Josh Broward
August 6, 2006
Last week we read Revelation 3 where Jesus says to the church in Laodicia, “Look! Here I am. I stand at the door and knock. If you hear me calling and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal as friends” (Rev. 3:20).
This week Jesus calls our attention to an open door to heaven.1 Even when our doors are closed to Jesus, His doors are always open to us. Jesus calls out to John, “Hey! Come on up here, and let Me show you what’s going on.”
The Spirit brings John straight into the throne room of heaven. John sees the throne and someone sitting on the throne, but he can barely describe what he sees.2 God is like one great big diamond shining in His own light. An emerald colored rainbow surrounds His throne.
Throne is a really important word in Revelation. John uses the word throne 47 times. Different people or things – good and bad – sit on different kinds of thrones. But here we see THE throne – God’s throne in heaven, and God sits on this throne.
This chapter is like an anchor point for the whole book of Revelation. At the heart of everything, God is King on his throne.3 Later in Revelation, John is going to describe some really bad scenes on the earth, and he wants the churches (and us) to know that even though all of this junk is going to happen, God is still the King. No one has knocked Him off His throne. No person, no thing, no event, no cause can take God’s place as King and Ruler of the universe. God is forever “the One who sits on the throne.” This is the key to life.
Let’s look at what is happening around God’s throne. 24 elders are sitting on smaller thrones around His throne (v. 4). The 24 are the leaders of the 12 tribes of Israel and the 12 apostles, and they circle God’s throne as the representatives of all God’s people. They are all wearing white robes and gold crowns. They have conquered. They are victorious. They have passed through the great tribulation of life, and they wear the robes only Christ can give. God has blessed them with the victor’s crown.
There are 7 torches representing the perfect fullness of God’s Spirit (v. 5). Lightning and thunder come from God’s throne (v. 5). Even in heaven where we can look at God face to face, he is still awe-inspiring.
“In front of the throne was a shiny sea of glass, sparkling like crystal” (v.6). In the Bible the ocean often represents chaos. In this shaky world, we often feel like we are floating on a stormy sea, tossed up and down by the chaos of life. When John sees heaven, he sees an ocean that is as smooth as glass. There is not even a teeny, tiny ripple on this sea. God has brought complete peace. God has totally dominated and pacified chaos and destruction.
Amazingly, when John sees the new Jerusalem at the end of Revelation, the sea is gone, and the buildings of the new Jerusalem sparkles like crystal (21:11). Could it be that God takes all of the chaos and junk of life, calms it, and then reforms it, recycles it to make the joyful walls of heaven out of what was our pain? What caused us pain is rehabilitated into the most beautiful city we have ever seen! That sure sounds like God to me!
And now for the first really weird thing in Revelation: Four strange beings prowl around God’s throne – a lion (king of the beasts), a cow (king of domesticated animals), a human (highest of all created animals), and an eagle (king of the birds).4 They each have six wings, and the wings are covered with eyes, meaning that they can see everything everywhere. But the main point of these strange unearthly creatures is not what they look like but what they say. They see everything (all of life’s joy and all of life’s sorrow), and yet “Day after day and night after night they keep on saying: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty – the one who always was, who is, and who is still to come’” (v. 8).
There is no one and no thing like God! He is holy, completely separate and beyond anything or anyone else. He is eternal. He always was. He always is, and He’s not finished yet. God is still coming even more.
When the 24 elders (who represent all of God’s people) hear this song of praise, they get down off their thrones.5 They fall down on the ground. They fall face down on the ground before God. They don’t hold anything back. They don’t care what anyone thinks. They worship God with all of their bodies. They submit everything they are to God. They “worship the one who lives forever and ever” (v. 10) with full-bodied, full-hearted worship.
Then, they lay their crowns in front of God’s throne. Their crowns are their own glory. These are the things that say they are important, the things that other people look at to see that they are special, their accomplishments, their successes, their achievements, the things they are most proud of. For us in our world, our crowns might be trophies, diplomas, degrees, awards, Super Bowl rings, wedding rings, pictures of our kids in our wallets, academic awards, bank books, or gold stars from the teacher. These saints take all of their “glory,” all of their crowns, everything that says they are worth something, and they lay it before God. They say, “No, God you are the One who is worth all glory. Anything that I have You have given me. Any good thing that I have ever done, any good thing that has ever happened to me is all because of You. I lay it all before You. It all belongs to You, not me or anyone else!”
In this act of worship, these 24 elders (and all of God’s people who worship like them) are rebelling against the rulers of this world. True worship is subversive to earthly status quo. Revelation talks so much about thrones because so many people and things want to rule on the thrones of our world. In John’s world and Jesus’ world the Roman government made people say “Hail Caesar! Caesar is King and God.” Hitler made people say, “Heil Hitler!” In our current world, no one human person is calling us to hail him as the ultimate king, but we still have thrones. We have our own cries of allegiance:6
“All hail the stock market! You are worthy of all our hopes and fears.”
