The Line Between Kingdoms

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Revelation 14:1-13

January 28/29, 2012 • Portage First UMC

There’s nothing quite like the real thing. When something has the word “imitation” in its name, you know it’s probably not as good as the real thing. For instance—imitation bacon bits do not even compare to real bacon. Imitation vanilla flavoring is good—until you have real vanilla. And imitation jewelry may be cheaper, but it doesn’t look as good or last as long. There’s nothing quite like the real thing. When we first got our Wii, I played several of the sports games. And you know, I was a darned good pitcher on Wii Baseball, and I wasn’t even too bad at hitting. But I doubt I could have gone and tried out for the Gary Railcats based on my experience with Wii Sports. It’s an imitation. It deludes you into thinking you are better than or know more than you do about the sport. Same with Wii Fit when we added it to our library. I enjoyed the skiing games, especially the slalom. I got to where I could avoid hitting many of the gates, but that doesn’t mean I should go out and try out for the Olympics because I’ve never actually on a ski slope, only on a virtual one. I’d likely break every bone in my body on my first attempt to head down the slope.

Increasingly, we live in a virtual world. We send e-mail rather than letters (and we jokingly refer to letters as “snail mail”). We have chats rather than conversations. And we text rather than talk. We might have hundreds of friends on Facebook and still feel incredibly alone because we have substituted virtual community for real community. We’ve substituted reading status updates for getting to know someone. And, like true consumers, we take what we can get and fail to notice the real person behind the status. When it comes to relationships and to people, when did we become satisfied with the imitation rather than the real thing?

When it comes to God, when did we become satisfied with the imitation rather than the real thing? That’s the question John is asking as we come to what is, to many, the darkest part of the book of Revelation. For the last few weeks, we’ve been working our way through this strange and wondrous book, looking not necessarily for clues to the date of the end of the world, as many do, but to the message Jesus gave John as a way to encourage the church. Remember, this book is not roadmap to the end, but a revelation of Jesus Christ (1:1), of what’s like and who he is. Last week, we talked about Jesus being the one who is present with his followers through whatever the world throws at us. We had that image of the believers being sealed, marked as belonging to God. Now, as we move forward in the Revelation, we’re confronted with a choice between two kingdoms: the kingdom of the beast and the kingdom of God. And the question John has for each of us is a simple one: which kingdom will you choose?

These chapters, 12-14, contain fantastic visions—dragons, beasts, angels, demons, and a woman clothed with the sun. The story begins in chapter 12 with a cosmic version of Christmas. When we think of the Christmas story, we think of the story we read in Luke 2 and Matthew 1, with shepherds and wisemen and angels telling us not to fear. We think of baby in a feeding trough, of cries in the night. We think Nazareth and Bethlehem. But in the Revelation, John sees Christmas from heaven’s viewpoint. He sees “a woman clothed with the sun” (12:1) who is about to give birth; the woman represents Israel, the nation out of which Jesus came, and on a narrower scale, she represents Mary who was the mother of the Lord (Smith & Card, Unveiled Hope, pg. 151). And as she’s about to give birth, a dragon appears. The dragon is always representative of Satan, the accuser, the one who wants to destroy whatever God is doing. And so the dragon stands before the woman, determined to destroy her baby because he knows this baby is the hope of the world. It’s a dramatic scene. When the woman gives birth, the dragon reaches for the child, but the “child was snatched up to God and to his throne” (12:5). The child was protected by the Father. And the angels, rather than spouting the words “fear not,” go to war against the dragon. The battle rages on, but in the end, the dragon “was not strong enough,” so he is “hurled down” where he “leads the whole world astray” (12:7-9). The angels win the war, but battles still rage on. I’ve heard that compared to what happened on D-Day in World War II. That day, that battle, changed the course of the war. From that moment on, the Nazi powers were defeated. The war went on for a while, but the tide had turned. When Jesus came, John says, the war for humanity was won. Even though there are still battles that go on, the ultimate outcome has already been decided.

In the next two chapters, then, John sees how that works itself out. The dragon calls forth a beast, a creature so frightening that the people of earth cry out, “Who is like the beast? Who can wage war against it?” (13:4). Then there is a second beast, one who carries out the will of the first beast, who leads people astray—so much so that people are deceived. They offer their worship to this beast. The picture John is giving us here is one of imitation. The dragon is Satan (John is quite clear about that), and the two beasts demand worship and seek to have the dragon’s will done in the world. We have here an unholy trinity—a parody or a mocking of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Satan imitates God the Father (one is creator and one wants to be), the first beast imitates the Son (demanding worship that only belongs to Jesus), and the second beast imitates the Holy Spirit (the Spirit brings glory to God and the beast seeks to bring glory to the dragon).

That’s what John was experiencing in the Roman Empire. As we’ve been saying these last few weeks, this Revelation was written to seven churches in Asia Minor, all of whom were undergoing various kinds of persecution because of their faith in Jesus. In fact, the church around the empire was beginning to more and more feel the sting of persecution and sometimes even death because of “the word of God and the testimony of Jesus” (1:9). The rising religion in Rome was emperor worship. When the Christians would proclaim a God who “sits on the throne” and who “rules the world,” the Roman Empire would say, “No, the emperor sits on the throne and the emperor rules the world. The emperor is the son of God, triumphant over all.” And the church believed Rome got its power from Satan. Rome, with its arrogant belief in its own significance and its determination to turn political power into religious devotion, is the first beast in John’s vision, waging war against God’s people (13:7) because Rome demanded worship.

Closer even to the people than that were the local elites, the governors and city rulers, who did their best to copy Rome and enforce Rome’s laws. They were the ones who insisted you should worship Rome and the emperor, and to make sure you did, city after city competed with each other for the honor of building yet another temple dedicated to the emperor or to someone in the emperor’s family. The local elites were the second beast, the power and the structure that carries out the will of the first beast (Wright, Revelation for Everyone, pg. 120). It’s a parody, an imitation, meant to divert the people’s worship from God to Rome—because if you get someone’s worship, you’ve got their heart. If you get their heart, then they’re part of your kingdom. You’ve got them for good.

