This summer, we are embarking on an 8-week journey through the book of Revelation. Our prayer for you as you read this book and we tackle it together is that you will be able to see Jesus clearly each day, and that it will help you to remain faithful and live in hopeful anticipation of the day when Jesus will return!
Welcome to Week 2!
Day 7: Reflection Day
Read Psalm 150:6
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.
Praise the Lord.
Read Revelation 5:13
Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying:
“To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb
be praise and honor and glory and power,
for ever and ever!”
If you were around last year when we explored Practicing the Way by John Mark Comer, you likely remember the guiding axiom: The question is not, ” Are you being formed, it is “What are you being formed by”? In this series on Revelation, and particularly in these chapters, we could make a similar statement as it relates to worship: the question is not, “Do you worship?”, but “What do you worship?”. Calvin College professor James K.A. Smith suggests in his book “You are what you love”, that to be human is to love, to desire. Contrary to the common phrase “I think, therefore I am”, Smith argues that a central part of being made in the image of God involves our capacity to love.
As I read the Scriptures for this week, I couldn’t help but read them through that lens. In the last verses of chapter 3, we read about three more churches, two that have become complacent and need to be re-focused (Laodicea and Sardis), and one that just needed to be encouraged to press on in the face of challenge (Philadelphia). Then, John’s vision shifts from the earthly reality of these seven churches directly to a vision centered on heaven. “Come up here, and I will show you what will happen after this,” John hears in 4:1. From that point on, John is absorbed in worship of the all-powerful, all-knowing, ever-present God. The focal point, of course, is none other than Jesus, the Lamb of God, who is the only one able to open the scroll containing the rest of the vision. No one knows exactly what happens after death, but this passage in Revelation suggests that worship will be the central component.
