We're going to be taking a little peek into the worship of heaven this morning. Another cameo of worship that the Apostle John gives to us. And we've been preaching through the majority text translation, which is on page 16, but you can follow along in any of your Bibles. Revelation 5 verses 8 through 14. And when he took the scroll, the four living beings and the 24 elders fell down before the lamb, each having harps and golden bowls full of incenses, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sing a new song saying, you are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because you were slaughtered and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and language and people and ethnic nation. And you have made them kings and priests to our God, and they will reign on the earth. And I looked and I heard, as it were, the voice of many angels around the throne and the living beings and the elders. And their number was 10,000 times 10,000 and a thousand thousand saying with a great voice, worthy is the lamb who was slaughtered to receive the power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing and every creature. which is in the heaven and upon the earth and under the earth and those upon the sea and everything in them. I heard them all say to him who sits upon the throne and to the land, the blessing and the honor and the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. And the four living beings saying the amen. And the elders fell and did obeisance. And all God's people said, Amen. Father God, we thank you for your word. It is our desire to have our lives conformed more and more to your will. Have your way, oh Lord, have your way in our lives. draw us ever heavenward step by step. Help us, Father, to abandon our flesh, to see it subdued under the feet of King Jesus, and to see our lives being caught up into the heavenlies in worship. I pray that you would anoint the preaching of your word this morning, that you would anoint the receiving of the word. May it be mixed in our hearts by faith. Be blessed. Oh God with our continued worship, and I pray for your blessing in our lives in Jesus name. Amen You may be seated One of the dangers of dividing a chapter up into small enough bites so that we can preach on it is that there's a tendency to miss the context and as a result to misrepresent the subject that you're preaching on. It's sort of like giving a description of an elephant and you say, well, an elephant's a creature that has a long nose. And that's true as a partial description. It's true that an elephant has a long trunk, but that is an inadequate description. And the same is true of worship. If we only focused on the last verses of chapter five, we might describe worship in terms of our activities and list a bunch of things that we do in the worship service. And we're going to be looking at some of those activities this morning. It's not as if that's an inadequate, I mean an inaccurate description, but it is inadequate. Those activities only make sense when you see them as a response to God's awesome provisions of grace in these two chapters. As Jeff Myers points out in his book, The Lord's Service, if we only focus on what we give or what we do in worship, it's very easy to become Pelagian. What does he mean by being Pelagian? Pelagius was a church father who was actually a very respected church father, an amazing orator, and in other ways had the attention of the people, but held to a heresy. And he believed that we can serve God without divine aid. We can worship without divine aid. And Augustine was his chief opponent, and Augustine pointed out, we can only give to God anything worthy that God has already given to us and enabled us to do. Jesus said, without me you can do nothing. The Apostle Paul in Romans 7 verse 18 said, I know that in me, that is in my flesh, nothing good dwells, for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. And so that's why the Apostle Paul calls us to worship in the Spirit, to sing with grace in our hearts, to pray in the Spirit. If we offer up only what our flesh is capable of, and I tell you, I've been in a lot of worship services where I'm convinced My own worship and the worship of those who are around us is just what we can do. It comes easy from what our flesh can do. The Apostle Paul says, the flesh profits nothing, nothing. It's not acceptable. And we're going to get into that a little bit more when we get down to Roman numeral three, point B. But let's start with a couple of definitions of worship. I've defined worship in your outlines as the wholehearted devotion of the creature in response to the gracious provision of the triune God. And I like Warren Wiersbe's definition equally well, and I wish there was a definition we could kind of merge the two that would still be not too much of a mouthful. But he defines worship as the believer's response of all that they are, mind, emotions, will, and body to what God is, says, and does. And as we get to later cameos of worship that the Apostle Paul gives us in the book of Revelation, we're gonna be seeing that even these two definitions are not adequate. We're going to be step-by-step, though, building our definition of worship as we go through these passages. And I think these two definitions do capture what's going on in chapters four and five. Anyway, I wanna quote from Jeffrey Myers at length on this point. Commenting on someone's definition of worship as the work of acknowledging the greatness of our covenant God and not so much about what we can get from God but what we can give to God was what the definition he was interacting with, he disagreed and he said this, First and above all, we are called together in order to get, to receive. This is crucial. The Lord gives, we receive. Since faith is receptive, faithful worship must be about receiving from God. While I do not deny that we work during worship, I do regard this definition as dangerously one-sided. Whatever we do in worship must always be a faithful response to God's gifts of forgiveness, life, knowledge, and glory, gifts we receive in the service. Paul asks us in 1 Corinthians 4 verse 7, what do you have that you did not receive? And the implied answer is nothing, nothing. And this is the order that we find in chapters four through five. We've been taking it piece by piece, a number of sermons on this, but if we're summarizing the whole of these two chapters The people recognize that they have been created by God. That's the part of the first part of this definition of worship. And they want to worship God. That elicits a response from their hearts. They are given an explanation that Jesus has provided everything needed for life and godliness, and it makes them want to respond. They see the Holy Spirit applying redemption to the ends of the earth, and it impels them with a wholehearted worship. In fact, it's the Spirit who enables them to do that worship. So in chapter 4, going backwards a few weeks, chapter 4 verses 1-7 we see God's provision, then in verses 8-11 there is the response of worship. In chapter 5 verses 1-7 we see God's provision, and in verses 8-14 there is a response of worship. And I do want to point out, just as a side note, that this actually illustrates, and there's other passages that illustrate it better, but it illustrates the Reformed principle known as the dialogical principle of worship, where there's a dialogue between God and His people going on in a worship service where God speaks, man responds. God gives, man responds. God enables, man responds. There's a preaching of the Word, men respond. There's this dialogue back and forth. And our worship services very self-consciously try in our limited way to imitate that dialogue. But back to the main point, all of chapters four through five give this basic definition of worship. It is the wholehearted devotion of the creature in grateful response to the gracious provision of the triune God. So this solidly founds worship on the grace of God as provided by Jesus and empowered by his Holy Spirit. Now the second point digs in a little bit deeper. It asks the question, why should we worship? You know, if our kids ask us, you know, why do we go to worship every Sunday? Why do we spend so much time in worship? It's important that we not just tell them because