We may not be as quick to identify ours or any other government as the beast, and certainly, at least in our current culture, we’re not asked to worship the image of our leaders. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t unholy parodies we’re tempted and even expected to participate in. Richard Foster says the three things in our world we are most tempted to worship are money, sex and power. Our economic system, while based on free and open trade, calls us to give everything we have for the sake of getting more and more. Wealth is seen as the goal, the most desirable state, and if you don’t have wealth, we’re told, you should do whatever you can to pursue it. Money becomes an object of worship, and we’re not content until we have lots of it. The same is true of sex. We live in a sex-saturated society. Hollywood tells us that if you’re really going to be happy, you should worship sexual intimacy by sharing it with whomever and whenever you want. The idea that such an act is reserved for husbands and wives in the marriage covenant is seen as old fashioned, hopelessly out of touch. Media becomes the beast, and we worship at the shrine of sex. And then there’s power. We’re in the midst of an election year, and every night and day on our television sets we see the deep, deep desire for power—so candidates campaign for power, and they often do it by digging up dirt on the other candidates, which is just another way of grabbing power.

But power is not just worshipped on a national scale in a campaign year. James Bryan Smith tells about a trustees meeting in a church he knew where they were discussing a proposed building addition. There were strong feelings around the table, partly because church attendance had plateaued lately. Some felt it was because the current worship services were full—there was no more room for new people. And others felt it was because a new church down the road had taken in some members that had come from their church, and those folks believed it was because that church had a better building. At the center of the discussion was an architect who was on the committee. He had been working on some drawings and so the group was asking questions about the size of the building and how much it would cost and so on. At one point, one person spoke up and said, “What I want to know is this: can we build a building that will help us compete with the church down the road?” The architect paused and told them he would need a minute because he had to decide whether to answer that question from inside or outside the kingdom of God. Was competition the goal? Is competition a value of the kingdom of God (Smith, The Good and Beautiful Community, pgs. 65-66), or is it a beastly imitation? Do we sometimes choose (or even seem to prefer) the imitation? Do we worship money, sex and power—the beast—more than we do the one who is on the throne, the ruler over the true kingdom? That’s the question John is asking the church.

Now, before we can go any further, we need to deal with what is perhaps the most famous part of the book of Revelation. Revelation 13 says the second beast “forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name. This calls for wisdom. Let the person who has insight calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. That number is 666” (13:16-18). This is also usually associated with a person known as the Antichrist, a word that does not appear in Revelation. Antichrist is a word taken out of some of John’s other writings, and equated with the beast here in Revelation. But when John uses that word in his letters, he describes people who have left the Christian community, who have gone out from the church and who now deny Jesus as the Son of God (cf. 1 John 2:18-22; 4:3; 2 John 7). In fact, he says many antichrists have come. John is describing a spirit that seeks to lead people away from Jesus. That’s different than what he’s describing in Revelation, and it doesn’t apply to just one person at the end of time. Nor does the Beast, because what John sees is a system that demands worship. And the way that worship or allegiance or obedience is shown is through this mark or seal. In fact, again this is a sign of imitation. Remember how the children of God were marked or sealed by heaven? Now, those who follow the beast are also marked. This seal, this mark is a sign of who we have given our allegiance to. To understand it as a literal mark misses the point. We don’t understand the first mark on the children of God as a literal one; why is so much ink spilled trying to make this one into a tattoo or a computer chip or something else like that?

Still, using this number, lots of folks have tried to figure out who the beast, the so-called antichrist is. One thing the commentators are agreed upon is that this a code, although the “key” to the code appears to have been lost early because many of the early church fathers puzzled over this number also. What we do know is that in ancient languages, there weren’t numbers per se, so you used letters to represent numbers—every child who has struggled to learn Roman Numerals knows that. And so you could use numbers that represent specific names or words—it was a practice called “gematria” where numeric values are assigned to letters and then added up (Smith & Card 157). One ancient example of this is a piece of graffiti found on a wall in Pompeii that read, “I love her whose number is 545” (Barclay, The Revelation of John, Volume 2, pg. 100). You see, that way if she didn’t love you back you could claim it was some other 545! But as for 666, various people throughout history have had their names manipulated so as to add up to the magic number—people like Martin Luther, Napoleon, Oliver Cromwell, John Wesley, Hitler, various popes, as well as Roman emperors like Caligula and Domitian. I remember when I was in school that some preachers said Ronald Reagan was the beast because each of this names had 6 letters in them. To some, that seemed confirmed when he left office and moved to a house at 666 St. Cloud Road. Mrs. Reagan got the address changed to 668. Most scholars today, however, agree that 666 was a first-century way of referring to the emperor Nero Caesar. Whether in Greek, Latin or Hebrew, Nero’s name adds up to 666 (Mulholland, “Revelation,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 18, pg. 521). To John’s churches, this one who was killing their brothers and sisters, this one who demanded worship—he was the living embodiment of evil. He was the beast.

But what about this language about the forehead or the right hand? Remember that the saints of God were marked on their foreheads back in chapter 7. Now, the followers of the beast are marked there or on their right hand. In first century Jewish understanding, the forehead was the seat of perception. It represents the place we decide to obey or not to obey. In Jesus‘ time, many Jews wore phylacteries, little boxes with Scripture in them, on their foreheads to remind themselves that they were the people of God. So marking the forehead, as both kingdoms do in this vision, indicates who we choose to obey—the beast or God. The right hand, again in first century Jewish understanding, was the hand of action, the hand by which you carried out your obedience. We see many places in the Bible where something is said to happen by the power of God’s right hand. So to be marked on the right hand means your behavior is being shaped by the beast. Forehead and hand—both are indicators of something much deeper, of whom you have chosen to follow, to obey. They represent our worldview and our lifestyle, and John says that, in the world, without that mark you can’t buy or sell. Certainly that was true in the first century, because as Christianity became an illegal religion in the Roman Empire, those who were Christians were banned from the marketplace. If you wouldn’t swear allegiance to or worship the emperor, there was no room for you in the public square. And don’t we find that sometimes to be true today as well? In a culture where tolerance is supposedly the highest virtue, the only ones excluded are those who dare to say Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. The only sin left is to claim to know the truth, and so we’re excluded more and more (Mulholland 525-527). If you’re not willing to act in an unethical way, you might not get that job. If you’re not willing to give your heart to the company, you might not work there long. And if you choose to become a Christian when your family has forbidden it, you might find yourself without a family, without a name, without a life.

