As I said earlier, the question
that we're answering in this sermon today is, what do you
do in church? And we've come to that season
of the year when we have Santas and reindeers and all sorts of
other things that are just fairy tales. And then extraordinarily
mixed in with all this, we have these pictures of baby Jesus
and angels and stables and mangers. And I suppose no wonder there's
just so much confusion in this world, isn't it? Where is the
boundary between fact and fiction? If you actually put the Lord
Jesus together with Santa Claus, who's real? And inside the churches,
the confusion is made worse. We live in this age of tolerance
where you can do whatever you wish as long as you don't harm
me. It's spilled over into churches
in all the things they do. If you did a survey of all of
the churches in this town today and asked them what they were
doing, whether they were worshipping God, every single one of them
would say that that's what they're gathered for, that they're gathered
together to worship God. In fact, lots of churches have
people called worship leaders. Worship leaders have a special
job of actually sort of stirring up people with songs and things
that they would actually be built up into some sort of emotional
high, and then that's declared that the God, the Holy Spirit,
has now come and moved amongst them. He has descended on them.
at their invitation and now he's working there. Others will have
formal religious activities with candles and robes and impressive
rituals and as if to say that God has actually brought near
to us because of all these things. We were in two churches yesterday,
both of them, wherever you looked You couldn't look but see a stained
glass window with a statue of Jesus, a picture of Jesus in
it. And the more I looked, the more
grieved I became because these things that seem as if on the
outside they are designed to aid worship, according to God,
are idolatry. Because we worship God in spirit
and in truth. And some others have some deeply
intellectual lectures or essays, and they'll probe into the deep
things of existence and God, and as people are brought into
seeing the brilliance of the speaker and the wonder of it,
and because it's spiritual, they think that God must be in it.
And others will encourage acts of sacrifice and great acts of
kindness to the poor and needy, and we'll see big things happening.
And people will say, God must be in it. And as much as we can
see all of these things and be grieved about many of them, the
question that should lie before us all the time as Christians
is not to worry about what other people are doing. That's really
none of our business. The question is, what are we
doing? We can easily see the faults
in others. The question that my friend in India raised for
us is, what do we do in church? Do we worship God here? What do we do in church? And
it's a good question, not just a question for us to ask today,
but it's a good question for us to ask continually. In everything
we do, is God being worshipped in the things we do? And so what's
the solution to all this confusion? God gives us one very simple
solution. We actually turn to his word
and we seek God's guidance by the spirit. In all things we
go back to the Word of God and say, what does God say about
this? I'm not interested in the opinions of men and you shouldn't
be interested in my opinion. The only opinion that matters
is God's. Isaiah 8.20 says, To the law
and the testimony, to the Word of God, if they speak not according
to this Word, it is because there is no light in them. And so,
as I said earlier, I have a simple proposition before you as we
look at these songs of worship in Revelation chapters 4 and
5. If we know for sure that there
is true worship going on in heaven right now as we sit here in this
hall, then the question before us in terms of Christian worship
is, to what extent does our worship reflect the worship of heaven?
Would our song that we sing, would our praises to God, would
it be in harmony with what goes on in heaven right now? One of the things I've spoken
to you often about is one of my great delights in India was that
we had about 25 girls in our dorm when I was sort of 13 or
14 years old and we used to go on bus trips and every trip you
take in India is a long trip. But as the bus started to move
in our driveway, the girls would start to sing. And I actually
produced song sheets for them with lots of really wonderful
songs. So they'd sing and they would sing until we actually
stopped. And so often on the bus there were 27 or more girls
and a few ladies and there was me. And I couldn't help myself
but sing. All these beautiful voices were
raised up and there was this terrible croaky frog in the midst
of all of these angels singing and it was For me, I'm glad they,
I hope, I thought they drowned me out. Sometimes I actually
thought I sang well. But the reality is that amongst
all of those beautiful voices, mine was a voice of discord.
It didn't fit. It didn't fit at all. And so
the question for Christians, isn't it, is can we actually
take our praises of worship here? Can we take what we say about
who God is from here and have it fit into heaven as it's happening
right now and there be a beautiful harmony? Not like my voice on
the bus. Can there be beautiful harmony?
