Living Waters of Grace, March 23rd, 2026

This is Living Waters of Grace, the teaching ministry of Clark

Wofford, senior pastor of Calvary Chapel of Westmoreland,

County of Greensburg, PA. Now here's Pastor Clark as he

continues teaching through God's Word.

We all have a ritual, I hope in the morning, something that we

do personally be before us and our God before we leave our

homes, before we leave our families.

It's there's some place in the house that we get alone with God

where only he can see us and we get on our faces before him.

And we worship Him this way, pouring out our hearts to Him,

asking Him to examine our hearts, to search us, to know

us, to see if there's anything in us that needs to be removed

and to be taken out. Do you have that practice?

Do you have a time that's dedicated to God, where you talk

to Him and listen for His voice? As Christians, we call this a

quiet time or a devotional. Ultimately, it's just time with

Jesus, however that may look, Pastor Clark will challenge you

today to set aside a time to be with Jesus so that he could do

the work in your heart that only he can do.

He can cleanse you of sin and empower you to live a holy life

for him. Now.

Here's Pastor Clark in the Book of Ephesians, chapter one with

today's edition of Living Waters of Grace.

Ephesians chapter one verse 13 and 14, It says in him you also

trusted. This is regarding him, Jesus

Christ and him you also trusted after you heard the word of

truth, the gospel, your salvation, whom also having

believed says you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,

who is a guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption

of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory.

So the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in us.

We're sealed by the power of God through the person of the Holy

Spirit, and it's the evidence that we belong to God without

the Holy Spirit. You aren't a Christian.

And you should know if you have the Holy Spirit because whenever

you have the Holy Spirit, your life has changed, your desires

have changed, your interests, your motivation.

You have conviction now about sin in a way that you didn't

have it whenever you didn't have the Holy Spirit.

And it says in First Corinthians 12/13 for by 1 Spirit are we all

baptized into the body of Christ, the baptism of the Holy

Spirit placing us from one place outside of the Kingdom of God,

and then doing a work by his Spirit and placing us into a new

family by his Spirit and Spirit baptism.

And if you study the ancient foundational documents like the

Nicean Creed or some of these things that fought out the

truths of historic Christianity in the beginning, because of all

the heresies, says there's one Lord.

And Ephesians says there's one Lord, 1 faith, one baptism, one

God and Father of all, who's above all and in all and through

us all. And so we're sealed by the Holy

Spirit of promise. And it tells us in chapter 4,

verse 30 of Ephesians, it says, and do not grieve the Holy

Spirit of God by whom you were sealed for the day of

redemption. How do you grieve the Holy

Spirit? It says, let all bitterness and

wrath and anger and clamor and evil speaking be put away from

you with all malice and be kind to one one another, tender

hearted, forgiving one another, even as God and grace forgave

you. If we hold bitterness and anger

and any kind of attitude in our heart toward anybody, toward

God, toward any kind of situation, it says we grieve the

Holy Spirit, we hurt the Holy Spirit, we wound the Holy

Spirit. And the Holy Spirit can't just

say I'm out of here. I don't like dealing with Clark

right now. He's just like making me

miserable, you know, He just makes me feel like I don't want

to be in him anymore. With the beauty of the Holy

Spirit is he doesn't depart in the new covenant.

He dwells in US forever. We're in the Old Testament.

Remember David prayed in Psalm 51.

Take not your Holy Spirit from me.

That was his biggest fear because the indwelling, the

permanent of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit didn't occur

until Pentecost. And so these things are

important. But in Revelation 7, this is

what he's going to do for these 144,000.

He's going to mark them with the seal, the Holy Spirit.

And the ceiling is something, it's done and seen by God.

I don't see a physical mark on you or you don't see one on me.

