Please turn with me in your Bibles to the book of Revelation, chapter seven. Book of Revelation, chapter seven, beginning in verse one. And after these things, I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. And I saw another angel ascending from the east, having the seal of the living God. And he cried with a loud voice to the four angels to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying hurt not the earth, neither the sea nor the trees. Do we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads? And I heard the number of them which were sealed. And there were sealed and hundred and forty and four thousand of all the tribes of the children of Israel. Of the tribe of Judah were sealed, twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Reuben were sealed, twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Gad were sealed, twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Aser were sealed, twelve thousand. Of the tribe of Nephilim were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Manassas were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Levi were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Issachar were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Zebulun were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Joseph were sealed 12,000. Of the tribe of Benjamin were sealed 12,000. With the breaking of the sixth seal, we had introduced the greatness of the Constantinian settlement. Christ, through the Constantinian Revolution, made himself powerfully evident in history, judging his enemies and breaking the power of paganism in the West. From that day to the present, the persecuting power of the Roman Empire, those persecuting powers were, as it were, drawn down from the very heavens, the seat of power. And in the midst of this, God wrought for his people a deliverance They were saved from persecution. They had the liberty now to worship freely and in public. Indeed, they were favored under Constantine. And in less than 100 years, they go from being favored in the empire to exclusively established by the empire. And all of this was good in the eyes of God's people. And as we had an opportunity to observe, it was like the very appearing and return of the Lord Jesus Christ, a type and an image of the end of time when God will judge his enemies and deliver his people. When we make the turn to chapter seven, we are surprised by what we find. Four angels commissioned to do hurt to the empire. And now, as we make our way to verse four, we see the reason for this. The visible church suddenly grew very large, but the election of grace was comparatively small. And in this we have the seeds of the coming apostasy. In some ways, chapter seven is very important for everything that will follow. If we will understand the rise of the beast and the man of sin, We have to understand first that at this period in history, the visible church came to be thickly sewn with tears. And at this point, the Christian religion begins to be corrupted greatly and rapidly. Look with me at verse four. And I heard the number of them which were sealed. So John, here's something further. He hears the number or the reckoning of those that had received the seal. If you remember our considerations of Ezekiel chapter 9, you'll remember that the one who was dressed as a priest bearing the ink horn, the Lord Jesus Christ did bring back to the father a report. of those that had been sealed. There, if memory serves, we don't receive any enumeration, but here we do. A report is given, and he hears the number. John hears the number that were sealed. And there were sealed 140,000 and 4,000 of all the tribes of the children of Israel. So the total was 144,000, 12,000, from each of the 12 tribes. We ought not to be surprised to find the number 12 associated with the church, and we'll do this more in some future sermons. Chapter 21 and the vision of the New Jerusalem is certainly full of this sort of thing. Of old, the church was divided up into its 12 tribes with its 12 patriarchs under the new. the church was reformed by the work of the 12 apostles and so it's altogether fitting here that we have the visible church represented as the 12 tribes and in the midst of those 12 tribes was the invisible church reckoned as 12,000 from each of the 12 tribes and perhaps the 12 indicates these to be truly apostolical men, those who embrace the apostolic teaching we should be very clear, there's a common exegetical mistake that is made here as if each one of the tribes was 12,000 and when you put all the tribes together there was 144,000 but you have to understand that the tribes are contemplated as being much larger and 12,000 is being selected out of the midst of them So we're not told how large each one of these tribes, only that it's larger than the 12. And 12,000 is being selected out of the midst of each of them. Careful attendance to the grammar makes that very plain. 