Awaken: Humility

[0:00] Well, welcome again this morning, and as we've gathered here together, there's great, great singing about the greatness of God. And that's what we are going to be continuing today in our series on worship.

[0:14] And if you have your Bibles this morning, let's begin with a verse from Psalm 46. Psalm 46.10, where we're told in part of worship and how we address God, in Psalm 46.10, we read, Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.

[0:44] And really, it doesn't matter what we do. It doesn't matter what anyone does. We worship a self-exalting God. God does everything that He does in order that He would receive glory and in order that He would be exalted in the earth.

[1:02] And today, we're going to be continuing and talking about a non-negotiable. Remember, we started last week and talked about worship is many things to many people. We know that God has told us, commanded us to worship, but we know that it's also an honor to worship Him.

[1:18] We know that God has prescribed worship, but said very little about how we are to worship, because we know that worship is going to look different in every culture, because the New Testament is a missions manual.

[1:30] And everywhere we go, worship will look different. But there are some non-negotiables. Last week, we looked in Nehemiah 12 at the non-negotiable of community in worship.

[1:42] You realize that we're not individuals in worship today. We are a community of faith, worshiping our Heavenly Father. Today, we're going to look at the non-negotiable of humility in worship.

[1:56] Our humility before God, and as we revere Him, as we honor Him, as we give Him the greatness, we ask ourselves the question, why will the greatness of God get all the attention in our worship?

[2:12] As we do that, I'd like to quote A.W. Tozer, a pastor that I quote from time to time. And this is one thing that A.W. Tozer has said.

[2:23] He says, In my opinion, the greatest single need of the moment is that light-hearted, superficial religionists be struck down with a vision of God high and lifted up and His train filling the temple.

[2:39] The holy art of worship seems to have passed away like the Shekinah glory from the tabernacle. As a result, we are left to our own devices and forced to make up a lack of spontaneous worship by bringing in countless cheap and tawdry activities to hold the attention of the church people.

[3:01] Now, in view of that, I think what the modern church needs to hear today is that we don't need cheap and tawdry activities to bring in the people because the greatness of God is enough.

[3:14] God's greatness is enough to hold our attention. God's greatness is enough for us to realize that He alone is worthy of all our praise.

[3:25] And to do so this morning, we're going to look at Revelation chapter 19. Again, if you have your Bibles, turn with me to almost the end of God's holy word, Revelation chapter 19.

[3:40] Last week, we looked at community, Nehemiah 12. Today, we're going to be spending our time and camped out in Revelation 19.

[3:50] But as we look at Revelation 19, before we get into it, I think we need to see a little bit of the context of the book of the Revelation and understand that the book of the Revelation was written to a people, to the church who were suffering persecution in Rome during that day.

[4:12] Rome was a very difficult place to be for those who are honoring Jesus Christ. The emperor Domitian was an emperor this time, and he was a very, very cold-hearted, cold-blooded killer and had killed many in the church.

[4:29] As a matter of fact, the writer of the book of the Revelation, the apostle John, was exiled to an island called Patmos by Domitian the emperor. And this is where we are coming to in the book of the Revelation.

[4:43] But I think in order for us to understand the book of the Revelation, we have to understand that it was written to a people in a particular time to give them hope. And the book of the Revelation, now when we look at the book of the Revelation, typically what do we see?

[4:57] We see a bunch of cool things, a bunch of images that tell us about the future. But first of all, we have to understand that it was written to a people in the first century, and it answered the problems that they had in the first century.

[5:13] And we're going to see a little bit of that today. So that's the first lens through which we look at the Revelation. It's speaking to first-century Christians who were under oppression and were being killed as Christians by Rome.

[5:26] The second lens that we use is that it's speaking to us today as well about what is going to happen and about what we need to understand about worship and about the greatness and the glory of God as well.

[5:40] So those are the two lenses through which I believe we are to view the book of the Revelation. It's not just future. It was written primarily to a group of people in the first century to address a problem that they had.

[5:54] They were suffering persecution. So let's get to Revelation chapter 19 and beginning with verse 1. Again, they said, Hallelujah!

[6:27] Her smoke arises up forever and ever. And the 24 elders and the four living creatures fell down and worshipped God who sat on the throne saying, Amen! Hallelujah!