The line is stark between the two kingdoms, and we are asked to choose. At the beginning of chapter 14, after all those dragons and beasts, John sees a different kingdom. He sees the Lamb—could there be a greater contrast to a dragon than a lamb? And with him are his followers—the same ones we saw in chapter 7—who are marked with “his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads” (14:1). What sets these people apart from the others is the one they’ve chosen to follow which results in a different way of life. John understands that the whole dragon/beast thing is a lie, but when he sees these followers of the Lamb, he notices a big difference: “No lie was found in their mouths; they are blameless” (14:5). They live in a way that is different to the world. They live, as best as they can, the truth. They seek to live in a way that is consistent with that truth (Wright 126). So let’s take money, sex and power again. When money comes along, those who follow the lamb recognize that its promises of security and wealth are a lie, and so while they use money, they recognize themselves as stewards, not hoarders. Money is a tool. Sex they recognize as a beautiful gift of God for intimacy between husbands and wives. It’s not a way to manipulate or influence or something we use merely for our own pleasure, as if pleasure were the highest good. Our culture tells us a lot of lies in this area. Satan whispers to us, “It’s okay, it’s only a little thing, it won’t matter.” And power—we remember that the world’s picture of power is not Jesus’ picture. In fact, on the last night he was with his disciples, Jesus gave us a model no one expected. When the world would say, “Grab power and run with it,” Jesus knelt down to serve, to wash feet, and called his disciples to do the same (cf. John 13). The idea that power is all that matters is a lie, and the followers of the Lamb refuse to believe or live by a lie. Instead, they choose, no matter how difficult it is, to live holy lives. Paul put it this way: “God did not call us to be impure, but to live a holy life. Therefore, anyone who rejects this instruction does not reject a human being but God, the very God who gives you his Holy Spirit” (1 Thessalonians 4:7-8). And Peter says the same thing: “The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming” (2 Peter 3:10-12).

Right after this vision of God’s kingdom, John sees an angel flying, spreading the “eternal gospel” to “every nation, tribe, language and people” (14:6). He hears a voice calling out the choice to those who will hear: “Fear God and give him glory…worship him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water” (14:7). The beast’s kingdom is described as “fallen” (14:8). And the choice is up to those who listen. The angel’s words are an important reminder for those of us who sometimes lose focus on spreading that gospel and instead become satisfied with religious activity. Sometimes we get need reminded that Jesus calls us to more than mere activity. As we’ve been doing all throughout this series, we’re telling the story of this church along with the story of those churches, and one of the biggest ways in the last year we’ve tried to be faithful to God in sharing the good news is through our outreach service, PF Hope. I’d like you to hear from one of those who has been working with that project from the beginning. Take a listen.

VIDEO: Kathryn Weatherby

Holy living is being captured by a vision rather than consumed by a task. And to do that we have to make our choice. There is no middle ground in this vision. We choose to stand on the side of God’s kingdom or the Beast’s kingdom. John sees the ultimate end of that choice: those who stand on the beast’s side find themselves tormented and on the wrong side of God’s fury (14:9-12). But those who choose God’s side, find “rest from their labor” (14:13). What we choose now has eternal consequences. And how we help those around us choose has eternal consequences. There is a line between the kingdoms—between the genuine and the imitation. The choice is clear.

Arguably one of the greatest hymnwriters of church history was Isaac Watts, who started writing hymns because the songs in the church of his day were boring, he thought. He wanted “new songs” for the church. And so he took the psalms and wrote them in new ways, celebrating Jesus in the psalms. One of his most famous writings is his adaptation of Psalm 98, which celebrates Christ’s return and his triumph over the beast and the powers of evil. The first verse goes like this:

To our almighty Maker, God,

New honors be address’d;

his great salvation shines abroad,

And makes the nations blest.

We don’t sing that verse anymore. In fact, the way we sing it, we begin in the middle of the hymn with the fifth verse:

Joy to the world; the Lord is come;

Let earth receive her King;

Let every heart prepare him room,

And heaven and nature sing.

Yes, “Joy to the World,” one of the most popular Christmas hymns, was written as a celebration not of Jesus’ first coming, but of his second. And that’s why the hymn ends with these hopeful and confident words: 

He rules the world with truth and grace,

And makes the nations prove

The glories of his righteousness,

And wonders of his love.

Hopeful and confident and sung by those who have chosen to live on God’s side of the line between kingdoms. Jesus once asked, “When the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18:8). He will, most certainly, but will he find us faithful here on earth? Where do you stand? What side of the line will you choose, and how will you then live? The choice is up to you. Let’s pray.

Center

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Revelation 7:9-17

January 21/22, 2012 • Portage First UMC

In July 2000, I found myself on a hot, sweltering day standing in the cool dampness of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This church stands over the traditional spots where Jesus was crucified and buried, and it’s a huge structure. When you enter, you first go up a flight of stairs to the traditional site of Mount Calvary, the place where the cross stood. Then you descend the steps to the rock where, again according to tradition, Jesus was laid after he was taken off the cross. And then you go around the corner into a huge area that marks the place where the tomb once stood. This church, as vast as it is and as important as it is, isn’t owned by any one denomination or tradition. In fact, it is owned or supervised by six different Christian traditions, and as you move through the building, you can hear worship taking place in all sorts of languages and many different styles. You hear singing, you smell incense, you see icons, you watch people praying and others reading. As I stood in that space on that hot July day, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was getting a taste of what heaven might be like. In the Revelation, John says he saw “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb” (7:9). It’s a powerful picture that causes to see the church as something more than “just us.” The church is truly a worldwide movement. When Jesus returns, his church will be made up not just of people like you and me, but of people from every tribe, nation, people and language. Every nation, joined together, worshipping God—the fulfillment of the angels’ hope of “peace on earth, goodwill toward all” (Luke 2:14).