And the reality is that the scriptures make it very, very plain to us
over and over again that it is not in the providence, the purpose
of man for him to determine how God is to be worshipped. God
determines exactly how he will be worshipped and to worship
God in a way which suits man and is not in accord with God's
dictates is to not worship God at all. And in the Bible you
can, I'll just recall some of the stories. You remember when
David wanted to bring the ark to Jerusalem, a worthy and noble
thing to do. And he thought to himself and
all Israel gathered together, we're not going to bring this
ark up to Jerusalem on sticks. We're not going to carry it on
bits of wood. So they made a brand new cart and they had this huge
religious procession and they had music and cymbals and crowds. brand-new car and a man called
Uzza reached out and touched that ark because he thought that
God could not get his ark into Jerusalem without the help of
men. And God struck him dead straight
away. You remember the story of Korah
and Dathan. They thought that they could
actually worship God in their way. And the ground opened up
beneath them and swallowed them up. Levi's sons thought that
they, after the extraordinary rituals of anointing them as
God's priests, they thought that they could go into God's temple
and worship God in their way. And fire came out from the altar
of the Lord and killed them. And in the New Testament we have
the story of Ananias and Sapphira. They thought that they could
come before God and worship God by proclaiming the things that
they had done and the things that they had done and tried
to hide deceitfully what they were doing. And God did the same
thing to them as He did to the sons of Korah and Levi. He struck them dead. There was
no trial, no jury. God is not to be played games
with. And so that's why I think these
songs in Revelation are so special, because they actually show us
what Christian worship is about. In John chapter 4, this same
John records that the Lord Jesus said to the woman at the well
that God is spirit. And His people must worship Him
in spirit and in truth. They must worship Him. When God
says must, then God must create that. And so the word worship
is an interesting word. It comes from two old English
words. One is worth. or what is deserving, and the
other one is ship, isn't it? And so true worship is to actually
gaze at the worth of God and to be in awe and wonder at who
God is. As the psalmist says, be still
and know that I am God. So saving faith, as we've said
so often, is a heart knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ in his
true character as revealed in the scriptures. So saving faith
according to Romans 10 comes through hearing. And so the proclamation
of the Lord Jesus in his true character and him crucified is
absolutely essential, not just for the conversion of God's people,
but for the ongoing Christian walk that God's people are to
engage in. The saving faith is a heart knowledge
of the Lord Jesus Christ in his true character as it's revealed
in the scriptures. So therefore truthfully proclaiming
him is the only thing that matters in church. If he is proclaimed
as he truly is, then the worship of heaven will be reflected in
our worship here. If that is happening here, then
this is the most important, the most significant, the safest
place to be in this apostate age where God has promised that
most who claim to worship Him will have been deceived. Everything
else in life is insignificant compared to worshipping God and
especially worshipping God in the assembly of His people. So God is the God who does the
gathering. And God gathers his people and
he assembles them together. And so in heaven, we have this
mighty throng, thousands upon thousands that are gathered.
So God is in the business of gathering his people together
and nurturing them. The true worship is spiritual
worship. One of the mistakes that we saw
in those churches yesterday is that there was an assumption
that when you build these huge buildings and you have these
pictures of Jesus everywhere, that that would actually inspire
people to worship. When churches are set up so that
the activities and the things that appeal to our eyes and to
our flesh are central, then there is an assumption that all those
things actually help in worship. God says true worship is spiritual. In fact, Philippians 3 has a
stern, stern warning. It says, Beware of the dogs. Beware of evil workers. Beware
of the false circumcision. For those who proclaimed that
the works of men aid and abet God in what He is doing. And
Paul describes true worshippers in Philippians 3.3, For we are
the true circumcision. who worship in the Spirit of
God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the
flesh. So true worship doesn't need
things which appeal to our flesh, to our natural instinct and our
desires. True worship is not aided by
emotional singing and music and it's not aided by all the things
that in so many churches people would think would aid it, with
priests in robes, with fancy statues, with stained glass windows. The world's idea of what is spiritual
and God's idea of what is spiritual are radically different things.
If you did a survey of the people of this world and asked who were
the great spiritual leaders that we've seen in our times, The
list would include Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Mother
Teresa, Diana possibly, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and people would
say that these are spiritual people. God says that anything
that is not of faith is sin. Now it doesn't matter how much
good work these people have done and they have done mighty deeds.
The question is, was it done in faith? Were they worshipping
God in spirit and in truth? So true worship is spiritual. So John was in the spirit. In verse 2 of chapter 4, immediately
he was in the spirit, and in the spirit he beholds the things
of God. And he starts to see God in his
true character in amazing ways. So true worship has God in his
true character lifted up for us to admire. And the first thing
that John sees, if you turn in your Bibles to chapter 2, he
saw a throne. He beheld a throne and the throne
was set in heaven. And so the first thing that John
sees in this marvelous part of his revelation, that there is
a throne, that our God is infinitely almighty and there is a throne
and that throne is set in heaven. It's not an unstable throne. It's not the sandy house that
we were singing about a little while ago. It's a throne that
is set in heaven. And then the one sat on that
throne. Not only is the throne stable,
but the one who's on the throne is seated. We must keep remembering
that our God is infinitely sovereign. There is absolutely nothing in
all of this universe that happens anywhere ever outside of his
perfect control. And so then we have this song
that these people sing, these creatures and these elders sing. It's a beautiful, beautiful song.