“All hail sports and entertainment! You are worthy of our time, our passion, and our energy.”
“All hail professional success! You are worthy of everything I am. I sacrifice everything else to you.”
“All hail our bodies! You are worthy of our time, money, and effort. Diets, pills, gym memberships, tanning beds, whitening creams, and spandex are small prices to pay to look good.
“All hail the kids! Your educational success is worth any and all costs.”
“All hail romance! You are worth my very identity. I’ll give up anything if you make me feel loved.”
When these 24 elders fall face down before God and give Him their crowns, they are participating in the basic Christian rebellion against the ruling powers of this world. Christian worship shouts that God alone is worthy. “You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created everything, and it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created” (v. 11).
These great worship leaders forget themselves all together. They don’t remember their former sinfulness. They don’t remember their former success. All they can think of is giving praise to God and thanking Him for His goodness.
God is like a great magnet that draws out our worship. When we really see God for who He is, we naturally worship Him. Chapters 4 and 5 slowly move toward a great climax of worship. First, the 4 living beings worship God (4:8). Then, the 24 elders fall down and worship God (4:10-11, 5:8-10). Next, thousands and millions of angels join in the singing (4:11-12). Finally, “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea” sings in worship to God (5:13). God is a great magnet, an eternal sponge drawing out the worship of everyone and everything in the world. He is worthy of our worship both now and forever, and He will get our worship because He draws it out of us.
When worship God together on Sunday mornings, we are joining in the eternal, heavenly worship of God. We aren’t just singing by ourselves. We are singing with all Christians everywhere. We are singing with all the angels. We are singing with everything that was ever made, plant, animal, and rock. Everything everywhere sings out in worship of God: “Holy, holy, Lord God Almighty! You are worthy to receive glory and honor and power forever!”
But if we worship God just on Sunday mornings, we are truly missing the point of worshipping God. God doesn’t want our worship if it’s only one day a week. He wants our worship 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. He wants us to live lives of worship. Paul said, “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship” (Romans 12:1). This day, today living for God is our spiritual act of worship. Every day is an act of worship. Every minute we live for God is an act of worship. Every time we choose God’s way, we bow down and lay our crowns at the feet of Jesus. Every time we act with love and speak a word of kindness, we cry “Holy, holy, holy.”
This week, as part of my research about this passage which talks about casting our crowns before the throne, I researched the Christian band Casting Crowns. One of their newest songs is “Lifesong.” The idea is that our lives become a song of worship to God. Below the title, the band leader, Mark Hall, wrote: “Worship is so much more than the songs I sing. Instead, worship is in the heart that lifts the song. If you think about it, worship began when I woke up this morning. My life purpose is to give God glory through everything I do. If my life does not worship Him, my songs don't either.”
Let me read some of the lyrics of “Lifesong” to you:
Empty hands held high -
Such small sacrifice.
If not joined with my life,
I sing in vain tonight.
May the words I say
And the things I do
Make my lifesong sing,
Bring a smile to you.
Let my lifesong sing to you.
Let my lifesong sing to you.
I want to sign your name to the end of the this day,
Knowing that my heart was true.
Let my lifesong sing to you.
The picture in Revelation 4 is a picture of eternal worship. “Day after day and night after night they keep on” worshiping God. Eternal means forever – as in nothing left out. We can begin the eternal worship now by worshiping God every minute of every day, by living lives of worship. Leave nothing out. Live an eternal life. Live an eternal worship. Live every minute, and live every minute as worship!
We are going to practice this eternal worship in a few minutes by singing some more worship songs together. This is worship, but this is the fuel or the practice for living lives of worship. Let’s sing with all our hearts, and live with all our hearts – all in worship of our great God!
Before we sing, I want you to listen to the song, “Lifesong” by Casting Crowns.
Lord, let our lives sing in praise to you!
1 See Pat Marvenko Smith’s idea of what this looks like at: http://www.revelationillustrated.com/shop/image04.asp.
2 See Smith’s painting at: http://www.revelationillustrated.com/shop/image05.htm.
3 Eugene Boring, Revelation, Interpretation (Louisville, KY: Knox, 1989), 102.
4 Boring, 107.
5 See Smith’s picture of this at: http://www.revelationillustrated.com/shop/image06.htm.
6 Dan Boone, Answers for Chicken Little, (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill, 2005), 43-44.
1 comment:
Excellent reflection on worship. I am presently doing a series on Revelation and needed some futher insights on worship especially as it relates to the opposing powers. Thanks very much. Isnt Revelation a most exciting gift to us from our Lord.
Post a Comment