Revelation & Worship 3

REV 4:1  After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this."

2  At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.

3  And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.

4  Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.

5  From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God.

6  Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back.

7  The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle.

8  Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."

9  Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever,

10  the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:

11   "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being."

I have noticed a trend in charismatic circles in the last ten or fifteen years that many of the songs that are sung are, what I would call singing to one another about God, or encouraging one another regarding some area of Christian endeavor. They could be called “ME” songs.  Very little of what is sung is actually worship, where God is exalted and glorified. Very little is speaking directly to Jesus about who he is and what he means to us. On one occasion when we visited an Eastern Orthodox Church I was able to talk at length with the priest. I didn’t ask the question but he seemed to perceive what I was thinking as my eyes roamed about the sanctuary looking at all the icons of the saints that covered the walls. He said, “We believe that all worship takes place in heaven, when we open the liturgy saying: ‘blessed be the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, now and forever, unto the ages of ages, amen.’ We believe at that point we are entering into the heavenly realm and from there we worship the Lord—heaven to heaven. Heaven is outside the realm of time and space and the icons remind us of the great cloud of witnesses that the Bible says surround us and witness what we are doing. We worship together with them.”  (not an exact quote) I immediately understood that they are at least touching a revelation of worship that is woefully lacking in today’s churches. I’m not suggesting that we all run off and join up with Orthodox Churches, but what I am suggesting is that we re-visit what worship really means and how and where we do it.

The next thing I noticed in my trips through Revelation and focusing on worship was, in all of the five places where it is mentioned that God is being worshiped, in every case there is reference to bodily action.

I heard Derek Prince say that every Hebrew and Greek word translated worship has to do with bodily action, from bowing, kneeling, kissing the hand, to prostration.

In 4:10 the twenty four elders fall down on their faces…mainly falling on their faces and cast their crowns before the throne.

Then in 7:11-15 it says, “all the angels stood around the throne and the elders and the four living creatures, and fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God,” We see that in the midst of all this one of the elders asks him, “

"Who are these arrayed in white robes, and where did they come from?"

John, of course doesn't have a clue. The elder answers "These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.  Therefore they are before the throne of God, and serve Him day and night in His temple. And He who sits on the throne will dwell among them.” Think of it! The martyrs have a position before the throne in the midst of the heavenly worshipers. If the Angels, living creatures, elders and martyrs all fall on their faces before the throne why are our earthly times of worship so seemingly devoid of any bodily action? Maybe we have not seen Him who is on the throne and received a revelation of his majesty and greatness. We tend to look at worship as something oriented toward ourselves and evaluated by what we get out of it and how we feel. So many times when I was pastoring I would hear people talk about a worship service in terms of what they received or if they didn’t feel anything then the service was somehow substandard. What is a worship service for anyway? It just occurred to me, why do we call it a worship service? That in itself reveals the misguided mentality behind it—a service? Who is being served?

Why do many churches today lower the lights during worship or have a light show going on over the worship team and behind the words on the jumbo-tron an ever changing landscape background? I have heard that some are actually using smoke machines—how interesting, is that to impress God or to illicit an emotional response in us?

Perhaps if we just seriously read some of these passages in the Revelation and considered who we are approaching in worship or prayer we might come with a different attitude. Think of the seraphim who worship before the throne, day and night, which is a way to explain to us that it goes on nonstop because there is no day or night there. They have six wings, and eyes all over them, the vision of what is before them is so majestic that they cover their faces and fall foreword before the throne crying out “Holy, Holy, Holy.” I remember hearing Jack Hayford say that every time they get up off their faces they are filled with such an overwhelming revelation of the one who is seated on the throne that they can do nothing but fall on their faces again saying, Holy, Holy, Holy. And they have been doing that for a long time.”

In the vision that Isaiah saw, the seraphim  cried out to one another, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!"

Concerning the word holy, [qadosh]  Alec Motyer in his superb work on Isaiah says, “Only here is the threefold repetition found, holiness is supremely the truth about God, and his holiness is in itself so far beyond human thought that a ‘super-superlative’ has to be invented to express it.”

Holy describes the complete otherness of God

The word seraph in Hebrew literally means burning ones.

Let’s ask the Holy Spirit to give us a glimpse of that scene as we come before him in prayer and worship.

(to be continued)