Worship: Revelation 4

Introduction: Wasting time with Father
John was a dangerous man.  As a Christian leader he was preaching a dangerous message that encouraged people to be different, and thus he was seen as a threat to the community.  So he was sentenced to spend some time on Patmos (maybe in a labour camp). Patmos is a small island in the Aegean Sea – between Greece and Turkey. It was probably inhabited by no more than a thousand people.  Maybe John was the only Christian; maybe there were a few other believers.... whether he was all alone or whether there was  a small group, John was worshipping on the Lord's day.  That might have felt like a waste of time; if you have to spend every day labouring in a quarry, why spend your little bit of spare time worshipping?  But it's vital that we are prepared to waste time with God, individually and with other Christians.  We'll come back to the idea of one-to-one time with our heavenly Father; I want to look at corporate worship, the times we spend together with Father... Because as John took time to worship (I believe with a few others)  he was “in the spirit” - he had an intense Holy Spirit experience that caught him up into heaven. 

1.  We need to expect encounter
In 4. 2 he hears again the Voice of God who says “Come up here..come up and see....”  What began possibly as  an ordinary Sunday, became a time of intense encounter with God by the Spirit.  And one of the features of this heavenly experience was that he witnessed the worship of heaven.  He describes a bit of that in this chapter, and some more in chapter 5, and again in  7. 12; 11. 15-18; 14. 7; 15. 3f; 19. 5-7. Heaven is full of worship!  If you struggle with worship, if you feel that worship seems like a waste of time, you'd better get used to it, because you're going to be doing a lot of it in heaven!

It was the same for Isaiah – he says, “the year King Uzziah died I saw the Lord, high and lifted up and his train filled the temple” (Isa 6. 1)  From an ordinary day maybe reflecting on King Uzziah's foolish mistake of taking it upon himself to burn incense on the in the temple, Isaiah finds himself in the heavenly temple . 

We need to let every time of worship go beyond the routine, to anticipate a meeting with Father. We need to let every place where we gather, become a thin place, where there is no more than a curtain between us and the eternal, the invisible, the manifest presence of God.   We need to move from the prosaic and routine.  With angels and archangels and all the company of heaven we praise your holy name saying Holy Holy Holy Lord god of hosts....   We desperately need to recover  a sense of occasion.  That is NOT the same as a forced sense of reverence: it comes rather, from a sense of awe and wonder at the reality of the Lord's presence and a sense of expectancy that he is here and going to touch our lives.

2.  Eternal:
There is a timeless eternal quality about worship that incorporates both old and new. Much of what Isaiah and John describe was part of the temple worship of the Old Testament.    When we worship, we are entering in through the veil into the “holy of holies”.  The praise of the heavenly host in 4. 8 begins with a direct quote from Isaiah 6. 3.  Six hundred years of time, both open onto the same spot in eternity... We need to value the old and the new as we come together to worship God.  And that is not just a matter of pleasing different groups within the fellowship. It is deeper than that. It is about reflecting the eternal, timeless, ever old and ever new nature of our god. Jesus said that a scribe trained for the Kingdom brings out of his treasure both old and new things. (Matthew 15. 52)

4.  Style
John saw a throne in heaven.  The person sitting there looked like red and coffee coloured gemstones. There was a rainbow around the throne that looked like an emerald..  and on twenty-four other thrones,  sat twenty-four elders wearing white robes and gold victor's crowns on their heads.  Flashes of lightning, and peals of thunder came from the throne. There were seven flaming torches, which are the seven spirits of God.  In front of the throne was something like a sea of glass as clear as crystal. Around the throne were four living creatures: one like a lion, one like an ox, one with face like a human, one like a flying eagle..  (v. 1-7) There is a lot of colour and imagery, sound...  

Worship never stops.  The living creatures were constantly shouting out, Holy Holy Holy. And as they did, the elders fell down, and threw their crowns before the throne of God, then they too spoke out “Worthy!”  In chapter 5, they sang, and were joined by a crowd too big to number. There was action, there was drama. A non-stop, living choreography of adoration..... a flow that is both spontaneous and ordered, where everyone know the right way to respond.   Whole being is included: body and emotions as well as mind. 

John was caught up in all this.  He says in (Rev. 1.17) that he fell at the feet of Jesus like a dead man.  In chapter 5, he says he cried when no-one was found who cloud open the scroll.  In the same way Isaiah responded to what he saw.   

5.  Content:
The way worship was expressed may have been full of colour and variety, but the focus was always truth. The twenty four elders and the four living creatures seem to know their Bibles! That's because the truth of God's word is eternal truth – rooted in the realities in the heavenlies.  Jesus says those who worship God must worship him in spirit and in truth. (John 4. 24)  The truths that heavenly worship focussed on were:

Who God is: the Almighty, who was and who is and who is to come!” (Rev 4. 8); the Lord of Hosts (Isa 6. 3);
What God has done: “you created all things, and because of your desire they existed, and were created!” (Rev. 4. 11);  You are worthy  for you were killed, and bought us for God with your blood, out of every tribe, language, people, and nation. (Rev. 5. 9)
The finally on how that what he has done to us.  “You made us kings and priests to our God, and we will reign on earth. (Rev. 5. 10)

Worship that takes us into the presence of God will be rooted in truth. It will be rooted in Scripture and in good theology.  It will focus in particular on who God is, and on what God has done in creation and salvation.  It will focus on the big truths!  

Conclusion: what wasting time with Father achieves
we don't worship to get educated about the word – although learning from scripture can be a significant part of our worship.
we don't worship to soften people up so they will respond to the word
we don't worship in order to feel good
we don't worship in order to get healed
we don't worship in order to make anything happen
we worship simply to spend time with father together; to encounter him. 
But, none the less, when we worship God, something happens. Worship changes us! 

It moves us from despair to hope.  Rev. 5. 10 says “They will reign on earth.”  Jesus is coming back to establish God's Kingdom permanently and triumphantly. Isaiah 6. 1 says, “In the year king Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and lifted up...”   It wasn't Uzziah on the throne any more, or messing around offering incense.   The Lord reigns! That is an intensely hopeful message.  The writer of Psalm 73 wonders why bad people prosper and what's the point of living right, “until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end”. (v. 17) 

It moves us from denial to repentance  Isaiah's experience in the thin place, led him to say “Woe is me for I am a man of unclean lips... (Isa 6. 5) and to be touched by the burning coal from the altar.  At the centre of worship is “The lamb has been slain.”  (Rev 5. 6)

It moves us from survival to mission. John got off Patmos eventually and wrote down what he had seen to encourage God's people and to invite the outsiders to come to Jesus. “let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.” (Rev. 22. 17)   Isaiah heard God say who will I send?” And Isaiah says “Here I am. Send me!” 

© Gilmour Lilly November 2012