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You can follow along in your
own Bibles or follow along on page 17 of the majority text
which does have a couple of differences. The vast majority of manuscripts
especially in line 2 where it's ninefold holy. and try to keep
in mind what we've been looking at the last two Sundays, the
magnificent splendor of God's throne room and the context of
this worship that takes place there. Revelation 4, 8 through
11. And the four living beings Each
one of them, having six wings apiece, were full of eyes around
and within, and they take no rest day or night, saying, Holy,
holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, the Lord God
Almighty, he who was and who is and who is coming. And whenever
the living beings ascribe glory and honor and thanksgiving to
Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever,
the 24 elders fall down before Him who sits on the throne and
worship Him who lives forever and ever. And they cast their
crowns before the throne saying, you are worthy, our Lord and
God, the Holy One, to receive the glory and the honor and the
power. because you created all things
and by your will they exist and were created. Amen. Father we
thank you for this your word and we pray that as we look into
it that your Holy Spirit would quicken the scriptures to our
hearts and enable us to grow in you, to grow in our ability
to worship. You have made us for worship.
You have filled us with your spirit to draw our hearts into
worship. And this is our desire to come
away from this aspect of our worship service, renewed and
energized by your Holy Spirit. And we pray to that end, you
would anoint the preaching and anoint the hearing of this your
word in Jesus name, amen. You may be seated. Henry Ward Beecher was a very
famous congregational minister in the 1800s and he was such
an amazing orator that he would hold huge crowds spellbound by
his preaching. They came from long distances
to hear him preach. Well, one Sunday, his less famous
brother was filling the pulpit for him while he was gone. And
when the crowds saw who was preaching, they were kind of disappointed
and many of them began moving toward the exits. And so he immediately
shouted out, All who have come here today to worship Henry Ward
Beecher may now withdraw from the church. All who have come
to worship God, keep your seats." And it was a stunning realization
by many in that congregation that this is exactly what had
been going on. Rather than adulating God, they
were adulating Henry Ward Beecher. And yet, as I examined that story,
I realized that there are many ways in which we too have this
tendency to worship aspects of creation rather than God himself. Some people come away from a
worship service disappointed with the music. They think that
they have really worshiped if the music just came out right,
okay? Now God cured me of that syndrome
when I attended a church up in Canada that had the worst music
I have ever witnessed in my life. And there was no instrumentation,
very small crowd. And yet I looked at the people
around me with the tears streaming down their faces and saw them
connecting with God. And I realized that I had crutches
in my life that I needed, I thought, if I was going to worship properly.
Now that does not excuse poor music. because we have seen before
that we need to offer up to God our very best and yet many people
look at worship as music ministering to them rather than music as
a tool for reaching of our heart to God, to minister to God. Others could care less about
the music. They're disappointed with the topic that is being
preached on on this particular Sunday. Others are disappointed
and they think that they are not worshiping because the size
of the crowd. Some people do not think they
have worshiped unless their emotions have been stirred in a particular
way or unless they've been really motivated to service or something
else like that has happened. I had, a lady up in a church up in Canada
who said that She could not worship. We were meeting in the Holiday
Inn. She just could not worship there
because it was not a church building. For her, it was the building
that inspired her to worship. But these are all false ways
that are counterfeits of the true motivations to worship. Fundamentally, worship is not
about our feelings, our encouragement, or our joy. It is such a focus
upon the majesty of God that our feelings are involved along
with the rest of our being, but they're not the focus of worship.
And I'm going to start with a definition of worship that I'm going to
repeat again later on. And I think this is just a fantastic
summary of what true worship is. It was given by William Temple,
who served in the Church of England from 1921 to 1944. He said, he said, worship is the submission
of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience
by His holiness. the nourishment of mind with
his truth, the purifying of imagination by his beauty, the opening of
the heart to his love, the surrender of will to his purpose, and all
of this gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of
which our nature is capable, and therefore the chief remedy
for that self-centeredness which is our original sin and the source
of all actual sin. In other words, it's only secondarily
about us. The focus is on God. And in the
book of Revelation, we're going to be seeing a number of cameos
of worship, each one giving a fuller and a richer expression of what
true worship is all about and expressing to us the mystery
of God-centered worship emerging from sinners like us. When you
really think about what we are, it is a mystery that we could
worship God properly because the scripture indicates that
anything that emerges from us and not from the Holy Spirit
is man-centered. Of necessity it is man-centered.