And I'm sorry I have to skip over so many wonderful verses
in Revelation 4 and 5, but let's go to these songs. in this age
of tolerance, God sits on a throne and he is still a holy God. And that's what these people
sing, holy, holy, holy, the Lord God almighty. He is holy. The most significant characteristic
of our God in the scriptures is that He is holy. He is absolutely
holy. He is infinitely holy. He says
in Psalm 22, that Psalm about the Lord Jesus and His death,
He said, yet you are enthroned as the holy one. You are the
praises of Israel. To enter into the presence of
a holy God, we must be holy ourselves. The holiness of heaven must be
our holiness, and our blessed Saviour is glorified in making
His bride both holy and accepted and dearly loved. Holiness is
the characteristic that defines God in all of His attributes. If we look at, he says that he
is light. For you only are holy, John would
say later on in Revelation 15 full. He's of two purer eyes
than to behold evil and cannot look at iniquity. And so everything
that God does is governed by His holiness. His justice is
a holy justice. His wisdom, a holy wisdom. His arm of power, a holy arm. His name, which signifies all
of His attributes together, is holy. So a holy God can only accept
and dwell with absolute holiness. Every aspect of a believer's
life must be perfectly sanctified to be worthy of the presence
of a holy God. To imagine that we can please
God in any way that is separated from the work and the person
of the Lord Jesus is the greatest folly and demeans the holiness
of God. Flesh can only give birth to
flesh. When sin was found in the Lord Jesus on the cross,
God's holiness and justice demanded its infinite punishment. And
yet even our forsaken Savior in Psalm 22 acknowledges the
holiness of God. And so in church, if we are going
to worship God, we're going to have to proclaim the infiniteness
of holiness. Either things are 100% holy or
they are 100% defiled, which is why Christians hope. Christ in you the hope of glory
which is why John could go into the presence of God in the Spirit
in heaven because he was clothed and robed in the righteousness
that was the Lord Jesus and so Colossians 3 12 says that you
are God's chosen people holy and dearly loved and So this throne is set, the Almighty
sits and the worshippers proclaim the holiness of our God. And
so this is the true character of our God who is now proclaimed. But true worship raises up God
in his true character and at the same time it places those
who were created in their right and proper places. they surround
the throne but the four living creatures give glory and honor
and thanks to God in verse 10 of chapter 4 and in verse 8 of
chapter 5 and in verse 13 of chapter 5, there is one thing
that God's people do when they have the holiness of God raised
up before them, they fall down. They fall down and worship and
they lay their crowns before the throne. They fell down in
chapter 5 verse 8. They fell down and worshipped. And it's so important for us
that we actually see our place before God. We actually fall
down before God and honor His holiness, honor the fact that
He is the creator and we are the created. In verse 11 of chapter
4, He is the creator and He is the sustainer and He is the creator
of all things. There is nothing in this universe
that He hasn't created. and surprisingly he's even created
people who will go to hell because of their wickedness. Proverbs
16 verse 4 says, the Lord has made all things for himself,
yes, even the wicked for the day of destruction. But for those people who call
on his name, for those who belong to the Lord, everyone who is
called by my name, whom I have created for my glory, God has
formed and God has created all things. We were chatting to a
chap the other day who said that he could not worship a God who
didn't give him a free will choice to love him. This man needs to
hear about the God who is being proclaimed in heaven at this
moment. and we need to fall down and
pray that we would see our nothingness and see the Lord Jesus as absolutely
everything. The fact is, as Spurgeon said,
God does not need our power, but our weakness, not our greatness,
but our nothingness. So the Lord Jesus encourages
us with honesty and sincerity to go privately and pray spiritually
to Him, to lay our life before Him, to lay our case before Him
who sees everything, and to fall down before Him and then wait
on Him to pick us up. He knows our frame. He knows
that we are but dust. But having fallen down, God then
lifts up his people. And true worship causes God's
people to rejoice with singing. As we've seen in our walk through
Mark's gospel, one of the things that's extraordinary, when the
Lord Jesus reveals his true character and his actions in caring for
his people, We have one group of people who are amazed and
go out rejoicing, and we have another group. The one thing
that characterizes the Pharisees all the way through is that they
can never rejoice. We have not one word of rejoicing
from them. So true worship causes God's
people to rejoice with singing. Let's read 5 verse 9. And they
sang a new song. And they sang a song saying,
You are worthy. And in this section of John,
the revelation of John, we have this extraordinary situation
in heaven where John is led to this place where there's a question
asked in heaven in verse 2, who is worthy? to open the scroll
and loose its seals. Who is worthy to enact all of
God's plans and purposes in this world? And no one in heaven or
on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or look
in it. And so John wept much because no one was found worthy. And then one of the elders said
to him in verse 5, do not weep. Behold, look at the Lord Jesus. The line of the tribe of Judah,
