Well, it's the second sermon in chapter 15, Revelation 15, verses 1 through 8. And I saw another sign in heaven, great and marvelous, seven angels having the seven last plagues. In them the fury of God is completed. And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire, and those who prevailed over the beast and over his image and over the number of his name standing on the glassy sea, having harps of God. They sing the song of Moses, the slave of God, and the song of the Lamb saying, great and marvelous are your works, O Lord God, the Almighty. Just and true are Your ways, O King of the nations. Who could not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name? Because You alone are holy. because all the nations will come and do obeisance before you, because your righteous judgments have been manifested. After these things I looked, and the sanctuary of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened, and out from the sanctuary came the seven angels, the ones having the seven plagues. They were clothed in pure, bright linen and were girded around the chests with golden belts. Then one of the four living beings gave the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the fury of God, the one who lives forever and ever. The sanctuary was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one was able to go into the sanctuary until the seven angels' plagues were completed. Amen. Father, we thank you for this, your word, and it is our glory to continue to worship you. We pray for your continued presence with us, in Jesus' name, amen. Most of you know who George Barna is, right? see a couple of shaking heads because I'm going to quote from him. I probably should give you a little bit of background. George Barna is the guy who does massive surveys and analysis of Christian opinions on all kinds of subjects. He's kind of like a gallop for the Christian church and he's probably the most quoted authority on Christian opinions anyway that are out there. Well back in the year 2000 he co-wrote a book called Experience God in Worship and in that book He summarizes the results of a massive survey. And let me read you a section of that because I think it shows quite well the troubling state of the church, at least in America. And I'm not gonna read the statistics, just his conclusions. He says, most adults will contend that a Christian has a responsibility to worship God. However, when asked to define what worship means, two out of three are unable to offer an appropriate definition or description of worship. And he goes through some of that. He goes on, he says, true to cultural form, the driving motivation behind the worship event attendance of millions of adults is to have a pleasing experience. For most Americans, worship is to satisfy them, not to honor or please God. Amazingly, few worship service regulars argue that worship is something they do primarily for God. A substantially larger percentage of attenders claim that attending worship services is something that they do for personal benefit and pleasure. Good worship is defined in a number of ways, and I won't go through all of the different definitions that they give. Most of them are extremely man-centered. But then he says, most people attend worship events expecting to experience outcomes such as comfort, predictability, professionalism, satisfying interpersonal relationships. Very few accept divine confrontation as a hallmark of worship. Yet, sometimes God uses a worship environment to grasp our attention and interact with us in ways that bring greater discomfort than security and joy. To most adults, such an experience is viewed as a negative, not a positive. Put this in context and the notion that America has a major problem in the area of worship is an inescapable conclusion. Perhaps the most striking feature of the research is the revelation that our problem is not an inability to craft services or experiences that are culturally relevant. We know how to do that. The problem is that American Christians do not have a heart that is thirsting for an experience with God, eager to express gratitude and praise to Him, humility, appreciation, acknowledgement of His love and character, and joy in knowing and serving Him. Later in his analysis, he says, if worship is so central to Christian experience, then how is it possible for church people to have strayed so far from the mark? And his conclusion is that our modern worship services are shaped much more, far more by cultural forces than they are by Scripture. They are shaped by man's expectations far more than they are shaped by God's expectations. He says that they are man-centered to the core. Very, very man-centered. Now I don't normally read such a long passage from a book, but I wanted you to see that it's not just little old me, Phil Kaiser, who thinks that there is a major problem in the area of worship. Even an authority, mainstream authority like Barna sees that there is a huge problem. But What I would say is that this is not a new phenomenon. We always tend to backslide away from this passion for God, this God-centeredness in our worship. I think it's one of the reasons why God has sprinkled these vignettes on worship all throughout the book of Revelation. Each one of these vignettes is bringing yet another kind of a reformation need to confront the church with. And I want to look at each of the points in your outline and see if our worship looks anything similar to New Covenant worship. It may be that we ourselves need to grow in this area. First point says, new covenant