[6:37] Then a voice came from the throne saying, Praise our God, all you his servants and all those who fear him, both small and great. And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters, as the sound of mighty thundering, saying, What?

[6:56] Hallelujah! For the Lord God omnipotent, the Lord God almighty reigns. Let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his wife has made herself ready.

[7:09] And to her it was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright, for the fine linen is the righteous act of the saints. Then he said to me, Write, blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

[7:22] And he said to me, These are the true sayings of God. And I fell at his feet and worshipped him. But he said to me, See that you do not do that. I am your fellow servant and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus.

[7:36] Worship God! Exclamation. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. Father, this morning, allow your word to be as that rifle shot to our heart.

[7:47] That be what we need to hear. That we might see that you alone are worthy of our praise. And that may your glory inhabit our praise and your greatness today. We pray in Jesus' name.

[7:58] Amen. What we see in Revelation 19 is that every word, every verse centers around the greatness of God. God in worship. Everything that we do in worship ought to center around the greatness of God.

[8:13] And the question we might ask ourselves, Is the greatness of God at the center of our worship? Is God at the center of our worship? So we ask ourselves the question, Why should the greatness of God be at the center of our worship?

[8:27] And I think what we see in Revelation 19, I think is we see three reasons why the greatness of God needs to be the center of our praise and our worship.

[8:40] And the first reason is because he desires our worship. Look at verse number 1 of 19. After these things, I heard a loud voice.

[8:54] Well, in order for us to understand this, we need to ask ourselves a question. After what? Well, what is the after what? The after what is what happened before the after what?

[9:07] And what happened before the after what is Revelation 17 and 18. And as we talk, as we read about the great harlot, the great prostitute, in Revelation chapter 19, verse 2, what John is writing about, and he says, After this, what precedes all of this praising and glorifying God in heaven?

[9:30] What happens in chapter 17 and chapter 18. And what we see here is that it's talking about Babylon, Babylon the great.

[9:42] The Babylon we see all throughout Scripture. And what the Bible talks about Babylon is not all that great. You remember Genesis chapter 11, the Tower of Babel, where they got together and wanted to build a tower to God, and God judged the pride and arrogance of mankind at that time.

[10:02] And then we look last week at Nehemiah 12, where Babylon came in, destroyed the temple, destroyed Jerusalem, tore down the walls, and took the people of Israel into exile.

[10:13] And it's not until we get back to Nehemiah, it comes back in. The temple had already been rebuilt. That was Ezra. Now Nehemiah comes back in and leads the people to rebuild the walls.

[10:23] And they sing glory and praise because of what? The greatness of God. He alone allowed them to rebuild the walls in the face of opposition. And now we see that chapter 17, chapter 18, Babylon the great.

[10:41] Babylon was a sign of wealth. And also, more specifically, the picture of Babylon is seen in the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire being the one that God's people were living under the rule of at this particular time when John is writing.

[10:59] If you go back to verse 1 of chapter 17, Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and talked with me, saying, Come, I will show you the judgment of the great harlot who sits on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth were made drunk with the wine of her fornication.

[11:18] And so what we're seeing is we're seeing this spiritual adultery, where in Rome there was wealth, there was power, there was abundance.

[11:30] They were at the peak of mankind's technology with the aqueduct and all of these. There was running water, after all, in the first century Rome.

[11:42] And so we see all of this decadence, all of this wealth and power, and then all of a sudden you realize that you're a Christian, and you're about to be martyred, and you've got a choice to make.

[11:57] Do I serve Jesus, or do I say, Well, you know what? Maybe Jesus is not the route I need to take. And why don't I just go ahead and settle back and enjoy the wealth and enjoy the abundance that there is in Rome.

[12:13] So that's what John is talking about, where he sees that the church is like this outpost in the middle of a foreign, dangerous, non-Christian, and sometimes even anti-Christian land.

[12:28] And God desires our worship. What we see is God's desire for worship unfold in two different ways here in Revelation 19.

[12:41] The first thing we see is God orchestrates history to display his glory. God has been working all throughout human history so that the world would see how glorious he is.