that's what we do. We are made to be creatures of purpose. And the more we understand the purpose for doing things, the more we're motivated to engage in those kinds of things. So when our kids ask us, why do we worship? There's at least three answers in this chapter that we can give to them. And the first is that God made us. He made our hair and our fingernails, and He gave us food, and He made the world around us. And we owe Him our gratitude because He has so generously blessed us. He says in verse 13 that there is nothing in creation that's exempted. And every creature which is in the heaven and upon the earth and under the earth and those upon the sea and everything in them, everything in them, everything created owes God worship and everything in creation will eventually be restored to the worship that God made us for. God is going to make a new heavens and a new earth where worship is going to be the most natural impulse of our hearts. It will not be a struggle to pray. I struggled with prayer, and I have to struggle against my flesh. It's a discipline. It's not natural like breathing. I've had some of the books on prayer say that prayer should be as natural as breathing to you, or you just do it without thinking. Wow, sure hasn't come naturally to me yet. I have to really work at it, but when we get to heaven and we are perfected It won't be a struggle to pray. It won't be a struggle to sing No aspect of worship is going to be a struggle to us because God's grace will have Subdued our flesh and drawn our hearts out and it will be glorious. It will be joyful for us It'll be the most natural thing for for us to do. But in the meantime we can at least say that all creation owes God the response of worship because God has generously provided for us life and breath and all things. Now of course this book goes on to describe a problem. Revelation will later describe men and women who do not live up to this ideal, in fact they worship the creation rather than worshiping the Creator. Sin has messed up our ability to worship God, it really has, it makes us bored with worship, it makes our minds wanders. Sin distracts our hearts from the Lord. We get into ruts and empty rituals or we can turn worship and move it in a direction that makes us feel good or satisfies our wants. We can become apathetic. But it's interesting that sin doesn't stop worship. It doesn't stop worship. Revelation describes all creatures as worshiping something. We were made to worship. It's just that sin distorts our worship and puts it in the wrong direction. Apart from redemption and restoration, men will not worship as they should. Now, one of the exemplars of worship in the book of Revelation that's given to us is the worship of angels, angels worshiping God. The elect angels never sinned, therefore they do not need redemption. And this means that they never have struggled with worship. They don't have to be taught how to worship. They don't have to be restored to worship. They love worshiping because this is the way they have been made to be. They always engage perfectly in worship. And so if you want to get an example of what we would have done in worship if we had never experienced the fall, Just look at the angels, and we're going to be seeing a lot of the angels worshiping God in the book of Revelation. It's hinted at here in verses 8 and 11, but they are exemplars. And by the way, the angels are very interested in our worship according to 1 Corinthians 11, and Paul hints that these angels are troubled by how imperfectly we worship. When they see the awesomeness of God in His throne, they see how pathetic our worship sometimes is. There is a disconnect there that is troubling in their sight, their sensibilities. It's jarring. Now, obviously, they know we're messed up. You know, we're sinful creatures. We're having to be restored to the worship that God made us to be restored to our high calling. But they are still troubled. And so Paul gives instructions and first Corinthians on our worship and how we need to change some of the things that we are doing. And one of his instructions was to women and how they ought to worship. And he gave us his reason. because of the angels. It's a very interesting phrase. He said, do it because of the angels. They are in your midst. And we are going to later on in the book of Revelation see some of the ways in which angels are involved very intimately in the worship of believers here on earth. It's hinted at here. For example, it mentions that they're somehow connected to our prayers in verse eight. It doesn't tell us how they're connected. In chapter 8, he's going to be telling us in much more depth how the angels are connected to our prayers and how angels are in some way involved in restoring us to what we were created to be. And that's the second reason for worship is redemption. This is the restoration process. We worship because Jesus saved us from hell and saved us from our sins. We deserve all of the judgments that this passage, I mean, this book goes on to describe, and there is some horrendous judgments in this book. We deserve those things, but praise the Lord. He suffered in our place, and that is great reason for us to be worshiping God, because he saved us from incredible suffering. So when Jesus takes the scroll and provides everything needed to be our Savior, it results in great relief for the Apostle John, and great worship in the church. After seeing what Christ had accomplished, verse 8 says, And when he took the scroll, the four living beings and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each having harps and golden bowls full of incenses, which are the prayers of the saints. And they sing a new song saying, you are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals because you were slaughtered and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and language and people and ethnic nation. I want you to notice the word because. They're explaining why Christ is worthy of worship. If you have a hard time worshiping, just meditate on what your sins deserve and instead what Jesus has given to you because of his redemption. It'll draw your heart out and make you want to worship. But A.W. Tozer said, Jesus was born of a virgin, suffered under Pontius Pilate, died on the cross and rose from the grave. to make worshipers out of rebels. And I think it must bring delight to Jesus' heart when He sees this being brought to fruition, that rebels are being turned into worshipers. And by the way, has He done a lot for our children? Does His gospel go to our children? Yes, it does. It's wonderful. And we ought to teach our children from a very early age to be much more active in worship. Revelation 11 verse 8 speaks of both small and great fearing the Lord. We can teach our children to reverence the Lord by pointing them to their Creator and their Redeemer. Revelation 19.5 commands both small and great to worship God for what He has done. Now, little ones may not be able to sing the words, but maybe you can teach them to hum the tunes, you know, or even if they can't make the tune quite, to let their voices be involved to some degree. But everything that has breath needs to learn to worship the Lord. Now there's a third reason why we ought to worship. God has given to each one of us a high calling. Every believer has been called out of the world and into his glorious kingdom. That is an incredible reason to worship the Lord. Verse nine says that's the only reason we really need to worship. But the more we understand of our upward call in life, the more it ought to motivate us to worship. For example, If he had just called us into the kingdom to be his slaves, we would have gloried in that. What an awesome thing it would be. We serve such an awesome master. But he didn't just call us to be slaves, he called us to be his sons and daughters. He adopted us into his family. You start meditating on things like that, it draws your heart out into worship. But he says, even more than that, this passage says our calling is higher. Verse 10 says, every one of you have been called to be priests and kings. Incredible. It's the next reason that follows the because of verse nine. You have made them kings and priests to our God, and they will reign on the earth. Every saint has already been made a