worship acceptable to God is brought by overcomers whose life is different from the world. Character matters. And we see that in verse two. Before we look into verse two, I just want to point out, he's already pointed this out earlier in the book, he rejected the worship of the Jewish synagogues, even though it was incredibly professional worship that was brought by some of them. But they had no faith, and they were similar to what the liberal churches present before God today. But in chapters two through three, we wouldn't find it surprising at all, God rejects the worship of the synagogues. But in chapters two through three, God also rejected the worship of at least some of the true churches of Jesus Christ. The church of Ephesus had lost its first love, had lost its spiritual capacity to listen to God, and so God rebukes Ephesus and says that they need to gain spiritual ears. They need to become overcomers. He tells the church of Smyrna that they must learn to listen to the Holy Spirit in the church. And they need to be striving to be overcomers. And you see similar admonitions to other churches with Laodicea making Jesus Christ so sick to his stomach with their worship that he was ready to vomit them out. He wasn't even inside that church. He was outside the church knocking on the door. So verse 2 definitely does not describe the church of Laodicea. So the point is that even true churches that think that they are being faithful to the Lord can have worship that does not get past the ceiling, let alone stand before the throne of God. Hebrews 12 gives us instructions on how we can be caught up to the heavenly Jerusalem and to the throne of God, and it's not automatic, and yet chapter 15, Revelation 15, verse two, shows some saints who have done exactly that. They are standing on the sea of glass that we looked at last week, standing before God's throne, passionately worshiping God. And how does it describe them? Well, it describes them as being overcomers. says in verse two that they are those who prevailed over the beast and over his image and over the number of his name. They were set apart to the Lord, not set apart to culture. Now we looked at that phrase to some degree last week, but I want to amplify a little bit on that. Amos 5 verses 21 through 23 describes what happens to the worship of people who are adapting themselves to culture, who are not sanctified to the Lord, who hold on to their sin. He says, despite the fact that they apparently had very professional worship, technically good worship, he tells them, I hate, I despise your feast days, and I do not savor your sacred assemblies. Though you offer me burnt offerings and your grain offerings, I will not accept them. nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings. Take away from me the noise of your songs, for I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments, but let justice run down like water and righteousness like a mighty string. Basically what he's saying is that beautiful music and very soul-soothing worship is not going to whitewash your sin in God's sight, not at all. And if we're to have worship that God delights in, it's got to be worship that flows from a heart devoted to the Lord and that does not conform to this world. If we compromise with the beast, with the economics of the beast, with the name of the beast, we cannot expect to be pleasing to the Lord, and the answer is pretty obviously why. The answer is because he's the archenemy of the beast. By the way, even though we're gonna be focusing just on worship today, it would be interesting sometime just to take an application of that phrase to being involved in politics. I believe that there are many Christians today who wear the name of the beast. They do not act like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego at all. But anyway, second thing that we notice about this worship is that it is the worship of the whole congregation, not just a professional band. One of the things that amazes me when I visit churches on vacation is the number of people who passively sit or passively stand and watch the worship team worship. Now, I should have been worshiping the Lord instead of looking around at all of them, so there's three fingers pointing back at me, so it's a rebuke to me too, but it was so distracting to watch 90% of the congregation not singing. Who's singing? Who is singing in verse 3? Not a soloist, not an organized choir, not a worship band. It was each and every member of the heavenly Zion. They sang the song of Moses. They sang the song of the Lamb. I've often been asked why we don't have choirs at our church. And it's not like we absolutely couldn't have a choir, but my answer is the same as Charles Spurgeon, that I really desire that the congregation with more energy, more skill, would be the choir singing before the Lord. And there are some distinctions between synagogue worship and temple worship, which I won't get into this morning. But New Covenant worship is not professionalism. It is offering up the sincerity of the heart. And even though we try to practice on the worship team, and we try to gain some skill because God commands us to sing with skill, We try to involve ordinary people and not become a professional elite. And that's one of the reasons, by the way, that we keep the worship team at the back. It's not like it's wrong to have the worship team up at the front. In fact, there are some advantages to having the worship team at the front. but we want to keep our focus as much as we can where it should be. And you are