But to get to that place, there are some dark images in this section of Revelation. We’re now in our third week exploring this strange and often misunderstood book, a book that’s not so much about a timeline for the end of the world as it is helping catch a vision of Jesus who is triumphant over the world. We’ve seen how John, in writing down this vision, has taken his time. Twenty percent of the book is written before we begin to get these glimpses of evil and its effect in the world (Peterson, Reversed Thunder, pg. 73). Last week, we talked about the Lamb of God who was found worthy to open the scroll, this scroll that was covered with writing on bot sides, symbolizing God’s purposes in history. At the beginning of chapter 6, then, the Lamb begins opening the seven seals that are holding the scroll closed—and that’s when strange, powerful and cataclysmic things begin happening. So this evening/morning, we’re going to walk quickly through those seals and see where they lead both John and us.

So the seals are really divided into two parts. There’s the first four, which let loose those strange beings we often hear referred to as “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” and then there’s the last three, which are responses to the situation caused by the four horsemen. Now, let me say what I’ve said before—these seals, these events are not meant to be sequential signs to the end. You can’t take these seals and match them up to the newspaper. Rather, John is seeing is what history looks like, and especially he’s seeing what life is like for the seven churches he’s writing to. Remember, this Revelation was written in a specific time to specific people who were undergoing hardship because of their faith. It was written not to scare them but to encourage them. He’s writing to let them know that God knows and cares about their suffering and, more than that, that God’s going to do something about it. He’s writing to offer hope, not fear.

So the first seal is opened, and John sees “a white horse” whose rider has a bow and a crown. “And he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest” (6:2). There are divided opinions among scholars as to who or what this rider is, but it’s likely he represents all those kings and rulers who have set out to conquer other nations, who try to claim power over other nations or even their own. The white horse represents the forces of human conquest, our desire for power and control (Wright, Revelation for Everyone, pg. 61). And certainly we only have to turn on the evening news to know how that is seen in our own time. In John’s time, it was seen in the undying thirst of the Roman emperor to conquer more and more people and territory. We’ve known and seen that throughout history, but we also see it in families and in homes when one person is unwilling or unable to put the good of others ahead of his or her own desires and wants. We see control and power and even abuse because we want to conquer. There is a horseman loose in the world bent on conquering—and he often looks just like you and me.

That spirit of conquering, then, leads to the breaking of the second seal and the release of a fiery red horse. “Its rider,” John says, “was given power to take peace from the earth and to make people kill each other. To him was given a large sword” (6:4). Commentators agree that this is the horse of war. He is the color of blood, and his actions spring from our pride and hunger for power (Peterson 77). And, again, we know this horse all too well; when hasn’t there been a war in history? When haven’t we fought over some piece of land or resource? The history of the human race is a history of war. Even in a land that seems peaceful, our desire for more and our competitive nature often brings war right into our businesses or our churches or even our homes. The red horse brings conflict.

The third seal brings a black horse. “Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand” (6:6). This is often the result of war—famine. Famine is “nature out of balance.” It happens when we have too much of what we don’t need and almost nothing of what we do need (Peterson 78). Famine results in hunger because during such times, as Revelation points out, things that poor people need shoot up in price and luxuries stay the same. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer (Wright 62). Famine is the result of economic imbalance, and while it’s easy to try to blame those who are poor for getting themselves into those circumstances, the truth is that while some do just “live off the system,” most economic systems work against those trying to get out of poverty. And for much of the history of the church, we’ve failed to notice. I’m thankful for people like Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, who often prayed, “Let my heart be broken by the things that break the heart of God” (qtd. in Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel, pg. 9). I know hunger and poverty and issues like that weren’t on the radar of my church growing up. We assumed, I guess, that everyone had what they needed. But today I am proud to serve a church that takes such things seriously, a church who has worked hard to fight against hunger in our own community. It’s unbelievable to many of us that kids go home on the weekend hungry, or that the only food they get is lunch at school. And yet, that’s reality. That’s truth. Let our hearts be broken by the things that break God’s heart. The black horse of famine hits us in many different and sometimes unexpected ways.

The fourth horse is pale. “Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him” (6:8). I hope now you’re seeing the progression—conquest leads to war leads to famine leads to death. John’s observation that that this rider was given power over a fourth of the earth reminds us how broadly and swiftly these horsemen ride, and that they ride throughout history. This is not just the situation in John’s time, or in the time of the medieval church, or in our time, or in the end times. Jesus told his disciples, “Nations will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains” (Matthew 24:7-8). These horsemen are the basic ills that plague our planet. They are the ways we hurt each other, no matter what period in history we want to point to. But why does God allow that? Couldn’t God stop all of it? Couldn’t he hold the horsemen back? Yes, of course, God could, but to do so would remove our free will, and that is one thing God will not do. Besides, when we see the true terror of what human beings do to one another, the grace and the salvation of Jesus looks even sweeter. These horsemen are allowed to do what they do so that “the saving message of the scroll can have its full effect” (Wright 62).

There are three more seals to open, however. The fifth seal shows the ugliness of religious persecution as John sees the souls of those who were killed for their faith. Sometimes, we think of that as something in the past, but in reality, more people are losing their lives for their faith today than in the first century. A report released last year by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research revealed that, in the first decade of the 21st century, 2000-2010, on average 270 Christians were killed because of their faith every day. That amounts to almost a million believers. If they were all in one country, we’d call it genocide. But it gets very little press. One million believers. In his vision, John sees them under the altar, crying out, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” (6:10). And they are told, “Just a little while longer.” Larger in scope is the sixth seal, which represents the evil of natural catastrophe—earthquake, unusual things in the heavens, mountains and islands shaken. The creation is in upheaval and those who are in power, who like to think they can control everything, run and hide. “Who can stand?” they ask.

