Revelation 14:1-5

This is the last in the cast of characters that we will read about in the interlude before the drama that will unfold in the next set of coming judgments. There is some question about the identity of this 144,000, but it is oddly specific as a reference, so we will discuss this a bit because of the multiple ways to view their identity, and I’m not sure which is correct. To be transparent, I am persuaded that this is the same 144,000 that were ordained by God from Israel, whose mission it was to preach the Gospel. The scene has moved from Earth to Heaven, however, their identity has not changed. I have some reasoning for believing that which will become plain.

I think at this point, their job is done, because in verse 6, which we will consider next time, it is an angel that preaches Christ’s Everlasting Gospel, and not men chosen by God. At this point, they take up their victory song, and that song seems to be specific to them.

The text we are studying this evening is a description of them and the events that surround them at this point in our future history. I will say it is easy to speculate or analogize about this, and I will try to keep this to a minimum because it makes it easier for theology to go off the rails a bit. So we will simply jump into the text.

I broke the text into the following thought units:

KV3: Victory in Jesus

3: And they *sang a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except the one hundred and forty-four thousand who had been purchased from the earth.

1-2: Mount Zion’s Choir and Conductor

3: The Song that Choir Sings

4-5: The Character of the Choir Members

This group of characters (the Choir and its Conductor) introduce the concept of Victory in Jesus, which you will notice is reflected in my title. In Systematic Theology as it was taught to me, this is one of the models of salvation in Jesus that can be derived from Scripture. I think it isn’t entirely incorrect, but I must state that the only model of Salvation I can determine from Scripture is faith in the Penal Substitutionary Atonement that Christ performed in our place on the Cross in Golgotha. But in dying vicariously for His chosen people, He won the victory over sin and death. This is an opening to the understanding of the victory model of salvation. I think it is incomplete by itself, but I personally see this as a vital part of the substitutionary act of Himself on the cross for all of our sins. I must state that the victory is Christ’s; we did nothing to qualify for it, nothing to earn it, and nothing to deserve it. There is victory over sin and its power over us in that atoning sacrifice, but it is all His, and nothing is ours. It is all a gift, given by His grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone, as stated in the Scripture alone, to the glory of God alone. I will come out and state without equivocation that Christ died for all those the Father gave Him at that point. However, before people start to get upset at me, He didn’t tell us who they were and then made it our job to preach the gospel to everyone, so please don’t misunderstand what I said. This is a nod at the doctrines of both sovereign election and limited atonement. For those who reject limited atonement because God would never place a limit on the number of people being saved, I will say this: You are focusing on the wrong question. It isn’t “How many God will save,” but it is “Why should He save anyone at all?” He is the offended party and is under no obligation to save anyone, and yet He will and does. He does not tell us anywhere who those individuals are, but He knows them all and has chosen each of them from before the foundation of the world in love, and He has made it our job to preach the gospel to them. The only way we can do that is to preach to everyone. Of course, that will be the very action that is already bringing persecution from individuals, police, and state governments, and could soon come here to Canada. The text this evening is conclusive evidence that ALL of God’s servants will enter into reward with Jesus because of His victory. Let’s get into the text.

KV3: Victory in Jesus

I have already explained that the victory is all His, and is not ours, although we are the beneficiaries of His vicarious actions, in that He died for us. One of my favourite verses in Scripture is 2 Cor. 5:21, which reads, “He made Him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” In His victory, which He has shared graciously with us through faith in Him, we also have victory. In fact, just a few verse earlier, that victory is explained, and it is the real cause of our liberty for the penalty, power, and someday, the presence of that enslaving sin nature present in all of us. 2 Cor. 5:17 reads, “Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.” It is a victory that is reflected here with great precision and ability in song, and the Choirmaster is none other than Christ, God the Son, Himself. Why? Because he has purchased us from the Earth. Let’s enter the text here.

1-2: Mount Zion’s Choir and Conductor

As with other places, the Redeemed have a song to sing, and reasons why, having to do with their worship of God because of what He has done on our behalf. Let’s look at the choir and the way in which the song is performed.

1: Then I looked, and behold, the Lamb was standing on Mount Zion, and with Him one hundred and forty-four thousand, having His name and the name of His Father written on their foreheads.