the choir. Each of you must be active. The third thing I see here is that new covenant worship was down to earth even though it took place in heaven. It was not complex worship that takes years to figure out what's going on. Some so-called covenant renewal worship is so incredibly complex that sometimes even the worship leaders get confused as to where they are at. For sure, visitors get confused as to what they're supposed to do. They get lost. And the readings and the prayers are so poetic and ornate, it's really hard to relate to them. It just seems so artificial. But we can easily fall into the same mode. When we try to outdo each other in the poetic beauty of our prayers, our focus may be in the wrong place. Who are we trying to impress? Is it God or is it our fellow man? When you read verses three through four, you do see emotional depth there, and you do see theological or doctrinal depth, yes. You do see well thought through prayer, but you do not see complex, ornate, or artificial prayers or songs. These are normal words of normal people who don't have normal hearts, because their hearts are on fire, lit on fire by God Himself, but the words are normal. The Greek is not ornate Greek. It's not Attic Greek. In fact, some people, they kind of look down, some Greek-speaking people look down at the Greek of the New Testament people because it wasn't so ornate. This is Koine Greek. This is the ordinary language of ordinary street people, ordinary Jewish Christians. The point is there's nothing artificial about the way they pray. It's simply the overflow of hearts that are full of God. The next thing that you see is that every phrase of this song is grounded in Scripture. Now I think David Chilton does a wonderful job of showing where each little section, each little phrase comes from. And the interesting thing is, it doesn't come from one song in the Old Testament. Okay, it's bits and pieces from all over the Bible. And the point is, this is not a psalm, this is a hymn. This is an exposition of the scripture. It is based on the scripture, but a psalm would be an entire section of scripture. A hymn would, can, you know, pick from all over. But it is scriptural through and through. When I evaluate the hymns and the songs that Kathy has researched and other people have contributed, I want to make sure that every phrase is scriptural. If a worship song has a non-scriptural phrase, I remove it, I replace it with a biblical phrase. God does not want man's opinions being offered up to him in worship no matter how cool those songs might sound But more to the point his command and it is a command his command in Colossians 316 is let the Word of Christ Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. In other words, the Word of God has to dwell in us richly through the music that we sing in worship. Now, if we were only to sing exclusively psalms, then the Word of God would dwell on us richly. But hymns can be scriptural expositions, and songs can be scriptural expositions as well. They are another way of driving the Word of God deep into our soul. By the way, there tends to be a prejudice for older hymns simply because they are older, but let me tell you something, some of the older hymns that I have looked at are anything but scriptural, okay? There are some bad old hymns and there are some great old hymns, but some of them you can go phrase by phrase and you'll say, okay, that phrase is from the scripture, but wow, the next, 10 phrases have nothing, you could not find a single place in scripture where those phrases come out of. I mean take a hymn like I Walked Through the Garden Alone, you know it's sentimental, it's sappy, there is nothing scriptural about it, it's just expressing somebody's feelings. So if Revelation 15 is to be a model of the church's singing that I think we have got to avoid both extremes that we see in the church of Jesus Christ. One extreme is exclusive psalmody, where you cannot sing anything but the psalm. The other extreme is what a lot of evangelicals have, where they give songs that are just expressing their testimonies and their feelings and their desires. They're not really expressing what the Scriptures themselves are talking about. Worship needs to be like the moon reflecting back the light of the sun. It needs to be scripture of God being reflected back to him in some capacity or another. And saying, Lord, yes, we agree with these scriptures. These are our heart's desires. We want to conform to your word. The next thing that I see is that new covenant worship includes both old and new. It borrows from the time of Moses, it borrows from the time of Jesus. Verse 3 says, they sing the song of Moses, the slave of God, and the song of the Lamb. Now this is such a rebuke to the modern church which has completely thrown out the Old Testament Psalter. The Psalter is so rich, and we need to be singing all 150 Psalms. Actually, the modern church has thrown out anything that's Mosaic. It's not just the song of Moses, but here we see the song of the Mosaic economy continues to be the lifeblood of New Covenant worship. Why? because God has not authorized us to put a dividing page between the Old and the New Testaments. He has not for sure authorized us to yank the Old Testament out of our Bibles. In fact, just to anticipate the next sermon, verse five indicates, as a part of this worship service, indicates that they are agreeing with God when He is judging the nations based upon the law of Moses. Now you might wonder, where's the law of Moses there? Well, commentators say that that's