Worthy

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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!”