the root of David has prevailed to open the scroll and to lose
its seven seals. And then John looks and he sees
in the midst of the throne and in the midst of the four living
creatures, and in the midst of the elders, at the center of
all of God's worship in heaven, stood a lamb as though it had
been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the
seven spirits of God. And this lamb, which looks as
if it's been slain, he takes the scroll because it's his right
to enact all of God's sovereign purposes. And so these creatures
and these elders representing God's people sing. God's people sing, they rejoice
over who the Lord Jesus is and what He has done and the enacting
of His sovereign purposes. And true worship in heaven causes
God's people to remember what God has done for them. In verse 11 of chapter four,
you are worthy because you've created all things. We remember
that God creates and sustains everything. And then we see that these people
in heaven rejoice with singing over what the Lord has done for
His people. They sang a new song saying,
You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals. And the
reason for the worthiness of the Lord Jesus, because you were
slain and have redeemed us to God by your blood. The common declaration of our
Lord Jesus is that He possibly redeemed people, or He potentially
redeemed people, or He did enough to redeem all the world if people
will then put their faith in Him. The song in heaven is a
different song altogether. You have redeemed us. and the us is critical. The people
around the throne in heaven are saying the Lord Jesus has redeemed
us and he's redeemed the us for a purpose. He's redeemed us to
God. He has reconciled his people
to God by his work, his perfect work, his perfect sacrifice on
the cross. Because we have been redeemed
to God, we have been brought back to God by your blood. So true worshippers sing about
what the Lord Jesus has done for them. And true worshippers acknowledge
that God is a God who elects His people. He has chosen them
out of every tribe and tongue and nation and people. God is
in the specific business of rescuing a specific people. And true worshippers
in heaven acknowledge that God actually makes worshippers. That worship of God is a grace
activity. If it wasn't for God's work in
our lives, we wouldn't worship Him. Just read verse 10 of chapter
5. And have made us kings and priests
to our God. Made us kings and priests. Does that mean that we do not
worship God through an earthly priest anymore? Absolutely. We need no earthly priest. We
have a perfect priest in heaven and God has made us to be priests. And true worshipers look at the
character of God, and they see Him high and lifted up and enthroned
in heaven. They sing praises to Him for
what He has done. And true worshipers, in verse
10, look forward to God fulfilling His purposes, and they wait on
the Lord. You have made us, in verse 10,
and have made us kings and priests to our God, and we shall reign
on the earth. that wait on the Lord will renew
their strength Galatians 5 says we by the Spirit out of faith
the hope of righteousness wait God's people wait in fact what
they're singing isn't it is what the Lord Jesus has done the past
and what he has do is doing now sustaining this praise in heaven
he's actually going to bring that back to earth and we shall
reign on the earth they are singing about the redemption of all creation
in the Lord Jesus they sing about that and they wait for it and
so God's people worship God in truth in his true character they
worship his sovereignty verse 8 and 11 of chapter 4. They worship
God acknowledging their total depravity, that we are nothing
and he is absolutely worthy. You are worthy is the song of
heaven and the others fall down. God's people fall down and they
see the Lord Jesus lifted up at the same time. Worshippers
in truth acknowledge that God elects his people. Worshippers
in truth acknowledge that God particularly saved his people
and absolutely none of his redeemed people are ever, ever going to
miss out on being in the new creation. His blood was not wasted,
it's effective. God's people who worship acknowledging
God's irresistible power and grace for you created all things
and by your will they existed and were created. God's true
worshippers acknowledge that God, because of His power and
His will, will make His people persevere to the end. And so
our one continuous prayer should be that our Father would grant
us the grace that we would leave our worship time singing the
songs of heaven with our eyes fixed on our Saviour, and like
our brothers and sisters in heaven at this moment, sing the same
songs to our Saviour and to our God. There are two states I was
reading in an article this week about believers. They are either
hungering for God and His presence or they are feeding and feasting
upon God and His presence. And may God quench our thirst
and satisfy our hunger with the manna from heaven. And before
I finish, there's just one special, special word in verse 10 of chapter
5. Because true worship is relational. True worship comes out of an
intimate, personal relationship with God that the Lord Jesus
called his father, Abba, father. God's children call their father
Abba Father. Don't miss the word in verse
10. And have made us kings and priests
to our God. God's true worshipers claim God
as their personal savior. They claim him as ours. He is my savior. He's my Lord. He's my redeemer. and if He's
our Savior and He's our Lord and He's our Redeemer and He
grants us the grace to worship Him in spirit and truth, we will
rejoice. Even in the midst of trials,
we will rejoice like our brothers and sisters in heaven. Let's
pray.