But it's evident by how we live and how we treat each other if

we are in Christ. But Jesus says by this shall

people know you're my disciples by the love you have for one

another. And so in this sense of what God

is doing in verse 2, he is making this mark visible though

to the spirit world and all the demons of hell and the person,

the Antichrist. They're going to know for sure

that these people have been set apart by God and there will be a

certain protection given to them in the midst of all these

cataclysmic events during this time in order for them to do

what it is God's called them to do during this tribulation.

All those from the ends of the earth, the other nations, the

other people groups will be directly impacted by the

evangelistic methodology of these 144,000 during this time

of tribulation. And so in in verse 3, it says do

not harm the earth and the sea or the trees till we have sealed

the servants of our God and our forehead.

So this command is given to the angels and these angels are the

very ones that will sound the trumpet judgments as we get into

chapter 8 next week. This won't start again until

these servants of God are sealed and protected by the Lord God.

So how are people going to get saved during this time?

When you think about it, I mean, with the Antichrist ruling and

hassling people and persecuting Christians, how are people going

to be saved? Well, we'll study later on about

the two witnesses that were eventually martyred that God

will raise up. But there's going to be such

powerful testimony during this time of tribulation, in the

midst of the chaos, in the midst of the trials and the

tribulations that are going to come upon the world.

It's going to cause people to do one of two things.

They're going to move away farther and farther from God and

curse him, or they're going to move closer to him and say,

there's got to be an answer to this.

I don't want to have to deal with this.

I need mercy. I need grace.

And many of those people will remember the things that you and

I had told them while we were alive, prior to us being caught

up in the air. I don't know about you, but as a

unbeliever prior to coming to Christ, what drew me to Christ

was trials and tribulation. It was the lifestyle I was

living. It was the condemnation and the

guilt and the darkness. It was all about me from my drug

induced hippie stage. And I, I just, I cried out to

God I didn't know existed and I asked for His help and I asked

him if he was real, that he would reveal himself to me and

show me who He was. And he did.

And it put me on the beginning path of my salvation.

I, I look at people in life and I know that God uses trials for

both groups. He uses trials and believers

lives to cause us to get on our face and say, Lord, I want to

move towards you, not away from you.

And for unbelievers, he causes trials to come on their lives to

break them so that they would repent and turn to God for mercy

and for grace. So God the Holy Spirit, as we

talked about last week, last week, he is everywhere present

and he fills all things. When the church is taken out at

the rapture, the Holy Spirit as a a person is in us.

He goes with us to the Kingdom. But at the same time, the Holy

Spirit is a spirit. He's God, he's omnipresent, he's

everywhere present. So doesn't mean because he goes

up with us, he's nowhere else. He's everywhere.

And the only way this work of God can be occurring on the face

of the earth this time with these 100 and 44,000, is through

the power of the Holy Spirit. John 16-8 And this is prior to

the Holy Spirit being poured out in Pentecost.

This is what the Lord says about the person, the Holy Spirit.

It says He will convict the world of sin.

He'll still be doing that during the tribulation and of

righteousness and of judgment of sin because they do not believe

in me of righteousness because I go to my father and you see me

no more. And of judgment because the

ruler of this world is judged. Of course, that's the the

Antichrist. So we we began to pick it up

here in verse 4 and it says and I heard the number of those who

were sealed. 144,000 of all the tribes of the children of

Israel, verse 5, the tribe of Judah, 12,000 were sealed.

Of the tribe of Reuben, 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 Neptali, 12,000 were sealed.

Of the tribe of Manasseh, 12,000 were sealed.

Of the tribe of Simeon, 12,000 were sealed.

Of the tribe of Levi, 12,000 were sealed.

The tribe of Issachar 12,000 were sealed.

The tribe of Zebulun 12,000 were sealed.

The tribe of Joseph 12,000 were sealed.

The tribe of Benjamin 12,000 were sealed.

So we see this tremendous move of God's spirit.

And what's what's amazing is if you ask a Jewish person today,

what tribe are you descending of?

They don't have a clue. They've lost all record of their

historical setup in the in that place of the world.

But God knows, he knows our lineage.

