Scriptures are on page 16, or you can follow along in your own Bibles. And we have been going, if you're visitors, verse by verse through the book of Revelation. And we're going to spend one more Sunday on Revelation chapter 7. beginning to read at verse nine. After these things, I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from all ethnic nations and tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the lamb, clothed with white robes and palm branches in their hands. And they shouted with a loud voice saying, salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the land. And all the angels stood around the throne, and the elders, and the four living beings, and they fell down before the throne on their faces and worshiped God, saying, Amen. The blessing, and the glory, and the wisdom, and the thanksgiving, and the honor, and the power, and the strength to our God forever and ever. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word, and we pray that as we dig into it, that your Holy Spirit would minister his grace in our lives, that we might respond as instruments of grace, rather than simply with carnal lies. We ask that you would stir up our joy, stir up our passions for you and for your kingdom, and that you would be glorified in this preaching of your word. In Jesus' name we pray it, amen. You may be seated. Well, as I mentioned, we're going to spend one more week in Revelation 7, even though we've covered every verse except for verse 12 in our previous expositions, and we've covered, you know, the doctrine of heaven and martyrdom, and we looked at eschatology and a number of other things. I thought verse 12 deserved a sermon all of its own, but there were certain features of verses 7 through 12 or 9 through 12 that I still had not adequately developed. And the praise in these verses, I think, ought to cause us to realize we ought to be more joyful than we are. And I want to dig into how to experience some of the joy of heaven and maybe even making this sermon a time where we're worshiping and adoring our great and awesome God. The praise of these verses poured forth for three reasons. They were thrilled with God's salvation. They were thrilled with the abundant provisions and blessings that God had strewn in their lives. And they were thrilled with God himself. And if we could regularly recognize and count these three things, we would, I believe, find the joy of the Lord springing up within our own hearts. First, they were thrilled with God's salvation. And I do find it interesting that it wasn't just the people who were saved who were thrilled with God's salvation. Angels who didn't need to be saved, had never fallen into sin, they are thrilled with God's salvation as well. Luke 15 verse 10 says that every time a sinner is saved, the angels have great joy. Why? Why? Well, the more you study the doctrines of salvation, the more astonished you become at God's wisdom, love, mercy, justice, wrath, patience, and other attributes. 1 Peter 1 verse 12 says that the angels desire to look into this doctrine of salvation much more. And the interesting thing about that passage is it indicates, it implies they've been looking into this doctrine ever since it was first proclaimed in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15. So there is so much more that needs to be understood, and it is a doctrine, as long as they have studied it, that still brings them joy and admiration for what God has done. So in the first point, I want to give you a little one ounce drink. It's not going to be much. We're going to just dip into the ocean that constitutes the doctrine of salvation and give you an exercise of meditating on what makes the angels so, uh, so joyful. Last Sunday afternoon, I was reading a chapter out of the book, a Puritan theology, uh, by Biki and This chapter was titled The Beauty of Christ's Heart, and it was summarizing one of the books that Thomas Goodwin had written. And over and over as I'm reading through this book, it was bringing me to tears, and I was having to stop and to just worship God and express the joy that was in my heart. And if you have never learned how to read theology books devotionally, I think you're missing out on so many opportunities to have your heart flooded with the joy of the Lord and to have your admiration and praise for God to increase. But these saints and angels in heaven, they stand in awe of God's salvation. It is so great, it makes every other brand of salvation that humanists proclaim pale into absolute insignificance. It makes them assert with a loud voice, salvation belongs to our God, and it makes the other half of the congregation say, amen. The blessing, and the glory, and the wisdom, and the thanksgiving, and the honor, and the power, and the strength belong to our God forever and ever. Amen. And when you think about it, it really is a miracle that anyone could be saved. As I said, I'm going to give you an ounce out of the ocean that constitutes the doctrine of God's salvation, and I think it will bring you joy this morning. Think about the justice dimension of salvation. God can't ever sweep sin under the carpet and forget about it. God is a just judge and Exodus 34 verse seven says that he can by no means clear the guilty. Numbers 14, 18 says the same thing. He by no means clears the guilty. See, he would cease to be