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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
New Covenant Worship
Series Revelation
This sermon analyzes yet another vignette on New Covenant worship which points to the need for reform. If heaven is the pattern for all that we do (as Colossians 3:1-2 says that it should be), then the worship of earth should be patterned after the worship of heaven.
| Sermon ID | 1241882333 |
| Duration | 51:00 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 15 |
| Language | English |
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