REVELATION AS A PICTURE OF WORSHIP

When I was in 7th grade, it was my first year of Junior High. School systems were a little bit different back then and 7th grade was the first year out of Elementary School. I went to a small school with 2 buildings. One building housed the elementary school, grades 1 - 6 and the other building was 7th grade through 12th. Because we were all in the same building, there were several things the junior high students and the high school students did together - like some sports and activities and band. Some of us had taken band classes when we were in 6th grade and so we were able to move into the ‘big’ band in 7th grade. We really thought we were something special being able to be in band with the older kids. Except that year we had a new band director. He was a local boy and decided that he wanted to come back to town, prove himself and in the process have the best band in the state of WV. Lofty goals from a small town high school. So he was determined and we got the brunt of his determination! 6th grade was over and a week later I find myself in the high school band with a bunch of upper classmen practicing. After all if we were going to be the best band in the state, that took practice. And practice we did. Every day for at least 2 hours during the summer. Your parents had to practically have a legal document to get you out of it. My family didn’t usually go on summer vacations so I was there, every day…. marching, and playing, and practicing formations for the half time show. Since we were going to be the best band in the state, we had to memorize these overly ambitious half time field shows and all our music had to be memorized. It was pretty brutal - and this driven band director often wasn’t very nice or calm about mistakes. When school started and football season started, we thought we had practiced to the point where we could do this stuff in our sleep. However, practice had not stopped. Not only did we practice the hour of our class during the school day, we practiced 2 hours after school, every day. I do recall one time when we hadn’t gotten it quite right and we had to practice on Saturday as well. But you know what, the next 3 years we were in that school, we were the number one marching band and the number one concert band in the state, every year. And as hard as we had worked and as much as we all complained about it, there was a sense of pride and accomplishment in what we had done. Number 1 in the state three years in a row from this small town school.
Haven’t you heard that old saying, “Practice makes perfect”? Have you ever thought about worship as practice - practice for something bigger and better when we transition into that eternal life with God forever?
As we finish up looking at the book of the Revelation of John, looking at the 7 churches addressed to learn more about what Jesus wants for his church. We remember that when John was in prison on the island of Patmos, Jesus took John to heaven and let him see what heaven was like. Along with all those bizarre images that just boggle our minds, and the 7 letters we have just studied regarding the churches, John reports a lot of experiences with worship. Over and over again in the writing of Revelation, John stops and gives us a picture of the worship he witnessed in his vision from Jesus. There is more about worship in Revelation than any other book in the Bible. Through the letter is this pattern of worship, then violence and persecution and danger, then worship, then violence and persecution and danger, then worship. This pattern is repeated throughout John’s letter. It is as if John is saying to us, ‘in the midst of whatever is going on, there is also time to worship’.
And John helps us see that the worship we participate now is a kind of practice for the worship we will participate in for all eternity in the actual presence of God.
Here we are. We are in worship. Many of us have been going to worship almost every Sunday, literally, our whole lives. Worship is what we do as the people of God. It is instrumental, it is important and it is fundamental to our lives. But like many things that deal with our faith, we sometimes have to stop and regroup and remind ourselves why we are here worshipping our God. Seems obvious why we are here but that still doesn’t mean we don’t need to stop and think about it and renew our commitment to gather as God’s people and worship!
The word ‘worship’ means to honor and give respect to something. God repeatedly decrees that we are to worship him exclusively. Don’t think of ‘worship’ as only what we do during this time here in the sanctuary. True worship is something we should be doing all the time. God understands us and knows how quickly and easily we are distracted by the things around us - and even though we don’t label it ‘worship’, when something begins to pull us away from God and the church, we are in effect ‘worshipping’ something else - we are giving it our time, honor and allegiance. That is worship. Often as we are reading through bible stories we read that God’s people, or an individual stops and ‘worships’ God. They don’t stop and break out the bulletins and begin a worship service, they in essence just stop for a moment to honor God. It would be as if we stopped after something happened and we looked to heaven and said either in our minds or even out loud, ‘Thank you, God!” That is biblical worship - taking a moment and honoring God for whatever reason.
Then there is the context of what we would think of as worship - formal worship. The Hebrew word for ‘worship’ in a formal context means to ‘willingly bow down to the ground and acknowledging the person before them is a greater power.” When God establishes formal worship in the Old Testament in the days of Moses, this is what he has in mind. His people taking time out of their lives to bow down before him and let him know that they think he is the greatest thing ever and the most important thing in their lives. This is why God has us gather together, because he wants for us to take a moment and say to him - ‘God, you are the most important thing in my life and I acknowledge your power over my life.’ When Jesus tells us we must worship God in spirit and in truth, that is what he is talking about. Gathering together as God’s people and giving God worth; sharing music and praying and just giving our hearts and mind and soul and strength to God alone for an hour. Knowing that we should be doing that all the time, but we gather to give God glory in a special way as God’s people. In Revelation 4 and 7 and on and on the picture of worship consists of people gathering around the throne of God and just singing praises - the Holy, Holy, Holy we earlier in the service comes from these passages because that is what the worshippers were singing. They were singing and bowing and praising God.
So as we gather we need to keep in mind that worship is not about us, it is not for us. We do not gather here to ‘get something out of it’. We do ‘get something out of it’ but that is not the purpose of our gathering. Formal worship is our opportunity to acknowledge that God created us, God cares for us, God forgives us, God gives us the means to live forever with him. And God demands - that is the subject of the first 4 commandments - that we take time out of our week to let him know that we appreciate who he is and what he has done for us. Think about it. There are 168 hours in a normal week - and God only asks us for 1. One hour out of 168 to honor the God who knows every hair on our head, the God who had his son die for us, the God who created the whole universe yet knows our name. And he demands that we gather for this worship together. Yes, you can stop and give God worth anywhere you are, anytime, but God has instructed us to make a time where we come together as the church and worship corporately.
John points out that this worship is going to go on forever. John gives us picture after picture of worship in this revelation of his and it is joyful singing, bowing before God, just praise. This is what giving ‘worth’ is all about. This is what worship is to be. Gathering together to give God value - to let God know that we think he is worthy of our time and our energy and our work and our service. Worship should be a joyful experience - not some formal, serious, sitting quietly in our pew. But a celebration that God has granted us a life in him. We participate in this worship, it is not something we watch, it is something we do.
This may mean we need to adjust our thinking a little about why we are here. We are to gather here because we have a desire to take an hour our of our life to let God know that he is worthy of our praise. Think about that and think whether that is part of your consciousness when you get up on Sunday morning and do what you do to get ready to come and be a part of this assembly. There should be, according to scripture, a feeling of wanting to be here because it is an opportunity to come before God and give him a moment. We come because we want to take this opportunity to thank God just for being who he is. This should be something we look forward to, we desire to do, we make every effort to do because God has made every effort to to make us his - and God enjoys our company and we should enjoy his.
This perspective is what Revelation is trying to teach us as we consider the idea of what worship is all about - and the reason for the band story in the beginning. Which I’m sure you were wandering what that was all about! We were the number one band in the state because we practiced and practiced and practiced and because we kept in front of us the reason for all the hard work - we wanted to be good at what we did. We showed up every day for those often difficult practices because we knew that was how we were going to get better at being a great marching band.
Revelation calls us to think about wanting to be good at what we are called to do as a church - which is to gather and to worship God in spirit and truth. To really in our heart of hearts gather because we want to be here to let God know his value and his worth and because we realize that if we are going to get better at this, we are going to have to practice again and again and again - every Sunday (or whenever we choose to gather) for the rest of our lives.
Until we gather for all eternity in that ultimate worship before our God in heaven.
Amen