a just judge if he condemned the innocent or if he pardoned the guilty. So how could he condemn Christ, the innocent one, and pardon us who are so filled with guilt? How could he do it and still be just? Well, somehow, God did exactly that. He pardoned the guilty and he condemned the innocent, just one, Jesus Christ, without being an unjust judge. Now, I said I'm only gonna give you a little thimbleful, an ounce drink, so I'm not gonna delve into that facet of salvation, but let me give you one of the implications of that. That doctrine is very popular nowadays in evangelical circles, and it's crept even into some reform circles like Auburn Avenue, to deny the doctrine of legal imputation. But if we deny the doctrine of our sins being legally imputed to Christ, His righteousness being legally imputed to us, we slander the justice of God as judge. Without it, he is no longer a just judge. It turns numbers 14, 18 upside down, and it makes God guilty of clearing the guilty. He says very clearly, he will by no means clear the guilty. And many of the Auburn Avenue advocates have monkeyed around with the doctrine of imputation. You cannot do that without destroying this part of God's story of salvation. But without the incarnation, there could be no salvation. No mere human could take the punishment needed for sinners because they have their own sins to answer for. God could not be punished for our sins because it was a man who sinned. It would need to be a man who answered for those sins and would be punished. But even a perfect man could not pay for the penalty of all sinners. The most he could do would be a substitute for one sinner, and no mere man could provide the infinite price required for insulting God's eternal and infinite being. But the incarnation provided the way for the miracle of salvation. Jesus was the God-man which made his substitutionary atonement perfect and infinite. And he had to be one person, not two persons, or it would mar our salvation. He had to have two natures, divine and human, perfectly united, yet not confused, or it would mar our salvation. And as you study the doctrines articulated at the Council of Nicaea and Constantinople and Ephesus and Chalcedon, you begin to realize that the simple gospel was not simple at all for God. Not at all. It took astonishing wisdom, providence, grace, and character for the triune God to pull off our, quote unquote, simple salvation. And as I read creeds like the Athanasian creeds, I just shake my head in admiration and worship for the great God that we have. It is astounding to read those doctrinal creeds. And those creeds, let me assure you, have barely dipped into the ocean of the mysteries that these angels desire to study more fully, and that we're going to be entering into and studying more fully throughout eternity. The more you study the Incarnation, the act of obedience of Christ, the passive obedience of Christ, and other aspects of salvation, the more you realize what an incredibly amazing plan this really was. And of course, the plan started in eternity past. You see God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit entered into a covenant with each other in order to save us. We call that the eternal covenant. And so you've got this whole huge doctrine of covenant theology, which is absolutely essential if we are to be a saved people. And the more you start studying the details of that eternal covenant, the more it brings you to tears to realize that our great God loved us wretches, us miserable sinners, us rebels against against him. Jeremiah 31 verse 3 says, I have loved you with an everlasting love. Therefore, with loving kindness, I have drawn you. You wonder, how could he do that? Psalm 90 says, Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, wherever you had formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. And he says, we inhabited him way back then before we even existed. His covenant salvation is an incredible doctrine to meditate upon. It lifts the drooping spirits to have great joy. But there were so many obstacles to getting saved that every part and piece of salvation is an astounding part of the puzzle that really ought to draw our hearts out in admiration for God's wisdom, thankfulness for His sacrifices, and praise for His work. I want you to just consider the issue of God's wrath. How on earth could God's wrath give way to His love? You know, evangelicals just tend to take His love for granted. You know, God loves us, and they don't think about it a whole lot. It's a miracle that God could possibly love us because the Scripture indicates that God's wrath must always abide upon believers, upon sinners, all sinners. It must abide upon them. John 3, 16, everybody's got that memorized about how God loves us, but we ignore verse 36, which says if you don't believe in Christ, you can't have life, and the wrath of God continues to abide upon you. So how can God love any of us? Psalm 5, verse 5 says about God, you hate all workers of iniquity. All workers. of iniquity. And there are many scriptures like that that affirm that God hates, despises, abhors, and abominates sinners. Not just the sin, but the sinners themselves. So how could He love any of us? All of us are sinners. All of us have done some iniquity and the answer is the only way that He could love us is if He saw us united to