So six seals, representing the full scope of evil in our world—conflict, war, famine, death, persecution, catastrophe. John sees it all and does not back away. Sometimes we want to turn a blind eye to the hurt and pain and brokenness in our world. Sometimes we do that unconsciously as we expect everyone to be “fine” when we come to worship, or we spread the lie that just coming to Jesus will make your life perfect. If Revelation is to be believed, coming to Jesus will make your life more dangerous. The persecution, in particular, is aimed at believers in Jesus. The church is at its best when it gets involved in the pain and brokenness of this world, and when we’ve been at our best we’ve started hospitals and care facilities. We’ve started educational institutions and benevolent funds. When the church is at its best, we refuse to let things be as they are. We look poverty in the face. We stare down racism. We challenge the idea that war is inevitable. And we refuse to be silent in the face of injustice. One of the biggest reasons, according to the Old Testament prophets, God became upset with Israel in ancient days is because they not only ignored injustice, they practiced it. They went to worship and then turned around and cheated each other. They took advantage of those in need. And so, for one example, the prophet Amos told them they shouldn’t anticipate the day of the Lord, the end of the world, because it wasn’t going to go well for them. In fact, Amos said, you shouldn’t even to bother to show up for worship. “Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them,” God told the people. “Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps!” And then, as if the people asked, “Well, what do you want?” God says, “Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:22-24). If you’re going to be righteous, if you’re going to be my people, you must be people who turn toward the world and work against injustice. That’s why John refuses to turn away from the evil of history, and the evil of his own world. We can’t shut our eyes to it. Instead, we run toward it, intent on overcoming evil with good (cf. Romans 12:21).

In the midst of all this evil (because there’s not really any other word for it), comes a beautiful picture at the beginning of chapter 7. An angel cries out, “Do not harm the land or the sea or the trees until we put a seal on the foreheads of the servants of our God” (7:3). A “seal” in ancient times indicated ownership or control. Whoever placed the seal on the thing or the person owned it (Mulholland, “Revelation,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 18, pg. 479). And ownership implied protection. And so, in another one of those symbolic numbers, the whole people of God are protected from the world’s evil. They are sealed. They are marked as belonging to God. Now, again, we have to understand what protection means in this setting. It doesn’t meant nothing bad will happen to you. It doesn’t mean you won’t get sick or your child won’t rebel or your life will be sunshine and roses. What it means is that the servants of God are always given the very last promise Jesus left his disciples with: “I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). I’ve said it often: the best gift Jesus gives us is his presence, right at the center of our life. In fact, the worship time that breaks out in the passage we read tonight/today is in response to this sealing, to this promise of God’s protection and presence in the midst of horrible evil and devastation. This great multitude that is sealed is from every tribe, every tongue, every nation, and there are so many of them that we Methodists, who count everything, are frustrated. John says it’s a group so large, “no one could count.” How in the world are they going to fill out the year-end reports if they can’t count them? But they sing together, “Salvation belongs to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb” (7:10). I can’t wait to hear that song!

John sees this multitude clothed in white robes, a color that represents cleansing (the early church gave each person who was newly baptized a white robe), and he is asked where these folks have come from. “Sir, you know,” John responds, and the elder tells him, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (7:13-14). Now here is one of those phrases that is well known in popular novel-ish Revelation theology: “the great tribulation.” Many see that as a time period near the end, usually seen as seven years, when the whole world suffers. But that’s not the context and that’s not what John says. John hears of people who are suffering throughout history, as we’ve said. The “great tribulation” is the period of time from when Jesus was crucified to whenever he returns—it’s not seven years, or even seventy. It’s the whole of time when wars, famine and all the rest seem to be winning. We live in the “great tribulation” right now, as have all who have come before us for the last two thousand years. A better translation of verse 14 would be that they “continue to come out of the great tribulation;” that’s what John actually says (Mulholland 480). He sees this incredible number of people, from all throughout history, who have endured because they have the Lamb at center of their life. To be counted among that group of faithful followers requires only two things: to be washed in the blood of the Lamb (which means we let Jesus do for us what we cannot do for ourselves, to forgive us of our sins) and to allow God’s seal on our foreheads (to let him “own” us fully). Two things we do to put him at the center, which is the image we have in this chapter. That’s why I keep saying Revelation isn’t just about Jesus’ appearance at the end of time; it’s about his presence in every time. It’s about him walking with us through the famine and war and conflict and fear that is our lives.

I got an e-mail this week from a member of our church, Leigh Coffey, who knew I was preaching on this tonight/today, and I asked her permission to share her story. Many years ago, Leigh was a single mom, supporting 3 small children, living in a 2 bedroom apartment. Times were tough, and there were dark days when it seemed they wouldn’t make it. It was humbling to have to ask for help, for assistance with food, and with gifts for the children at Christmas, but Leigh knew she had to do it if they were going to make it. Jobs would come along, but they weren’t paying the bills fully, and the low number of hours she was getting was even endangering her state funding for daycare. One December, in the midst of that struggle a friend told her about the opportunity she might have to go back to school and still keep the state funding. Leigh had just enough time to enroll for two spring classes at IUN, which she did, and there she learned about scholarships, grants and student loans she could receive which meant she could go full time and obtain her degree in Geology. As a bonus, she met David, now her husband, while she was at school. At the end of that e-mail, Leigh wrote, “Whenever I go through tough times now, I remember the struggles I had raising the children. I remember how God used these experiences for me to grow and to become a better person. So I may be down for a bit, but I bounce right back because I have God’s strength to rely on, and I know that whatever I go through, it always works out for the best in the end.” That’s what having Jesus at the center of our lives does. No matter how difficult the road gets, he walks with us through it all.