in the phrase, the sanctuary of the tabernacle of the testimony. The 10 commandments that were put into the Ark of the Covenant were called the testimony. The Ark of the Covenant was called the tabernacle of the testimony because it housed the law of God. It tabernacled the two tables of the law that Moses had put there. And then the temple was called the sanctuary of the tabernacle of the testimony. So the point is that the law of Moses, exactly as it was written, not nine commandments, but 10 commandments, exactly as it was written, exactly as it was put in two tables into the Ark of the Covenant, continues to be a part of the worship of God's people in the New Covenant worship. So if churches want to get their worship past the ceiling, they must not sneer at God's hymn book, the Psalter. They must not sneer at Moses. They must not sneer at the law of God. The songs that hit the top of the worship music charts of heaven were the song of Moses and the song of the Lamb, right? Though we're going to likely sing an endless list of new songs in heaven, the old will never grow old or obsolete. Glendale Peace once said, don't waste your time trying to figure out which is best, the old or the new. They are both best, for they are both vital to the whole. The song of Moses and the song of the Lamb. Cease to sing either, and you rob the other of its fullness of joy. Christians should appreciate the heritage of their old hymns, and yet enjoy the endless possibilities of new songs by which to praise their Lord. God is always the same, and so whatever was valid once will always be valid. But God is also infinite, and so there is no end to what can be discovered. And so the new is always valid also. Well, I wouldn't say always valid. If it's scriptural, it is valid. But the wise Christian will learn from the heavenly singers to preserve the old and pursue the new. And singing the new is exactly what he means when he says, and the song of the Lamb. This song has phrases taken from the Old Testament. It has phrases taken from the New Testament. You will not find the exact words of this psalm, I mean this song, in any one psalm of the Psalter. Some of it came from Moses, some of it was newly composed. So John does not want us singing only from the Psalter, New Covenant worship incorporates both. We are commanded in the New Testament to sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and you will find several non-Psalter songs scattered through the worship services of the book of Revelation. Okay? And by the way, other commentators point out that these songs are located in other books of the New Testament as well. Now speaking of the importance of singing itself, which some people don't like to do. Their lips are sealed, you know. They're zipped on Sunday morning. But Martin Luther said, next to theology, I give the first and highest honor to music. And concerning the energy with which the whole congregation sang, John Wesley said this, sing lustily and with good courage. Beware of singing as if you are half dead or half asleep, but lift up your voice with strength. Be no more afraid of your voice now, nor more ashamed of its being heard than when you sung the songs of Satan. And if he was around today, he would say, then when you cheered at the football game, okay? Next, I want you to notice that verse two ends by showing that this singing was accompanied by harps. There was instrumental music in this worship service. If they are harps of God, then they are authorized by God. And we'll look at where they're authorized in a bit. But because this is such a huge debate in Christian circles as to whether or not instruments of music are authorized in the worship service, or whether they were only authorized in the temple, only authorized by Levites to sing, I want to spend a little bit more time on this point. I cannot adequately cover everything, obviously, in a sermon, so I've written a pretty big book that's been newly published on LeanPub. You can go there and look for all of my books, actually. And it deals much, much more extensively. It deals with every objection to instrumental music. Now, if there are harps of God, then God must have authorized them somewhere. And in my book, I tried to show that God has authorized the use of instrumental music and worship in the law of God, in the life of David, and specifically in the booth of David, the tabernacle of David is the way some people translate it, which is entirely different from the temple. It is not the temple. It was more akin to the synagogue. You can find it in the Psalms, in the Prophets, and in the New Testament. And in the various places, in fact, I've written down, I'll go ahead and quote some of these references for you. But there are references that indicate that God has commanded the use of instrumental music, not just by Levites, but also by non-Levites. Some of the non-Levites include prophets, 1 Samuel 10, verse 5. Kings, 2 Samuel 6, verse 4. Isaiah 38, verse 20. Ordinary citizens, Psalm 33, verses 1 through 3. 