All pagan worship is man-centered. But when you have tasted deeply
of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and you've caught even
a tiny glimpse of the glorious throne room that we described
last two weeks at the beginning of this chapter, you're going
to at least in some small way approximate the characteristics
of worship that we're going to be looking at in this sermon. There are just three points I
want to emphasize this morning. This is one of those rare three-point
sermons. First thing I want to emphasize
is that worship is fundamentally theological. Now, you might question
that. You might have read some theology
books that just seem unbelievably dry and dusty. Is that not something
that's an exercise outside of worship? But I do not think it
is. It is fundamentally theological. The better we know God, the better
we are able to worship Him. Now, I've attended many worship
training seminars in my life, and most of those seminars have
taught techniques to make people feel something. It's an atmosphere
and a ritual that they are trying to create, and they might throw
in some scriptures, you know, to teach and justify their techniques
and message, but they amount to techniques to making people
feel something. And even some of the popular
preachers of today who spend a great deal of time teaching
often leave theology at the door and they emphasize the kind of
oratory that reaches the emotions. They certainly do not preach
in all of the kinds of passages that I preached on through 1
and 2 Samuel and in the book of Revelation. In fact, I had
one of my friends, his favorite expression was, nah, I'm gonna
skip over that passage because it just doesn't preach. And he
says another one, wow, that passage preaches all by itself. And his
concept was, this is something that I can capture the imagination
of the people with. I can capture and bring and draw
their emotions in. with. And I'm not against emotions. In fact, I believe that the whole
man, including his emotions, must be offered up to God. But
worship is fundamentally theological. It is impossible to worship God
if you do not know him. And since true worship is the
response of our hearts to knowing him, The better we know God,
the better we will worship. Now the angels and saints in
heaven who have the incredibly awesome worship that chapters
four and five describe, they know God a whole lot better than
we know Him, and therefore they worship Him a whole lot better
than we worship Him. In fact, one of the authors on
this book, one of the commentaries pointed out that the quality
of their worship was directly tied to their knowledge of God
and who He was. So if you wanna grow in your
ability to worship, you need to grow in your knowledge of
who God really is. And this involves not just understanding
the theological truths about God, the doctrine of God, theology
proper, but the experience of our relationship to Him that
should flow from those theological truths. Even though worship involves
ritual, It's not only ritual. It's not simply feeling, even
though it involves feeling. It's not simply teaching, even
though it involves teaching. It is knowing God and responding
to what we know about God. And when you have faulty views
of God, of necessity, you are going to have defective worship.
If your view of God is that He is a cosmic vending machine who
is here to satisfy our every want and every desire, when God
comes through or when the vending machine comes through for you,
then you're going to be self-satisfied. And when He does not, the vending
machine does not come through for you, you're going to get
frustrated. You're going to feel like you haven't connected. You haven't
worshipped. is my contention and the contention of many Reformed
people that the biggest problem in the modern evangelical church
is a deficient view of God. And even though this is just
a tiny cameo of worship, it has three, I think, lovely remedies
for modern man. And let me show first of all
how this worship in heaven flows from their theology of God. First
theological truth that drove the angels to worship God was
His holiness. And this is not just a threefold
holy as you have in the New King James Version. The majority text
repeats the word about God nine times. And it is the only attribute
of God that is even repeated three times, let alone nine times. So no matter which version you
have, the holiness of God is being emphasized. Nowhere in
the scripture do you have something addressed to God, love, love,
love, or mercy, mercy, mercy. He is love, but His love is always
a holy love and His love is only exhibited when it is consistent
with His holiness. His holiness is so fundamental
that God cannot love that which is inconsistent with holiness.