Of course, we're all descendants of Adam and Eve.

That's that's a fairly easy one for even us to understand,

right? But the tribes are real specific

and they'll be used to give God glory throughout the Book of

Revelation. And so we see the specific names

of these tribes. Now, some of you are Bible

scholars in here and you might say, well, there, there's a

couple mistakes in there. Clark, why isn't the why isn't

some of these other guys mentioned in here, like Dan, the

tribe of Dan, It was mentioned in the Old Testament.

Well, some people, you know, there's sometimes some things in

the scripture. What are you going to do make it

up and just say, well, I think it, you know, sometimes it's

better to say, I don't know. But God has a reason, though.

He God doesn't make any mistakes in his word.

There's a reason why there was a couple of adjustments and, and,

and this tribe of Dan, Some people believe the reason it

wasn't included. This is conjecture, but it's a

possibility that the Antichrist will come up through the the

tribe of Dan. I don't know, but one of the

other interesting things here is that we see the the tribe of

Levi's mentioned here and they weren't given a inheritance in

the sense of an earthly Kingdom. Whenever they're their reign was

going on, they were the priests unto God and the and the temple

and their inheritance was a heavenly blessing.

Their inheritance was the Lord. But here they show up again.

And then you have Joseph who had, you know, two sons,

Manasseh and Ephraim. Well, for whatever reason here

we see Manasseh mentioned, but we don't see Ephraim mentioned,

but we see Joseph mentioned so that the number still comes down

to be the same. But all these guys, they're,

they're descendants of Jacob and historical, why God's doing this

that we'll get into a little bit later as we move on in

Revelation 2112, after the Millennium and the new heaven

and the new earth and the new Jerusalem, there's going to be

12 gates in this new Jerusalem, and each one will bear the name

of one of the tribes of Israel. It's going to be fascinating.

And there will be that great door of Judah representing the

line of the tribe of Judah, our Savior Jesus Christ.

In verse 9 it says, after these things I looked and behold, a

great multitude which no one could number of all the nations,

tribes, peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and

before the Lamb closed with white robes, with palm branches

in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice saying,

salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne into the

Lamb. What a tremendous picture here

of hope that in spite of the hell that's going to be poured

out into the world during the Tribulation, you're going to

have all these people from all over the world that are going to

come to know Christ during this time.

Part of this vision that John is having is that many Gentiles

will be saved, a great multitude.

There's so many people here, he can't even begin to describe the

number. And that should give us hope

because there will be some of our loved ones that won't make

it out in the Rapture with us, but that doesn't mean it's over

for them. And that might be a good

conversation to have with some family, some friends.

Hey, you might not buy into this.

You don't want to believe it right now.

That's between you and God. But when this does happen,

remember that there's still hope that you can still believe.

It'll be tougher to believe them because you will most likely

face true death and martyrdom to make your stand for Jesus

Christ. And it says they're going to

have white robes on. And the significance of these

robes is a beautiful situation here where it talks about these

robes that are washed and they're made white in the blood

of the Lamb. Only the blood of Jesus Christ,

Amen, can make us clean, not by works of righteousness, which we

have done, but according to His mercy.

He saved us without the shedding of blood.

There is no remission of sins. It's not my good life that I

think I live or you live our good works, although our works

are in evidence of our relationship with Christ.

As the old hymn said, nothing in my hands I bring only to the

cross I cling. And so the blood of Jesus Christ

upon every one of us today. And we all know what we are,

don't we? Down deep inside we know what we

still are and what we need to become by the grace of God.

But that God in his mercy looks at us and he sees this blood

that's been shed and that we're his children, that we're covered

by this blood, not having a righteousness of our own, Amen,

but the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

That should give you such hope today and such confidence and

such comfort that as He sees you, He chooses to see you

clothed in the righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ.