144,000 of, the preposition there is ek, out of. So there's a larger body and a group is being selected out of the midst of those. The result of all of this is plain. that Israel, the visible church, the number of those that were professing the true religion and their children had swollen greatly during this era. It had swollen so quickly that it must have boggled the minds of the Christians at this period. You remember up to this point, they had been a persecuted group. Indeed, under Diocletian, if you'll remember, public worship had become impossible. at least as far as being visible to the Roman world they would worship together to be sure but they had to do it in secret places the famous era of the catacombs so now suddenly from being a persecuted minority now everybody wants to join and masses are flooding into the visible church and yet the true Israel of God, the invisible church, the elect, the number of those who truly believed was comparatively small. And we see here an application of what Paul said, they are not all Israel, which are of Israel. In other words, there is a visible Israel, and there is within her, her hidden spiritual life the hidden spiritual life of the elect I wonder here and I just offer this for your consideration I do wonder if there is a proportion being evoked if we consider Israel in its wilderness state a population of 2 or 3 million 144,000 out of those would be about one in 13 or 14. Not very many, but I suspect if a proportion is being evoked here, then it would be Israel settled under its monarchy, settled under David, settled under her king. There we do learn from chronicles in the census that the population was probably about seven million, which would make 144,000, about one in 50. one in 50. And I do think that there's much to contend this to commend this idea that a proportion is being intended here now, because the church is now for the first time, since its expansion into Gentile territory has been settled under a Christian king, one who was professing the true religion. But what a striking thing. What a proportion. between true believers and false professors. Can you imagine one true believer for every 49 tares? It's staggering to think about. In a congregation of our size, if you think about it, there would probably be one. Maybe two. And that is an amazing thing to think about. You remember that the Lord Jesus Christ taught that many are called, but few are chosen. In this era, many have been called by the gospel. They had heard the sound and they came into the church. But we find that the election of grace was comparatively small. As we have been following along in the history, we ought not to be surprised by any of this. or that this history would be figured to us in this way. With the Constantinian revolution and settlement, the Roman masses began to petition for inclusion in the visible church. Under Constantine I, under Constantine the Great, Christians constituted the chief constituency of the empire. They were favored above all others. some 50 years later under Theodosius I pagan worship would be made illegal altogether this is where the word pagan comes from they were driven out into the villages they were the pagane or village dwellers they could no longer abide in the big cities under the watchful eye of the king and by the time of Theodosius II so this is about a hundred years after Constantine Christians are the only constituency in the Empire. In 423 there was a law passed that stated and took for granted that there were no more pagans in the Empire. Probably overbold, but they had been so pressed out into the fringes that you could scarcely find one who would admit to such a thing. So at this time the Roman world became roughly equivalent to the visible church, the 12 tribes. And if you consider our immediate context in the scripture, we do find illusions to this reality. You remember the angels were commissioned to hurt the earth, the sea, the trees, all ways of referring to the Roman world or landscape. But then more specifically we learned in these past few verses that the angels were not to hurt those that had been sealed. Which means the hurt that's going to be done is to the Roman world more broadly, excluding those that had been sealed. But all the Israel, all considered as the twelve tribes, all is considered the visible church. We wouldn't say that there was an exact correspondence between the Roman world and the visible church. But at this point, very much like in ancient Israel, they were, for the most part, overlapping. Because there were great temporal advantages to joining. And that tempted a great many to come in. Now, when we come to the next chapter, we'll see this highlighted. When that herd actually begins to be done, we'll find that characterizes being done to those that inhabit the earth, which is the unsealed of the twelve tribes. And that's why I say the twelve tribes are roughly synonymous here with the Roman world. The language of Israel at this time also began to be applied to the church and there was a subtle and hurtful shift in theology I can't do all of this, I wanted to list out some samples for you but there was so much and the literature is so extensive that it in some ways defied easy summary at least by way of sample, I'll just summarize it for you if you read the last two books or so of Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History something that will impress you is that he is taking the promises even the temporal promises that have been given to Israel of old and he was applying them to the Visible Church and the Roman Empire even the temporal promises There are many texts about Israel's final glory, and he said these things are fulfilled in our day, in our midst. As I said, particularly if you just want a little bit of reading, Church History, Book 10, Section 4 is full of it, and Book 10 altogether is not very long. Julian the Apostate, about 20 years after summarizes much of what he had seen in Christianity and remember he is called the apostate because he began as a Christian was well acquainted with Christianity and yet fell away from the faith he said they, that