[12:59] And that everything that is in this world today, all of the wealth, all of the fame, all of the opulence, the luxury, all of these things, the big temptation that we just talked about to give in to this world and to say, I'll enjoy what's here, is God wants the world to realize that when compared to worldly pleasure, his greatness far surpasses any of that.

[13:31] You realize that for God, when he blesses us, he doesn't bless us necessarily with silver and gold. What does he bless us with? His presence. Because that's the best thing he could give us. It's the only thing that'll last.

[13:42] And it is the best thing. And God displays his glory all throughout Scripture. Everything that God does is for his honor and his glory.

[13:56] Think about it. We worship a self-exalting God. God alone deserves our praise and our worship, but God wants our praise and our worship.

[14:10] Everything revolves around him. And he wants the world to know it. Now, sometimes we don't think about it this way, but do you realize that we worship a self-centered God?

[14:24] We do. Why? Because what else is there for God to be centered around? If we are self-centered, it's not good. But for God to be self-centered, it's awesome.

[14:37] Why? Because God lives to be exalted. Because if God were to be centered around anything else, then it means he would no longer be God, because there would be somebody else higher than God.

[14:51] God wants to be exalted. God lives to be exalted. God lives for his own honor and his own glory, because he is, after all, God. And we ask ourselves the question, if you ask people today, why would God save you from your sins?

[15:07] What do you think the answer would be? Well, that is the answer, but a lot of people would say, well, because he loves me. You know, that's true.

[15:18] God does love us. But that's the only part of the story. As it says, you know, for the rest of the story, the rest of the story is, God does everything he does for a reason.

[15:32] God doesn't just love us just because. Because God doesn't do anything just because. Think about it. Why did God send Jesus to die on the cross?

[15:45] To save us from our sin, to allow us to be reconciled back to him, so that we might what? Glorify God. What is the chief end of man? Glorify God.

[15:58] What did we hear Jesus pray to God? Remember that prayer for his disciples? Over and over and over and over and over and over again. In that prayer, Jesus said, so that they might what?

[16:12] Glorify you. Everything that Jesus did for us is so that we and our lives would glorify God. So God orchestrates history. Everything that God did, everything that God does, is so the world would look at us and say, oh my, that's an awesome God.

[16:31] That's a great God. Everything that God does. The sunrise, the sunset, all that God does is so the world would look and say, look how powerful and mighty God is, and so that they might worship him.

[16:46] So God orchestrates history to display his glory. Do you realize that because we're here today, we are a display of his glory? Because look at a beautiful sunrise, at a beautiful sunset, and what I like to say is, you know what, God, you're just showing off.

[17:01] Because he can. God deserves our glory. So he orchestrates history to display his glory. He expects us to display his glory in our worship.

[17:16] And secondly, God ordains us to enjoy his glory. God ordains the church to enjoy his glory. Go to verse 6 and 7 of Revelation 19.

[17:29] And I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sound of many waters, as the sound of many thundering, saying, hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigns.

[17:40] Let us be, what? Glad and rejoice and give him glory. So he wants us to enjoy his glory. At this point, the church chimes in.

[17:52] Not only the 24 elders, but now the entire multitude of those who have been martyred, those who are before the throne of grace, those who are the church, chime in and say, hallelujah, hallelujah, Lord God almighty, you reign.

[18:08] And let us be glad. Let us rejoice. Don't miss this. Rejoicing is equated with giving God glory. And we see that in our worship.

[18:20] God's desire is for his glory and our satisfaction to go hand in hand. You see, when we worship him and we enjoy worshiping him, God is glorified.

[18:32] And God enjoys that. God satisfies us in the midst of a hostile world. Do you realize that we could either enjoy the pleasure of this world or we can enjoy the pleasures of God's company?

[18:46] God wants us to enjoy his presence. I mean, is being together as a church supposed to be boring? No, it's supposed to be enjoyable. It's supposed to be exciting.

[18:57] You know, it's like, oh, do I get up this morning? I don't feel like going to church. Well, it should be that we enjoy the presence of God with the presence of God's people. Remember last week we talked about community.

[19:08] We're a faith community. Everything we do is to encourage one another, build each other up. Sometimes it is to say, you know what, you need to stop that.

