Worship God as a holy God
Series: Holy – Holy – Holy | Bible text: Revelation 4:8b
To worship God as a holy God is to worship him even if you do not experience him as a loving, merciful, just God. In doing so, you bring a piece of heaven to earth, because it is the heart of worship. But if we refuse or distract ourselves with other things, how that leads us into inner turmoil and dissatisfaction.
Tomorrow my husband and I will celebrate our second wedding anniversary. I’m not saying this to give my husband a heads-up and give him time to think about tomorrow. So it’s not just because of that. No, I’m primarily telling you this because the circumstances of our wedding were a bit special and have a lot to do with today’s topic. Within three months we cancelled everything for the wedding planned for October and organised a completely different celebration a few months earlier. This was due to a serious illness of my mother and the fear that she would not make it to a celebration in October. My husband had suffered several strokes of fate in his environment in the months before and had trouble dealing with such surprising deaths. So you can imagine, when we stood in church two years ago, we were both two broken people and really not at our best. Even though we were both at a low point in our lives and really had nothing to offer each other, we stood there and said how much we loved each other. I think wedding vows are very much like praise. For me, it is still a lesson that love and worship – lifting up the other person – has little to do with how I experience my counterpart at the moment, but with who my counterpart is.
He is worthy
Perhaps you know how you can go outside into nature and just be amazed. What you see inevitably leads you to worship God as the creator of this incredibly wonderful beauty. It may be that you are experiencing blessings and guidance in your life and, full of joy and gratitude, you can’t help but praise God for it. But it is just as possible that you are not experiencing God as just because he has taken a loved one from you. It may be that you do not experience God as merciful because he does not hear your prayers, your pleas and you have to bury wishes and dreams. Maybe you are not experiencing God as loving because you are not hearing him or feeling his presence. I don’t know if your soul is rejoicing or weeping right now. But with a broken heart it is very difficult to worship God. How can I sing that God is such a loving, just God when my circumstances scream that He is not. I’m not saying God still isn’t, but if you don’t experience it yourself, it’s just harder to believe. I think this is where the holiness of God comes in. To worship God as a holy God is to worship him because he is worthy. It absolutely doesn’t matter if you are having the best time of your life or if you are saddened to death.
We naturally try to find answers. Again and again the question of why comes up, but the Bible shows us that God does not need to answer this question all the time.The best example of this is Job. He loses everything he has, his possessions, his family and his health. This is followed by many chapters describing how Job and his friends discuss why all this happened to Job. In the end, God comes and instead of answering this one big question, he finally says to Job, «I am God and you are not.» But even more impressive to me is another unanswered question. Jesus hangs on the cross to pay for our guilt with his death. He sacrifices himself so that we may live and do so for eternity. The physical pain must have been incredibly bad, but think about how great his heartache must have been. We read of this in Matthew 27:46: «Around three o’clock Jesus cried out loudly: «Eli, Eli, lema sabachtani?» That is, «My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?» «(Matthew 27:46 HFA). And God is silent. There is no response from the Father. I am sure that Jesus experienced the Father at that moment as anything but loving, merciful and gracious. Personally, it helps me to realise that Jesus, in addition to the physical pain, also experienced the inner pain and that God did not answer his cry. God is holy and that means he is different from what we expect. Realising this is the first step to very honest praise. When we fall on our knees and say, «God, my heart is broken and I don’t understand why you are not intervening right now, but I recognise you are holy. Even though I don’t understand you, I know you are worthy to be worshipped. For this reason I praise and honour you Lord. I lift up your name», then we come to the heart of praise. This is praise that changes the world.