is the Christians differ from the Jews of the present time and say that they that is the Christians corporately and nationally considered are the true Israelites this is the way that they referred to themselves during this time and Eusebius really captures that remember we've used him much as an exemplary man of the times because he does much to capture for us the spirit of the times and common Christian belief and even language the way that they referred to themselves and thought about themselves but remember there was in this, I don't have any problem with them calling themselves Israel and so on But if you remember the eschatology of the fathers, which we did in some detail, if you remember the chronology in which they were largely agreed, they believed that pagan Rome would persecute. But that pagan Rome itself was hindering the appearance of Antichrist. In other words, the Roman Emperor himself was that hindrance, that let, that Paul talks about in 1 Thessalonians 2, that hindered the appearance of Antichrist. But they expected that soon, you remember Cyprian thought it was imminent, very soon, in the 250s and 60s, the Roman Empire would be broken up And when it was broken up, the man of sin would arise in a reconstituted empire, and then he would unleash the worst persecution. And then the end would come. But you remember, that's important. The expectation of the visible church before this was we will be relieved and the Roman Empire will be broken up. But then Antichrist will appear and the persecution will be worse than ever. That was their belief. But all of that is now set to the side and forgotten. Now, the visible church inherits Israel's temporal glory rather than anti-Christian persecution. And you might say that the visible church inherits Israel's temporal glory rather than the emphasis of the preceding age, which was that the invisible church inherits glory as it passes through the martyr's fire and shedding her own blood so there was a great shifting here in theology it can seem subtle but it's a complete difference with respect to expectation what's going to happen here in the future also quite noteworthy is that Eusebius did live long enough to be very disappointed and he wrote much of the hypocritical joining of the church he expected that there would be great spiritual changes in the empire as men and women whole families came flocking into the visible church and yet that spiritual change did not happen and so after the language of glory you start to hear from the fathers of the church during this a growing complaint The visible church is full and has spread large, and yet the spiritual changes are meager and small. I did lift a sample of this for you from Eusebius's Life of Constantine, which he wrote after Constantine's death. Book four, section 54. Here he's describing Constantine and then contrasting him with what he saw in the population, says in like manner, his mental qualities reached the highest point of human perfection. Indeed, he was distinguished by every excellence of character, but especially by benevolence. A virtue, however, which subjected him to censure for many in consequence of the baseness of wicked men who ascribe their own crimes to the emperor's forbearance. In truth, I can myself bear testimony to the grievous evils which prevailed during these times. I mean the violence of rapacious and unprincipled men who preyed on all classes of society alike and the scandalous hypocrisy of those who crept into the church and assumed the name and character of Christians. His own benevolence and goodness of heart The genuineness of his own faith and his truthfulness of character induced the Emperor to credit the profession of these reputed Christians, who craftily preserved the semblance of sincere affection for his person. The confidence he reposed on such men sometimes forced him into conduct unworthy of himself, of which envy took advantage to cloud in this respect the luster of his character. This is largely an apology for Constantine's character and conduct, but you see in the midst of it, there's a recognition that there were flocks of men coming in to the Christian church that were not the lambs of God, but rather ravenous wolves. And we could continue this. It wasn't just Eusebius, but other fathers from the period, Cyril, Gregory Nazianzen and later church historians write about this as the period so this is not some obscure fact but some of you might know the name of Mosheim a famous church history, Neander, Geisler large church histories, great experts in the field and they say that this indeed was the time if I make this a little bit more concrete it will probably become plain for all of you you remember it was about this time also that the Aryans almost took over the church altogether and it was very difficult to find orthodox believers Constantine Waffled, some of his successors were out and out Aryans and it became a great threat to the church or you might say that the visible church was full of Aryans Athanasius says this and I had to list this out because the language is so striking The error is recognized in its true character and indignantly rejected by those who bear the sign on their forehead." Isn't that something which is the very language of our text used by Athanasius in his first oration against the Arians? The error is recognized in its true character and indignantly rejected by those who bear the sign on their forehead. And at this time, as I said, the empire was full of Aryans, which is nothing other than to say that