[19:19] Why? So that your life can glorify God, so that your life can exalt God. So he wants us to enjoy his presence. Let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory.

[19:34] God ordains the church to enjoy his own glory. Everything that God does is marvelous. That's why he's able to say in Psalm 148, verses 1 to 14.

[19:47] You can turn there if you like. I do have that up there, don't I? All right, Psalm 148. Let's listen to what the psalmist says about God.

[19:58] Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord from the heavens. Praise him in the heights. Praise him, all his angels. Praise him, all his hosts. Praise him, sun and moon. Praise him, all you stars of light.

[20:10] Praise him, you heaven of heavens, and you waters above the heavens. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. He also established them forever and ever.

[20:21] He made a decree which shall not pass away. Praise the Lord from the earth, you great sea creatures in all the depths, fire and hail and snow and clouds, stormy wind fulfilling his word, mountains and hills, fruitful trees and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying fowl.

[20:40] Pretty much covering it. Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all judges of the earth, both young men and maidens, old men and children. Pretty much covers everything and everyone.

[20:53] For let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted. His glory is above the earth and heaven. And he has exalted the horn of his people, the praise of all his saints, of the children of Israel, a people near to him.

[21:09] Praise the Lord. Praise the Lord. God desires our worship. If anything else or anyone else is at the center of our worship, then we've missed the purpose for which we were created.

[21:24] I've heard an amen for that. If anything is at the center of our worship, then we have missed the point of why we're here. Why we're here. Nothing else deserves our worship.

[21:35] And so as we see the second thing, first of all, he desires our worship. God wants it. God desires it. You realize that's why he created us? He created us to have someone to worship him.

[21:48] You think, well, pastor, I don't think that's why he did. Why else? So we would go and mess up and be smelly creatures that do all these things that are opposed to him?

[22:00] No. He wanted to show his glory by creating us, watching what we would do so he could come and send his son Jesus, die on the cross in our place, and show how much he loves us, and to show us as a masterpiece to the world to say, look how good God is.

[22:20] Look at what God did for those people who didn't deserve it. Remember, it's not about us. It all centers and all revolves around him. He created us so that we would praise him and show to everyone else how good and awesome a God he is.

[22:37] Secondly, the reason why the greatness of God needs to be at the center of our worship is because he deserves it. He deserves it. Haven't we seen already that he deserves our praise?

[22:50] So what excited this multitude in Revelation 19? What got this thunderings going on? You know, have you ever been at a ball game or in an arena and everybody goes, I got your attention, didn't I?

[23:05] And it's like this thunderous noise going throughout this arena or this auditorium. And matter of fact, the LSU football game they've had before in the past where it actually registered on the Richter scale.

[23:18] That's going up in heaven and it's called worship. And I think we need to worship somewhat the same way.

[23:28] Why? Because worshiping our heavenly Father ought to move us to get excited. And this is what's happening in heaven. So as we look at Revelation 19, what did they see in God?

[23:40] What drove them to this thunderous praise and worship and exaltation of this almighty God? First of all, we see the greatness of God in worship.

[23:51] We see the greatness of God in worship. And as we go through this list, first of all, we start off in chapter 19, verse 1. After these things, I heard a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven saying, Alleluia!

[24:08] Salvation belongs to our God. He is a Savior. He is a Savior. Now, this is not just individual salvation.

[24:19] All the way from Genesis 3, where mankind sins and a lamb has to be slain, and all the way through the Old Testament, where God's people would drift away from him, and he would come in, and he would take care of the enemies, and he would save them from their enemies.

[24:38] And when Jesus Christ dies on the cross of Calvary, and he redeems mankind over and over and over, we see the threat of redemption all throughout history, from Genesis to the Revelations.

[24:52] So first of all, they're worshiping God because he is Savior. Second, because he is glorious. Look at verse 1.

[25:04] Alleluia! Salvation and glory and honor belong to our God. He is glorious. We see this hallelujah.

[25:18] Hallelujah. We see it all throughout the Old Testament. But you realize we don't see it in the New Testament, except for Revelation? In this worship, four times, here we see, hallelujah, great is our God.

