We, who were called to be your people...

Revelation 4:6-11

“In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back. 7The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle. 8Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come." 9Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever, 10the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:
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."


So, obviously, these four creatures and elders had a reason to worship God…they felt something tugging at them. I mean, God wasn’t threatening them in any way “say I’m holy or I’ll blow you up” or anything like that. They did it all by themselves. As soon as they saw God, bam…they knew they were in the presence of their LORD.

It’s funny though…I don’t know why but the situation is just slightly different at my church, at my youth-group, at our little home-group session...in the car with Chris Tomlin CD playing. It seems so strange…I don’t know what’s going on.

As hands+tears, we are talking about how worship is not just happening on Sunday, but your worship service shouldn’t be then, completely ignored. So, I’m gonna talk a little bit about the musical aspect of worship.

Some might say, well, it’s different. I mean, seriously, those creatures were like, in the presence of God, y’know, I mean, it wasn’t hard to worship because they had the Creator Himself, like, right there man. You don’t get that at our youthgroup meeting. I mean, dude, our band needs help and we sing the dumbest songs ever. And Christian Music man, well, that stuff is like Secular Music rejects. They need help. It’d be different if I was like, actually in heaven, y’know. Right man?

Well…no…actually…not right. Trying to condense this into one post will be interesting.

So…what is worship anyway? If it isn’t just what happens every Sunday where we sing happy songs about the cross, then, well what is it? Personally, I like Bob Kauflin’s definition. (whoah, all of our three readers are dropping their jaws, Jo likes Mr. Kauflin’s definition of worship, dude, I think she like…worships Mr. Kauflin himself…” Well no, I’m not as bad as that :P)

It goes like this: Christian worship is the response of God’s redeemed people to His self-revelation that exalts God’s glory in Christ in our minds, affections, and wills, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Then all our three readers are going…whoah whoah, wait, I didn’t know all of that was going on when I was sitting there in church. It just seemed like a buncha peeps singing to me. And in truth, it might not be happening in your church in some of the people’s hearts, but this is what worship should look like. So let’s break this down a little.

Christian worship is the response of God’s redeemed people.

Ok, already we’ve hit something. It’s the response of God’s redeemed people. That’s a big concept right there. What comes into play right here is our knowledge about propitiation which is and awesome thing. As Christians, we should all be familiar to this to some extent. Now the first thing we need to do is build that knowledge, because the more we know about it, the more amazed we will be. But we are singing for a reason. We aren’t just blathering away, alright, Sunday seems like a good day to sing, we’re Christians so it seems a good idea to sing about God, hm maybe throw in some biblical stuff in the lyrics, sounds good to me.

No, not at all. We sing because we can’t help it. Every week we’ve had 7 days for God to lavish his grace on us. Just this past week, God comforted me when I was feeling depressed about our family’s financial state, and that made me want to sing a little bit louder. I was feeling worn down with a lot of different personal matters, but I read in Psalms about how God is triumphant always in the end; I raised my hands. We sung the song “God Over All” published by Sovereign Grace Ministries. I wanted to jump up and down by the chorus. Why? Because I had something to sing about. Because I had an amazing god to sing to.

But why aren’t kids doing this now? I’m not putting myself out as any example, because there have been way to many times where I have not felt like worshiping. I am just to depressed, these songs are just to boring, I’d rather think about my new iPod I just got, or the painting we have to do in our house. How come this is happening? One of the main reasons is:

it’s just not cool.

I mean, seriously, like how many people are watching me right now? They might think I’m a freak.

Well, the thing is, when we realize how amazing God is, when we know how wretched and small we are, when we realize that an awesome God wanted to save some puny people from sins they utterly and completely deserved punishment for, other people’s opinion’s just seem to slip away. I want to worship God, because He is so good to me.


It may not be cool to fall down on your face

But it isn’t worship to mumble.

That’s why we need to SING OUT to our God, not cross our arms and just kind of mouth the words here and there. The elders in Revelation didn’t care what other people thought, they knew they owed their lives to this awesome God. They faces fell to the ground.