2 Samuel 6, verse 5. Males, 1 Chronicles 13, 8 and 15, 16. females, Exodus 15 20, Psalm 68 verse 25. Now in each of those passages that I just listed they're commanding these non-Levites to use instrumental music in worship services. Now they couldn't do it at the temple, but they could do it in the synagogues, they could do it in the tabernacle of David, and the only music that he speaks against is music that flows from a bad heart, Ephesians 5 verse 19, and that which was produced by lawless lives, Amos 5 verse 23. So the point is that God delights in the music of the upright. It was not just a command for Levites in the temple, it was a universal command. And by the way, God's delight in music preceded the time of Moses, way before the time of Moses. According to Job 38 and Ezekiel 28, God created instruments for the angels to use and worship and in fact Job 38.7 says that all of the angels burst into praise and worship when they watched God out of nothing create this earth. It's like wow! When they saw the power of God they could not help but sing and praise and worship God and it says that Lucifer was an upright angel on that day who accompanied the singing with tambourines and pipes according to Ezekiel 28 verse 13. And God called that musical accompaniment perfection and beauty. Instrumental music is perfect in God's sight, or it can be. It is beautiful in God's sight. God has enjoyed worship accompanied by instrument from day one of creation to the end of the book of Revelation, passages such as Revelation 5, verse 8, and 14, verse 2, et cetera. And He wants us to glory in music as well. What He wants us to do is to pray, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. If every facet of our lives is supposed to be patterned after heaven, which Colossians 3 verses 1 through 2 says that it should be, then we need to be patterning our worship on earth after the worship that goes on in heaven. So this would involve us in singing new songs, such as you see in Revelation 3, verse 8 and verse 11, chapter 5, verse 9, verse 12, verse 13, etc., as well as the instrumental music that accompanied that singing all the way through the book of Revelation. And really, this is no different than what happened in the Old Testament worship of the temple and the synagogue. God showed Moses the pattern in heaven, and he said, you are supposed to imitate your worship on earth after the worship of heaven. I'll just give you a few verses that say that. Exodus 25 verse 40, 26 verse 30, Numbers 8 verse 4, Acts 7 verse 44, Hebrews 8 verse 5. In these verses he's saying it's not enough for heaven to be beautified by music, He wants the kingdom of heaven to invade the kingdom on earth and transform our worship so that with David we can affirm that the praise of the upright is beautiful. Psalm 33, verse 1. And it says that it's beautiful in the context of being accompanied by musical instruments, verses 2 through 3, same instruments that were used in heaven. So just as there are harps of God in heaven in our passage of Revelation 15 verse 2, there are, quote, musical instruments of Jehovah, unquote, on earth, 2 Chronicles 7 verse 6. Now in my book on musical instruments, I try to demonstrate how the Booth of David or the Tabernacle of David was the paradigm, the paradigm for New Testament worship. It included non-Levites and even Gentiles playing instruments before the Lord in worship, and you could not do that in the temple, okay? But they could do it in the synagogues and in the Tabernacle of David. So what it was doing is it was foreshadowing the New Testament New Covenant worship according to Amos 9 verses 11 and 12 and Acts 15 verses 15 through 17. That was the paradigm according to those two passages. Now I'm just skimming over just a handful of some of the proofs that I give in my book, but because some have asked for a bit more proof, I'm trying to give it. And there are many other proofs. Every time God commands us to sing a psalm, which he commands us to do a number of times in the New Testament, he's commanding us to sing something accompanied by instruments. And the reason I say that is that the word psalm in both the Hebrew and in the Greek means a song accompanied by musical instruments. And in my book, I deal with every objection that people have brought up to that conclusion. It really is a slam dunk argument. But the Psalms themselves command the use of instruments over and over, and in a number of places even command Gentiles to play upon instruments. The Psalms say, sing to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of a psalm, with trumpets and the sound of a horn. Sing praises on the harp to our God. Let them sing praises to Him with the timbrel and harp. Play skillfully. Praise Him with the sound of the trumpet. Praise Him with the lute and harps. praise Him with the timbrel, praise Him with stringed instruments and flutes, praise Him with loud cymbals, praise Him with clashing cymbals. Even the term silla that occurs 74 times in the Old Testament is an instruction to use musical instruments because it's an instruction to play those instruments a forte, very loudly. Now if the Psalms are for today, how can we ignore the instructions of those oft-repeated sillas? And what about the instruction, higgaion, from Psalm 9, verse 16, or 92, verse 3? I mean, it's an instruction to play those instruments more softly, okay? Quieter instrumental music. There's a place for quietness in instrumentation. In fact, instruments are supposed to be the servant of the words, not vice versa. You're not supposed to overpower the words with the music. So there are times when the words call for quieter kind of instrumentation. In fact, sometimes for no instrumentation. The Bible indicates there's a time when you shouldn't have instruments. In any case, it's hard to spiritualize away such instructions that God has preserved for us. Even the inspired titles of the Psalms shows us that God loves musical instruments. Can we really forbid stringed instruments while singing Psalm 3 when the inspired title calls us to sing it, quote, with stringed