priest and a king when Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father. Now, yes, he's the high priest who prays for his people, but because of our union with Christ, we've been given a new authority in prayer, and we can worship him in prayer. Yes, he is the king, but because of our union with him, We can reign, we can worship even in our dominion. So who should worship? Absolutely everyone. Who can worship? Those who are redeemed. How soon do we teach our children to worship? Wow, as soon as they can even recognize what God has done for them and be able to respond in gracious goodness, we should be encouraging them to worship. And it may simply be folding their hands in private worship at home or maybe clapping together with the singing, but in some ways involving our children. And what are the reasons for worshiping God? We've got three glorious reasons in this chapter that we can give. He has been so generous and has supplied abundantly. But we come now to the question, how should we worship? And this is what I'm wanting to focus on this morning. This passage answers the question in a number of ways. Several verses show that our worship needs to be saturated in the scriptures. Now that's shown In part, I hinted at in the fact that the worship flows from Jesus taking that scroll, which we saw before was the Old Testament canon. But it's a lot more than that. Chapters four through five are absolutely saturated in the Old Testament allusions. There are 23 allusions to Daniel. There are detailed allusions to 1 Chronicles 29, 11 through 12, the praise passage, various Psalms, Isaiah 42, and other passages. D.H. Milling has shown that all of the praise sections in these chapters are framed by the Old Testament and the Gospels. You know, it's as if the worshipers have taken in so much scripture that they can't help but have scriptural thought coming out of their mouths when they worship. If you liken the Bible to the brilliant sun, uh that's shining on us our worship is like the moon it's giving back some of what god has given to us so we we we know he's glorified with the scriptures and so we glorify him by shining back some of the light of the scriptures One of the things that many visitors to our church have noticed, whether they like our worship or don't like it, they have commented to me that they have never seen services that are so saturated with the Scriptures. And I think that is good. That's what we have very self-consciously tried to do and vary those Scriptures from Sunday to Sunday. It's not simply the obvious response of readings. There's not a phrase of any psalm, hymn, or spiritual song that does not in some way emerge from the Bible. Very deliberate. We've encouraged our men to try to ground their prayers in the Scripture, not reading lengthy passages of Scripture, but turning the Scripture into prayer, grounding our requests in God's attributes, in His generosity, in His commandments, in His promises, but being solidly grounded in the Scripture. So that's the first way, be Scripture-saturated. Second, we can see that the worship of those on earth is involved in some way in the worship of those who are in heaven. And I really want to dig into this point because I think for some people this is a theoretical concept, but they just don't know how it actually works out in practice. John Calvin just hammered on this a lot. Hebrews 12 contrasts two kinds of worship. There is worship on earth that never gets past the ceiling. And then there is worship on earth that pierces through the clouds and gets into the throne room of God. And Hebrews says that that church that he was ministering to had that kind of worship. They had tasted of the powers of the age to come. They had tasted of the powers of the Holy Spirit. And he said this about them, you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven. To God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect. He said, you're there. You're there in your worship services. And the question is, how? How did they get there? Not all worship in this book gets there. Just like in Hebrews, the book of Revelation contrasts two types of worship. Later chapters are going to be showing us people who make a pretense at worshiping God. Hey, their worship doesn't get past the ceiling. It does not get past the ceiling. But the prayers in verse eight, they made it all the way to heaven. Just as incense wafts its way up into the sky, it says the angels and the elders are holding those bowls of incense that are filled with the prayers of the saints, and where do they lay them? They're laying them before the throne of God. So somehow, the prayers have gotten up there. By the way, it's not just the people in heaven. Verse 13 says it's people on earth. It's their prayers that have wafted up as well. Verse 13, and every creature which is in the heaven and upon the earth and under the earth and those upon the sea and everything in them, I heard them all say, to him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb, the blessing and the honor and the glory and the power forever and ever, amen. How can our worship possibly get past the ceiling and come before the throne of grace when our hearts are so dulled by sin? and the seven eyes that were on the lamb that we looked at last week gives the answer. The same spirit Okay, the seven eyes or the seven spirits means the fullness of the spirits going out into all the earth and those eyes see, right? So the spirit sees everything. The spirit is absolutely essential to worship. And there is other images that are given in the book of Revelation of the spirit, you know, the candelabra, those candlesticks are representative of the church. with each local church being one of those candlesticks. But what's the oil? The oil is the Holy Spirit. What's the fire? It's the Holy Spirit applying His presence into our lives. We can't even spiritually see God or connect with God if the Spirit is not burning in our hearts. But when we worship in spirit and truth, Our worship gets past the ceiling. There's a connection between this worship service and the heavenly one because the Spirit of God goes from Christ to us and it comes back to Christ from us. Romans 11 says that it's the Spirit alone that can intercede from within us and make our prayers acceptable. So let me briefly apply the implications of that. When you men compose your prayers, for public worship, they shouldn't just be prayers where you're trying to outdo each other and making the prayers sound pretty. Right? You need to be praying to the Holy Spirit that he would help you to compose the prayers in a way that they would be spirit anointed and draw the hearts of the congregation to connect with the heart of Jesus. You see, if Paul, if the Apostle Paul didn't know how to pray, you can bet your bottom dollar, you don't know how to pray without the power of the Holy Spirit. And that's exactly what Paul said in Romans 8. He says, we do not know what we should pray for as we ought. We do not know. And Paul gives the same answer there that the Apostle John gives here. Here's his answer. How do we do it? The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit, verse 16. Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. The Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered, verse 26. So God helps us to pray in a Spirit-anointed way. So we're going back to our first point, Worship is the wholehearted devotion of the creature in grateful response to the gracious provision of the triune God. We need the Spirit's gracious provision if we're to worship properly at all. So how do our prayers get past the ceiling? Ephesians 6.18 and Jude 20 explain the only way it can happen. Those two verses say we must pray in the Spirit. How do we get our singing past the ceiling? We must sing in the Spirit according to 1 Corinthians 14, 15. How do we get worship past the ceiling? Philippians 3, 3 says we must worship in the Spirit. How do we get rejoicing that really ministers to the heart of God and glorifies Him? 1 Thessalonians 1, 6 and Romans 14, 17 say we must rejoice in the Spirit. How do our expressions of love connect with God's heart Romans 8 says our expressions of love can't get past the ceiling if they just emerge from our own flesh. The flesh profits nothing, he says, but when the Holy Spirit Witnesses with our spirit that we are sons and daughters and he makes our hearts cry out Abba father Our hearts connect with God's heart, but it's the spirit alone who can enable us to do that That's why Colossians 1 18 says we must love in the spirit How do we keep our minds from wandering in the worship service? It's very easy for minds to wander, isn't it? very easy Well, Romans 8, 6 says we must have our minds controlled by the Spirit. How do we make sure that the preaching that I engage in doesn't fall to the ground and become absolutely of no effect? You walk out of here unaffected by it. Well, Hebrews 4, 2 says that the preaching of the Scriptures, even though it can be powerful, accomplishes nothing, nothing, if it is not mixed with faith in the hearts of the people. and who gives faith? It's the Holy Spirit, right? And so Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2.13 that this sermon will only transform you as you are taught by the Holy Spirit. Can you see why that definition that Jeff Myers and why he gave a slightly different definition, but why that's so important, the first part where we receive from God. We've got to self-consciously say, Lord, I know I can't worship as I ought. Draw my heart out. Give me your grace. Pour out upon me a spirit of prayer and supplication. I want to worship in the Spirit. Week by week, it should be our desire to connect with God's throne room, to get past the ceiling. And the only way to do that is if the seven eyes of the lamb the fullness of the holy spirit that goes out into the whole world is coming right into this auditorium connecting with our spirits and saying you are my son you are my daughter and our hearts cry out thank you lord abba father i love you i adore you it's the spirit the spirit alone that can do that so how should we worship First of all, we worship in a scripture-saturated way. Secondly, we should worship in a spirit-anointed way that gets our worship past the ceiling and into the heavenlies. But there is more. Being spiritual does not mean that God does not use various means. In fact, as we go through the book of Revelation, you're gonna see every worship service has parts and pieces in it, and music is one of those parts and pieces. Our worship is not patterned after heaven if we do not have music. I had a reformed pastor, he was a PCA pastor actually, pretty conservative guy, a neat guy, a friend of mine, who told me that they frequently had worship services that only had prayer and preaching. And I said, you don't have any music? No, he said, I am so disgusted with all of the music wars that we've just blocked the music completely out of the worship. Well, he's not authorized to do that. He's not in charge of worship. God alone can authorize what's going on in worship, and our worship needs to be patterned after heaven, and music is a clear part of that pattern. Now, there's only mention of one musical instrument in this passage. There are other passages you could look at that have more, but verse eight does mention the elders having harps. And keep in mind, there's so many ways that people can go in trying to explain away the applications of passages. I saw one weird commentary saying, these elders are angels. It must be another order of angels somehow. No, they're elders. Everywhere in the Bible that elders are mentioned, they are leaders in the church, okay? And so they are leading the worship with these harps. Now some people say, okay, well, we admit that they're leading worship and there are instruments in heaven, but hey, that's heaven, we're on earth. And so they say that Revelation really doesn't have any impact upon how we should worship. That's all heavenly worship. Well, that's just not being sensitive to the way Revelation is dealing with worship. John Calvin said, we're not truly worshiping if we are not in some way connected with the worship of heaven. We are not worshiping as we ought. But I would go beyond John Calvin and say that our worship doesn't just connect with heaven, it must be patterned after heaven. Our worship has to be patterned after the worship of heaven, just like in the Old Testament. The worship was patterned after the worship of heaven. And here's the point, if the worship of heaven has musical instruments and we are patterned after the worship of heaven, we must have musical instruments as well. I'm almost finished with a book that shows the clear call of both the Old Testament and the New Testament to use musical instruments on earth as well as in heaven. But, and I think it's a much more thorough defense of any other book that I have seen. That's my first point. The heavenly worship that is the pattern for our worship has musical instruments. So should we. But the singing of new scripture-based songs is also biblical. And notice that I said scripture-based. Though these songs go beyond the 150 Psalms of the Psalter, they are based on the Bible just like our prayers should be based on the Bible, and just like our teaching should be based on the Bible. And of course, Colossians 3.16 likens our singing to both praying and teaching. It's just a different form of praying and teaching. I'm not teaching the Scripture if I just read the Scripture. That's called reading. It's not called preaching. Okay? And so you're not teaching in song if you're just reading word for word the song. There's expositions. And all of our hymns and our spiritual songs are expositions and applications of the Scripture. So this would be one of many passages that justifies the use of scripture-based hymns and songs. And again, keep in mind, you can't use the, well, that's in heaven, but we can't do it on earth. Verse 13 makes it very clear. They're singing these on earth as well as in heaven. Another point is that worship should be orderly. And this is something that sticks in the craw of some modern worshipers, but I really do think it's quite clear here. I don't think anybody would deny that the worship described in this chapter was spirit-led, but it is also clearly liturgical. It's spirit-led, but it's also clearly liturgical. We should not consider liturgical worship to be devoid of the Spirit of God. And I think many times it is devoid of the Spirit of God, but it doesn't have to be. It doesn't have to be, okay? Consider the following points. The worship of this chapter has leaders. The word elders is connected with worship over and over again in this book. That term is clearly used. In the New Testament, the Old Testament is a leader of the church, and these elders were leading the singing with their harps in verse eight, seem to have some connection with and authority over the prayers of the saints in that same verse. It's a leadership function. Second, in verse five, one of the elders guides John's appropriate responses in this chapter from weeping, transitioning into, and he even gave him time to weep, right? But from weeping into rejoicing. from, you know, our inadequacies to Christ's adequacies. And so, it's showing there that he's guiding the congregation in some way and what is appropriate. And later in this book, there are gonna be elders who are going to be giving guidance in other aspects of worship. Third, the elder seems to initiate the worship in these two chapters. When they engage in a certain action, other people join them. When they kneel, everyone kneels. And they certainly lead others in worship in later chapters. So if the spirit-led worship of heaven requires leaders, We would assume that the worship on earth requires leaders as well. But the second, the next building block in demonstrating the liturgical nature of this worship is that there is a corporate unity that is found in the prayers, songs, recitations, responses of a man dealing and standing. It's scripted. And many people believe that scripted worship cannot possibly be spirit-led worship. But wouldn't you agree, let's start with this, wouldn't you agree that the worship of this chapter is ideal? That it's a perfect, glorious worship? I think it is. Yet all the worship of the book of Revelation is scripted just like Old Testament worship was. And interestingly, people don't have any problem whatsoever with having scripted singing of songs that everybody sings together. But is that any different than scripted prayers or