[25:33] He is glorious. And all of this belongs to him. Only in Revelation. He is omnipotent. Verse number 1.

[25:44] Salvation and glory and honor and what? Power. Oh, you can talk to me this morning. And power belongs. We're going to see it a little while that it's okay to talk back to the preacher when we're worshiping, right?

[26:00] Okay, we'll see that in a moment. I'll show you. And so they say, power belongs to you. And why is that important? Because remember, they were a people that were persecuted. They were a people that were in Rome that were in fear of their life.

[26:14] This emperor, Domitian, he loved to kill Christians. And so here they are, and John is saying, all heaven and all the earth is praising God for its power.

[26:28] He's got power over Domitian. He's got power over Rome. So there's hope. And what he's saying is, the power of Babylon, that's pictured in the Roman Empire.

[26:40] What's John saying to these people? Guess what? Roman Empire won't be there forever. One day, the Roman Empire won't be anymore. One day, God, in his sovereignty, is going to take care of Rome and wipe this Roman Empire off the face of the earth.

[26:58] And so he is giving them hope. And so he says, our God is glorious. Our God is omnipotent. And the next two go together. He is true, and he is just.

[27:12] Look at verse number two. For true and just, or true and righteous, are his judgments. Why? Because he has judged the great harlot who corrupted the earth with her fornication, and he has avenged on her the blood of his servants shed by her.

[27:31] So God is true, but God is just. And what we see here is, we don't normally like to think that God takes revenge.

[27:44] But the Bible says he does. Vengeance is not ours. Whose is the vengeance? Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. And what we see here in Revelation chapter 17, what we see in verse number six, I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.

[28:05] And when I saw her, I marveled with great amazement. And so this Babylon, this Rome, Domitian, the emperor, has killed so many of these Christians' families, have martyred so many of these Christians.

[28:21] And what does God say in Revelation 19? I've taken vengeance on her. I've taken vengeance on this great harlot. And because she was drunk with the blood of the saints and seeing how many Christians she could kill, God says, I've taken vengeance.

[28:36] And we're going to see in a moment that she suffered for it. And that those who do not bow the knee to him will one day suffer judgment forever and ever and ever.

[28:50] So he's just. But the thing that we see in Revelation 17, 18, 19 is not necessarily, the focus is not on the fact that God's enemies are going to be punished.

[29:02] The focus is that God does not overlook sin and that God will judge one day. God will not overlook injustices.

[29:15] One day God will set it all right. So people today ask, well, where's God when these children are being molested? Where's God when these terrible things are happening to people? We can rest assured they will get theirs one day if they choose not to turn to Jesus Christ.

[29:32] So what the people, what the Christians in the first century were hearing was, God is not overlooking your pain. One day God will take care of the injustice.

[29:44] And he will take vengeance on those who have persecuted you. So he is just. Next, verse 6. He is mighty. He is mighty.

[29:54] Verse 6. We hear the mighty thunderings saying, Hallelujah, for the Lord God almighty reigns. The Lord God omnipotent reigns. Domitian.

[30:05] This is interesting. The Lord God. Here's John writing. He says the Lord God. This is only one of a couple of times that we see Lord God put together.

[30:17] Emperor Domitian. Here. Emperor Domitian. A little bit of backstory. Emperor Domitian had actually decreed that people would call him Lord and God. You're a Roman?

[30:30] Lord Domitian. Domitian is God. And here is John writing in exile from Patmos, writing to the Christians on the mainland. And guess what John does?

[30:42] Okay, Domitian. Get this. You're not Lord. And you're not God. Lord God almighty reigns. Reigns. And John is calling God Lord God almighty.

[30:56] And he reigns. Look at the next one. That brings us to he is sovereign. He is sovereign. Our Lord God almighty reigns. He's in control.

[31:06] Wouldn't that be good news to Christians under persecution? God's in control. It might be painful right now, but one day he's going to take care of it. And one day he's going to take you to glory. Our Lord God almighty is sovereign.

[31:20] And then another thing. He is holy. Verse number eight. And to her was granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and bright. For the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.

[31:34] We're going to see just a moment that the saints, we who are the saints, it's not our righteousness that is provided to us. It's the righteousness of Jesus Christ. God is holy.

