Celebrating God

Text: Revelation 4:1-11

Focus: Worship

Function: To help people see the importance of worship (here).

Form: Story Telling

Intro:

Happy New Year! Last year was pretty hard on us as a Church. But we are still here! And I thank God for that. Some pronounced us dead and or dying. And I don't blame them. It hasn't been easy.

But Jesus said that He will build His Church and the gates of hell cannot stop it. (Matthew 16:18)

We have a lot planned. You met Kathy Royer. You will also meet Dan Poole. They are two people from the district who are going to help us find out more about ourselves and find ways to bring about healing.

And in prayer, and by the witness of The Holy Spirit, in conversation with Karen Garrett, our Leadership Team chair we are going to focus on the basic fundamentals of Christianity.

We want to get back to what it really means to be a Christian. So, for the first 3 months of this year, instead of the Lectionary, we are going to look at basic themes like Worship, Bible Study, Prayer, Going to Church, Simple living, Service toward God and others, Fasting and Giving.

And that sounds like a lot, but what we are really doing is trying to keep it simple.

There is a section of this book (hold up Simply Christian) that is titled “Reflecting the Image (of Jesus).”

After all, that is what Christians are, the image of Jesus.

And throughout these three months one thing will be evident. It is about God, not Us. And it all starts with Worship of God.

And, I need to disclose that most of my material is not going to be original. I am seeing it through the lens of a mind much more profound than mine. The mind of Bishop N. T. Wright. Of course, he isn't so hifalutin that he goes by that title. His people know him as Pastor Tom.

Worship is different than entertainment. Movies, football, basketball, soccer, theater and music is entertainment. But you are not coming to be entertained. Worship is about us proclaiming TO GOD, His worth.

And here is why: When we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. To not have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven’t yet really understood who He is or what He has done.

The best way to discover worship is to join in and find out. However, many people who do that for a while, or even for their whole lives, find themselves getting stuck in the routine. (ANYONE?)

But that isn't all bad. Perhaps they begin to ask deeper questions: What does it all mean? Why do we do it? And many who don’t join in with worship, or who used to but stopped a long time ago, remain puzzled as to the point of it all. For people in any of these categories, and indeed for people who enjoy worship but want to go deeper, a good place to start is with our text, the fourth and fifth chapters of the last book of the Bible, the Revelation of St. John.

Here we find ourselves eavesdropping on a majestic mystery. John the “seer," or prophet, is describing a vision he has seen. And John himself is something of a fly on the wall, peeping into the very throne room of God Himself. And we, we are watching the scene through his eyes. We are eaves-dropping it second hand, as it were.

The scene tells us a great deal about worshiping the one true God.

John has been privileged to watch something going on in heaven. This doesn’t mean that he has been fast-forwarded to some remote future.

At the end of Revelation, he describes the distant future. And it doesn’t look like this earlier vision at all. Nor does it mean that he’s been snatched off to some distant location far up in the sky Rather, when he says that “a door stood open in heaven,” he is insisting on one of the main points of the book of Revelation -namely that God’s sphere and ours are not far apart- and that at certain places and moments they interlock. (fingers interlocked)

Sometimes the boundary between them is like a thin partition, in which, to some people and at some times, a door is opened or a curtain pulled back, so that people in our dimension can see what’s going on in God's dimension.

What John sees in his vision is the regular life of heaven, the worship of God which, in that dimension, is going on all the time. What John sees is what is happening in heaven right now, as we speak.

It is an astonishing sight. John begins by describing God's throne -and cautiously- God himself.

Thunder and lightning are coming from the throne, telling us that this is a place of majesty and awesome glory Around the throne are representatives of both the animal kingdom and the world of humanity: the whole creation is worshiping God -for all He is worth. There are two songs sung. One by the animals and one by Humans and Animals. The animals are singing a song of God’s eternal holiness. It is a Song straight from our Hymnal. (SING)

Holy holy holy
Lord God the Almighty
Who wert and art and ever more shall be.

The scene that John depicts doesn’t stop with a single song of praise; in fact, the scene is only just beginning. The animal creation praises God ceaselessly; the humans join in. But now their song is fuller, because they have something more to say; they cast their crowns before God’s throne, not just to celebrate his greatness but also to express their understanding of why they, as His creatures, are right to offer him praise. A song that comes from Contemporary Christian music:

Thou Art Worthy, Thou Art Worthy, Though art Worthy, Oh Lord
To receive Glory, Honor and Power
For Thou hast Created all things, and for They pleasure, we are created, Oh Lord.

Here we see God’s world as it should be, God’s world as it already is within the dimension of heaven. All creation worships God; human beings, through their chosen representatives, worship God because they have grasped an essential secret: they know why God ought to be praised, and why they want to praise Him—because he has made everything.

This is the point at which many of us want to say: “But wait, the world is a mess! It’s all very well for people to praise God as creator -but look at the state of his creation! What is God going to do about it?”

And there is good news. And this is also right at the heart of what Christian worship is all about.