scripted recitations? No. If you can sing a scripted song that draws your heart to heaven, then you can read a scripted recitation that draws your hearts to heaven, and that's certainly the impact that it seems to have had upon this crowd. We find the whole crowd enthusiastically singing the same words in verse 9 and saying with a loud voice the same words in verses 12 through 13. Now here's the point, for the crowd to in unison say exactly the same words indicates a formality that is lacking in some churches, but it's a formality that God's Word calls for. And I do want you to notice something else interesting about these three recitations. Verse 9 has words that some people would call worship music because it is. It's a lifting up of the heart to God that we typically raise our hands with And it's moving, okay? It's pure adoration, but that is not the only kind of worship music that the Bible talks about. I want you to notice the words in verse 12 are instruction to each other that God is worthy, okay? The direction of these words is horizontal. Verse 12 has them saying, not singing granted, but there are Psalms that do the same thing, saying, with a great voice, worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered to receive the power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. Now earlier they were addressing God and saying, you are worthy. And now they're addressing each other and saying, hey, God is worthy. Okay, this is a horizontal relation. It's admonition. It's teaching. And then in verse 13, every creature responds by saying to him who sits upon the throne into the lamb, the blessing and the honor and the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. Notice it says to him, not to you. Okay. This is addressing others to address him. Now, why do I make such obvious points? Because so many of my non-liturgical friends insist that horizontal language that you find in some of the Psalms and that you find in many of the doctrinal hymns are not worship music. It doesn't stir the heart in quite the same way. In their mind, worship music is always and only addressed to God and lifts the heart to God. But you know what? That's an artificial distinction you're not gonna find in the Bible. You won't find it in the New Testament, you won't find it in the Old Testament. Why don't you turn with me to Colossians 3, Colossians 3 in verse 16, and this is a powerful scripture that also talks about every aspect of our worship being scripture saturated, completely opposed to the singing of butterfly kisses as one congregation here in Omaha on Mother's Day. They had the whole congregation singing butterfly kisses. I had told the pastor, what? You're kidding. He said, oh yeah, we loved it. And it would be totally opposed to, you know, the singing of a personal testimony such as, I walked through the garden alone or something like that. No, it's Scripture based. So Colossians 3 verse 16. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. In other words, be saturated with the scripture. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace, there is the role of the Holy Spirit in our lives, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. So worship according to Paul involves both words directed to God, directly to him, as well as addressed to each other. Now the words that are horizontally addressed to each other, he calls them teaching and admonishing one another. And you can do the horizontal teaching and admonishing using the music, he says. That's biblical. That's what the Psalms do. The Psalms pattern for us. what our worship music should be like. So if you look in your bulletins to the first psalm that we sang, Psalm 117, it's calling upon us to glorify God. Okay? So we're admonishing each other. That's kind of a horizontal plane. Same is true of the next two, of our God is mighty in Christ alone, but then you get to Psalm 115, and it's lifting up the heart, it's telling God, we want all the glory to go to you, we love you, Lord. But then interestingly, as you go along in the Psalm, it alternates between addressing God directly and addressing the saints. Okay, so you find that very typically. We love God and then we say to others, don't you love Him too? That's the kind of back and forth that you have going on in the Psalter. It's all a part of biblically balanced music. Now, I'm not saying we've always achieved biblically balanced worship far from it, but that is what we're striving for. So here's the bottom line. If we are to pattern our earthly worship after the worship in heaven, then there is some major reformation that needs to happen in Christian circles. And again, let me emphasize, I am not saying we are doing it perfectly. But I'm saying that much modern worship has completely missed the boat by throwing out liturgy. While John Frame's book on worship has some excellent insights that I think balance out what others like Jeff Myers have said, And while he's one of my heroes, his accommodation to modern individualism, and that's what he calls it, he calls it individualism, I think is a backward step. And I'm just going to give you one example. I want you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 14, and I want to read for you a verse that modern charismatics and non-charismatics alike, it seems to be quite pervasive, say is a paradigm for our worship. 1 Corinthians 14 verse 26. Now if this is a paradigm for our worship, then our church leadership needs to repent. I'll be quite clear on that, but hopefully I'll demonstrate to you it's not a paradigm, it's a rebuke. But anyway, these are the kinds of scriptures that need to be debated in the church and thought through. OK, 1 Corinthians 1426. How is it then, brethren, whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. Let all things be done for edification. Now it's my opinion that John Frame's interpretation of this verse deviates from Reformation history. John Frame says this is a paradigm to be followed, and if it is a paradigm, then he says it clearly means that the worship service must not be dictated and planned out in detail by the leaders. It needs to have spontaneity, free flow, democratic involvement, with the elders only being there to make sure it doesn't get too crazy, doesn't get too out of control. According to him, this should involve people spontaneously getting up in the middle of the service and giving a testimony of something that's happened in their life, which could result in a spontaneous singing of a praise song that had not been planned for before. Or it could involve another person getting up and saying, you know what? I feel led by the Lord to sing this song. Could you guys sing this with me? And they say, well, we don't know that song. And so John Frame says, you could just teach the people. And it wouldn't be you. It could be any member. Teach the people that song during the worship service. Now, by the way, this is a background that I've come from. And I used to love this kind of worship. And it was only over time I began to realize this really is not the biblical paradigm that we should be following. Anyway, he says, others could interrupt a sermon with some questions or offering further insights. Hey, pastor, you know what you just said in your sermon reminds me of something that I've learned from my Bible study. And he says, others who believe in ongoing charismatic gifts would exercise those gifts during the corporate worship of God. And so you can see that a worship service like that would be quite different from what we do now. Now, of course, if that is what Paul has called us to, then we should immediately repent and get with the program, or probably more accurately, get rid of this program. Toss it, right? And I'm open to that, if I could be convinced that this is actually what the scriptures say. But if it is a paradigm, it is my contention that it is the only place in the whole Bible where such a paradigm could be found, and it contradicts numerous passages that call for united corporate liturgy. The awesome prayer in Acts 4 was prayed by every member of that congregation, and it says they raised their voice to God with one accord, And then comes a beautifully composed prayer that is based upon the scripture. And when you've got the thousands of people with one voice, all of them