[31:47] So as we ask ourselves the question, as we see this greatness of God enumerated in Revelation 19, how do we attract people into our worship?

[31:59] How do we attract people into our worship? You know what? We've got a wake-up call. The world is not starving for the greatness of our music. The world is not starving for another slick message.

[32:15] The world is not starving for, we might quote A.W. Tozer, for cheap and tawdry activities. Because if the world comes in here, and Paul talks about that in 1 Corinthians, about those who don't know God coming into worship, and they hear us exalting and glorifying God, what does Paul say it's going to drive them to do?

[32:36] To exalt God. And I guarantee you that if our worship is filled with glorifying God, that's what the world is starving for.

[32:48] The world is starving for the greatness of God that will lift them up from the mire of their existence and give them hope for a better future and an eternity with Him.

[33:02] And then we see the gladness of God's people in worship. Very quickly as we go through this, we see the gladness of God's people. What is the response? Verses 5 and 6. Then a voice came from the throne saying, Praise our God, all you His servants and all who fear Him, both small and great.

[33:18] Who is that? That's the church. That's everyone who's up there in heaven by that time. And they're all worshiping and praising Him. First of all, we see is we revere Him.

[33:33] In our worship, do you realize our worship reveals what we think about God? Our corporate worship will reveal if we're bored. Our corporate worship will reveal if we're apathetic.

[33:49] Our corporate worship will reveal what we believe about God. Do we fear Him? Look at verse 5. Then a voice came from the throne saying, Praise our God, all you servants and those who what?

[34:03] Those who fear Him. We are to revere Him, fear Him in worship. Our worship is not to be just at the surface. Our worship is not just simply to be all about ourselves.

[34:19] Our worship is to honor and fear our Lord God. Secondly, look at verse 6 and 7. As I heard, as it were, the voice of a great multitude, as the sounds of many waters, as the sounds of mighty thunderings, saying, Hallelujah, for the Lord God omnipotent reigns.

[34:37] Let us be glad and rejoice. In our worship, we are to rejoice in Him. Rejoice in Him. Hallelujah, our Lord God almighty reigns.

[34:50] Be glad and rejoice. Do you realize that this is the only time in verse, only the second time in God's Word where being glad and rejoice are put together?

[35:02] And you might ask, Where's the other time, Pastor? Well, I'm so glad you asked. It's in Matthew 5, verse 12. You remember the Sermon on the Mount? What? Jesus said, Rejoice and be glad when you suffer persecution for my name's sake.

[35:19] Isn't that awesome? Jesus, back in the Sermon on the Mount, saying, Be glad and rejoice when you're what? Persecuted. And here we have the church of God being persecuted, and as they're worshiping God in heaven, they say, Be glad and rejoice.

[35:38] So in our worship, we're glad and we're happy and we're rejoicing because we are a glorifying God. And I love this. Look at verse 7. Look at verse 7. And it's getting more exciting.

[35:49] Look at verse 7. Let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come and his wife has made herself ready. Not only do we revere him, not only do we rejoice in him, but we, and I trust you are, we're ready for him.

[36:07] Heard one amen. We are ready for him. As we look at the marriage supper of the Lamb, verse 8, Wedding in the Old Testament really had two parts to it.

[36:30] There was a betrothal, which was where there was a commitment made to the other. Interesting thing about Jewish marriage.

[36:42] The betrothal, they were almost considered husband and wife. Just without the benefits. And so their husband and wife, basically, so everyone sees them as that.

[36:53] But then when the time comes, the groom and his attendants go to the bride's house, get the bride, bring her back to his house for the wedding celebration.

[37:05] And that's what we see here. We see that the groom has gone to get the bride and she is ready for him. You know what, ladies and gentlemen?

[37:16] We, the church, are waiting for the bridegroom to come and get us. And we're going to spend eternity with him in heaven.

[37:27] And so we are ready. But we also see the third thing. We saw, first of all, that God desires our worship. Secondly, he deserves our worship.

[37:39] And then thirdly, he draws us to himself in worship. He draws us to himself in worship. As we go through this, quickly, I hope, I want us to see something very, very, very quickly.