For example, does God love Satan? I think it's quite clear that
God does not love Satan. He hates Satan. and his wrath
is going to be poured out upon Satan. God's holiness is a fundamental
attribute that characterizes every other attribute, whether
it is wrath, mercy, omniscience, or anything else. John Reisinger
has pointed out that the Shorter Catechism does not list wrath
or love as one of God's fundamental characteristics, one of his fundamental
attributes. You might think, well, that's
crazy. It lists only those attributes which are always and everywhere
displayed. So though God has wrath, His
wrath is not everywhere displayed. Though God is love, His love
is not everywhere displayed. Hell is not the display of love
towards sinners, but it is the display of His holiness. Heaven
is not the display of God's wrath towards sinners, but it is the
display of His holiness. And do we need to replace the
battery on this thing? All of a sudden it sounded different.
Fine? Okay. So if you start your theology
by saying that God is fundamentally wrath, you will end up with a
very different God than the God of the Bible and you will have
a very difficult time worshiping him, you will lose the assurance
of your salvation. Such a theology will kill true
worship. Now on the other hand, if you
believe that God is fundamentally love, as most liberals believe,
then you will of necessity have to believe that God loves Satan
and he loves sinners just the way they are, and there will
be no motivation to cast off sin. There will be actually no
reason to feel it necessary to have the gospel, to have salvation,
to have grace or to have mercy. Love is an important attribute
of God, but it is not fundamental. Holiness is. There is no circumstance
in which God's holiness is not exhibited. But I think it's important
to understand that holiness is not just the absence of sin.
Any theology book will tell you this. It's not just the absence
of sin. Righteousness is sinlessness,
but holiness is more than righteousness. Holiness at its essence, and
sometimes it's translated this way, means separateness. You
know, sanctified, separate. It means separateness, uniqueness,
transcendent perfection. God is above and separate from
creation, and that's why Revelation 15.4 says about God, you only,
are holy, or you alone are holy. Angels may be righteous, they
may be sinless, but God alone is uniquely separate from all
other beings in His sinlessness. His righteousness is different
from all other righteousness. It is a holy righteousness. He's
the source of holiness, goodness and righteousness. So even though
there are other spirits, God is a unique spirit in His being. No other spirit is eternal. No
other spirit is omniscient. No other spirit is immutable.
Those are some of His incommunicable attributes that set Him apart
as uniquely holy. That's what holy means. God is
set apart from all others. Now there is debate amongst theologians
as to whether we really need to be distinguishing between
his communicable and his incommunicable attributes, and I say absolutely
it is a very important distinction. And it's the incommunicable attributes
especially that distinguish all of his attributes as holy, okay? Separate, different from creation.
Now it's true that we are called to be holy and separate as well.
But it's not the radical set-apartness that God is. We will always be
creatures. God alone will always be set
apart from creatures in an absolute way. So no matter how set apart
you may be, you're going to be recognizing that He is infinitely
beyond us in every attribute. Fundamentally, that's what holiness
means. It is righteousness to the nth degree and beyond to
infinity. It is wisdom to the nth degree
and beyond to infinity. God is so unique, so transcendent
that he says, to whom will you liken me? Though God is a father,
And He calls us to be like Him. The reverse is not true. We should
not be likening His fatherhood to our fatherhood. He is so transcendent,
so unique, so perfect in His fatherhood. There is nothing
on earth to compare to it. So what does it mean for us to
be holy? In part, it means to be set apart from the world at
conversion as His. In part, it means justification,
which means we are legally set apart from sinners. In part,
it means Christ-infused righteousness, which we call sanctification.
In part, it's continually pressing into our upward calling, but
holiness is like a magnet that separates us from the world and
is attracted to God. It means to love the Lord your
God with all of your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to submit
yourselves to His will. And here's the point. Holiness,
apart from worship, is inconceivable. Inconceivable. All creatures
who are holy to some degree in this book are holy because they
are captivated by God's transcendent holiness that blows all other
holiness away and yet causes us to want to be more and more
like him. And the more we meditate on the
awesome holiness of God, the more we're drawn to worship rightly.