saying the same thing, it's obviously been either written and read or written and memorized, but it is a scripted prayer that the whole congregation was involved in. Now back to this 1 Corinthians 15 passage, excuse me, 14 passage. You may wonder where I get the idea that it's a rebuke instead of a paradigm, and there's two immediate reasons in the context, in the immediate context, lots of reasons in the rest of scripture, but let me just give you two from the immediate context. Every time Paul uses the Greek expression for how is it then, brethren, he is rebuking them for something that they are doing. Now you could paraphrase it, why are you doing this, brethren? Or you could say something like this, what on earth is the matter with you, brethren? Then he tells them what he's troubled with. You got way too much individualism going on. Whenever you come together, each of you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revelation, has an interpretation. So my first reason for seeing this as a rebuke is that's what it means. How is it then, brethren? That's the way Paul uses that. Anytime you see that, it's not going to be praise forthcoming. It's going to be a correction of what they are doing. The second reason I see that as a rebuke is that the rest of the chapter, every verse of the rest of the chapter, takes each of the things they're doing in verse 26 and tells them to cut it out. In verse 26, all of them are speaking in tongues. And in verses 27 through 28, he tells them, you can't all be speaking in tongues. For one thing, you can't all be speaking at the same time, and a maximum of two or three, even if there was a reason for having your tongues. So he says, cut it out. And verse 26 says, each of them is trying to prophesy. And he says in verses 29 through 30, that each of you can't prophesy. That contradicts what verse 26 has been going on. Verses 30 through 32, he tells them they can't each be sharing a revelation. One reason he gives is in verse 33, for God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. He's contradicting what they are doing. And verses 34 through 35, he tells them that women can't be doing any of the things that are listed in verse 26 there. They can't be leading in that, and for that matter, they shouldn't be teaching. James says, not many of you should be teachers. That, too, would contradict verse 26. All through the remainder of the chapter, he points out that their unordered service is completely contrary to the kind of worship outlined in God's Word, and God wants detailed order in worship. So he ends the chapter by saying, let all things be done decently and in order. And the book of Revelation is a book that teaches us much about the detailed liturgy of our worship, our order. When Jesus called us to pray, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. He's not just saying, okay, you can do your own thing on Sunday. I'm just talking about Monday through Saturday. No, he's talking about Sunday. He meets, he's in the Spirit on the Lord's Day and the rest of this book is taking place on the Lord's Day. It's instructing us about things on the Lord's Day and he's saying, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Our earthly worship needs to be patterned after the heavenly worship. Jeffrey Myers says Moses is warned by Yahweh to model the worship of the tabernacle exactly according to the pattern shown him on Mount Sinai. Exodus 25. 9 and 40, Hebrews 8, verse 5. Similarly, in the new age, since Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension, heaven and earth are united when the Lord gathers His church to worship on Sunday. There is a real sense in which the assembled church worships in heaven. Hebrews 12, verse 22. The Lord's day is an eschatological foretaste of heavenly existence. Now, it should be. I don't think it always is. But it should be. Well, if this is true, then it's a slam dunk that our church worship should be liturgical. Numerous scholars have demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt that the worship of Revelation is planned, scripted, and led for united corporate involvement. As Myers summarizes, when the Apostle John was privileged to observe heavenly worship, as he records for us in Revelation, he saw an orderly, formal service performed by angels, living beings, and the 24 elders. They repeated various rituals and ritual responses. They alternated responses antiphonally. They sang hymns in unison. They fell down together in a prearranged liturgical action. They jointly recited prayers of praise and thanksgiving that must have been precomposed and memorized. GK Beals' commentary massively cites, well anyway, he cites numerous scholars that claim that John borrowed ideas from current church practice and synagogue practice to describe heavenly worship as if this is John's idea instead of a revelation from God. And Beal says, no, you got it completely backwards. The early church had that kind of worship because it was borrowing it from heaven. But there's clearly a connection if you read both history and if you read the scriptures. So if you want to go back to early church worship, go back to ordered liturgy. And I know I've spent a lot of time on this, but with all of the worship wars going on in the United States, I think you need to have a solid exegetical basis for your opinions. It is my belief that the worship of Revelation is the same as the worship of the early church, which is the same as the worship of the synagogue system in the Old Testament. It is worship according to the heavenly pattern. Now, I'll hasten to say that the fact that it is liturgical does not mean it can't be done with energy, enthusiasm, emotion, meaning, heartfelt love. It can. This liturgical worship involved the whole being of these worshipers. After seeing all that God had done for them, how could they not offer back up to God their entire lives and their hearts? I love the statement made by William Sucker back in 1899. He said, a drop of praise is an unsuitable acknowledgment for an ocean of mercy. And I might add that worship that is not well thought out is unworthy of offering unworthy and unsuitable acknowledgement of the incredible plan of salvation that God has given for us. But in any case, these saints don't just have a drop of praise. When we looked at chapter 4, we saw their worship was wholehearted. I'm not going to repeat what we said in that chapter, but let me just ask some questions of the text here. Did it involve their minds? Well, very obviously, yes. It took some thought for someone to compose the liturgy, and the people that are reciting the liturgy are obviously saying it with meaning. And they're saying it enthusiastically. And of course, 1 Corinthians 14 says we must worship with our understanding, pray with our understanding, bless with our understanding. Our minds must be in gear. The Holy Spirit does not bypass the mind. He heightens the mind's grasp of reality. Second question, did worship still involve their voices? Yes. Verses 8, 9, 12, 13 imply that the voices are fully engaged. In fact, in verse 12, it says, They recited the liturgy with a great voice. New King James translates it with a loud voice. Their voices are fully engaged. Third, were their bodies engaged? Yes, they were. And I've listed in your outlines, these two chapters show that they sat sometimes. Chapter 4, verse 4. Sitting down is okay. They stood sometimes. They fell on their knees sometimes. So their bodies were engaged as well. Other scriptures talk about raising your hands to heaven in worship. This sermon should not be seen as being in conflict with anything that we talked about in Revelation chapter four. But there's one more worship war issue that this passage settles quite clearly and that is who should be worshiped. Believe it or not, I've run across a lot of people who insist you may only pray to the Father, worship the Father, sing to the Father, and I've even run across Reformed people who have said this. It is non-confessional, but it is quite common. They say that our prayers and our worship must be done in the name of Christ and by the power of the Spirit, but only be addressed to the Father. And they point to John 4, verse 23, which says that true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. And we