[37:52] And I want us to, first of all, see the opposite of Revelation 19. You know, Revelation 19, our worship centers around God. Well, what about what happens when we have man-centered worship?

[38:03] You say, well, where do you see that? We'll look at verse 10. Isn't it amazing how no matter where we are, no matter who we are, the tendency is for man-centered worship to slip in.

[38:18] Look at verse number 10. And I fell at his feet. Whose feet? No. No. The angel's feet.

[38:29] I fell at his feet to worship him. But he said to me, what? See that you don't do that. I am your fellow servant and of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus.

[38:43] What does he say? Worship God. So John, in the very presence of God, has a tendency to worship the messenger.

[38:53] And what does he say? You know, the Greek translation is, John, what are you doing? Get up! Don't worship me! Worship God! So there's a tendency in man-centered worship, there's a danger of misplaced devotion.

[39:08] There is a danger of misplaced devotion. And what happens there is there is a subtle temptation to slip into idolatry. Now, John wouldn't say he's being idolatrous.

[39:21] But if John, the apostle, in the very presence of God, is tempted to worship another creation, then isn't it easy for our worship to kind of slip into a similar thing?

[39:34] And especially today in the modern church, there is that tendency for sometimes for us to worship the worshipers. There's sometimes a temptation to worship the worship team.

[39:44] And worship their awesome talent. And they are talented. And we do have a great worship team, I believe. But sometimes we even have the tendency to worship worship.

[39:57] What does this messenger say? Worship what? Worship God! Exclamation mark! That's what it has in my Bible. Worship God!

[40:08] Exclamation. And sometimes we even say, well, you know, we need to worship. We need to make our worship better in order that we might be able to attract more people. You know what? Sometimes we have the wrong motives.

[40:19] Let's go to the next one. There's a danger of misdirected motives. You know, sometimes those who lead worship, sometimes those who preach, have the tendency not only to misplace our devotion, but sometimes our motives might not be in the best place.

[40:38] Remember John the Baptist said about Jesus? He must become greater. I must decrease. But, you know, sometimes for those who lead worship publicly and sometimes those who preach God's Word, you know, we really want Jesus to be increased.

[40:56] But somewhere within us, there's like, Lord Jesus, at the same time, why don't you kind of increase me some too? Right? Lord, I want you to be greater, but it would be nice if I would become greater too.

[41:08] And so sometimes we have misplaced motives because that's what we're seeing here too sometimes is that there's a possibility that our motives get misplaced.

[41:19] But there's also the danger of misunderstood success. There's also the danger of misunderstood success. What do we ask ourselves sometimes? And I'm guilty of it. Sometimes on the way back home, I look over to Catherine and I say, what do you think about worship today?

[41:34] Oh, I think people had a great time today. Or sometimes the worship team says, you know, how did we do? How did the people feel today? How did we feel about worship today? Oh, did we nail that song like we did in practice?

[41:46] Or, you know, did we have a good crowd? How was our worship today? I think it was good. Yes. Ching. What is the only one question we need to ask ourselves?

[41:56] What does God think about our worship? What does God think about our worship? Because what happened to the worship of the Jews at times?

[42:07] God says, you're doing it all right, but because your heart's not right, it stinks. So they thought they were doing everything right. They thought their worship was good.

[42:19] But God says, it's stinky and smelly. So the question is, God, what do you think about our worship? And I was led to pray that this morning. Lord, I pray that our worship today would arise up to you as a sweet-smelling savor, that when you breathe it in your nostrils, and I know I'm anthropomorphizing God, but when, God, when you receive our worship, Lord, may it be honoring to you.

[42:48] May it be pleasing to you. So misdirected devotion, or misplaced devotion, misdirected motives, and misunderstood success. And then, as we bring it down, believe in the power.

[43:02] I think we need to be believing the power of a God-centered worship, and we'll see that. Look at verse 9. Then he said to me, Right, blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.

[43:13] The Father seeks us for worship. Do you realize that? God the Father is seeking us to worship Him. And I like that, because, you know what? We're not going to attract very many people.

[43:28] This is the way it is. I'm not the greatest speaker. I'm not the greatest preacher. So I'm not going to attract a whole lot of people. Although we have a great worship team, our great music is not going to attract the world by droves.

