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There's a scene in the beginning where God the Father is sitting at the throne and he's got a scroll in his hand. And in Bible times, a scroll was a book. And on the book are these seals that are holding the scroll together. He's holding the scroll and everyone around the throne is saying, "Who is worthy to open the book?" And they say, "The lamb is worthy." So the lamb takes the scroll from the hand of the father and he starts taking off these seals. There's seven seals. And as he takes each seal off, something happens. Seal one, two, three, four, five, six. And this is the end of the sixth seal.

How many are there? There's seven. Okay. So 1 2 3 4 5 six. At the end of the sixth seal, who shall be able to stand? That's the question. Now, between the sixth seal being taken off and the seventh seal, there's an interlude. There's an intermission. And that intermission is answering the question, who shall be able to stand? Because the assumption is no one can stand. But the people that are able to stand are highlighted in Revelation chapter 7, which is the intermission between ch the sixth seal and seventh seal. So here here here it is 144,000. These are the people that are able to stand and they come from these tribes.

We'll do a short little study on this because there's a lot of questions. These are not literal Jews. when when the northern kingdoms was taken away into captivity, the 10 in the north, they assimilated and they lost their national identity. Okay, two tribes in the south. So, you can't find people from the tribe of Reuben. It's it's impossible. Jesus came from the tribe of Judah. Judah and Benjamin were the ones that are preserved. And the people in the north, some of them became Samaritans. Okay? So, they were considered not Jewish. And the reason we know they're not Jews in the New Testament context is this passage. It says, "For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly." Okay? And he goes on, "But he's a Jew who is one inwardly." Okay?

So, we're all Jews. We're Korean Jews. You didn't know that, right? Praise God. Yesterday, we talked about all the noble laureates. We can claim that. Claim that. Praise God. Genesis 3:29. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed. So, that's the that's the New Testament Jew. That's the heritage that we have. And 144,000, in case you're getting a little nervous here, it's not an indication that only 144,000 will be saved. Praise God. All right. Now, how do we know that? It says, "Then I looked and behold, a great multitude which no one could number." Praise God. All right. So, this is not a limitation to 144K. And uh some people are like, "Oh, what if he gets 1441?

I he wants his perfect number. Sorry, you don't get caught up. So, so this is not what it's talking about. Nor is it saying that the 144,000 are saved by different means than anybody else. Okay? Because we see it says they have come out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the lamb. They're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ like everybody else. So, who are the 144K? All right. The number I believe is a symbolic number that represents God's people who are alive and ready when Jesus comes. Now, I had always these assumptions about the 144,000. They're like Delta Force, the Green Beret, special forces that I can't get in. But I analyzed this further and the 144,000 come from these tribes.

The characteristics of these tribes. Okay. Have you ever wondered how we got the 12 tribes? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here it is. Here it is. This is how we got it. Okay. You remember the story? Let me just do a really quick fly by night. 10,000 ft. Just few little vignettes here. Jacob fell in love with Rachel. It says that Rachel was beautiful, but Leah was tender eyed. I used to think that Leah had these big old puppy dog eyes, but it really means in the Hebrew she had weak vision. Okay. So, so, so, so Rachel was stunning and and Jacob was like I want to marry her. And the Bible says he went to Laban and said, "I'll work seven years." Seven years. That's incredible. Seven years. Can you imagine? And this is not easy labor.

It's like tending sheep, being out there late, all this crazy stuff. But the Bible says they felt like days because of his love for Rachel. So, he's waiting for the day he's going to marry the love of his life. And he goes through the wedding ceremony, and you read between the lines, she had a veil the whole time. The Bible says they have their wedding night. They didn't have LED lights back then. It's dark. Wedding night, euphoria, bliss. He wakes up. He's like, "Honey, I'm so glad to be married to you. What? Like, this is a mistake." Like, big old puppy dog eyes. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. All right. I'm filling between the lines. All right. I'm dramat. I'm going to talk to your father. He goes over there. Layman's like, "Sorry, a little mix up last night. I'll tell you what, we'll cut a deal. Why don't you take both of them? You can have Rachel right now on credit. Credit. Seven more years." And that's the beginning of the story.

