When I attend a Sunday morning worship service, I usually sit on the front row. I do this not because I am some sort of liturgical brown-noser, eager to earn worship points from God for my enthusiasm. I am a pastor; I am paid to sit on the front row.   Unfortunately, I cannot see my fellow worshipers from the front row. My back is to them. So, on occasion, while the worship team leads congregational singing, I turn around for a look. On even rarer occasions (only once or twice a year), I sit in the very back row. … Continue reading The Posture of Worship (Revelation 4:9–10)

Familiarity breeds contempt. At least that is often the case with our relationships. In The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis writes, “When two humans have lived together for many years it usually happens that each has tones of voice and expressions of face which are almost unendurably irritating to the other.”[i] And all the people said, “Amen!” Or, as the kids might put it, “Been there, done that.”   Interestingly, when it comes to a relationship with God, familiarity breeds not contempt but ever-increasing wonder. Consider, for example, these words from Revelation 4:8–9: “And the four living creatures, each of them … Continue reading Worshiping God for Who He Is (Revelation 4:8–9)

Around the throne of God are gathered “twenty-four elders” (Rev. 4:4), “four living creatures” (4:6), and “many angels” (5:11). Although he does not see them in his vision, John hears the voices of “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them” (5:13). All creation, John is telling us, unites to worship the God who made them and the Lamb who would save them (Rev. 4:6-8).   In Reversed Thunder—my favorite book on John’s Revelation—Eugene Peterson comments on the significance of the twenty-four elders and the four living … Continue reading The Worshipers of God (Revelation 4:6–8)

  Who is the God Jesus Christ invites us to worship?   Several years ago, J. B. Phillips wrote a helpful little theology primer with the title, Your God Is Too Small. In the first half of that book, he exposed numerous “inadequate conceptions of God which still linger unconsciously in many minds,” including God as a “resident policeman,” “parental hangover,” “grand old man,” “managing director,” “and pale Galilean.”[i]   More recently, in Habits of the Heart, Robert Bellah and his colleagues told the story of a woman named Sheila, who said: “I believe in God. I’m not a religious … Continue reading Shock and Awe (Revelation 4:2–6)

  Today, many American congregations are casualty-strewn battlefields of the “worship wars,” in which defenders of traditional hymns, pianos, and organs face off against partisans of contemporary choruses, guitars, and drums. Such wars, I fear, reduce the worship of God to a question of style rather than substance: “How do we worship?” instead of “Whom do we worship, and why?” Revelation 4–5 counters this reductionism with a mind-expanding vision of God and his Lamb, whose character and actions call forth our unceasing, full-throated, knee-bending “glory and honor and thanks” (4:9).   Let’s take a closer look.   “Come Up Here” … Continue reading “Come Up Here” (Revelation 4:1)