Man-centered worship is utterly incompatible with the unique
holiness of God. Now these angels go on to adore
God as the Lord God Almighty. We saw the first sermon that
everything in the first eight verses really showcase God's
sovereign rule over his creation. I mean, just seeing his throne
would have made people stand in awe in its own right. But it is God himself who captivates
the hearts of these angels. He is their king, and they gladly
give him their allegiance. I've had times of worship where
God's presence was so strong in the room that I literally
put my forehead on the ground and ask God if he would be willing
to put his foot upon my neck. I delighted in his kingship. That was the most natural expression
of my heart to him. I love his kingship. I love his
sovereignty. I love his rule over me. The
fact that God has ordained everything and controls everything from
the foundation of the world to the end of the world does not
make me shake my fist against him like some people would. No,
it makes me stand in awe of who he is. It makes me love him.
The more we understand of God's total control of every molecule
of our bodies, of our world, and of this universe, the more
puny we see ourselves as being, and the more splendorous and
awesome God becomes in our minds. So proper theology really is
a foundation for worship. Third thing that forms the core
of their worship is God's aseity. And this too is an essential
core attribute that distinguishes God from all creation. And it's
captured in that phrase here, he who was and who is and who
is coming. On my sermon on chapter one,
verse four, I pointed out how the strange, strange Greek makes
liberals think that John didn't know Greek, that he had bad grammar,
but it's actually brilliant Greek that translates the Hebrew word
I am in Exodus 3 verse 14. In Exodus 3 verse 14, God explained
what his name I am meant. It means that God is eternal,
that he is self-sufficient, and that he overflows constantly
in his goodness. He's eternal, he's self-sufficient,
he's constantly overflowing in his goodness to others. Now,
the Hebrew of Exodus is hard to translate. This Greek here
is hard to translate. But let me go through those three
things. First of all, it shows him to be eternal or above time. All of us are creatures of time
and will be limited and subject to time for all of eternity,
not God. He experiences 1,000 years ago
and today and 100,000 years from now, all as if it is in the present.
And the Greek captures this by using the present ongoing tense
of the Greek word, I am. That's God's name. And the Greek
imperfect tense, which is the past ongoing tense of the same
word, I am, but instead of using I am for the future, which in
the Greek would miscommunicate the idea that God is changing.
It's just one of the limitations of Greek. God uses the present
tense of the participle of the word to come, indicating that
anything that is to come in the future God experiences in the
present right now. Okay? In other words, The Greek
demonstrates that God experiences past, present, and future all
as one. He is above time. And any number of commentaries
delve into the mystery of this Greek phrase, this translation
of I am. Zerwick and Grosvenor's grammatical
analysis book adds that the Greek gives the idea of changelessness. It says, the fact that the whole
name is undeclined adds the impression of immutability to that of eternity. Well, you don't have to spend
much time thinking about God's eternity, and it blows your mind. It almost makes you feel undone.
We have a hard time even conceiving of anything being not subject
to time. What is eternity? It's hard to
grasp, and the more you meditate on God as being the immutable
God of eternity, the more you stand in awe of Him and want
to worship Him. There is none like Him. It is
like standing before the Grand Canyon with your mouth hanging
open only a thousand times more grand. But praise also flows
from the concepts of self-sufficiency that are embedded in the name
Jehovah or I Am. He needs nothing. Now think about
this. If God craved our worship, which
is the way some atheists have characterized God as being a
narcissistic, self-seeking God. He always wants everybody to
worship Him. If God craved our worship, it would not inspire
us to worship, but the doctrine of aseity means that God doesn't
need anything. Acts 17, verse 25 says, for sure,
He doesn't need our worship. God doesn't need anything. Instead,
the doctrine of the Saint, he means God is so self-sufficient
that it's impossible for him to be selfish or self-seeking,
impossible. Why? He is so full, he's always
giving, giving, giving of his abundance. The Father constantly
overflows in love, praise, generosity, and communication with the Son
and the Spirit, and the Spirit is always overflowing in generosity,
love, and praise to the Father. And it brings the Spirit such
joy to praise the Father because of this doctrine of the Vesaites.