Can you say dysfunctional? That's the beginning. So then these two sister wives little rivalry going along. They don't like each other because this is not that long after the flood. H and there's a big thing about procreation and population. It's not like today or doesn't make sense economically back then. big time worth of a woman was based on her fertility. And look at this. The Bible says that God looked down and had compassion on Leah. And look at she starts having kids like Gracie, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Dina. Woo. And then Leah's like, "Maybe my husband will love me now." Wow. I mean, just hear that. She'll love he'll love me now cuz I'm bearing all these kids. And then Rachel goes to Jacob and says, "Give me children or I die." Can sense some marital tension there.

And then Jacob's like, "Woman, is it my fault that God has shut up thy womb? And then Rachel's like, "Uh, I got an idea. Why don't you take my servant, Billa?" And Jacob, this brother, he's like, "Okay, where's she at?" Then you get Dan and Napali. Then when Leah's done having kids, she says, "Take my servant Zilpa." Jacob's like, "All right." And this is how we get 12 tribes. Now, let me tell you about some of these brothers. Let's talk about Reuben, firstborn. The Bible says that Reuben slept with his stepmother. Jacob heard about it. This was so significant that on his deathbed when he's going through his sons, he starts with Reuben and he said, "You defiled your father's bed." And because of that, you will never prosper.

Reuben, this family had problems. Now, let's go down. Let's go down to Simeon and Levi. These guys get upset because Dina gets raped. And the guy that rapes Dina is u you know, he's sorry cuz he really likes Dina. and he goes to Reuben, these brothers, and and says, "Hey, um, you know, sorry about that. I really like her. Let's let's fix this. Let's let's get can can I still marry her?" And Simeon and Levi say, "Under one condition. All you brothers in your whole family, everybody, big tribe of people, all of you have to get circumcised." So they're like, "Go back." say, "It's going to be painful, but I think it's a good deal." So, they all do that.

This is in the Bible, guys. All right. All All the All these brothers, the third day is the most painful. They're all laid out. Simeon and Levi go into the camp. They kill all the men. Genocide. And Jacob says, 'You've caused me to stink in this Canaanite area, and they're going to kill me because of you. On his deathbed, he says, "Simeon and Levi, instruments of cruelty." All right. So, all right. Now, let's come to Judah. Oh, this there's a whole chapter on Judah. Whole chapter. There's a pause in the story of Joseph and then they go to Judah. Judah had a few sons and his oldest son was married to a gal named Tamar and Tamar's husband Judah's son dies.

So the tradition was that he would the the next son in light would marry Tamar but that son was wicked and he dies and it's to be the third son. So by this time Judah's getting a little bit he's like Tamar's bad news. Every son that marries ends up six feet under. And and when that son grew of age, Tamar saw there were no wedding bells. So she came up with a plan. Judah was out shearing sheep. Tamar dresses like a prostitute. Judah comes and says, "Hey, you opened for business." And then afterwards, she's like, "Payment?" And he's like, "Uh, I don't have the goat with me, but uh I can give you something to uh on credit." And he says, "I can take your staff, your signate ring, something else." She takes it. And then Judah sends the goat.

Prostitute isn't there. He goes back home. Oh. A few months later, everyone finds out. Oh, Tamar is pregnant. And you can just sense a little bit of the hypocrisy because Judah's like, "Let her be burnt." I'm like, "What were you doing, brother?" Anyways, let her be burned. Calls her out and then she's like, "Well, the father is ta." And he's like, "Oh, that is how we got this dysfunctional family." Okay. Now, let's look at the 144,000 again. Oh, this is a quote from Leslie Harding. He's a avenist scholar. Judah was independent. Issakar was complacent. Simeon was sadistic. Gad was fun and games. Manasseh was shrinking and reticent. Benjamin was ordinary and uncompromising.

Who shall be able to stand? Oh, let's go. Judah. Really? Reuben. All right. Simeon. Levi. Out of these names, the only one that is stellar is Joseph. All the rest of them have issues. Big time issues. And then it hit me. The message of who shall be able to stand is really a message of hope. Because we're a mess, guys. Dysfunctional trauma. And God says, "I'm going to take you in your mess. I'm going to make something beautiful out of it." Amen. You know, we're talking about family this week. And God says, "Look, doesn't matter what you've been through. Doesn't matter how broken you may be. You give your life to me. I can take that and make something beautiful out of it."

