 11.30.
If you prefer Saturday nights,
we have a Saturday night service at 7 p.m.
We also have a midweek service Wednesday night at 7 p.m.
You can watch Today in the Word on Sunday mornings at 10 a.m.
on ABC channel 6.1.
Join us as we broadcast Calvary Chapel Caldwell's
Sunday morning church services.
Where Pastor Bob teaches you how to apply the truth
in your Bible to your everyday experiences,
so that you might enjoy better life.
If you have your Bibles, we're in Revelation chapter seven
as we're making our way through the Bible.
If you haven't been here, quick review is that we learned
in Revelation two and three, that that was the age of the church.
And then we learned in Revelation five that Jesus,
the Messiah, has the scroll in his hand,
and he's going to open the scroll.
The church is in heaven in Revelation five.
In Revelation six, Jesus begins to open the scroll,
which is the title deed of the earth,
and that begins the seven year tribulation period
that everybody's concerned about.
And we read about how it starts out with the white horse
and then those first four seals, the white, the black,
the red, the pale.
And at that time, 25% of the population is wiped out.
And then in Revelation six, we see the fifth and the sixth seal open.
We read about that last week.
And now we come to Revelation seven.
And before the seventh seal is open,
there's a parenthetical section here in Revelation seven.
So the seventh seal is not opened until Revelation eight,
which we'll get to tonight.
But this is known as a parenthetical section,
which is it's kind of like a little stop in a section
and show something else.
So Revelation six ends with a question.
Revelation six, 17.
For the great day of his wrath has come
and who is able to stand.
So we know that in Revelation six,
we're in God's wrath being poured out on the earth
and he says who is able to stand.
And then in Revelation seven,
they answered that question.
Even though these are going to be the worst days
the world's ever seen,
the seven year tribulation period as it begins,
people are still going to get saved during that time.
And we talked about that on Sunday,
how it's God's heart to save souls.
So let's pick it up in verse one, Revelation seven.
After these things, I saw four angels
standing at the four corners of the earth,
holding the four winds of the earth
and the wind should not blow on the earth
or the sea or on any tree.
So here the four corners is a figure of speech, right?
Many of the things we read about in the book of Revelation
are pictures, images, idioms.
It speaks of the North, South, East, West,
the four points of the compass.
And he's saying that these four corners of the earth,
the winds of the earth should not blow.
So imagine all these bad things going
and there's no breeze, right?
You've ever been out on a hot day
and there's no breeze and you're like,
oh, wish there was little breeze.
So all the bad stuff we read about last week
and then in verse two it says,
then I saw another angel ascending from the East,
having a seal of the living God
and he cried with a loud voice of the four angels
to whom it was granted to harm the earth and the sea
saying do not harm the earth or the sea or the trees
till we have sealed the servants of God on their forehead.
So now this parenthetical section
we had a little time out like, hey stop, what's going on
until we seal these servants of God.
Now between the six and the seventh seal
God's judgment is suspended here
from the trees and the sea, all those sort of things.
It says in verse three,
seeing do not harm the earth or the sea
or the trees till we have sealed the servants
of our God on their foreheads.
And I heard a number of those who were sealed
144,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel were sealed.
Now if you've been around for a while
and you've ridden the Bible for a while
and you realize that there are a lot of different groups
who claim to be this 144,000
because people want to know who are these 144,000.
And the Jehovah Witnesses are a group that they claim
to be 144,000 until their group passed that
and then they said no we're not
cause they didn't have my room.
So and then I don't remember Herbert W. Armstrong,
Worldwide Church of God, they claim to be that.
Now why would any group claim to be this 144,000
even though we read right there in verse four
who it says it is, right, children of Israel?
Well, why would any group want to be them?
You know, and it's interesting because in doing so
they conveniently write the Jews out of prophecy.
And I don't know if you've ever heard
of replacement theology or reconstructionism or kingdom now.
All of those terms teach that all of God's promises
to Israel were passed onto the church
because the Jews rejected Jesus.
And way back we talked about Constantine
and the church when we were in Revelation two and three.
Constantine around 312 AD, right,
that his conversion to Christianity,
Christianity became the official religion
of the Roman Empire.
And at that point Christian teachers
and thinkers and theologians had been teaching
that the kingdoms of this world are gonna fall.
But now they got a Christian in power, Constantine.