Now, in case you think I don’t know how to count, I do remember that there is one more seal. It isn’t opened until the very beginning of chapter 8. John describes it this way: “When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour” (8:1). And why does heaven get silent? Verses 3-5 give us a clue, as an angel comes to the altar with a golden bowl of incense mixed with the prayers of God’s people. Heaven gets silent so that the prayers of the saints—our prayers—can be heard (Peterson 85). And then there’s this beautiful picture—the prayers of the saints go up to God, and then the angel hurls them back toward the earth, “and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake” (8:5). I think that’s beautiful because God takes our prayers and then sends those prayers back into the world to make a difference—and the thunder, lightning and such are an indication that the prayers of the saints are turning the world upside down. In fact, this seal is last because the answer to all the evil that was revealed in the first six seals is for the saints of God to faithfully pray. So many times we feel powerless in the face of evil—whether it’s intentional evil or circumstantial evil. We feel powerless, when in fact we have the strongest power in the universe on our side. If Jesus walks with us through the evil in our world (and he does—the first six seals tell us that), then prayer becomes our most valuable weapon in the fight against evil, in our struggle to push back the evil we see. When we pray, God acts. Years ago, I remember hearing Dr. Maxie Dunnam ask the question, “What if there are some things God either can not or will not do until and unless God’s people pray?” Heaven is waiting on our prayers to push back the evil in our world.

Many of you know that. Many of you have experienced in your own lives the power of people praying for you. Part of the story of this church is the importance—the vital importance—that prayer has had in your life. There are literally hundreds of stories we could tell about how the prayers of this church have made a difference, but we only have time for one. Take a listen.

Video: Prudence Shutters

What if there are some things God either can not or will not do until and unless God’s people pray? Where would Cameron be had the people of this church, and many others, not prayed for him? Folks, the message of Revelation 6-8 is just this: there is evil in the world, and it can seem very dark at times. But God has people in every tribe, every nation, and every tongue who are faithful, who have put Jesus at the center of their lives. And those are the people who are called to pray, to fight against evil with their prayers. James put it this way: “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective” (James 5:16). Overwhelmed sometimes by the evil that surrounds you? Tempted to despair that evil will win? Revelation says that’s not going to happen, but this vision also calls on us to be faithful and persistent in our prayers. And when your mind wanders (like mine does), or you get distracted (like I do), don’t give up. Pray again. Pray often. When I was in college, there was this idea among some folks I hung out with that you should spend an hour praying every day. A whole hour. At minimum. Well, I can’t focus that long, but do you know what I learned? The Bible doesn’t say, “Pray an hour each day.” No, the Bible says, “Pray continually,” or in older translations, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). What I think that means is that we stay connected to God, we lift up prayers whenever we think of it, we use everyday circumstances to call us to prayer. Reading the newspaper and you see something that breaks your heart—pray. Drive by a car accident—pray. Sit down with a friend who is going through a hard time—pray. In everything, pray and push back the darkness of our world. That’s the call of Scripture. That’s the call of Revelation. Our prayers are heard and used to make a difference in this world. And so I would love nothing more than for this community to know Portage First, first and foremost, as the church that prays constantly what Jesus told us to pray: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). May it be so for us. Amen.

Worthy

Sermon Study Guide is here.

Revelation 4:6-11

January 14/15, 2012 • Portage First UMC

When I was a kid, I collected comic books, and I was one of those who did what you needed to do to keep them in good condition, because I knew there were certain issues that were worth a lot of money. And I believed that if I kept what I bought in good condition, one day I would be able to sell them for a lot of money. I don’t know if you’ve ever collected anything like that—maybe coins or stamps or rare books—but when the time came to sell my collection (when Cathy said the time had come to sell my collection), I learned a pretty quick lesson. “Value” and “worth” are determined by the person who is doing the purchasing. You might see on a website that a certain item is worth $100, but if no one will pay $100 for it, it’s really not worth that much. What I learned is that the comics I had so carefully preserved over so many years were apparently worth more to me than they were to anyone else. Selling my collection, contrary to what I had hoped when I was a kid, did not make me instantly wealthy.

Figuring out what something is “worth” is an activity that’s kept Antiques Roadshow on the air in Great Britain since 1979 and in the United States since 1997. And still, “worth” is a very individual thing. I have many items in my house that, if I were to ask an appraiser, would probably have very little worth in terms of dollars and cents. But to me, things like the cross from the church I was baptized in, or the stopwatch that belonged to my grandfather, or the chalice given to me by my first youth group—those things are worth a lot to me. They’re like the MasterCard commercial— “priceless.” I bet you have things like that in your life, as well.

But, for most of us, worth goes beyond material things. Sometimes we describe friendships or relationships as “priceless” or “worth more than gold.” That friend who listened to you at a dark moment in your life—priceless. That person who stood by you when everyone else seemed to turn their back—worth more than anything. And the very wise author of Proverbs begins the last section of that book with these words: “A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies” (31:10). But what about our relationship with God? What is that worth to us? Do we think about why we come to church? Is it just to to fulfill some sort of obligation, some sort of social expectation? I had a man tell me once he came to the church I was serving because, when he started a new job, his boss told him the best way to make sales contacts in the community was by going to church. In the beginning, at least, church was a way to expand his business. What is God worth to us?

That’s the question that confronts us as we turn this morning to Revelation 4 and 5. These two chapters, that you’re going to be reading more closely this week, give us a glimpse into the worship that takes place in heavenly places. Now, wait, you might say, I thought we were going to find out about the end of the world in this sermon series. What do these chapters have to do with that? Why do we need to know about heavenly worship in order to learn about the return of Jesus? Well, as you read this past week, this letter, this Revelation, is written to seven churches who are facing intense persecution and the temptation to give up. They are struggling to remain faithful. In each of those letters in Revelation 2-3, Jesus gives the church an encouragement to stay faithful, to cling to their first love, to avoid those who would lead them astray. And then, John says, he looks and he sees “a door standing open in heaven” (4:1). An open door implies an invitation to come in; the open door in heaven is an invitation to the church to participate in the life of heaven, in the worship of heaven. This is an invitation to the churches to consider who really is worthy of their worship. These two chapters lay the groundwork for everything that is to come in the rest of the book.