From where he was standing, John looked and saw the Lamb. The choice of the Lord Jesus’ description here as the Lamb speaks to his role as the sacrificial redeemer of His people. He paid for OUR sins by the sacrifice of HIS life, redeeming us, all to rescue us from this present evil age. We could speak for a while about how He already has, by our justification by that atoning sacrifice, and also, providing we follow Him, for our sanctification, that is our being made holy. We are “new creations,” according to 2 Cor. 5:17, which we looked at a few moments ago.
The Lamb was standing on Mount Zion. He has now left His location at the throne of the Father and stands with His people on Mount Zion. Maybe not all of them, and here is one of the ways of looking at this number of 144,000, which is part of the text in the following phrase. Some view this as a symbol of the entire church. Matthew Henry says in his commentary that, “Mount Sion is the gospel church. Christ is with his church, and in the midst of her in all her troubles, therefore she is not consumed. His presence secures perseverance. His people appear honorably. They have the name of God written in their foreheads; they make a bold and open profession of their faith in God and Christ, and this is followed by suitable actings. There were persons in the darkest times, who ventured and laid down their lives for the worship and truth of the gospel of Christ. They kept themselves clean from the wicked abominations of the followers of antichrist. Their hearts were right with God; and they were freely pardoned in Christ; he is glorified in them, and they in him. May it be our prayer, our endeavor, our ambition, to be found in this honorable company. Those who are really sanctified and justified are meant here, for no hypocrite, however plausible, can be accounted to be without fault before God.” Henry views things at times in a larger allegory, and it isn’t incorrect. As my friend Dan likes to say, these categories are not mutually exclusive. However, I still am persuaded that there is a more specific application to this group on the Mountain of Zion with the Lamb.
His name and the name of His Father are written on their foreheads. If you will recall, when we looked at Revelation 7, in verses 4-8, it lists 144,000 men set aside as evangelists from the 12 tribes of Israel (not the traditional tribes either, there were some reasons for that). These men were clearly still believers sent out to preach the Gospel to a world that clearly needs it, if we can believe what we read there. All of these men were faithful, apparently, because they are all here, now with Christ, on the site of His seat of government, and out of the dangers of that “mega” red dragon.
Does this mean all of them were martyred? Possibly. This has happened large scale before, during the early days of the church. Most of the Apostles died in that kind of persecution, as did many other believers. It is not lost on me that your answer to that question will depend on your eschatology. If you are premillennial and believe there will be a harpazo of believers before this starts, they were most likely martyred. If you believe that this event is halfway through the tribulation, then other possibilities open themselves, but you can figure that out on your own. If you are post-tribulational in your view, then anyone in heaven, including the two witnesses, was martyred, because that event is simply a catching away to meet the Lord in the air as He comes back to earth. Whatever the case, they are all there with Him at the seat of His government. If I read this literally, as I have tried to do appropriately throughout (and it isn’t always possible), it is not the whole church, it is that same group of 144,000 we looked at before. Are there correlations with the church? Most certainly, and we may have occasion to look at those. Moving on.

2: And I heard a voice from heaven, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder, and the voice which I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps.

I heard a voice. The Greek text has this as singular, so it really is “a voice.” It is coming from Heaven. Whether this is the voice of God could be a discussion point, but it has the earmarks of divinity in that it is like the voice of many waters and the sound of loud thunder. It is our Lord who spoke like that to John in 1:15, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is Him. Angels have spoken with that kind of voice, as in 10:3. However, it was from Heaven, and that’s all I feel comfortable reading out of the text. Anything else is really reading into the text, eisegesis.
That voice was like the sound, it says, like harpists playing on their harps. I went to university with a guy who got into making harps. His name is Tim. It is a larger stringed instrument, and requires skill to play well. That instrument must be properly attuned, and interestingly, I have never seen one played by one who is standing up. I know a younger lady from Chicago who plays one beautifully. She once sat on my glasses. Ooops! She was in her Junior year of high school last time we spoke, and I was in my third year at Carleton. I knew her dad. His name is Gene. Great guy. He and his wife had 9 kids. Sarah, the young lady, was the oldest. Think about what this phrase is saying. That was one voice that sounded like harpists, PLURAL. These stringed instruments were perfectly in tune and being precisely played. Remember that old Red Rose Tea commercial? “Only in Canada, you say?” I think this is like that. Only in Heaven, I say. And we have only the orchestra here. The singers come next.

This passage is painting a picture like we saw in chapters 4 and 5, where we encountered a kind of heavenly cantata of sorts, that grew in strength and volume as all of creation joined in at appropriate times. Except this is a very specific picture and a very specific group performing the music. And who is the master conductor? None other than the Lamb Himself! Next thought unit.

3: The Song that Choir Sings

Here, we find out this is a “new song.” It isn’t just heavenly music, it is a universal premiere! Let’s see.