And we need to be reminded of that when we look at each other

and we see the warts and the stains and the failings and the

struggles. Try to ask the Lord to give you

a vision of one another that you're wearing a robe that's

white and it's pure and you're not looking at all the

inconsistencies or the weaknesses of one another's

lives, but you're looking at each other as God sees you

holding him without blame before him in love.

And they're waving these palms and these palms are symbols of

rejoicing and gladness and, and they and they begin to sing and

all this worship that's going on in the Kingdom of heaven, as

Rick talked about it, says they're crying with a loud voice

saying salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne into

the lamb. Salvation belongs to our God, no

one else. Only God has the authority and

the ability to save us. All the angels stood around the

throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and they

fell on their faces before the throne and worshipped God,

saying Amen, blessings and glory and wisdom, Thanksgiving and

honor and power, and might be to our God forever and ever.

Amen. I know so little about this kind

of worship, but I long to experience it more alone with

God. We all have a ritual, I hope in

the morning, something that we do personally be before us and

our God before we leave our homes, before we leave our

families. It's there's some place in the

house that we get alone with God where only He can see us, and we

get on our faces before Him. And we worship him this way,

pouring out our hearts to Him, asking him to examine our

hearts, to search us, to know us, to see if there's anything

in us that needs to be removed and to be taken out.

And this is true worship, guys. I mean, as good as this worship

is here this morning, right? It can't come faintly close to

what this worship is like in the throne room of heaven.

I think the beautiful thing is when we enter into that place,

we're not going to have to look around and say, what are they

doing? How do you do this?

We're all going to be in unison. We're all going to be on our

face and it's just going to all come together because worthy is

the Lamb that's slain before the foundation of the earth.

We'll see him and we'll all fall on our face and worship Him.

True worship. We see here adoration and

Thanksgiving and prayer, praise. And I think just to throw this

out to you, what is our worship like?

Is it too casual? Is there ever a time in your

life or mine that it's it's OK to fall on our face before him?

I mean, if they do it here, I would think it would be OK to do

it here too, right at home. You got all these pews in a way

it's tough to get on your face when the pews are in a way, you

know, the first church had no pews when they, when they do the

historical study of the, the original church places of

gathering, of course they worshipped in homes whenever

they began to have places of assembly.

There was no such thing as pews. There was no such thing as

chairs. People stood like whenever Esau

whenever help me guys, was it Esau that was proclaiming the

word and everybody stood up Ezra, I'm sorry.

Good. Your guys are listening here.

You're paying attention. But you know, they all stood up

to hear the word of God and they stood up for hours.

They weren't like man, I'm tired.

Can't I sit down? No, they they stood up to hear

the word all day through Ezra the servant as Nehemiah was also

involved in that. And so there was there was room

to to fall on the face of of on our faces before God.

Sometimes we give people an opportunity to end to the

service, to come up and get before the Lord on their faces.

Our culture is, is too, I don't know, smooth nowadays That that

may be in most places isn't looked upon as being something

that's reasonable. Because what, what would someone

think if I did that? I'm messed up.

And I yeah, I mean, I need to. Sometimes I just want to come up

here and fall on my face because God is worthy to be on my face

before. And maybe I'm reminded that I

need to do that corporately with my brothers and sisters.

I mean, no pressure on anybody, but that's something that we, we

provide here for, for people to do.

But I think about this, this worship and I, I long to be in

this, this kind of worship one day in the throne room of

heaven. And as we worship God on this

earth in this way, God scans our hearts and he reveals our

motives. I find it very, very important

when I'm alone with God, he shows me my, my heart.

He shows me what I need to see that I can't see.

If I don't put myself in this position of a brokenness and

humility before him, if I'm too busy discharging out and running

and just doing what I think I'm going to do, I'm missing.

What God wants to say to me, and that's still quiet moment.

I'm too busy, I'm distracted. But I encourage you to to do

something in the morning or at night, whatever is best for you,

where you have that time to give God an opportunity to to speak

to you, but also a time where you can begin to worship God in

a new way and not so much, Lord, I got this problem.