Can you say, "Hallelujah. Praise the Lord." Ain't that beautiful? I mean, that's the message of the 144,000. I mean, he didn't he didn't give he could have had any list. He could have said the tribe of Daniel, the tribe of Enoch, the tribe of Moses, but he's like, "No, no, no. Reuben, who Levi, Simeon, these guys, deepseated issues, addictions, behaviors, sadistic, and God says, "You give your life to me, and I can make something beautiful out of it." This is a message of hope. When you look at the genealogy of Jesus in Matthew chapter 1, every year you're like, "Oh, I'm going to read the Bible through." And then you start with the genealogy. This is that genealogy. You ever read that? You ever read that? Look at this. All right. You know who's in that? Judah. Tamar.

And one of the sons that came from Judah and Tamar is in the genealogy. That's amazing. That's amazing. That dysfunctional night of pleasure. God says, "Ah, it's in the bloodline." David, you read that genealogy, it says David, Solomon, and in that it says the wife of Uriah. It's not even his wife. All these years later after Psalm 51, after repentance and everything in the genealogy, it says, "Ah, Solomon by someone else's wife, the wife of Uriah." Wow. Dysfunction, brokenness. You have Rahab. She had a night job, red light district, gentile, genealogy, Manasseh, the guy who put Isaiah in a log and sawed him in half, one of the worst kings in Israel. And later on, he repented.

Look at the brokenness. But in the end, you still get Jesus. Praise God. God says, "All this detour, all this mess, all this brokenness, all this dysfunction, in the end, he's like, I can still get there from here. the brokenness, the loss, the trauma. I can take that and make something beautiful out of it. There's a proverb in Ezekiel 18:es 1-3. The word of the Lord came to me again saying, "What do you mean when you use this proverb concerning the land of Israel? The fathers have eaten sour grapes." We were camping in Yellowstone and on the way we stopped at Walmart and I bought my daughter cuz she likes pomegranates. These pre-peled out pomegranates in a little plastic cup that was sealed and we fed it to her.

She's eating pomegranates the whole time. And then later on after she's finished a whole bunch of them, we decide to taste one and it was rotten. Rotten. And so, so we're like, "Oh, she's tough." You know, all this stuff. And then, and then she's, uh, not feeling the best. She's like, "Mommy, daddy, I don't feel good." And then she goes to sleep in the same sleeping bag as my my wife. And then she has she's she vomits in the sleeping bag while we're camping, middle of the night. I mean, it was a disaster that whole time for days. For days, she's vomiting. All right. Electrolytes. around the middle of like bison and whatever it is and we're just like this is a disaster disaster. So here it is. The fathers have eaten rotten grapes but look at the proverb.

Who are the people that suffer and the children's teeth are set on edge? There's another translation that says the children's teeth are clenched. This is talking about generational trauma. Usually, it's the parents that eat the rotten grapes and it's the parents that get Montazuma's revenge. But in this case, this is the proverb. It's acknowledging the reality of generational trauma that when the parents eat rotten grapes, the anxiety, the anxiousness, the fallout of that are the children. The children are the ones that get the nuclear radiation of the sins of the father. That's the proverb in Israel. And he says, "Look, as I live, says the Lord, you shall no longer use this proverb in Israel." It's a promise. God is saying, "Look, I'm going to stop the crazy cycle.

It's not fair. What have the children done? I'm going to put a stop to the craziness, the sins of the father. I'm going to put a stop there. You can no longer use this proverb in Israel. And later on in Ezekiel 18, it says he shall not die. Praise the Lord. For the iniquity of his father, he shall surely live. That's a promise. Doesn't matter what home you're born into, what trauma, the fallout of that, the dysfunction. God says, "Look, I'm going to stop this nonsense." New beginning. This proverb is in Jeremiah 31. Look at this. Very familiar. In these days they shall say no more. The fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. Exact same proverb. But everyone shall die for his own iniquity. Every man who eats sour grapes his teeth shall set on edge.

And afterwards the most quoted passage in the New Testament of the Old Testament is this. I will put my law in their minds and write it in their hearts. I will be their God and they shall be my people. I will statements. God is standing in the gap of generational trauma and says, "Look, I'm going to do something. I'm going to stop the crazy cycle. I'm coming in now. It's a divine intervention promise. New covenant reality." I want to share this clip of Joyce Meyer. It's a few minutes, but it's worth it. Of someone that's experienced trauma and come out of it and try to mic it up here. I'll never know what it's like to have a great dad.