the Lord Jesus Christ. Romans 8 says that nothing in all of creation can separate us from the love of God, which is, where does his love reside? His love resides in Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior. If he saw us as outside of Christ for even a moment, his wrath would have to abide upon us. And so there's a Christ-centered focus to our salvation in this chapter. When I lie awake, I will sometimes use the parts and pieces of my salvation as a reason to lift up my heart in admiration and praise to God. So if you were condemned to death in a court of law, and you got an attorney and you appealed. And on your appeal, you were not only acquitted, but you were declared perfectly righteous. You're not guilty of any sin. You're declared perfectly righteous. You would be thrilled with what your attorney has done. But if you really were guilty, and the only reason you were declared not guilty is because your attorney took your place and he credited his good record to your name, you would be very humbled and astounded. But when you realize that your attorney not only died in your place, but he paid an enormous ransom for the privilege of being able to do so, You would wonder why, why would he do that on my behalf? You start digging and you realize he had a great love for you and a love for the father that motivated him. And the more you dig, you realize, whoa, this attorney not only died in my place, but this attorney gave me a fabulously incredible inheritance, his inheritance. That's a bit what it's like to think about being saved. Can you see why the martyrs in heaven, they're not bemoaning the fact that they are martyred. No, they're rejoicing in their savior. Meditating on total depravity makes me realize. that I didn't even have the faith to come to God in the first place. He had to give even that to me. There's nothing I can take credit for. Meditating on unconditional election makes me thrilled with the Savior who paid for every condition that was there. He did not see one single condition that would make me deserve salvation. Meditating on limited atonement is not only humbling, but it gives me great security because it makes me realize he didn't just die for a mass of faceless humanity that may or may not get saved. No, it was an effective redemption. And it was a particular redemption that had every one of you specifically in mind when he climbed that cross and he died with you in mind. It's just incredible when you think about a marvelous grace of our loving Lord grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt meditating Upon irresistible grace Just makes me so thankful for what he has put up with in my life You know perseverance of the Saints me what can I say, you know, it's just mind-boggling that God is would preserve us through all the ups and downs of our sinful life. Just incredible. And the only way we could persevere is as He preserved us. Anyway, it's grace, it's sheer grace. And so Isaiah says, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness. Can you say with me, I was condemned, but now I am justified? Man, that's great reason to be joyful. Can you say with me, I was enslaved, but now I am redeemed? To be redeemed means that somebody paid a purchase price to take you out of the slave market, or maybe you were captive and he paid a ransom for you. We're free. Can you say with me, I was under God's wrath, but now I'm at peace with God? Can you say my righteous deeds used to be as filthy rags, but now my righteous deeds are acceptable before the Father because of what Christ has done? When you see all around you people predestined to hell, and God out of sheer mercy and love chose some out to be his people, It is something that is thrilling, absolutely thrilling. No wonder these martyrs are thrilled with God's salvation. Now some Christians might have been tempted to envy the power and the wealth and the position of these persecutors, But those persecutors were headed toward an earthly judgment that we looked at in previous sermons, and they were headed toward an eternal hell. There was nothing in those persecutors to be envied. These martyrs are the ones that should be envied. They were accepted by God, which is symbolized, by the way, by the fact they're standing before the throne. You don't stand before the throne unless you are absolutely secure. Now, it's true, in verse 11, they fall on their faces before the throne, but not because they are terrorized by that throne. but because they are so overwhelmed with God's kindness and His love on their behalf that their hearts are gushing with love and adoration. They are humbled before the Lord. Their white robes come from Christ. Their victory branches come from Christ. And so they instinctively ascribe all salvation to God and to the Lamb. And men, angels, and all of the creatures respond with a hearty amen. Now the second reason for their doxology is that they are thrilled with God's abundant provision of blessings. And we saw that God had provided fellowship where only alienation existed before. God provided joy and peace and love and all of the fruit of the Spirit. He provided holiness. He provided a kingdom. He provided heaven. I mean, you could say with Paul that having given us the Son, God has with the Son also freely given us all things. So if you lack joy of the Lord, you might consider