the empire and the church was full of false professors who knew not God and knew not Jesus Christ. So in sum, the new Israel had swelled large, but the true Israelites were exceeding few. Many were indeed called, but very few were chosen. I wanted to take away from this a single doctrine, but also a handful of uses from the doctrine. From time to time, the visible church is thickly sewn with tears. This is a reality with which we must be prepared to grapple. You remember, if we can back up with some of our more general theology, the invisible church is the sum total of the the sum total of all of those who have, are, or will believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in all places and in all ages and this invisible church becomes visible by its profession in the world but of course it's not just true and sincere believers that are going to profess but false professors will mix themselves in with the true professors because men will join the church for all sorts of reasons that don't have anything to do with Jesus Christ as it was in this time remember by the time of Theodosius II if you wanted to hold any public position you had to be a professing Christian if you wanted to be comfortable at all in the empire you had to be a professing Christian and so people had great temporal advantages to making that profession and joining the visible church and this is not just true in that day but there remain motives for joining the church that don't have anything to do with love for and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ I say that this seems to be a very useful doctrine you'll have to judge for yourself but it seems to me that in our day and age the visible church is thickly sewn with tears I don't know how else to interpret the evidence. I looked at some recent polling numbers. Do you know that 80% of the population of the United States of America, 80% of the people consider themselves to be Christians of one form, shape or variety. 80% and a lot of those think themselves to be evangelical Christians. And yet our culture is not changed. And when you look at statistics for things like crime and divorce and whatnot inside and outside of the visible church, the statistics are not all that different. And it does appear that the visible church, at least in our country, is thickly sewn with tears. Now for you system, we will do these briefly, but I hope that you'll lay them up in your heart. Think about these things. First of all, for self-examination, why are you here? Why am I here? Am I here because I'm the pastor and I'm expected to show up? You wouldn't have anything to do if I didn't show up? There wouldn't be any sermon to listen to? Is that why I come? Or do I come for something else and for some other reason? I would hope that my motives are somewhat more than simply having a job for myself and an income to be earned and those sorts of things but why are you here? are you here simply because mommy and daddy require it of you? or you wouldn't want the rest to think ill of you for not being present and so on? why do you come to the visible church? do you come because you have a faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know that there is no other name given among men by which you must be saved. Have you become convinced of that? And so you come. Do you find in your heart a love for this precious Savior who so loved you and gave himself up for you? Is this why you come? Then very good. But there can be all sorts of other things. all sorts of other pressures whether it be I come from a Christian family I have a Christian spouse I want to wear a good Christian and religious face and so on and the church has always been filled with such although as we've already seen in the apocalypse when persecution comes it does tend to prune away the dead branches But right now we live during a time of great comfort. There is no great disadvantage to naming the name of Christ. And parts of our culture in various places still very much expect it. And so there will be pressure to blend in. But there's no good reason for coming unless that faith be sincere and that love be true. I do hope that you'll look deeply into your hearts and ask yourself, what do I find here? Am I trusted in the Savior and in Him alone for the forgiveness of sins, a perfect righteousness and the glory hereafter? Do I find in my heart a bright and burning love for the precious Redeemer? Second, if we consider this reality, we will have an expectation of discipline. in the church. I'm afraid probably that we still think of discipline as an unusual occurrence in the church, as if some strange thing has befallen us when it happens. But discipline is to be thought of as a regular part of the healthy life of the visible church, a regular part of the healthy life. The temptation is always when a disciplinary situation comes And it becomes a mess, as it always does. Then we begin to wonder, is there something wrong with us? Because these matters have befallen us. It's possible, but not necessarily. And we should expect discipline. Believers need discipline. I do remember reading J. Adams some years ago. I found it very helpful. He said, because churches fear discipline, and what happens, the mess that it causes when it happens they will set the bar of membership in the churches very high so that if you can jump over that bar you probably will not be a problem for us later on but if we simply observe the Lord's requirements for admission into the visible church a credible profession of faith