The message of these chapters and of this sermon is pretty simple, pretty straightforward: the entire creation is called to worship the one true God, the creator of all. He is the one who is worth giving everything. “Worship” means “to give worth to” someone or something. What we worship becomes first in our lives. What will become evident in the chapters that follow is that creation, particularly the human creation, has chosen not to worship the creator. Instead, creation is in rebellion against the one true God. The rest of Revelation is the story of the creator acting decisively to put creation right. John’s perspective is not that creation is bad; quite the contrary. Creation was good; the book of Genesis, the other end of the Bible, affirms that. Creation was good, but it’s been twisted and broken by our actions. As we’ll see in the weeks to come, God is “angry with the forces that have corrupted and defaced [creation], and which threaten to destroy it” (Wright, Revelation for Everyone, pg. 49). The book of Revelation is about putting creation back together, re-creating the world the way it was meant to be. And these chapters are here to give us a glimpse of the goal. On any journey, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there. This glimpse of worship in heaven gives John (and us) a sense of what God intended from the beginning, and what creation is going to look like when God is done. The goal is nothing less than the fulfillment of Jesus’ prayer, that things on earth will become as they are in heaven (cf. Matthew 6:10).

For those of us who have been in the church for a long time, and maybe even for those who haven’t, worship isn’t always something we think a whole lot about. We show up at church, we do whatever the service says to do, and we go home. Is there anything more to our worship? Revelation would say yes, absolutely! These two chapters give us five hooks to hang our worship hat on, five ways earthly worship ought to reflect heavenly worship. In other words, if this sort of worship is where we’re headed, if this sort of worship is what heavenly worship is like, maybe our earthly worship can look more like this as well.

So, first, worship centers. In the very beginning of chapter 4, when John is invited into the heavenly worship, the first thing he sees is a throne “with someone sitting on it” (4:2). Those believers in the Roman Empire knew about thrones. The throne was where the power was. The throne represented the emperor, the one who often held your life in his hands. The throne, for purposes of political business, was the center of things. By John’s time, though, Roman emperors were beginning to take the power of the throne a step further and demand worship as a god. The Roman emperor was considered a deity, a god, or at least a son of god, and emperor worship was something expected. To talk about worshipping a throne other than the emperor’s could be a dangerous and life-threatening thing. And yet, here in Revelation, it’s not the emperor’s throne at the center. It’s a throne occupied by one who “had the appearance of jasper and ruby” (4:2). Jasper and ruby are the last and first stones on the breastplate of the high priest in ancient times, which reminds John that all those complicated religious rituals of the past were meant to point to the one on the throne (cf. Mulholland, “Revelation,” Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 18, pg. 458).

There’s a simple truth here: worship is about God. Worship centers us on God and his throne, his rule over all of creation. If worship doesn’t focus on that truth, it becomes less than what it should be. So often, in our consumeristic society we talk about “what I got out of the service” or “that really spoke to me.” And I’m sorry, Revelation says that’s not what is most important when it comes to worship. It really doesn’t matter if we like the music today or if we think the lighting is just quite right, and it doesn’t even matter if you like the sermon or not. Now, I hope you do, and I hope you leave today having learned a thing or two, but that’s all secondary to the real purpose of worship. The center of worship is God, not “me.” We worship for an audience of one. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if we feel good when we leave. It doesn’t matter if we don’t like the person next to us. It doesn’t matter if someone makes noise that bothers us. What matters is whether or not we have centered ourselves and our lives around the one who is on the throne. If we come to worship with any other primary motivation, we’ve missed the point. Worship centers us on God (Peterson, Reversed Thunder, pg. 59).

Second, worship gathers. Verse 4 says, “Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders” (4:4). Now, you don’t have to read Revelation very long to figure out that numbers are important, right? Twenty-four, in Revelation, is used to describe the whole people of God. It’s a number that represents the twelve tribes of Israel (the Hebrew people who were faithful) and the twelve apostles or disciples (the followers of Jesus). Twelve plus twelve equals twenty-four and that represents the whole people of God from the very beginning of time (Peterson 61). It’s that group of people—the faithful—who are gathered together in the heavenly worship. It’s worship that brings them together. They come to worship the one who is creator of all, to sing praise to the one who has created everything—that’s why they have gathered. Worship centers and gathers.

And worship reveals. At the beginning of chapter 5, John looks to the throne and sees a scroll in the hand of the one who is sitting there. The scroll, he says, had “writing on both sides and was sealed with seven seals” (5:1). In Biblical imagery, that means what is written there is firmly decided; it cannot be changed. And John wants to know what is on the scroll; we all would, wouldn’t we? Inquiring minds want to know! But no one is found worthy to open it. And John weeps. What does it take to be found worthy? Well, shortly John finds out. It takes someone who has triumphed over the mess the world is in. It takes someone who has won over the sin and the brokenness that make up our world. John is told to stop weeping because “the Lion of the tribe of Judah…is able to open the scroll” (5:5). And John looks toward the Lion and he sees a Lamb “looking as if it had been slain” (5:6). All of that, of course, is imagery from elsewhere in the Scriptures. The lion of the tribe of Judah was understood to be the Messiah, the Savior, and for Christians, that Messiah is Jesus, the Lamb of God (cf. John 1:29) who had been slain, nailed to a cross. Jesus is the one who is worthy to open the scroll, to let us know what God the Father is up to (Mulholland 465-466) because, as the elders will sing, with his sacrifice he has “purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation” (5:9). And so, worship reveals. Worship shows Jesus as the worthy one, the one who has saved and will save (Peterson 64).

And that happens in many ways, but most obviously through the reading of Scripture and through preaching. The scroll tells us that, as the scroll represents the unchanging word of God. So preaching, again, is not first and foremost about meeting my needs. It’s more about revealing my needs—revealing my need for a savior, my need for hope and help, and pointing me to the only one who can meet that need. As Eugene Peterson writes, “Scripture read and preached discovers that Christ (the Lamb) reveals the meaning of my life and fulfills my destiny” (Peterson 65).

