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.