And now, singing for the very first time, their new universal hit, the 144,000, with “New Song!” Sorry, I’ve done some MCing over the years. Old habit. These must be preaching a sermon in the heavens because of the audience of the performance. It is like the pastor when he preaches from the Word. He is preaching to an audience of ONE. Yes, THAT One. God Himself. Believe me when I say that I wouldn’t want to make mistakes in the heavenly songs that I have the privilege to speak to the holy church of Him who has redeemed us all. And the Living Creatures and the Elders (who we have said represent the church now in Heaven) are a part of the audience as well. I know that it will be an intense privilege to hear that performance. I also know some of you are singers too, and I know how you feel about songs sung for God. Some of us do it every week, for the most part. This is the performance for eternity. What a holy and blessed privilege to be there to hear that song.
There seems to be a very special property to this song, and I do not claim to understand all that it means. No one can learn the song unless they are one of the 144,000 that were redeemed from the earth. I know that there has been rank heresy released over the earth because of this verse. The Jehovah’s Witnesses (who are neither) say that only that 144,000 will enter Heaven and be with Jesus (apparently they forgot to read Revelation 15). I wonder how that will work when the other 8,899,460 JWs in the world find out they didn’t make the cut. (There are approximately 9,043,460 reported on earth as of this date.) We know for other reasons that these people are largely unbelievers, but if you are a real believer that Jesus Christ is God the Son and is Himself God, please find a real church. What I do think is that it will be a very special privilege to hear it the first time live.
Is this 144,000 a figurative number? I don’t know. There is a part of me that sees it as representative of the church, but given what we have seen in Scripture, I don’t understand how that could be. Numbers can be figurative. I’ve done some of that kind of math. Usually, it is expressed in math as a lower-case I in italics after the number. For example, 5i would indicate the imaginary number 5. I don’t think this passage involves that kind of math. There are parts of the passage that describe the whole church (“purchased from the earth”), but there are specific places where it can only be speaking of the 144,000 Jewish evangelists. It will be amazing to find out, will it not?
“Purchased from the Earth.” ἀγοράζω, primarily, “to frequent the market-place,” the agora, hence “to do business there, to buy or sell,” is used lit., e.g., in Matt. 14:15. Figuratively Christ is spoken of as having bought His redeemed, making them His property at the price of His blood (i.e., His death through the shedding of His blood in expiation for their sins), 1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23; 2 Pet. 2:1; see also Rev. 5:9; 14:3-4 (not as KJV, “redeemed”). Agorazo does not mean “to redeem.” It means “to purchase” as per Vine. This is a case of KJV mistranslation, but now that we know that, we can understand that Christ purchased us with His own blood on the cross. He redeemed us to Himself by paying for all of our sins on the cross. I think this means that the cross of Christ is central to the consideration, is it not? It is the very reason we are all here! And the Scriptures are all about Christ, so this is no surprise.

4-5: The Character of the Choir Members

Personally, I like to have a program for a concert. I mean that little booklet that you get at the door. I don’t know why, but I like to learn about the performers and how they got to be where they are, and other interesting facts about them. If there is a soloist, a program can, by the descriptions and facts about the performers, enhance their performance for me. I look at this as a program of sorts for this performance. Let’s look.

4: These are the ones who have not been defiled with women, for they have kept themselves chaste. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These have been purchased from among men as first fruits to God and to the Lamb.

Not defiled by women. There is a literal meaning here and an allegorical one, and I will present both. First, the literal meaning. These guys didn’t sleep around. It says they are οὐκ ἐμολύνθησαν παρθένοι γάρ εἰσιν in the text. Literally, “not who have been defiled (kept themselves chaste) for (they have)” and that’s the Greek word order. The NAS has this correct. KJV says they are “virgins,” but that is not a complete meaning. Remaining chaste may mean that, but it may also include faithfulness to a spouse, though I am not confident of my Greek understanding to say more than that. My thinking is that they are both undefiled and chaste. Now, the metaphorical meaning: They have not participated in activities like syncretism or apostasy. Compare this with the apostate church, Babylon, the spiritual harlot, spoken of in Isaiah 1:21, “How the faithful city has become a harlot, She who was full of justice! Righteousness once lodged in her, But now murderers.” The context here was speaking of disobedient Zion, which we learned was also called Babylon in Rev. 11:8, which reads, “And their dead bodies [the two witnesses] will lie in the street of the great city which mystically is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.” These were faithful instead. As it says in Jaimeson, Faussett, and Brown, “Their not being defiled with women means they were not led astray from Christian faithfulness by the tempters who jointly constitute the spiritual ‘harlot.’” That is both the literal and figurative meanings, and again, these categories are not mutually exclusive. Both can be true at once.
What we do know is that these men are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These individuals are sold out for Jesus, Beloved. If they read it in the word of God, they will thoughtfully and intentionally try to do it, and do it the way the Scriptures say to do it. Following Christ is not a brain-dead activity. Your brain must be engaged.
These have been “purchased” (again, not redeemed, it is the same Greek word) from among men as a sort of “first fruits” to God and the Lamb. Here is where I believe we may be able to apply this to the entire “Israel of God,” all believers of all races through all time. James tells us who the first fruits are in Jas. 1:18 — “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.” James wrote in code and was, in my opinion, writing his general epistle to the entire church. I know, this all gets kind of confusing. However, there is no reason to think anything else unless you are a hyper-dispensationalist. We can talk about that at another time if need be, but not now.
Think about this. Is there anything outside of Jesus’ specific choosing of 144,000 men out of spiritual Israel that makes them different than us? No. They, like us, are also sinners saved by grace. There is only one gospel of Jesus Christ, and there is only one way to be saved, and that is through the Lord Jesus. In John 14:6, Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” The Book of Acts in 4:12 says, “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” Being called out of Israel does not have special meaning in reference to salvation. It does here, but that is because Israel as a whole rejected the Messiah the first time. Many of them will reject Him the second time. However, the men and women that God wants from that nation will also be saved, and saved by the same gospel as we believe. To think otherwise is to open up to all kinds of errors like Replacement Theory, Postmillennialism, and the like. No, they must be saved by the same gospel as we are.