making a long list of blessings that God has strewn into your life. At our session meeting on Tuesday, Rodney quoted somebody as saying, was it a bad day or was it a bad five minutes that you milked all day? Isn't it amazing how we can have so many blessings in a day, and all it takes is five minutes of something bad happening to us, and we think the whole day was terrible. It makes us nurse on that bad thing that has happened, and we just can't let it go. That's a terrible way to live. Now, I didn't ask Rodney where he got the quote from. I did a search on internet and it kept saying unknown source. So I'm going to start attributing this quote to Rodney. But it says, was it a bad day or was it a bad five minutes that you milked all day? Now think about those martyrs. They'd had a bad hair day, hadn't they? It was a really bad day. And yet they rejoice in all of the good things that God has given to them. We too easily allow small things to suck all of the joy out of our lives. We too easily allow one person to suck joy out of our lives that maybe five other people have given to us, given us incredible joy. But focusing upon the hundreds and hundreds of blessings that God has given to us can cure us of joylessness and make us realize, wow, we are incredibly blessed. You know, sometimes when I'm counseling people, I will give them this homework assignment, especially when a person thinks that the worst thing that they'd ever done in their lives was to marry this person. There's nothing good in them. I give them assignment. When you come back next week and don't come back, if you've not done your homework, always, that's my assignment. If you don't do your homework, don't even bother making an appointment with me the next week. But here's your assignment. I want you to write down 100 things that you can thank God for about your spouse. And they blink at me, and I can't think of one thing. Not one thing I can thank you, the Lord, for about them. So I will give them some hints. You could thank the Lord for this. You could thank the Lord for that. And they reluctantly think, yeah, I guess I could thank the Lord for that. And I'll give them a few more hints. And they get the point. And if they've really tried, I have yet to find any person that could not come up with 100 things that they are thankful for about their spouse. And so if you lack joy, count your blessings. Take time off to do so. One of the purposes of God's festivals was to give people enough time off that they could begin to count the blessings that God has poured into their lives to give them great joy. Deuteronomy 16 verse 15 says, seven days you shall keep a sacred feast to the Lord your God in the place which the Lord chooses because The Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you surely rejoice." He blesses you so that you surely rejoice. But if you don't think you've been blessed, you're not gonna rejoice. So you gotta start counting those blessings, thinking about them. The third reason why they had such great joy was that they were thrilled with God himself and praised him. And before we go word by word through the sevenfold doxology in verse 12, I should point out that almost the same praise, I think there's just two words that are changed, almost the same praise is given of Jesus in chapter 5, and the implication is He's just as divine as the Father. Now, the second thing I want you to notice is how close the martyrs are to God in this paragraph. We looked at the martyrs and what a privilege it is to die as a martyr for God, and both Barclay and Bass point out that the martyrs are closer to God's throne than the elders are. They're closer to the throne than the angels are. Bass says, here we have a series of great concentric circles of the inhabitants of heaven. On the outer ring stand all the angels. Nearer the throne is the 24 elders. Still nearer are the four living creatures. And before the throne are the white-robed martyrs. God honors them, and they are totally secure in Christ. They stand before the throne that close. A third thing I want you to notice is that there is an amen at the beginning and the ending of verse 12. Amen is a liturgical term that means we are in total agreement. Amen. I agree with that. Yes. May it be so. That's what it means. So this last chorus begins with an amen. By the way, that's the commentators say that's the only other time in scripture that this occurs. And it ends with an amen, and that shows agreement with everything that God has been praised for. And in our Christian walk, we need to get to the place where our hearts very quickly and eagerly enter into that amen, that agreement that God is worthy of our best. He's worthy of our love. He's worthy of our worship. But that means disciplining our thinking and taking the focus off of the worldly things and that many times obscure the great privileges that we have. Let's go through the seven attributes of God. Now, if you run out of things to praise God for, I would encourage you to just go through his attributes and start spending some time on each attribute. Lord, I thank you that you're holy. And start thinking about various facets of what holiness means and what kind of a world this would be if God was not a holy God. And spending time on that. Now, there's only seven that are mentioned here, but seven is the number of