And when our need is revealed, when we see Jesus as he is (holy), our response is the same as the elders in this vision. John describes it this way: “Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne” (4:9-10). They fall down in front of God—they recognize God as absolute, as the one true God. He is above them, both literally and figuratively. Then they worship—they acknowledge God as their God, God in their life. This may sound like the same thing, but remember there are many people in America today who believe in God. Gallup Polls last year found that 92% of Americans say they believe in God, and 78% of those people identify themselves as Christians. And while polls regularly report somewhere around 38% of people claiming “regular” church attendance, the actual numbers indicate that more than half of them are lying. Actual numbers show that only about 18% of the U.S. population shows up at church on any given weekend. So even in our society there is a wide gap between believing God is the one true God and actually doing something about it, making him our God. James says even the demons believe there is one God, and they tremble but they don’t allow him to be their God (James 2:19). So the movement is from seeing God as God to allowing God to be our God.

Then the elders “lay their crowns before the throne” (4:10). This is a movement toward giving up control of our lives to God (Mulholland 462). In ancient times, when one king had conquered another king, the way the conquered king showed both his allegiance to and his acknowledgement of the conqueror was to throw his crown at the conqueror’s feet (Barclay, The Revelation of John, Volume 1, pg. 163). John describes it as a continual process, that the elders are always throwing the crowns at the foot of the throne, which reminds me that it’s a continual process for us to give up control, to allow God to be in charge in our lives. Every morning, I need to “take off my crown,” and pray, “God, you be in charge today, you take control. I give you my life. You are my Lord.” That’s our response when we see who Jesus is and what he has done for us. That’s how worship reveals who Jesus is and who we are.

Fourth, worship sings (Peterson 66). You can’t read these chapters without noticing the songs. Verse 8: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.” Verse 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.” The worship of heaven erupts into song every time spoken words simply won’t do. But that’s nothing new in the Scripture. Perhaps, as we made “The Journey” during Advent, you noticed how everyone sings in the Christmas story. Mary is told she’s going to have a baby—so she sings praise to God (Luke 1:46-55). The angels want to announce the news of a baby born—and they do it with a song (Luke 2:14). Simeon, an old man in the temple waiting for the Messiah, gets to hold the baby Jesus—and he breaks into song (Luke 2:29-32). There are times when songs say for us what mere words cannot. Besides that, songs bring us together. When we speak, we may not all say the same thing, but when we sing, when word and rhythm and melody are all combined—then we worship in a unified way.

It’s interesting to me that, over the last twenty years or so, one of the biggest controversies in the church, and not just ours but in all of Christianity, is what’s come to be known as “the worship wars.” And the “war” is not usually about theology or beliefs about what worship is. It’s usually over the way we do worship. And it’s even more often about music. We’ve been through that here. There are still pieces of that battle ongoing. As I shared last week, along with the story of the church in Revelation, we’re going to be telling our story as a part of this series, and a big part of our story here is about worship and worship’s role in the church. Take a listen.

VIDEO: “Worship” - Jeff King

Singing is in our Methodist DNA. The earliest Methodists sang their faith. There were very few sermons John Wesley preached that his brother Charles didn’t put into song. And I bet not a one of you can name or recite a single one of John Wesley’s sermons—I’ve studied them and I could give you very few of the titles. But everyone here likely knows, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!” or “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing” or “Christ the Lord is Risen Today.” Music does for us what preaching and spoken word cannot; it gets deep into our soul. To the early Methodists, John Wesley gave certain instructions on singing, on how to worship God in song. He advised them, “Beware of singing as if you were half dead, or half asleep; but lift up your voice with strength…Do not bawl, so as to be heard above or distinct from the rest of the congregation…but strive to unite your voices together…Above all sing spiritually. Have an eye to God in every word you sing. Aim at pleasing him more than yourself” (UMH vii). Now, I know some of you don’t like to sing, and having grown up singing from as early as I can remember, I don’t quite understand that. I’m sure you have good reasons, but I want to advise you now: even if you don’t sing here, there will be singing in heaven. You might want to practice now! Because worship sings.

And finally, worship affirms (Peterson 68). The very end of chapter 5 reads this way: “Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’ The four living creatures said, ‘Amen,’ and the elders fell down and worshipped” (5:13-14). The last word in the heavenly worship is “Amen,” which means, “So be it,” or “Yes!” The final word in worship is an affirmation of all that has happened. When you think about it, we come to worship to say “yes” to God, and miraculously, we find God also says “yes” to us. Worship is affirming (Peterson 68). In the Revelation vision, from this point on, the heavenly beings are sent out to do God’s will, to restore the creation. In our worship, we are called to do the same. As we worship, we are given a glimpse of God’s call, and then we are sent out to affirm that calling by living it out for the rest of the week. So it’s not a matter of choosing worship or work; it’s both. We worship in our work. We affirm God’s call in our work. We work toward what the vision of worship calls us to do: to restore God’s good creation through our work. “Anything which is fulfilling the function for which it was created is praising God” (Barclay 159). No Christian is fulfilling God’s plan for their lives more than when they are living out their calling through their work, for that is worship every bit as much as what we do here on Saturdays/Sundays. The last word in worship is “amen”—may your will be done in my life, O God.

That’s the picture of worship in Revelation: worship centers, gathers, reveals, sings and affirms. And it is revolutionary. It sets the stage for everything to come, because in worship we are reminded that God is king, not the emperor. God is in charge and we are not. We are his servants, sent to do his will in a broken and hurting world. And what was true of the churches in the first century is still true for us today. “Worship, after all, is the most central human activity. Certainly it’s the most central Christian activity” (Wright 48). It is what sets the stage for everything else.

The story is told of a small country church located in a very remote rural area, and one week, they got a horrendous snowstorm. The snow was so deep that the mail couldn’t get through and so the pastor hadn’t received the weekly mailings from the denomination telling him what special emphasis was to be used this Sunday. Even e-mail and the internet was down! By Sunday, people had begun to dig out and they wanted to get out of their houses, so there was a huge crowd at church. The pastor came in, saw the crowd, and was a bit shaken. When the time came, he stood up, explained the situation about the mail and said, “In the absence of any other thing to focus on, I guess today we’ll just worship Jesus.” That just might be the key, Revelation says. Because only Jesus is the one worthy of our worship. He is the only one worth giving our lives to. And so let’s affirm that, shall we, with “the last word” of worship. Jesus is the only one worthy of worship—and all of God’s people said, “Amen!”