5: And no lie was found in their mouth; they are blameless.

Here is more of that holy and righteous character. I know it is easy to believe that anyone can change their behaviour to comply with this, but the Apostle Paul thought otherwise. He called himself “the chief of sinners.” Bearing false witness is really at issue here, and because these individuals really will believe the gospel that Jesus died for them to pay the penalty for all their personal sins including the Original Sin, and really will believe that God raised Christ (God) from the dead to prove it, they will behave differently, just as we should.
There will be no speaking of falsehoods in the name of false religion or false hope on behalf of a false saviour, falsely “resurrected” from the dead, spoken of by the False Prophet as if he were God. They will not lie about Him, about sin, theirs or anyone else’s; they will, in the love that God has for all of us, speak the (gospel) truth in love to all, and make that same invitation we always make to you.
Turn from your sins and to the living God for forgiveness granted vicariously by Christ (God the Son) on the cross by His grace for all of your sins. Believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead because it is the proof that He really did pay for your and everyone else’s sins! Confess Him as your Lord now, and He will save you. Then, if anyone is in Christ by that repentance and faith, He will give you His New Nature. Your desires will change, and then your behaviour will change. Everyone around you will see the change, and you can tell them what happened and Who (capitalized!) is responsible for that positive change in your life. I will not say your problems will end, that would be a lie, and I would be blameless here. You will still have problems as you did before. Everyone does! However, NOW, you will have the grace of God to face those problems steadily and go through the hard times to the sanctification that is waiting at the other end. And (eventually) you will WANT this process, as intense as it can get. And I know of a couple of cases where it was pretty intense for me, and not just for me.
These will have no lie found in their mouth. They will be blameless.

Okay, okay, I hear you out there in the back row of the internet. “You guys sure are stuck on all that ‘gospel stuff.’ You just keep repeating it!” My friends, you are correct, because it is the gospel of Jesus Christ that is the power of salvation for everyone who has believed, believes now, and will ever believe. It doesn’t matter where you are from, who your parents were, what sins you have committed to this point in your life, or how many times you have done this before in a vain attempt to gain God’s favour. Do you not understand that you cannot bribe God with your good behaviour? You can’t fool Him with the hypocritical act that we all have at times. He is GOD! He sees through the act to the truth. I urge you – just drop the act! Come to Him in the humility of acknowledging who you really are: a wretched sinner that is only worthy of the condemnation that all outside of Christ are already under! Tell Him you are that sinner. Ask forgiveness for all that sin! It doesn’t matter what it is because He was there when you did it! He already knows! And if you are truly sorry, that is, if you are honest in your repentance, God will forgive you, because our Lord Jesus Christ has already died to pay the price for all of your sinning. He is the perfect atoning sacrifice for every sin, and more, He will wipe your record clean. Just as He took away all the penalty and power of sin for all who will turn to Him, He will remove YOURS! Oh, Happy day, when Jesus took my sins away! For me, that happened on the evening of Tuesday, June 18, 1985. And when I, humbly and honestly before God (finally) acknowledged He was Lord over my life, He filled me with His Joy. I can’t entirely explain how, but I lost all the weight of the world that had all through school been very squarely on my shoulders. I can tell you that it rolled into the grave at the foot of the cross, and it remained there for good. I was made new! A few moments later (and I mean that literally), I was tempted with something that I really wanted, and I turned it down flat. I didn’t want it anymore! It was no longer who I was. I was made new. Born again or from above, however you want to phrase it. I tell you my story because it can happen for YOU! I was at work and had a spare couple of minutes. I was alone, nobody was with me. And the Lord Jesus came and saved me. I pray He will find you in your own sin and rebellion and have the mercy only He can have on you.

And that’s what I saw in the text this evening.