What can we learn about worship through the book of Revelation?

Question:

What can we learn about worship through the book of Revelation?

Answer:

Before I begin I must humbly submit that I find this book to be most difficult to grasp. I will quote John Calvin who himself did not choose to write a commentary on this book for fear of err. In his commentary on Galatians, Calvin said the following about the interpretation of Scripture: “Let us know then, that the true meaning of Scripture is the natural and obvious meaning, and let us embrace and abide by it resolutely.” He even goes so far as to say “Let us not only neglect as doubtful, but boldly set aside as deadly corruptions, those pretended expositions, which lead us away from the natural meaning.”

I present this merely in humble agreement as to my abilities to understand Revelation in its entirety. That being said we can begin by simply looking at the examples of worship we see through John’s (son of Zebedee (Matthew 10:2)) apocalyptic accounts. Interestingly, if we err and think we may more clearly understand these visions if we witnessed them first hand (as John had) this may not be the case as John’s purpose was indeed to write down what he experienced in order to share it with others (Revelation 1:11) so we should be able to take this account and glean what God had intended for us.

What we see through Revelation (perhaps not coincidentally a vision that occurs on the Lord’s Day) is this constant veneration by all for the …

I and Love and You

“Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

- John 15:13

“Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame. Many waters cannot quench love; rivers cannot wash it away. If one were to give all the wealth of his house for love, it would be utterly scorned.”

- Song of Solomon 8:6-7

After reading, please feel free to listen to my full audio sharing below this text.

I came across a song a few days ago that caused me to reflect on the three words that seem to carry tremendous impact for everyone in this world - I and Love and You. I couldn’t help but reflect on my life and our Lord and how these words carry so much weight.

Firstly, I began to think about how we come to worship the Lord. Of course, worship to the Lord is more than music and one day of the week and is really about how we live everyday for Him. Love isn’t a part-time occupation nor a fanciful hobby nor an emotional roller coaster but is founded upon the sound understanding of something or someone and devotion to it. This prompts me to ask about what the core of worship is founded upon. Do we understand what we sing and do we mean it each time we sing it? How can so many of …

Lyrical Theology

This past weekend I was at my church summer conference and we had a great series of sessions on the topic of “The Journey of Salvation: Justification, Sanctification, Glorification”. I will blog on these learnings in the near future.

I wanted to dedicate this post to a form of musical worship that was newly introduced to me during our conference by a fellow brother (Thanks Jermaine). The term for this developing genre is “reformed rap”. It features select artists with a passion for the Scriptures and meaningful lyrics that are based on the Truth.

One such artist, is Shai Linne (his MySpace page is here and blogger page is here). I listened to a couple of his tracks and immediately was taken aback with the quality of the music and the lyrics. It was indeed “Lyrical Theology” - what a concept! Such dedication to the Word and such focus on the art/medium of rap and what has been generated is a deeply meaningful, educational, challenging, inspiring form of musical worship. It is even more inspiring to hear that some of these labels will not present an artist until they have finished seminary - what a testimony to their dedication to handle the word of God as carefully as the prophets and apostles did.

I immediately logged onto iTunes and downloaded 2 albums of Shai and am making my way through each track. After using 2 of the songs (Mission Accomplished and Atonement Q&A - see below) to close out our series of talks at our conference that dealt with the same …