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Only worshippers are in Heaven.

Worship is what the Father seeks.

Jesus came to seek and to save lost sinners, and make them worshippers of God.

God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

The driving message of salvation is worship. Jesus tells us the only thing God seeks is worship. So, the purpose of salvation is worshiping the God of Heaven. Now, look what Revelation completes for us. The whole Bible can be summed up by the theme of worship. We have come to the final lesson from Revelation 4 & 5.

Four Foundational Truths To Anchor us Through Life

Here they are:

1.    God’s Word describes the Real Heaven: There is only one Real Heaven and Rev. 4-5 describes what it looks like, so none of the other accounts that you read or hear about Heaven, other than the truths of God’s Word, are accurate or inspired.

2.    God’s Word declares Eternal Heaven & Hell: There are only two destinations, one is an eternal place God calls Heaven, filled with joy, peace, bliss, and endless pleasures; and the other is a place of conscious, endless torments called Hell: and you are going to one or the other.

3.    God’s Word demands One Way of Salvation: that the only way to Heaven is through having imputed to you by faith alone, the redemptive, blood-soaked, substitutionary sacrifice of Jesus upon the Cross, as described in God’s Word.

4.    God’s Seeks True Worshippers: the only true salvation is the one that saved us out of our hopeless distance from God; and that makes us worshippers. We who worship are bondservants of God. His salvation brings us into complete submission, as we bow before God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Spirit.

So, who are the saved, who are the redeemed, who are the bondservants of God? In Revelation, when we see the ending, we see that:

Believers are Worshippers

The heartbeat of God’s Word is worship. This morning in John 4, Jesus defines believers as WORSHIPPERS!

The word translated “worship” is 65x in the New Testament, and ten of those times are clustered right here in John 4. Here is the defining chapter on the worship and the worshippers that God seeks. Please stand with me and follow along as we read John 4:20-24 (NKJV):

Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. 24 God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Pray

Worship: The Whole Theme of God’s Word

The driving message of salvation is worship. Jesus tells us the only thing God seeks is worship. So, the purpose of salvation is worshiping the God of Heaven. Now, look what Revelation completes for us. The whole Bible can be summed up by the theme of worship.

The Scriptures open in Genesis with God walking and talking with His Worshippers, who fall away from Him in sin. So God comes down and finds them and explains to them how they can come back to Him through a substitutionary, sacrificial offering made obediently as an act of worship.

The next book Exodus contains elaborate plans for a tent whose sole purpose was to bring worshippers to God. It was made to transport nomadic, desert-dwellers from the dry, barren wastelands to before the very Throne of God, anytime they wanted to come just the way God instructed them to come.

The longest book at the heart of God’s Word is a manual on ways to Worship the God of the Universe. The Psalms are mostly songs of worship, pointed at the God of the Universe.

The rest of the Old Testament is a series of prophets lamenting the neglect and abandonment of worship by God’s people who were to be a kingdom of Worshippers (priests).

The Gospels open with the God of Heaven on earth seeking creatures who would be willing to be Worshippers. As an infant He is welcomed by kneeling shepherds, and worshipping Wisemen. He is followed for three plus years by a band of disciples who often were overwhelmed with awe and worshipped Him.

Then, Book of Acts records what happens when average people from every walk of life, every strata of society and every depth of sin are bound together with a common passion of being life long Worshippers.

The Epistles are a training manual on how to grow as worshippers personally and corporately. Then, Revelation ends what Genesis started. The God of the Universe is walking with, and sharing with His worshipping creatures, forever dwelling with us, just as He promised.

God’s Word closes with all of God’s Worshippers at last Home with their Creator and Worshiping HIM!

Are You a Worshipper?

Is your heart the heart of a worshipper? The word worship is full of meaning, expressing the idea of falling down, prostrating oneself, and kissing the feet or the hem of the garment of the one honored.

Worship has been defined as when:

•    God’s Holiness quickens my conscience;
•    God’s truth feeds my mind;
•    God’s beauty purges my imagination;
•    God’s love opens my heart; and
•    God’s purposes capture my will.

Does this describe most believers of 2012? Someone once said, “The immense tragedy of the contemporary church is that most people worship their work, work at their play, and play at their worship”.

Christ’s Salvation Invitations

Jesus who paid the price for sin on the Cross, presented the way that anyone who wanted to be saved, could be saved. Jesus shared the Good News.

But as we look through the two-dozen or so different times that Jesus shared the Gospel we see that He almost never repeated Himself. It is almost like each time is unique, yet each time was the same. That is the wonder of salvation.

What was the message Jesus gave to those who heard Him preach? In the Gospel by John we can find what is perhaps the most exciting, extraordinary, and profound of all the Gospel presentations.

John captures Jesus 24x describing those believers who will surround the Throne, as those who:

1.    A believer is someone who possesses Christ, and becomes God’s Child by a Supernatural event.

o    John 1:12 Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—
o    John 1:13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

2.    A believer is someone who understands that salvation is only by trusting in One who took my place.

John 1:29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

There before  John stood the One whom all the sacrifices of Old Testament times had foreshadowed. It is exceedingly striking to observe the progressive order followed by God in the teaching of Scripture concerning “the lamb”.  The Gospel as explained by Paul in I Cor 15:3-4 explains this so clearly Christ died for sin

3.    A believer is someone who is overwhelmed by the Spirit of God.

John 1:33 I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’

God’s Holy Spirit comes and invades every part of our being, standing by to transform, deliver, heal, and protect. The Baptism of the Holy Spirit is the washing away of our sins, the supernatural implantation of a new heart, and the beginning of God’s work in our lives. It is instantaneous and supernatural. So in a sense, baptism does save us, baptism does wash away all sin, but the baptism that does that is only performed once and only performed by God the Holy Spirit!

4.    In John 2: A believer is someone who is saved only by hanging onto Christ alone.

John 2:11 This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.

Salvation is a person, and He is our substitute, and we cling to him!

5.    In John 3: A believer is someone who gets to start life over again, seeing Christ as their only hope to live the truth and love the light, and have God’s wrath removed forever.

Now mark these with me in your Bibles:

A BELIEVER GETS TO START LIFE OVER AGAIN. (brand new and the right way!) That is in John 3:3, 5, 7 In reply Jesus declared, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again.”  5 Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’

A BELIEVER LOOKS AT CHRIST AS THEIR ONLY HOPE. John 3:15-16, 18 that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

A BELIEVER LIVES THE TRUTH AND A BELIEVER LOVES THE LIGHT.       John 3:20-21 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth, comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.”

Remember again Acts 26:18 we are light seekers and lovers. I John 1 we walk in the light.

A BELIEVER HAS GOD’S WRATH PULLED OFF OF THEIR LIFE BY ACCEPTING THE SON.  John 3:36  Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on him.”

God’s wrath against sin is as unavoidable apart from Christ’s sacrifice; we are without Jesus, like a target painted by a laser with a laser guided bomb headed its way, or a heat seeking missile locked on a jets engine, or a radar honing missile streaking toward an unsuspecting transmitter; or like swimming near blood when killer sharks lurk nearby. All are fatal, one is eternally fatal!
Are You a Worshipper?

Is your heart the heart of a worshipper? The word worship is full of meaning, expressing the idea of falling down, prostrating oneself, and kissing the feet or the hem of the garment of the one honored.

Worship has been defined as when:

•    God’s Holiness quickens my conscience;
•    God’s truth feeds my mind;
•    God’s beauty purges my imagination;
•    God’s love opens my heart; and
•    God’s purposes capture my will.

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