say, well, yeah. If we worship the Father, that's the kind of worship that was going on in Revelation chapter 4. If Jesus and the Spirit are pointing to the Father and saying, worship the Father, obviously that's going to be our emphasis, but where does the Father point? He points to the Son, and He glorifies the Son, and He points to the Holy Spirit. So, I think it's a false dichotomy, and I think this chapter is so clear on that question. Who is worshiped in this chapter? It is Jesus. You cannot get away from it. Every word of praise and adoration in this chapter is given to Jesus. Every act of bowing and standing is done before Jesus. Every form of worship done here is done to Jesus. Jesus is worshipped in exactly the same way that the father was worshipped in chapter four. Why? Because he's equally part of the Godhead, right? He's equal in power and glory. And thus, in this chapter, Jesus is explicitly said to be worthy of all worship and honor and praise, not as to His manhood, but as to His divine person. And because it's such a wonderful passage, let me just read it to you again, so you can see this wonderful worship of Jesus. And when He took the scroll, the four living beings, and who takes the scroll? It's Jesus, isn't it? When He took the scroll, the four living beings, And the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each having harps and golden bowls full of incenses, which are the prayers of the saints. So notice that they're even delivering the prayers to Jesus, even the prayers. And they sing, verse nine, they sing a new song saying, you are worthy to take the scroll. Who are they talking about? They're talking about Jesus. You are worthy to take the scroll to open its seals because you were slaughtered and have redeemed us to God by your blood out of every tribe and language and people and ethnic nation. and you have made them kings and priests to our God and they will reign on the earth. And I looked and I heard as it were the voice of many angels around the throne and the living beings and the elders and their number was ten thousand times ten thousand and a thousand thousand saying with a great voice worthy is the lamb who was slaughtered to receive the power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing And every creature which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and those upon the sea, and everything in them, I heard them all say, to Him who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb." So here they are equally including the Father and the Son. "...to Him who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb, the blessing, and the honor, and the glory, and the power forever and ever. Amen. And the four living beings say the Amen." and the elders fell and did obeisance." Now, with such clear worship being given to Jesus, you might wonder, why would so many Christians say that you can't pray to Jesus, praise Jesus, worship Jesus, sing to Jesus, adore Jesus? Well, it's a misinterpretation of John 16, 23 through 24. Those two verses say, and in that day you will ask me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. Until now, you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. People have sometimes misinterpreted that to mean no one is supposed to pray to Jesus. They say, just look at it. It's clear in the text. In that day, you will ask me nothing. Most assuredly, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. They say, see, you can only ask the Father. You can only pray to the Father. You cannot pray to the Son. So, wow, yeah, seems pretty clear. Well, the reason it's puzzling is because the word ask, there's two different Greek words that are quite different. The first is not pray. The second ask is pray. And I won't get into it, but just read Matthew Henry's. I think most of you have Matthew Henry's commentary. D.A. Carson has good comments on as any number of commentaries that do. But there are two Greek words used. Jesus was simply saying that because they were will be illuminated by the Holy Spirit, they will no longer continue to be asking dumb questions like they have been asking. But will they pray to the Jesus? Yes, of course, they'll pray to Jesus. But he's no longer going to be the source of information. The spirit's going to be the sport. He's going to inspire them. Okay, that's what he's saying. Now, of course, I've heard others say that the Father and the Son may be worshipped, but nowhere in the scripture are we commanded to worship the Holy Spirit. Well, in your outlines, I've given you some scriptures that show that the Holy Spirit is equally worshipped. The Holy Spirit is very explicit. The Holy Spirit lifted Ezekiel up from the earth and an authorized voice worships this Holy Spirit saying, blessed is the glory of Jehovah from his place. Now think about it this way. If the Son proceeds from the Father and if the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, then there's going to be a a connection between them. When you bow before one, you're going to be bowing before the others. Even symbolically, this is true. The seven eyes on the Lamb, on Jesus, were the Holy Spirit. So when people bow before the Lamb, they're bowing before the Holy Spirit, and since both Spirit and Son are in the midst of the throne, they're bowing before the Father at the same time, right? So even though you can distinguish between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, they're not three gods. It's so important we understand they are one God in three persons, and you cannot separate them. Since they're all fully God, equal in power and glory, they're equally worthy of worship. And this has always been the position of the church. The Council of Constantinople in the year 381 A.D. made clear that the Holy Spirit is divine and that He, quote, with the Father and the Son is equally worshiped and glorified. Our Westminster Confession says the same thing. Religious worship is to be given to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. semicolon, and to him alone. The whole Godhead is a hymn, and each person of that Godhead is worshiped. Those who object to our singing the doxology to the three persons of the Godhead, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are failing to appreciate the consistent doctrinal position of the church for the last 2,000 years. Now I'm not going to get into all of the details of it. But I'll just comment on one more verse. Actually, I'll quote a couple of other commentators. 2 Corinthians 3.14 passage, Albert Barnes wrote about it. It is a prayer, and if it is a prayer addressed to God, it is no less so to the Lord Jesus and to the Holy Spirit. If so, it is right to offer worship to the Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Lorraine Bettner says much the same. He says that 2 Corinthians 13-14 is a prayer addressed to Christ for His grace, to the Father for His love, and to the Holy Spirit for His fellowship. Augustus Strong, Reformed Baptist, said, if apostolic benedictions are prayers, then we have here a prayer to the Spirit. Now I know people have been curious about that. That's why I dug into it a little bit more depth. All three persons worthy. Now let me just conclude with a few more thoughts to wrap up. Worship wars usually result because people have not looked at the whole picture in scripture. They park on one or two verses and ignore several others that are quite clear, but we should always be wary of interpretations that just camp on a few verses. It's sort of like taking a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle and fitting together 50 and say, see how perfectly we have fitted together 50 of these pieces And they say, that's it. That's the picture. And I have known Reformed people who do have a good picture. They've got 50 pieces. They've got the trunk of the elephant. But then they criticize others for using the whole 1,000 pieces that are in that as if they are not following the scripture. No, it's because they're reductionistic that they see these differences. And this is one of the problems I have with Jeffrey Meyer's book. He's got a lot of the puzzles, more than the 50, but boy, he ends up ending up in legalism as well. So we just need to be careful on this. As we look at future cameos on worship in this book, we're going to discover