Worship – Where heaven and earth touch
What makes me think that this is the heart of praise? I would like to read you a Bible passage from Revelation 4. John has a revelation from heaven. What he sees seems so wonderful that he can hardly describe it. Using the words he knows, he tries to describe it as best he can. «Just in front of the throne was something like a sea, transparent as glass, clear as crystal. Immediately around the throne stood four mighty creatures, covered all over with eyes. The first of these creatures looked like a lion, the second resembled a bull; the third had a face like a man, and the fourth resembled a flying eagle. Each of these figures had six wings. The wings were also full of eyes, inside and out. Tirelessly, day and night, they cry out: «Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who has always been, who is here today, and who is to come!» These four living beings praise and extol the one who sits before them on the throne and who will live forever and ever. And each time they do so, the twenty-four elders fall down before him and worship him to whom all power has been given and who lives forever. They lay down their crowns before his throne and cry out: You, our Lord and God, we worship. You alone are worthy to receive honour and glory and to be praised for your power. For you created everything. According to your will, the world and all that lives in it came into being.»(Revelation 4:6–11 HFA). In the second part he manages to hit the words without paraphrasing, because he reproduces the words he hears there. God is worshipped as a holy God. When I say it is the heart of worship, I mean it is the kind of worship that is heard in heaven. The Lord is praised for being, for what he is. Holy. Mighty. Worthy. Anyone who has heard a sermon or two here in recent weeks will be familiar with this phrase from Revelation 4:8 «Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty».
It is exactly the same wording as in Isaiah 6:3. Isaiah is called to his ministry as a prophet and in doing so he is surrounded by angels. «They cried out to one another: «Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty! His glory fills the whole world» «(Isaiah 6:3 HFA). I think it is no coincidence that it is the same wording twice. The two visions are about 850 years apart and one wonders if the angels could not have made a new song of praise in the meantime. Probably they did not lack creativity. Rather, it seems that it was simply a timelessly appropriate phrase. But what fascinates me about these biblical passages is something else. It seems that angels and heaven are not as far away as we might sometimes imagine. Do you know that right now, at this moment, the angels in heaven are worshipping God? And I think we are being asked to join in. And do you know what happens then? Heaven and earth touch. Personally, I don’t believe that heaven and earth are two separate worlds. I think sometimes there is an intersection and heaven on earth becomes visible. We see part of this in the cross, where God gives his only Son so that we can meet him in freedom. He builds the bridge between heaven and earth. And I am sure that part of this intersection also has to do with worship. Are you aware that through your praise, you bring a piece of heaven here on earth? What a privilege!
Worship – Our Heart’s Desire
Yes, it is truly a privilege. Not only because we get to experience a piece of heaven on earth. I believe the need to worship is ingrained in us from the beginning. We are made for worship. Who of you knows the situation: you are sitting at the dentist’s and then as you are sitting defencelessly on this chair with this clamp in your mouth, suddenly your left big toe starts to itch terribly. You can’t do anything at that moment and it gets more and more unpleasant over time until it’s almost unbearable. And when you’re finally free again, it’s pure salvation. So if we are made to worship and it is a need of ours, then at some point it becomes unpleasant if we don’t do it. Either an inner turmoil arises or we start worshipping something else. When I think of worshipping the holy God, I can’t help but think of David. David danced, played music and wrote songs to the glory of God. We can still read some of these in the Bible today in the Psalms. David praised God when he was already king, but he also praised God when he was on the run from his enemy Saul. No one told him that he had to worship God and yet it was not a question for him. No matter how desperately he cried out to God, his prayers ended in praise. David did not do this because he felt pressured to do so. His prayers are usually far too honest for that. No, I think David knew full well that worshiping the holy God would bring peace to his heart.
I wish that, like David, we would follow this need of our heart, this longing, and worship the holy God. It is a great privilege to be able to do this together after the sermon. But I also want to encourage you to make more space for worship in your everyday life. You can sing, dance, play music, pray in your own words or with the words of the Psalms. How you worship is not so important. It is more important that you do. Put your mobile phone away, go out into nature or make a date with someone to do so. Do what it takes to move away from distraction into an attitude of worship.
Possible questions for the small group
Read the Bible text: Revelation 4:8b
- What kind of God do you perceive the holy God as at the moment? Do you experience him as a loving, merciful, patient father or rather as a cool, distant God who seems to ignore your calls?
- How does how you perceive God affect your prayer life and worship?
- When was the last time you took time to worship God outside of the Sunday service?
- How do you worship God in your daily life? Have you deliberately set aside a time of day? Is there a special place where it is easier for you to worship?
- Do you find it easy to worship alone (or with your partner, your family)? What could help you to make it an integral part of your life?
- To begin, you could end today’s small group time with a time of worship instead of a round of prayer.