instruments? Now, God didn't just preserve that particular instruction for the Levites of the Old Testament. He preserved it for us. It's how to sing this psalm. Can we really forbid wind instruments when Psalm 5 calls us to sing those words with flutes? And if it's only symbolic of joy, which is one of the objections, why command a flute in one place and a harp in another, in another place other instruments, and why command the instruments to be louder here and softer there? Now some people will object, OK, if you're going to do that, you can't use the piano because the piano is not mentioned in the Old Testament. You've got to restrict yourself to harps or to flutes. And I say, no, that's actually covered both in the law of God as well as in the Psalms by a number of different things. For example, the generic musical instruments is what the term neginoth, you've seen that. in places like Psalm 54 and Psalm 55. Negunoth means just some generic musical instrument. And that's why David was not in sin when in certain Psalms, like Psalm 8 and Psalm 81, he commands them to use an instrument of Gath, which was an instrument that was invented by the Philistine city of Gath. That's indicating that even musical instruments that are not explicitly laid out in the Pentateuch are allowed, and they're allowed by God because the law itself gave flexibility. Certainly David modeled the use of all, quote, all kinds of instruments, 2 Samuel 6, verse 5, and authorized the use of all kinds in Psalm 150. So I think the keyboard and the guitar are pretty well covered by that phrase, all kinds of instruments. And part of the reason for God mandating this kind of flexibility is because God seems to love variety. Suzanne Hayek-Vantura has demonstrated how the diacritical marks that you see above and below the Hebrew are actually musical notations and that these formed, and you see church fathers referring to them, these formed the foundations for Western music. And the exquisite nature of the original music exhibits variety in voice and instrument, melody and harmony, modality and rhythm. Now the fact that exactly the same words are sung to one tune and instrument in one psalm to a totally different tune and instrument in another psalm, but they're the same words, again indicates God gives flexibility. His biblical guidelines for music are not inhibiting, but spur us on to reverent creativity. God loves music. He wants us to love music. And if you have conscience issues over this, I would encourage you to get my book from Lean Pub on musical instruments. There are many, many other proofs that the book covers. I should also point out that those who have conscience issues over the possibility, the remote possibility, of adding something to worship need to also have their consciences troubled over taking away something that God has given, because both adding and taking away are forbidden by the regulative principle of worship. For example, the classic passage on the regulative principle of worship is Deuteronomy 12, 31 through 32, which says, you shall not worship the Lord your God that way. Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it. You shall not add to it, nor take away from it. While most evangelicals are breaking that commandment with adding all kinds of man-made traditions, there are Reformed people who take away from God's commandments by forbidding instruments, forbidding the raising of hands, kneeling, saying amen, all of which are clearly commanded in the scripture. I see yet another implication for reform when verse three showcases the new covenant worship is a heart that is drawn out in God-centered adoration. There is nothing man-centered about this worship. Verse 3 says, So where is the focus? It is totally on God. This is not a seeker-sensitive worship. This is a God-sensitive worship. John Wesley said, Above all, sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing Him more than yourself or any other creature. In order to do this, attend strictly to the sense of what you sing and see that your heart is not carried away with the sound but offered to God continually. So shall your singing be such as the Lord will approve here and reward you when he cometh in the clouds of heaven. I was very convicted by Dick Dungan when I would travel with him on some of his missions trips, because this was a man that was so God-centered in his life that worship continually poured out of his soul. Now sometimes it troubled me because we always slept in the same room, sometimes in the same bed, and He would be sound asleep his face radiating joy and singing loudly Singing and praying to God out loud, and I'm thinking well Thank you Lord that he just loves you so much on this, but I gotta get some sleep here and I'm not saying you have to do that, but you could just see this man was so drawn to God and his worship and And he was so God-centered in all of life. His worship was God-centered. And it made me long to have more of that. Louis Albert Banks tells of an elderly Christian man who was a very fine singer. He developed cancer of the tongue, and he had to have his tongue removed and a portion of his throat. And prior to the operation, he's on his Guernsey, prior to the operation, the man asked the doctor, are you sure I will never sing again? And the doctor affirmed, yep, you will never sing again. And the patient then asked if he could sit up for a moment. And he said, I've had many good times singing the praises of God. I have one song that will be my last. It will be of gratitude and praise to God. And right there, he