perfection or fullness. And so these stand as a symbol of the fact that God in His entirety is perfect. And I should mention, too, why there's a the. It's a little bit awkward English, but in the Greek, there is a the in front of each one of these attributes, and the reason is to show that God has these characteristics preeminently. Others may have them to some degree, but only because they derive them from God, and so Traill's commentary says the article means, in each case, the dot, dot, dot above all others. So the glory above all others, the honor above all others, the blessing above all others. It shows God's preeminence. Now there is one other interesting side note. G.K. Beale and others point out that these exact words were used to praise kings and especially the Caesars And it's blasphemy, you know, for the Caesars to be accepting that kind of worship. The greatest potentate in the world is nothing. He is an insignificant worm, if even that in comparison with God's glory. But anyway, let's go through these. The first word is the blessing. The Greek word eulogia literally means to speak well of someone. Now, is it appropriate for us to bless one another, to speak well of one another? Well, of course it is. We're supposed to do that. We're commanded to do so. But it should be even easier to speak well of the God who is perfect in His attributes and from whom all blessings flow. Yet how frequently do we bless God? You know when I was in my early twenties I used to think that I was pretty good at blessing God. And I came to realize how pathetic I was through an assignment that was given at Prairie Bible Institute by my professor. He said, for your homework today, I want you to spend one hour in doing nothing but adoration of God. Don't even allow one sentence of any other kind of prayer. No confession, no petition, nothing but adoration. And I thought, well, that'll be a challenge, but I think it's pretty easy, not a problem. So that night I got down onto my knees and I prayed my heart out before the Lord who loved me, who had saved me, and whom I loved so much. And in many ways, I think my prayer was a great prayer of adoration. It was kind of short, but it was a great start. And I just remember happening to glance at my watch, thinking the hour had almost ended, and my eyes got big. I don't remember if it was like five minutes, but it was just a few minutes had passed by, and I thought, whoa, I've got a long ways to go. And at the end of 15 minutes, I'd run out of things to say, and so I was digging through the Psalms frantically, trying to come up with things to adore God for, and I didn't think I was gonna make it through that whole one hour. And that exercise was an eye-opener to me of what a shallow worshiper I really was. I could go for a whole hour asking God for things, for me and for other people. But blessing him for a whole hour, wow, that was obviously beyond me at that point. But over the years I have discovered that blessing and praising God should be the most natural flow of our heart because in him we live and move and have our being. You couldn't take a breath without him. In him is wisdom and healing and ministry and everything else that we do. Psalm 103 says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your inequities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagles. And he goes on to give all kinds of things for which he blessed God. Do you bless God that you've got salt and pepper on your table, and clean water, and milk, and air conditioning? You should. Last Sunday, we saw that heaven is the pattern for our worship, but heaven is also the pattern that shows how mature we are, how close to God we are. The closer we get to God, the more natural blessings will become. So it's a sign of maturity in Christ. It is certainly one of the things that leads to joy inexpressible and full of glory. Try it sometime. And if you've run out of things to thank and praise and bless God for, I guarantee you the deficit is in you. It is not in God. As the Levites in Nehemiah 9 verse 5 said, blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. In other words, he's saying it doesn't matter how great your blessings might be. God is so infinitely exalted above anything that we could say in our blessings and praise that we could never even approximate it throughout eternity. We're going to be growing in this ability to bless the greatness of our God. The next word is the glory. The glory belongs to God, not to man. But what does man do? Man's always seeking his own glory and praise and honor for himself. Rather than seeking to esteem God above all others, what do we do? We seek self-esteem, don't we? But in the process, we lose it. Ironically, it is as we seek God's glory that God's light shines more and more into our lives and transforms us from glory to glory. So how do we get glory? How do we get esteem? It's not by seeking it, it's by glorifying God and esteeming God above all others. Douglas Kelly said of this verse, if you could get rid of everything that is secondary, What would be the primary purpose for which God caused you to be born? Above every secondary purpose, the primary one is that you might glorify Him. This is profoundly different from the worldly way of thinking, which is that if you are to be a good humanist, what you need to think about is self. The