It's almost like He's putting His arm around us and He says,
look at the Father, worship the Father, praise the Father. What
a glorious Father. Not one of the persons of the
Trinity is asking for self-centered introspection. The Father looks
to the Son and He says, this is My beloved Son, hear Him. They're always overflowing. They're
pointing outward. And the doctrine of aseity thus
makes us stand in awe of God and want to worship Him. He is
worthy of worship even though He doesn't need it. And it's
really hard to capture all of the nuances of aseity, but it's
yet another doctrine that sets God apart and forms the foundation
of God-centered worship. It humbles man. It draws attention
away from our deficiencies and focuses our attention upon God's
sufficiency. So if you want to grow in worship,
do not go down the pathway of so many churches who ditch doctrine
and overdose on emotion. OK, study theology, pray that
God would transform you with it. So the first point of this
sermon and the biggest point is that worship is fundamentally
theological. The better we know God, the better
we will worship Him. Now the second major point that
we see in these verses is that worship is the God-centered response
of the whole man to God. And I want to read you a definition
of worship that I read earlier. I'm going to read it once again.
This is William Temple's definition. Worship is the submission of
all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience
by His holiness, the nourishment of mind with His truth, the purifying
of imagination by His beauty, the opening of the heart to His
love, the surrender of will to His purpose, and all of this
gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which
our nature is capable, and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness
which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin.
Now I want you to notice that the worship of verse 9 is not
about how we can feel good and be pleased and come away satisfied.
When you stand before God, your wants and your virtues melt into
nothingness and your desires take a second place to wanting
to please God and glorifying Him in everything. Worship is
what Victoria Brooks calls ministering to God, the reach of the heart.
And so verse 9 shows that worship glorifies God, not man. It says, and whenever the living
beings ascribe glory, worship is ascribing glory to God. We have come this morning to
build Him up. We have come to praise Him. We have come to please
Him. Any worship that glorifies man is defective worship. When we worship in the Spirit
and in truth, the Spirit will move our hearts to glorify God.
Why? Because it's the Spirit's passion
to glorify Jesus and the Father. It's His passion. You are obviously
not filled with the Holy Spirit when your passion is to glorify
yourself or to glorify man. Next, true worship honors God,
not man. And whenever the living beings
ascribe glory and honor, who gets the honor in many churches?
The preacher does, at least if he's delivered a particularly
powerful oratorical sermon. That's idolatry. In other churches,
it is the worship team, if they have performed particularly well. In other churches, it is the
crowd. If it is particularly large, so large that their singing
overwhelms the emotions. And I mentioned that when our
church up in Canada met there, for her, it was the building,
wasn't it? Those are fake substitutes for
what drives true worship. The best way that you can bless
a preacher is to honor God. And the best way to honor God
is to worship here with your whole heart and to leave here
with a determination to please God in everything that you do.
Worship gives thanks to God, not man. And whenever the living
beings ascribe glory and honor and thanksgiving. Now you might
wonder, why are the angels giving thanksgiving to God since they
were never redeemed like we are? But angels would consider that
an utterly foolish question to say, hey, they perfectly serve
God. Why not? Why doesn't God thank them? They
would say, no way. honors the angels by allowing
them to serve. He doesn't need them. It is an
honor to even be alive. It is an honor to serve such
a majestic and transcendent God. It is an honor to be in his presence
and to have our puny worship even appreciated by God, okay?
So yes, they have a lot to thank God for. God upholds every atom
of their being by the word of his power. And notice too that
the focus is on God, not man. Now if I wanted the focus to
be upon me, I would follow the advice that a couple of my homiletics professors gave
to me. and craft my sermons with stories
and truths that would capture the imagination and stir the
emotions and I would restrict my preaching to passages that
would allow me to do that. But Paul in 1 Corinthians 2 put
aside all of the principles of oratory that he had learned from
the best orators of this day. And his goal was not to impress,
but draw people to know God and to serve him. His goal was to
teach the whole counsel of God so that God would be placed.
not man's ears tickled. Verse 9 speaks of the 24 elders
who stand as representatives of all of the elect from the
Old Testament through the New Testament. By the way, rightly
identifying those elders is going to help us in the next chapter
to determine what is this book with the seven seals that are
on it. Lots of controversy on that. And there's lots of controversy
on these 24 elders. Well, I can tell you, they're
not angels, as some people take them to be. They're not priests,
as others take them to be. They're elders, that's what they're
called. They are representatives of the people. And we're not
gonna get into that today. That's reserved for next week.