[43:43] So I can take comfort in this. You can take comfort in this. God's the one that's doing it. If we have people listening to the sound of God's Word today, if we have people next week who will be worshiping together with us, God's the one that's going to have to do it.

[44:01] And this is what we see here in verse 9. Blessed are those who are called. God calls us, and whosoever will may come. It's not about us. Remember, it's about Him.

[44:14] God sends out the invitation. We don't draw the crowd. God has to send them. And then verses 7 and 8. Clean and bright. He is granted to us to be arrayed in fine linen.

[44:24] His bride has made herself ready. And the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints. And what we see here in this, and it's not so much, I realize it talks about the righteousness of the saints, but what does the Bible say about our righteousnesses?

[44:41] They're all as filthy rags. So the righteousness that he's talking about here is the righteous acts of the saints brought about through the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

[44:54] So bottom line is, we're worshiping today not based on our own merit. We worship based on the merit of Jesus Christ. And so he provides. He provides.

[45:05] The Son enables us to worship because of what he has done for us. And then thirdly, God directs, God the Spirit directs us in worship.

[45:15] Look at verse 10. I fell at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, but let's go to the end. For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. We see the Godhead here involved in worship.

[45:28] Definitely a picture of the Holy Spirit. Now I want to think back to Tozer. He also said this quote, It is delightful to worship God, but it is also a humbling thing.

[45:42] And the man who has not been humbled in the presence of God will never be a worshiper of God at all. He may be a church member who keeps rules and obeys the discipline and who tithes and goes to conference, but he will never be a worshiper unless he is deeply humbling.

[46:01] So the non-negotiable is our humility before God. This is not a game. This is not a, you know, we don't worship. The worship team doesn't come up here so that we might enjoy their worship.

[46:15] No, we come in here so that we might corporately worship our Heavenly Father in humility. Again, bottom line, do we really glorify God? Is God glorified in everything that we do?

[46:26] Do we walk out on cloud nine no matter how we think the worship went? You know, there's some days where I walk out of here, Brother Harry, you've preached, you've been a pastor for years. How do we walk out sometimes?

[46:38] Man, I just blew that. I messed up. It was horrible. Worship team might say, you know what, we sang that off key and it was terrible and you know what, the people looked at us like they were mad at us and it was a terrible day of worship.

[46:52] Right? And all the while, there are people in the crowd that are saying, oh, praise, I'm praising, I'm worshiping God and they're praising and worshiping for the right reasons because you see, it doesn't matter how, air quote, worship goes, is if God is pleased with our worship then that's all that matters.

[47:13] If there's two people here and we worship and praise God corporately together and God is pleased, we had great worship. Amen? If we had a hundred here, it would be great worship.

[47:29] It'd be really great worship. Right? But God alone is the one who judges. So as we finish, the greatness of God is more than enough to hold our attention, incite our affection and lead us to humble adoration of God in worship.

[47:48] That's the bottom line. God's enough. If we didn't have instruments, that would be okay. We've got our voices. If we didn't even have our voices and we all suffered at the same time from laryngitis, we could lift our head to the heavens and praise God with our hearts.

[48:05] Amen? And I feel like I cheated you, I robbed you. What do we see over and over when God says something or when the messenger says something?

[48:17] What do the people say? Amen! Amen! Glory! Hallelujah to God! You know, it's okay to talk back to the preacher and agree because that's what amen means. I agree.

[48:28] So true. So right. Bottom line is God deserves our worship. He's a good God and he's so much better than what the world offers. Let's pray. Lord God, this morning, we're so thankful for your goodness.

[48:41] We're so thankful, Heavenly Father, that you love us, you care for us, you guide us, you are in control, you are just, you are mighty, you are holy, you are eternal, and for all these things, Father, we praise you, we honor you, and glorify you today.

[49:05] I thank you, dear God, for everyone here. For those who are traveling, those who are out of town this week, Lord, we pray that you would provide them safety in their travels back and that they might be able to honor you and glorify you in their travel and in their time with those family that they're with.

[49:24] We praise you, Father, today, we give you all the honor, all the glory, and all the praise. Amen. Let's all stand.