chief concern is, how can I make myself happy? How can I get out of life what I wish? How can I avoid any more pain than necessary? How can I have the maximal physical or emotional pleasures? How can I use other people to give me that pleasure? In other words, the humanistic position is to glorify self. But once you set as the goal of your life to make yourself happy, you are assured of misery. Self-seeking of my own pleasure and glory brings more psychological relational misery than anything you can imagine. It is the lie of the devil. In human relationships, it is the people who are the most caught up in the glory of God and seeking to honor him who will be the most liberated personalities, free and open-hearted. And then he points out that if you are consumed with a passion for God's glory, God's glory actually invades your life more and more and causes your life to be illuminated, filled with light. The second Corinthians 318 words it. But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the spirit of the Lord. So do you want to have some of the joy of those martyrs in heaven? than die to self and try living to God's glory. The third thing they adore Him for is the wisdom. God is preeminently wise. The more you study the incredible complexities of God's predestinating, of everything that happens in history, every molecule, every dust molecule you breathe into your nose, God has ordained all of that, and then his superintending providence, it is mind-blowing, the kind of wisdom that would be required for that to be achieved. When you start studying botany and biology and astrology, it blows your mind to realize the incredible wisdom of God who planned all of that, who makes all of that, who preserves all of that. In fact, that was one of the things that humbled Job into the dust in the last chapters. God is articulating all of these scientific facts. You think you know something? Well, do you know about this? Do you know about this? And Job says, no, Lord, I know nothing. He all of a sudden realized that the wisdom belongs to God. And you take discipline after discipline in the university And it takes your breath away at the incredible wisdom of God and what men don't know. The more we study, the more we realize the horizon of studies keeps increasing. The more I have grown in my knowledge, the more I realize I don't know. I'm such an ignoramus in terms of the whole scope of things. It's just an amazing thing. When you're studying economics, please, don't speak of the invisible hand that controls and makes these laws of economics. Speak of the wisdom of God and His power. When you're studying physics, don't speak of the wisdom of nature. No, give glory to God. It's the wisdom and the power of God. After Paul discussed the wonders of salvation, the amazing plan of eschatology he had for planet Earth, he bursts into praise saying, oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God. How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out. For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has become his counselor? Or who has first given to him and it shall be repaid to him for of him and through him and to him are all things to whom be glory forever. Amen. The next word is the Thanksgiving. Now, should we be thankful to the people who are around us, who bless us, who do good things to us? Absolutely, yes, we should. God commands us to do that. But who deserves the ultimate Thanksgiving? it would be God. And that's why 1 Thessalonians tells us that we must thank God in all things, and why Ephesians 5.20 says that we must thank God for all things. for all things. The saints in heaven realize to a far greater degree than we do that all things work together for the good of those who love God. But the more we are convinced of that fact, the more we're going to be prepared to thank God in all circumstances and for all circumstances. It'll also make you realize why God's judgments so frequently fall upon those who grumble and complain. We think, Well, they had a lot to complain about. I mean, why is God getting on their case? They had a rough life. And God, no, he is very offended with that because that grumbling is an incredible insult to the God who loves you so much and who has done so much for you. You know, this is another test of your maturity. How close are you to the saints in heaven and giving thanks? Interestingly, Thanksgiving transforms us and turns even the worst things that happen to us into a blessing. The Puritan William Law said this, do you know who is the greatest saint in the world? It is the person who has a thankful heart. If any would tell you the shortest, surest way to all happiness and perfection, he must tell you to make a rule to yourself to thank and praise God for everything that happens to you. For it is certain that whatever seeming calamity happens to you, if you thank and praise God for it, you turn it into a blessing. Could you therefore work miracles? You could not do more for yourself than by this thankful spirit, for it heals with a word of speaking and turns all it touches into happiness. And I can tell you from my own personal experience that this is absolutely true. See God as worthy of all thanksgiving in all things and for all things, and you will start to have the character and the joy of these saints in heaven. You will. Yet another aspect