that worship forms an integral part of spiritual warfare, for example. OK? And a lot of definitions of worship don't get into that. Anyway, let's at least commit ourselves to embracing each of the points here. And on the back of your outlines, I've got in some fill-in-the-blank words. And I'm going to give you 12 quick applications. First, prepare for worship by asking God for grace to worship. If we come into worship doing only what we can do, it will not get past the ceiling. God wants us to have supernatural worship. Second, since God is glorified by every living person worshiping God, let's start at a very early age teaching our children to worship at home so that they can enter more fully into worship in church. If you've got ideas on how we can improve on that, let us know. Let the elders know. We really want to help on that. Now, it's not that all of the teaching is going to be understood. It doesn't have to be. It's not that the hymns need to be understood. It doesn't have to be. But in some ways, how do we involve them? You know, when we started the church, we had shakers. We had different ways of involving the kids. And we may go back to some of those things. But if we can involve them more, we do want to. Third, let's be like the moon in our worship, reflecting the light of His Scriptures. The Holy Spirit gave us the Scriptures, and so we know those are appropriate to reflect back to Him. They're tools. When you pray, I would just caution you, don't just read long sections, especially if they're written as a prayer, that's fine to pray. Turn the passages that you are focusing on into prayers. That's a better way of doing it. It needs to be Scripture grounded, not necessarily just a long passage of Scripture to read. But do reflect back the Scripture. And there's lots of prayers in the Bible that can model doing that. Fourth, let's be more and more conscious of being before the heavenly throne when we worship. We can approach God's throne with boldness because of Christ, but the more conscious we become of what we are approaching, the more it makes sense that we need to have everything regulated by His Word. Fifth, don't despise liturgy. You may be unwittingly despising the heavenly liturgy of the angels and saints described in this chapter. Sixth, ask the Holy Spirit to grip your heart with the scriptures to enable you to rise above the flesh. and to pray and sing and listen in the power of the Holy Spirit. Even liturgy needs to be engaged in with the power of the Spirit. Seventh, rejoice in the newness and freshness of the worship model to us in Revelation. God doesn't care for vain repetitions, and some of the liturgical worship services that I've been to, they do the same thing, every worship service, year after year, and it's almost like a vain repetition as far as I'm concerned. we want to have freshness in our readings and freshness in our prayers. And so pray for the elders. We're trying to develop, you know, new responsive readings. It's a lot tougher than you think. We're not satisfied necessarily that all of our readings really capture the heart and lift them up to to God, but pray as we try to develop that because I think God loves, you look through the worship services in the book of Revelation, I think he loves freshness. Now there is repetition, it's okay to have repetition, but boy, it gets old after a while if it's too repetitious. So pray for us. Eighth, when you recommend music to us, make sure that it's God-centered, that it's richly grounded in the word, and that the music fits the lyrics. Now, I haven't even commented on music fitting the lyrics, and I'm not going to, well, maybe I will, just briefly. The Bible talks about how music needs to fit the lyrics. The more I have studied the tunes that God has put right into the Hebrew diacritical marks in the Old Testament, I have been absolutely blown away with how sensitive the music is to the words, to the lyrics. They're quite different in the various songs. Just try to think about that. I wonder how amazing and how wonderful is worship going to be 5,000 years from now when they've had tons of time to improve upon the worship that's going along. But we can at least be a part of the process. We're still in the infancy of the church, at least I think we are. And if that's the case, hey, we can put up with a lot of differences amongst churches as we're wrestling our way forward. But let's be a part of the process of improving our serve. Ninth, try to gain a new appreciation for the corporate dimension of worship. We're all together with one voice enthusiastically. We're reciting, singing, praying, admonishing. I think you guys did a great job today on getting your voices in there. There's something wonderful about the enthusiasm and the energy when we come before the Lord in our worship. Now I've quoted for you in the past, and I tried to find it. I couldn't find the quote. But the early church fathers talking about the responses of their congregation sounding like rolling thunder. They sent shivers up their spine. You get the impression from their writings that sent shivers up their spine as the congregation was really entering into the worship. So verse 13 speaks of their united recitation, being with a great voice or a loud voice. And I think most of you are really excelling in doing that with energy. Some of you, I think, could improve. But at least appreciate the corporate unity that is implied in the worship. And connected with this 10th application, let's not forget the corporate amen. I think it's very interesting that verse 14 in the Greek speaks of the living being saying the amen. as if amen is a distinct part of the worship service. And it is, it is. There's singing, there's recitation, there's preaching, and there is the amen. And sometimes there can be confusion as to when that can come in. Now, obviously, as individuals, you can say amen anytime. But there is a corporate dimension to amen that I think needs to be very, very consistent, and it's most appropriately given after the introductory blessing, at the end of every prayer, at the conclusion of the message, and at the end of the benediction. And we elders probably need coaching on how to give you hints that it's time to say that amen, you know, when we come in, we're not always doing that. But I try to say amen at the end of every sermon to give you an opportunity to respond with an earth-shaking amen. I'm gonna do that at the end of this sermon, which is wrapping up in less than a minute. So be prepared, okay? 10th, discipline your mind to not wander. Worship with your whole being to the best of your ability. 11th, though most of our prayers do go to the Father, get used to worshiping and speaking to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And then 12th, ask God to help you grow in worship week by week. Amen. Amen. Hallelujah. Father, we thank you for the privilege that we have of worshiping you. that you did not cast us away as a rag. When we consider how inadequate our worship is, it'd be easy for us to imagine you not allowing us into your present, just telling us to get out of here, and yet you have invited us. And we thank you that you sent your Holy Spirit into our lives knowing full well our worship is imperfect, and yet your Holy Spirit hudders prayers that bypass our prayers sometimes and makes them more perfect. And that your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, intercedes on our behalf and enables our worship to be perfected through his merits. You are so awesome, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We love you. And we're grateful to you for the privilege of being your sons and your daughters, for the privilege that we have of being priests and calling others to worship you and bringing them into reconciliation with you and to be kings and to rule here upon the earth. We're so grateful, Father, so grateful. And so I pray in weeks to come, that you would help us to step heavenward, to more and more press into this upward calling, into the ideal of worship. We have not arrived, but we want to keep pressing forward. And so we pray for your blessing. And even as we close out the service with this last song that we sing, may your spirit fill our hearts with joy as we sing it to you and to each other. In Jesus' name, amen.