started softly singing the words of Isaac Watts' hymn. I'll praise my maker while I've got breath. And when my voice is lost in death, Praise shall employ my nobler power, my days of praise shall ne'er be past, while life and thought and being last. He wanted the last sounds of his vocal cords to be God-centered adoration. That was his heart's passion. Now hopefully you'll never lose your voice, but New Covenant worship should take on a God-centered adoration such as those two men had. A lot of criticism I hear from people in other churches of what's not in the worship service. It all revolves around how I feel and how it affects me. It's very self-centered. Worship is not about the pastor and other people serving you. The very meaning of the word worship is service. It's how can I please God? It's what I'm offering to God. It has nothing to do with what I'm receiving. Now, do we receive in worship? Absolutely, yes, as a secondary thing, but what we're coming to worship to is say, Lord, I long to give you just a tiny bit of what you deserve. You deserve infinitely greater than what I can get, but open my heart to be able to serve you more effectively. That should be our motive. Even when you're listening to a sermon where God is challenging you or blessing you, it should be a response of your heart to say, Lord, help me to be pleasing in your sight. I want to conform my life to your word. I love you. My life is yours. Have your way with me. Speak to me through the sermon. I'm listening. There is no part of the worship service that cannot be God-centered. Now the next verse indicates that along with adoration there should be awe, reverence, and humility. Who could not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name, because you alone are holy? According to Barna, The fear of God is completely absent from most worship services. I have no idea, no way of verifying if his research is correct, but when you look through the worship services that are sprinkled through the Old and the New Testaments, you will see the fear of God there. The fear of God is certainly central to New Covenant worship. Who would not fear You, O Lord, and glorify Your name?" Now to glorify somebody is to look to His advancement, His honor, His joy. Do we do that with God? You know, if you have a struggle with glorifying God in worship instead of being self-focused, just ask the Holy Spirit, make me more like you. The Holy Spirit is an expert at glorifying the Father, and He can help you to glorify the Father. And by the way, the Spirit has infinite humility, and He can share with you His humility, where your focus becomes more and more about pleasing God rather than lifting yourself up. Now verse 4 gives three reasons why people should fear God. First motive is that He alone is holy. The word holy, by the way, does not have as its primary definition righteousness as Ray Simmons will tell you. He's discovered that last year in his studies. It's being separate being completely set apart. So yes, it does mean righteousness in one sense, that we are separated from sin, but ultimately it's the totally other, the totally transcendent, and in that sense of the definition of the word, God alone is holy. But either way, it is an incredible motive for worship. The second is that his great commission will be so successful that all nations will worship him. Missions is a tremendous motive for worship, and it's the most natural response of those who have been saved. God told Pharaoh, let my people go that they may worship me. Redemption leads to worship. Let my people go, there's the redemption, that they may worship me. Redemption leads to worship. And if we do not have worship as a natural response of our hearts, we need to question, Lord, have I been redeemed? Those two go hand in hand. Well, this also speaks of judgments. Just as Israel rejoiced when they saw the judgment of Egypt, and the Red Sea, these saints are rejoicing and worshiping when they see God's judgment on Israel and Rome. Judgments may cause the non-elect to hate God, but judgments cause the true believer to stand in awe of God and to love Him the more. Now, one thing that troubles me about some churches that I run across is how they seem to deliberately keep doctrine out of worship. Now, it may be surprising to you, but it happens frequently. I've had pastors tell me, well, one pastor very literally, he said, that he does not like doctrine. Doctrine divides, love unites, I don't like doctrine. I said, well you've just affirmed a doctrine and it is not a biblical doctrine. And you can imagine the argument we got into. But this song of Moses and the Lamb is incredibly rich in doctrine. I'm not going to spend much time on it, but let me point out some of the doctrines that undergird this worship. First, there are God's attributes that are used in worship. And as I read verses 3 through 4, I want you to see if you can notice the doctrines of God's lordship, His omnipotence, His justice, His judgment, His truthfulness, His holiness, His knowability. that really is a an attribute that means he can be known liberals many times deny that but he can be known his transcendence and his imminence every one of those are explicitly mentioned in other words this song is rich in doctrine let me read those verses see if you can count off on your finger see if you can come up with nine of God's attributes Great and marvelous are your works, O Lord God the Almighty. Just and true are your ways, O King of the nations. Who could not fear you, O Lord, and glorify your name? Because you alone