that can judge the maturity of our worship is the praise that they ascribe to God above all others, the honor. Now, natural man wants to honor himself. Perfected man in heaven ascribes all honor to God. So where are you on that continuum between what natural man on earth does and what the saints in heaven does? See, who we bestow the most honor upon shows the relative importance of that person in comparison to us. Now, by that standard, I would say that most evangelicals, based on the kinds of things that they do, must think that they are much more important than God and much more important than others. Why? Because they honor themselves so much more than they honor others or than they honor God. But the most holy and most joyful beings in the whole universe are these saints who speak of the preeminent honor going to God. The next two characteristics are the power and the strength. I'll take those two together. Both have the idea of power and might inherent in the words. But the first word, dunamis, focuses on God's omnipotence already displayed. And the second word focuses on God's omnipotence giving him the ability or the capacity to accomplish something in the future. Now, the word power. Or Dunamis is used many times of Christ's miracles. In fact, sometimes it's even translated in the New King James as miracles. Sometimes it's just the power that produces miracles, like in Luke 16, 19, that power went out from Jesus and healed all. But it's also used of creative activity. In Romans 1, verse 20, it says that creation shows forth God's great power. It shows forth his victory over the demonic forces. The strength, however, the second of those two words, focuses on what God's power has the capacity of doing in the future. So where power showcases what God's already done, strength showcases what God's power will achieve in the future. And both subjects are incredible subjects for joy. In Job, God is talking to Job. about what happened when he created the world. And it says that all of heaven broke forth in singing and praise. Now, it must have blown them away to have nothing but heaven. And boom, all of a sudden, there's this ginormous planet that appears. Maybe it even startled those angels. But as they considered what God had done, it says that all the sons of God shouted for joy, Job 38, verse 7. Okay, when God's power, part of the Red Sea, destroyed the Egyptians, what did that elicit? It elicited this incredible, joyful singing on the part of God's people. When the power of God produced the incarnation, the angels of heaven sing for joy. So God's power has accomplished great and mighty things, but God's iscus, that's the second word, which the dictionary defines this way, exceptional capability with the probable implication of personal potential, unquote, is celebrating the incredible plan that he has way off into the thousands of years in the future. God's power is committed. It's fully capable of carrying out his plans. Kelly comments on this last word. We often enough fail to carry out our resolves to do good. We lack either the strength or the resolve. God is different. He is able to carry through every aspect of every gracious promise He has made to His children. In due time, He will carry through everything He ever said He would do for us. Now speaking about this word, Henry Roskup said, heavenly worshipers in the Revelation passages are completely convinced of his capacity to work. That was from their book on prayer. What does the Bible teach us about prayer? This passage says, be absolutely convinced if God's promised something, you can have faith that God is able to carry it through. Now, when everything appeared to be falling apart on earth, remember this was the great tribulation they'd just gone through, it would have taken faith for them to do that. But all it took is a glimpse of God's throne and all doubt was removed. And so in this passage, we can praise God for what He has done, what He is doing, what He will do in the future. Past testifies to his omnipotence. In the present, we experience his omnipotence. And in the future, we can trust his omnipotence to transform the world just as he said he would. And the double amen shows that they are doubly convinced of these praiseworthy features in this amazing doxology. So here is a crowd that was not discouraged by the Great Tribulation. On the contrary, they see the power of Satan and the beast and the beast's prophet as of no comparison to the greatness of our God. And if God is for us, who can be against us? Amen. Let's be a people committed to rejoicing in all circumstances and for all circumstances. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you for the examples that it gives that we can look at. And Father, we long to be a joyful people like the saints in heaven. And I have seen people, Father, who approximate that to a great degree, that nothing seems to be able to rob them of your joy. Not affliction, not financial loss, not the sins of other people. Father, help us to not be robbed of the joy of the Lord, because we know that joy is our strength. And so I pray for this, your people. that you would make them to be a people filled with joy because of their focus upon you, their devotion to you, their worship and adoration of you. Help us, Father, to be transformed by this, your scripture. In Jesus' name we pray.