And so they were teaching that Jesus was literally
gonna return and rule the earth and free it from Satan's system.
But that wasn't popular with the administration in power.
So it wasn't politically correct.
So it was like, oh, we can't think that.
So origin, another Bible teacher, philosopher of the day,
said, I think we've been reading the scriptures wrong.
And all the promises given to Israel
are simply allegories and illustrations.
And he was followed by Augustine
who advocated the allegorization of the Old Testament.
And so Augustine was eventually followed by Martin Luther
and Luther had great faith.
And you know, he was part of the Reformation.
We talked about that.
But he was against the Jews.
And one of the tragedies of this replacement theology
is that it led to anti-Semitism.
And really Hitler was an anti-Semite, right?
Hitler believed that the Jews were terrible,
led to the holocaust, right?
And so when you think about what was going on with Hitler,
and you probably heard different stories about what
was the church doing when Hitler was, you know,
doing his thing, well, a lot of the Protestant pastors
supported Hitler because they believed, right?
That God was done with Israel.
And so, but the truth is, the Bible tells us
that Israel is God's timepiece as it relates
to prophetic things.
And God is not through with the Jews.
God made a covenant with Abraham.
And he promised a blessed Abraham,
regardless of Abraham, whatever he did there in Genesis 12.
One that says, now the Lord said to Abraham,
that was his name before God changed his name to Abraham.
He said, I will make you a great nation.
I will bless you.
I will make your name great.
You shall be a blessing.
And I will bless those who bless you.
And I will curse those who curse you
in all the families of the earth.
You shall be blessed, right?
So we see that God has a covenant with Israel.
And the new covenant, God promised to give Israel
a new heart upon which he would write his will there
in Jeremiah 31.
He says, behold, the days are coming.
He says, Lord, I will make a new covenant
with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,
not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers
in the day that I took them by the hand
and led them out of the land of Egypt.
My covenant, which they broke, though I was a husband
to them, says the Lord.
So we know that God has not done
with the nation of Israel.
And it is interesting, though, that this doctrine
is prevalent in our culture.
And those of you who are a little older
haven't been in culture for a while,
it's very prolific in universities.
And a lot of the universities, they hate the Jews
and where do they get it?
Well, we don't want to get off on that.
But, right, there's just a lot of anti-Semitism
and so who are the 144,000?
Well, in verse four, it says, I heard a number of those
who were sealed, 144,000, all of all the tribes
of the children of Israel were sealed.
So it's the children of Israel, right?
And every place in the Bible from the very beginning
Genesis to the end of Revelation, when it says
tribes of Israel, you know who it was speaking about?
The tribes of Israel, right?
So, and just in case you misunderstood
that it was the Jewish people of the tribes of Israel,
then it goes on and spells it out in verse five
of the tribe of Judah, 12,000 were sealed.
Of the tribe of Ruben, 12,000 were sealed.
Of the tribe of Gad, 12,000 were sealed.
Of the tribe of Asher, 12,000 were sealed
of the tribe of Niftali, of the tribe of Menassah,
of the tribe Simeon, 12,000, 12,000, 12,000 Levi,
of the tribe Levi, 12,000 were sealed,
of the tribe Issaqar, 12,000 were sealed,
of the tribe of Zambielin, of the tribe,
I thought that 12,000 were sealed,
the tribe of Joseph, and the tribe of Benjamin,
12,000 were sealed.
Now, you add that all up, it adds up to 144,000.
Those are the tribes of Israel,
and so it's as clear as clear can be to me, right?
And so there's no confusing about it,
these 12 tribes of Israel, 144,000 are sealed
to do God's work during this tribulation.
And these 144,000 are gonna be pointing people to Jesus, right?
And so, as we've been talking about during the tribulation,
somebody might get the idea that God's just pouring out
his judgment on the earth and too bad for all those people.
He's continually having people share his good news, right?
And so the Bible tells us that the church is already sealed
and that's what we're doing now.
And you think about where we're at,
we're in the church age where we're supposed
to be telling people, Ephesians 4.30 says,
and do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God
by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.
So the church is already sealed, but here in Revelation 7,
he's gonna seal these 144,000.
Verse 9, after these things, I looked and behold,
a great multitude, which no one could number
of all nations, tribes, people, and tongue,
standing before the throne, before the Lamb,
clothed with white robes with palm branches in their hands.
And so the white robes represent the righteousness
that comes through Jesus Christ and parted to us by faith.