I'll never know what it's like to be able to sit on my dad's lap, put my arms around his neck, and just get a hug without fear that it's going to turn into something else. I'll never be able to be hurting and ask my dad to go have coffee with me and sit down and just tell him what I'm going through and have him really care. I'll never have that. And literally what he did was he raped me. And he did it every week at least once a week until the time I was 18. I did a little bit of math and realized that my father, whom I was supposed to be able to trust, who was supposed to keep me safe, raped me a minimum of 200 times before I became 18.

But I have something better. because I have a walk with God and a relationship with God that is the absolute most wonderful and precious thing in the whole world. And the Bible says in Psalm 27:10, "Even if your mother and father forsake you, I will take you up and adopt you, and I will make you my own child." Amen. One of the things I remember that was probably one of the most disgusting to me was when I got old enough to learn how to drive, my father would take me out every Sunday afternoon for a driving lesson. And of all the ridiculous places to take me to do what he was going to do to me was he took me to a graveyard and that's where he'd have sex with me in the car and if anyone came around then we'd have to get out of the car and pretend like we were looking at graves and sick sick sick sick sick sick sick.

He worked nights as a truck mechanic and so I was at school most of the time during the day and I only had to deal with him on the weekends. But I tell you, I hated summers. Couldn't wait to go back to school. Lots of mornings he'd come and wake me up and put his hands on me under the covers. I prayed for my dad to die. That didn't happen. I prayed for my mother to leave him. That didn't happen. I prayed he'd leave me alone. That didn't happen. Why didn't God help me? I was praying. I was asking him. I was this innocent little kid being abused. Well, you know what? I don't have the answers to all that. But I can tell you that by faith, I now understand. That's why that scripture that I shared last night about by faith, we understand how the world was made. You know, I I I can't explain it to you in my mind, but I know that God didn't get me out of it, but he did

give me the strength to go through it. And listen, I remember when I was a teenager laying in bed at night, which was my favorite time when my dad was still at work to lay in bed when it was quiet. And in my little childish way, I would pray then and I would think, "Someday I'm gonna do something great. Someday I'm going to do something great. I believe that God puts a seed of greatness in everyone. I believe there's more capabilities inside of you than what you can even begin to imagine. But Satan tries to diminish us. He tries to demean us and belittle us through people mistreating us. But I want you to know today that even though I was being abused and abandoned, it seemed that nobody was going to help me and that it would never end.

Right in the midst of that, God had a plan. God had a plan. And I cannot explain this to you, so don't even ask me to. But for years, I said, "Of course, I wish that I would have never been abused. But God has helped me recover." And about three years ago, I said that, but of course, I wish I wouldn't have been abused. And God stopped me. Said, "Stop saying that. And then I I thought about it and I thought, and I know this sounds crazy, but I'm glad it happened. You know why? Because I'm a better person now than I ever would have been. I don't know how to make any sense out of that, but I know that I know that I know that God has redeemed me and he has taken what Satan arm and worked it out for good. And I'm a better person than I would have been had it not happened.

And you can be, too. I'm stronger. I know God better. I understand people's pain. And I believe it's I believe that it's made me able to reach out to you in your pain and your need and to tell you with all passion, God is alive. He loves you. He's got a good plan for your life. And don't you ever doubt that. Don't ever doubt that. Can you recover? You're looking at somebody who did. Amen. You're looking at the evidence that you can recover. There's no pit so deep that he can't reach down in it and lift you out. He will set your feet on a rock. He will give you a wonderful life. He will give you beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. He will make you a tree of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he might be glorified, and he will give you a double blessing for your farmer trouble. Come on, give God praise.

Notice what she does. She flips the script. And you can see it summarized in the words of Joseph to his brothers. Joseph went through trauma. And after his father died, his brothers came to him. They didn't even come. They sent messengers and said, "Look, dad said you need to forgive us." Because they thought after dad died, he was going to get revenge. And look at what he says. You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good, the saving of many lives. He had learned to forgive, but he was able to transcend the trauma and recognize that God can take a mess and really turn it into a masterpiece.

Let us pray. Oh, Father in heaven, Lord of glory, we thank you that you're a God that can take us in our dysfunction, in our mess, in our brokenness and flip the script. redeem us, use us for your glory, and turn us into a masterpiece. Not anything that we can do, Lord. It's your power working through us. And we thank you for the testimony of the 144,000 that you can take the most broken of us and use that to minister, to empathize, to understand other people. Father, we pray that the work that you started in our lives, we know you'll be faithful to complete. We ask these things in the precious name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.