are holy, because all the nations will come into obeisance before you, because your righteous judgments have been manifested. Well, the same verses also show God's providence. So His attributes, those are doctrines. His providence, that can be seen in the phrases, your works and your righteous judgments have been manifested. The doctrine of providence ought to stir up worship. And when you look around you in America, you see how things are unwinding and getting worse and worse. It's actually a part of God's providence, his judgments. And it ought to say, Lord, we worship you because you're true to your word. It's happening exactly as your scriptures have said it would happen. It ought to lead to worship. Verse four also gives one facet of our doctrine of, well, let me point out sovereignty. Your ways, king of the nations, shows the doctrine of sovereignty. So the point is, doctrine is not irrelevant to worship. It is the fuel. Doctrine is the fuel of worship. It stimulates worship of the hearts if we have any grace in our hearts whatsoever. And by the way, it says in John somewhere, John 4, I think it is, that the Father seeks people to worship Him in spirit and in truth. Okay, those are the two criteria there. If truth is at the heart of what the Father seeks to worship, then we need to have our worship saturated with the truth of doctrine. And verse four gives the doctrine of eschatology. Why do they worship? It says, because all the nations will come and do obeisance before you. Literally, they will worship you. I don't like the way he keeps throwing in that obeisance. It's worship. But this is a God who is so awesome that he will eventually convert every nation and nations as nations will worship him. True eschatology is not irrelevant. It transforms worship. When I became a post-millennial, it revolutionized my worship. And in eschatology, judgments of nations precede conversion of nations. So he says that they will worship for another motive, because your righteous judgments have been manifested. Now, you take those two phrases together, and it's showing that Jesus is advancing the cause of his kingdom through judgment and through conversion. infallibly advancing it, just as Psalm 2 says that he would, and that Jesus will not stop until all nations are Christian nations. John Wesley said about this phrase, This is a glorious testimony of the future conversion of all the heathens. The Christians are now a little flock, they who do not worship God, an immense multitude, but all the nations shall come from all parts of the earth to worship Him and glorify His name. Now how do Pesimillennialists take this verse? Well, they can't take it literally because they think, hey, it's obvious things are going to get worse and worse. So for example, even though the dispensationalist commentator Thomas prides himself in being a literalist, an absolute literalist in the book of Revelation, his interpretation, I take everything literally, he says, He said, oh, you can't take that verse literally. Why? I mean, he says it frank out. You cannot take it literally. Because he says, well, the world can't be Christianized. So you can't take it literally. And I say, no, he said it would. And so it will, OK? All nations will one day worship Jesus. The Great Commission will not be a failure. It will be a success. Now of course it takes faith to believe that. This is why so many people reject post-millennialism, because it takes faith to believe post-millennialism. On the surface it just doesn't seem credible. It takes faith to believe God's promises. But you know what? All of worship takes faith. All of life takes faith. Paul says in Romans that without faith it is impossible to please God. And if our worship is to get past the ceiling, we must believe the word of the God that we are worshiping. To do otherwise is to insult Him. Okay? Yet there are countless Christians in America who pretend to worship God passionately, all the while despising His law. Not believing His promises, using carnal weapons instead of God's spiritual weapons, and in other ways showing they're really not living by faith. New Covenant worship, worships because it can see beyond what the world sees. It sees heaven invading earth gradually, replacing the kingdom of man with the kingdom of heaven. We must have the spiritual eyes of faith if we are to fully worship. I started this sermon with the research of Barnum. on the state of worship in the American churches and it is in desperate need of reformation and it may be that our own hearts need to be tweaked or maybe even majorly changed. That's okay. Don't ever despair when you find the Word of God showing that you're way, way below His standard. Just repent and ask God to change you. And don't despair over the state of the church. We can have faith that God can change. He knows exactly how to take the church from living by sight to living by faith. And it's my hope that the book of Revelation as a whole has been accomplishing exactly that task in you. May it be so, Lord Jesus. Amen. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that your word is constantly challenging us to live by faith. to realize that our sufficiency is not in ourselves, but as Ray mentioned in the communion meditation, it is in you. May we have the same faith that Noah had. May we continually look to you and be pleasing to you in the way in which we live our lives Monday through Saturday and the way in which we worship and keep your Sabbath on Sunday. We pray for your blessing to rest on this your people in Jesus name. Amen