But as these elders witness the way that the angels worship God,
it stirs up their hearts to want to do the same. And one of the
central features of their worship is humility. It says the 24 elders
fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him
who lives forever and ever. Kneeling before God has really
fallen out of fashion in a lot of circles. I actually had one
Reformed people argue vigorously with me that kneeling in worship
is potpourri. In other words, it's Roman Catholicism.
And my response is, you've got to be kidding. The Bible is full
of potpourri? And he said, no, no, no. When
the Bible talks about kneeling, it's just talking about an inward
disposition of the heart. And I patiently took him through
passage after passage. It talks about literal people
literally kneeling before him. And he kept saying, no, it's
not literal kneeling. It's the disposition of your
heart. I can guarantee you, brothers and sisters, if you caught even
a tiny glimpse of the throne room of heaven, You would not
be able to sit. You would not be able to stand.
You'd be on your knees. Probably more likely, you would
be prostrate on your face, unable to move. This is the grandeur
of the God whom we serve. And 100 years ago, kneeling was
common, even kneeling before men because it expressed a sense
of humility. I read a humorous story about
Neil Martin. He was a member of the British
Parliament and was once giving a group of his constituents a
guided tour of the Parliament buildings. And during the course
of the visit, the group happened to meet Lord Hailsham, who was
the Lord Chancellor. He was wearing all of the regalia
of his office. And Hailsham recognized Neil
Martin among the group, and he cried out with a loud voice to
get his attention, Neil. Well, not daring to question
or disobey the command, the entire band of visitors promptly fell
to their knees, okay? It was that much of an instinct
for them. If somebody said Neil, okay,
they knelt, you know, it wasn't something they would question.
And then they sheepishly recognized, okay, Lord Hailsham was just
trying to get Neil's attention. But they were used to kneeling
because the outward kneeling was supposed to reflect an inward
disposition of humility. Now, if worship, get this, if
worship is what we defined it as earlier, as the God-centered
response of the whole being to God, then our body is a part
of our worship. We are not Gnostics who separate
the body from the spirit. Raising hands kneeling, standing,
having our heads lifted toward heaven, having our heads bowed
down, shouting with a loud voice. These are all things that the
scripture talks about over and over again. Examine your body
posture during the worship service and ask you if it is consistent
with the worship of the transcendent God that is being described in
chapters four and five. Now, I don't want you to be legalistic
about that, because there are various postures that the Bible
describes, and they're all symbolic of various states of mind. For
example, sitting. You're sitting right now. In
some churches, you never sit. Some Eastern Orthodox, you're
always standing. But sitting is described in the Bible, and
it reflects the security that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ,
okay? So there are various postures
that are out there, and I don't want you getting legalistic,
but I do want you to be self-conscious About what your body is doing
during worship realize that you communicate with more than just
your words our body posture Communicates a lot to others in the church
to the angels who are in our midst this morning It communicates
to God we call it body language, right? so If worship is communication,
then our body language needs to be thought about. Is it consistent
with what we are trying to communicate inwardly? What does slouching
with a cup of coffee in your hand communicate? Now, I'm not
saying you can't have coffee. I'm not saying that. All I'm
saying is, what are you communicating? If your body is communicating
language, and it is, it's communicating to me, it's communicating to
everybody else, you just need to think about, okay, is what
I'm communicating with my body consistent with what my heart
and my mouth is communicating? I want you just at least to think
about it. I'm not going to tell you how
you should sit or anything like that. I'm just saying, try to
think, how am I communicating with my body? OK, verse 10 goes
on to show how worship is total surrender, not self-seeking.