I need your help. And how about I do?

But can we just say, Lord, you're worthy, worthy of you,

and we just repeat these things. Amen.

Blessing and glory and wisdom, Thanksgiving and honor and power

and might be to our God forever and ever, Amen.

That's a great thing to be praying, isn't it?

Make that part of your prayer. Doesn't get any better than

that. That's the word of God.

And verse 13 and one of the elders answered saying to me,

who are these arrayed in white robes and where do they come

from? And I said to him, Sir, you know

they came out of the great tribulation, this end time

period which will eventually end prior to the second coming of

Christ. Verse chapter 24 of Matthew,

verse 31. It says, For then shall be great

tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world

to this time, nor shall ever be. Therefore they are before the

throne of God in verse 15 and serve him day and night in his

temple, and he who sits in the throne will dwell among them.

That again, at this astounding picture of the throne room of

God, the privilege that these folks have to be before his

throne, serving Him day and night in his temple.

We won't need sleep in heaven. We're going to have new bodies.

We're going to have energy that we never could imagine.

And here's this Lamb of God sitting on the throne who will

be dwelling among us. They shall neither hunger

anymore. We're now we're going to eat in

heaven, guys, don't be discouraged about that.

We're going to have that great marriage supper, the lamb.

We're all going to be able to eat, you know, but you're not

going to be up there starving. When are we going to eat?

There's not going to be any more thirst.

The sun shall not strike us down, nor any heat.

For the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne will shepherd them

and lead them to living fountains of waters.

And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes so that

we're going to have this safety in heaven.

And we're going to be continually immersed in the

blood of Jesus Christ that never loses its power, the fountain of

God that washes us and keeps us pure for all eternity.

There'll be no more tears. What's that going to be like?

I still cry, don't you? There's still things that affect

me. There's still things I'm

burdened over. There's still things I'm

concerned about or I don't understand.

And sometimes when you're alone and you're, you're crying out to

God, there's only one person who can comfort you.

Your friends can give you solace.

Your loved ones can put their arm around you.

But there's only one that can really touch your heart and tell

you it's going to be OK. And he's faithful to do that.

But one day when we get in his throne room, all the stuff that

we've been through in this world and this life, all the

injustices are the things we didn't understand why they

happened the way they happened. It won't matter because he's

going to wipe away the tears. And he says there'll be no more.

Later on in Revelation, there'll be no more remembrance of the

former things for the former things have all passed away.

What a day that'll be. I have a lot of celebrating to

do throughout all eternity. This has been Living Waters of

Grace with Pastor Clark. We're going through the

challenging and also intriguing Book of Revelation.

Whether you're a fan of reading ahead in books of fiction,

there's such a benefit to reading ahead in the Bible to

read about how it all ends. But in an interesting turn of

events, the Book of Revelation is not really the end, but

rather the beginning. Life as we know it here on

earth. But there's so much to look

forward to. But what comes after all?

The judgement of the earth and those who reject God?

There's a lot to work through, and it can be heartbreaking to

read through the intense judgements and wrath that will

come on those who hate God with all their might.

The thing is, God has given chance upon chance to these

people. They don't want it.

So the outcome is that there are judgments and consequences for

those who've rejected the good news and the gift of salvation

that's offered through Jesus's death and resurrection.

Are you one who has heard about these things but doesn't really

want it because you want to live life on your terms?

Trust me, living for Jesus is so much better.

That doesn't mean it will be easy, but as you listen and read

through Revelation with us, you'll come to a stark

realization that you don't want to be on earth when the

apocalypse happens. So check out Calvary Chapel

online.com to learn how to come to a saving grace through faith

that will allow you to be with Jesus for eternity.

We'd also love to meet you in person at Calvary Chapel

Westmoreland. Come join us at 400 E Pittsburgh

St. Ste. 6B in Greensburg, PA 15601.

This has been living waters of Grace.