And remember, the branches, it says there they had palm branches,
remember when Jesus rode in to Jerusalem
to be held to Messiah, remember they were waving palm branches
saying, Hosanna saved now, symbol of worship.
Verse 10, and crying out with a loud voice saying,
salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
And all the angels stood around the throne
and the elders and the four living creatures
fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God.
So here we just see in heaven their worshiping God
and we see what these 144,000 are saying.
Verse 12 saying, amen, blessing and glory
and wisdom Thanksgiving and honor and power and might
be to our God forever and ever, amen.
Then one of the elders answered and said to me,
who are these arrayed and white robes
and where did they come from?
And he said to them, sir, you know, so he said to me,
these are the ones who came out of the great tribulation
and washed their robes and made them white
in the blood of the Lamb.
So here again, we see in verse 14
that there are people going to get saved
during the tribulation period.
And here at church, I don't know if you guys realize this,
but I meet people all the time at church who tell me,
you know, I got saved in a water,
I got saved in sunny school, went to church
and then I went to college and then I started going off
the rails and started being crazy, not following Jesus.
Then, you know, I got married or whatever,
maybe didn't get married, whatever.
And then 10 years go by and then they're like,
and then life was terrible.
And then I decided to come back to church again, right?
And I hear that story all the time from people.
And so when you think about who's gonna get saved
in the tribulation, where are they gonna be people?
Who, whenever the rapture happens,
they're gonna be like, I'm not going to church,
I don't need God.
And, right, they're gonna, but once things start happening,
once this one-world leader comes on the scene,
I mean, once you start seeing crazy things happening,
you guys realize they had a great earthquake
in Russia the other day, six largest ever.
And we're reading this like, oh yeah,
a lot more of those are gonna come, right?
But if you're a believer when the rapture happens, right?
You're gonna escape the tribulation.
But if you're not saved or not following the Lord
during that time, then you're gonna be here, right?
And, but those people are gonna know many of them.
And so, how do they get saved
during this seven-year tribulation period?
Well, God gives them lots of opportunities
to receive salvation, right?
There's gonna be the 144,000 witnessing
that salvation comes from God.
And then we're gonna read later on Revelation 11,
he sends these two witnesses,
and they witness for three and a half years
to tell people about the Lord, salvation.
And then we're gonna read in Revelation 14,
there's gonna be angels flying around proclaiming
the gospel there in Revelation 14-6.
Then I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven,
having an everlasting gospel to preach to those
who dwell on the earth, to every nation,
tribe, tongue, and people.
So, we see that God's gonna give people
lots of opportunity, and we're gonna stop there
for about a time.
Thank you for joining us for today in the worth.
We'd like to share with you a couple of things
that are going on here at Calvary Chapel.
Calvary Chapel called,
will invite you to our Community Easter Service Saturday,
April 4th at 7 p.m. and Sunday,
April 5th at 9.30 and 11.30 a.m.
This special service will feature the musical drama.
This is love, pre-enacting to death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Everyone is invited to this community event
that features a bounce house, face painting,
candy for the kids, free pizza before the Saturday service
and a barbecue after each Sunday service.
Free lattes and Italian sodas for all first time visitors.
For more information visit us at calvarycaldwell.com.
Calvary Chapel Caldwell would like to invite you
to our Saturday night service at 7 p.m.
This is an alternative for those who cannot make it
to our Sunday morning services.
Like us on Facebook at Calvary Chapel Caldwell
or check out our website at calvarycaldwell.com.
You can watch today in the word on Sunday mornings
at 10.30 a.m. on the CW channel 2.2.
Join us as we broadcast Calvary Chapel Caldwell's
Sunday morning church services,
where Pastor Bob teaches you how to apply the truth
in your Bible to your everyday experiences
so that you might enjoy a better life.
If you would like to listen to Pastor Bob's message today
and its entirety, you can visit our YouTube page.
Just search Calvary Chapel Caldwell
and you can see all of the latest messages from Pastor Bob.
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If you are not currently attending a church
and are in the Caldwell area,
we'd like to invite you to one of our services.
We're located on the corner of 10th and Everett
across the street from the library in downtown Caldwell.
You can also visit us on the web at calvarycaldwell.com.
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Thank you for joining us for today in the word.
May the Lord bless you and may you have a great day.
Today is the day you have made.