It says, and they cast their crowns before the throne. The
crowns they wore were crowns God had given them in recognition
of their labors and of their service and of their victory
over Satan. So it's not as if God does not give them things
to honor them. He does, in fact, the doctrine
of aseity guarantees, necessitates that God is going to be giving
us things that we do not deserve. It's his nature to do so. So
God was indeed honoring them, but the first impulse of their
hearts is to recognize, hey, I don't deserve it. Everything
I have done to serve the Lord was done by His grace, by the
power of the Holy Spirit's gifts that He had given to me. It's
given success by God's blessing. It was financed by God's money. So when we come face to face
with God, we're not going to lose our crowns. But we're going
to be very quick to acknowledge, you know what? I don't deserve
these things. God gets all the glory. That's how God-centered
worship should be. And it grieves me when I see
church audiences clapping for special music or clapping for
a drama or clapping over a particularly entertaining section of the sermon.
Now, they'll be quick to say, no, we're clapping for God. But,
you know, many times the points at which they clap It doesn't
seem like it's clapping for God. To me, it seems like they're
appreciating the entertainment or the oratory, whatever it is
that the person is bringing. But worship is so God-centered
that it draws our hearts out into total, unreserved surrender
and devotion to God. And throughout the verses that
we have read, you can see that involves the whole man. It involves
the mind, the will, the passions. It involves the inward man. It involves our outward actions.
But this brings us to our final point, and I'm not going to spend
much time on verse 11. even though it is rich in theology
and praise. But I'll let you do your own
dissecting of verse 11. If you were to parse every word
in verse 11, which is really a worthwhile exercise to do,
you would see that it's simply the verbal expression of points
one and two. In verses 9 through 10, the elders
had been listening to the verbal expression of the angels. So
listening can be a part of worship. They've been listening to fantastic
theology. But the elders could not help
but verbalize what they have heard in their own worship. Verse
11 has them responding, Now the reason I'm emphasizing this is
I have known people who never publicly verbalize
what they say is in their hearts in worship. They don't sing aloud.
They don't say amen. They don't read the responsive
readings. And the Quakers used to do this. They would sit for
an hour without any preaching or any singing or anything, just
sit in silence, and they called that the worship of God. But worship is best expressed. And I find when I let out of
my heart and into my mouth what is in my heart that it intensifies
what's already in my heart okay so my verbalizing reinforces
what is in my heart intensifies it helps my whole being to enter
into it so it's a part of wholehearted the whole man offering up his
worship to God. There's a connection, by the
way, between our mouths and faith, and we'll get into that when
we get into chapter 12. Lord willing. But don't just
listen. Verbalize your worship. You can
verbalize in singing. You can verbalize like the saints
do in a later cameo in this book where they all say, Amen. You
can verbalize by responses to the readings and to the blessings.
You can verbalize by saying, Hallelujah. Or whatever way it
is that your mouth enters into it, make sure your mouth is a
part of the whole man offering up worship. Now I'm gonna read
William Temple's definition of worship one more time, and as
I do so, ask God to make that to be a more and more definition
of your worship. He said, worship is the submission
of all our nature to God. It is the quickening of conscience
by His holiness, the nourishment of mind with His truth, the purifying
of imagination by his beauty, the opening of the heart to his
love, the surrender of will to his purpose, and all of this
gathered up in adoration, the most selfless emotion of which
our nature is capable, and therefore the chief remedy for that self-centeredness
which is our original sin and the source of all actual sin. May God make us to be more and
more People of worship and that goal really is possible because
God made you for worship He's filled you with the Holy Spirit
who delights and drawing our praise and glory to to God And
giving him that what he deserves and so by his power make it your
goal to become more and more a people of worship Amen Father
God we thank you for not only the illustrations of worship
that you have given in your word, but that you take the scriptures,
you transform our hearts with those scriptures. And I pray
that as our minds are transformed, our hearts would be transformed,
and they would become hearts of worship, the reach of the
heart. Help us, Father, to be people
who delight in ministering to you. In Jesus' name we pray,
amen.
Made for Worship
Series Revelation
This cameo picture of what the worship of heaven looks like gives us several principles that should guide our worship services.
| Sermon ID | 99323161450210 |
| Duration | 43:02 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Revelation 4:8-11 |
| Language | English |
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