which is a relatively low bar Then when people come in, there's an expectation that everybody is going to need discipline to some degree. Most of us suffice with those gentle means. We hear the word preached. Perhaps every once in a while we have an admonition. No big formal process. None of those sorts of things. But that's part of the disciplinary function of the church. That's its largest part. And we certainly all need that. But even true believers from time to time will need those heavier measures. When we consider that the visible church is also thickly sewn with tears, when they discover themselves, when they reveal their true character, there is going to be discipline. And so if we believe the doctrine we need to be prepared for this there will be time to time when tears reveal themselves and then they will need to be disciplined and that discipline might very well terminate in that greater excommunication where basically the church declares because of the sin and the impenitence it seems to us that you are no believer at all you profess the faith but the profession is not credible because the life is not answerable Third, I hope that this realization will stimulate us to watchfulness. Even with other believers, knowing that in this life we all yet remain sinners, we must be careful of the leavening influence of the sins of even the children of God around us. It's not an easy thing. We tell our children in the families, as you look at your parents, emulate their virtues and don't copy their vices or their sins, but advance. Do the things that they do well, forbear doing the things that they do ill, and that's a very difficult thing to do. We have a similar dynamic, one with another, and that requires watchfulness, consideration, thoughtfulness, we don't simply want to imitate one another's sins to our own hurt if we'd really be profitable we must not only protect ourselves from leavening influence but also help our brother when we detect those sins but we can't simply say because we all dwell together in the in the visible church I can sort of turn my discerning faculty off when it comes to behavior. We need to stay acute and lively, having our senses exercised to differentiate between good and evil, as the apostle says. How much more so when we recognize that there are going to be tears in the visible church, and they certainly will leaven the whole lump if they can. And so we must be watchful at all times. I'm not saying this. I hope it won't make you suspicious of one another. You have known one another long enough probably to know strengths and weaknesses and so on. Emulate the strengths, forbear the weaknesses, and try to help one another in the faith. If things are working rightly, we help one another go forward rather than dragging one another backwards. And finally, a fourth application. I hope that all of this will protect you from disillusionment. So that you might have right expectations concerning the visible church. I don't know if you can remember back to our sermons in Revelation chapter two, but you remember when the Ephesian angel is commended for being faithful and disciplined and we read that and wow, a beautiful commendation from the Lord, and we'd like to have something like that. But you can be sure that on the horizontal, rather than seeming like some glowing and wonderful thing, it probably just seemed like a mess and a disaster and a very difficult work. In the eyes of the Lord, a wonderful thing. In the eyes of everybody that was watching it, probably thinking to themselves, what a mess We need to be careful that our expectations with respect to the visible church are not naive or we will be very disappointed. People can come into the into the visible church and expect that they're going to, you know, walk into a hall of saints with halos on their heads or something like that, rather than thinking of the visible church as a hospital for broken sinners. But the expectation is very different. The one is naive and will lead to disappointment. And the Lord would warn us about these things beforehand. But the other will put you on the right path. You'll know what to expect in the visible church. And I would protect you if I can from any hurtful surprise that might lead to a temptation to doubt. The Lord has not told us to expect the glorified church in this earth. Consider the condition of the apostolic churches, and it will disabuse you of that notion forever. Consider that both the Corinthians and the Galatians were trying to cast off the apostle Paul, the apostle who had been involved in their own conversion. So would you be surprised when you find a congregation trying to cast off their pastor who is somewhat less than that to them? We ought not to be surprised by any of these things. and the apostolic epistles are largely records of the ills of the churches planted by the apostles themselves and difficulties that they found difficult to rectify in the people. It was hard work and a lot of it was quite messy. You might think of others, diatrophies, who love to have the preeminence Cast off the authority of the Apostle John and you can go you can go on and on the situation is always difficult but remember the greatness of the of the visible church is that That hidden spiritual life is nestled in her bosom the election of grace is in the midst of her and The ordinances are administrated by her, which are called means of grace. And Christ has promised to meet with his people in this place. A good and precious thing to be sure. Let us pray together.