If you were afraid that saying to God: “What are you going to do about it?” is a form of blasphemy, don't be afraid. Because that it is exactly the reaction taking place before our eyes in the heavenly court itself.

At the start of the fifth chapter of Revelation, John notices that the figure on the throne is holding a scroll, which we gradually realize is the scroll of God’s future purposes, the purposes through which both the oppressor and the oppressed will get their justice and the world will be healed. Because that is the story of Revelation. The problem, however, is that nobody is able to open the scroll. The fact that we all have sinned and harmed others means that no creature is found who is worthy.

That does not mean that God isn't powerful enough.

Ever since Creation began, God has committed himself, to working through his creatures -in particular, through us, His image-bearing human beings- but they have all let him down.

And in heaven, for a moment it looks as though all God’s plans are going to be thwarted.

But then there appears, beside the throne, a different kind of animal. It is, we are told, a Lion; but then we are also told that He is a Lamb. To read Revelation, you have to get used to its kaleidoscopic imagery.

The beings are highly symbolic. The Lion is an ancient Jewish image for the Messiah, the king of Israel and the world. And The Lamb is the customary sacrificial offering for the sins of Israel and the world. Both these roles are combined in Jesus in a way that nobody had ever imagined before but that now makes perfect sense. And when He —the Lion/Lamb— appears, those who were already singing (the animals and the humans) turn their praise of God the Creator into their praise of God the Redeemer. God Himself takes on this dual role. Here are the words directly from the text:

“Thou are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth.”

Then, like a great concert with more choirs joining in from all directions, the angels take up the song:

“Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom arid might and honor and glory and blessing!”

And, at last, “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them” join in the song:

“To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might, forever and ever! Amen!”

AND THAT, that, is what Worship is all about! It is the glad shout of praise that arises to God the Creator and God the rescuer from the creation that recognizes its Maker and creation itself that acknowledges the triumph of Jesus the Lamb.

That is the worship that is going on in heaven, in God’s dimension, all the time. The question we ought to be asking is how best we might join in?

Because that is what we are supposed to do. And let’s get one thing clear before we go any further. There is always a suspicion that creeps into discussions of this kind, a worry that the call to worship God is rather like the order that goes out from a dictator whose subjects may not like him but have learned to fear him. “The Dictator wants an hundred thousand people to line the route for his birthday parade? Very well, he shall have them, and they will all be cheering and waving as if their lives depended on it —because, in fact, they do. Turn away in boredom, or don’t turn up at all, and it will be the worse for you.”

If it has crossed your mind that worshiping the true God is like that, let me offer you a very different model:

One Saturday afternoon, while I was bored I was flipping through the channels on TV. I caught the start of a couple's figure skating routine.

Now, generally, I would rather watch golf than figure skating, but something seemed to tell me to keep the channel there.

I am not a figure skating judge, but to me, for all intents and purposes, it was perfect. It was just the right music, just the right costumes, just the right choreography. The couple skated and danced as one. It was probably the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

It was so good that at the end of the routine, I found myself weeping.

And, it turned out that I was not the only one impressed by it. After the ovation, every single judge gave them a perfect “10.”

But maybe the most electrifying part was the ovation itself.

The performance was so beautiful that the audience just sat there for a moment, completely transfixed. They too, were stunned by the majesty of it. And finally, when they realized that they had witnessed something of unsurpassed beauty, they erupted into thunderous applause.

When you get to witness something of such incredible beauty, at the end, you feel like you are bigger, wiser, -like maybe you have just grown more mature.

That sort of response is pretty close to genuine worship. Something like that, but more so, is the mood of Revelation 4 and 5.

That is what, when we come to worship the living God, we are being invited to join in.

When something like that happens to you, you are aware of things in a new way. You are changed.

Worship changes us. lt’s a bit like falling in love. In fact, it is a kind of falling in love. And when you fall in love, when you’re ready to throw yourself at the feet of your beloved, what you desire, above all, is union.

This brings us to the first of two golden rules at the heart of spirituality. You become like what you worship. When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship.

Those who worship money become, eventually, human calculating machines. Those who worship sex become obsessed with their own attractiveness or prowess. Those who worship power become more and more ruthless. Those who worship anger, want to hear a message that makes them mad about somebody else. Those who worship excitement want to be entertained.

So what happens when you worship the Creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has been accomplished by the Lamb who was slain? The answer comes in the second golden rule: because you were made in God's image, worship makes you more truly human. It is biblical: Genesis 2, In the Image of God did God create Adam and Eve. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive.

The opposite is also true. When you give that same total worship to anything or anyone else, you shrink as a human being. It doesn't, of course, feel like that at the time. When you worship part of the creation as though it were the Creator himself—in other words, when you worship an idol-—you may well feel a brief “high.” But, like a hallucinatory drug, that worship achieves its effect at a cost: when the effect is over, you are less of a human being than you were to begin with. That is the price of idolatry.

The opportunity, the invitation, the summons is there before us: to come and worship the true God, the Creator, the Redeemer, and to become more truly human by doing so. Worship is at the very center of all Christian living.