The Hope of God’s Perfected Worship #1
The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide . He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. Revelation 21:15-16
In this series of gospel-sanity devos, we’re exploring the theme of hope, and we are doing so by taking a look at Revelation 21-22, the last two chapters in the whole Bible. This portion of God’s Word gives us a tantalizing preview of coming attractions-a glimpse of the life we will forever enjoy as those redeemed by trusting in the person and work of Jesus, plus nothing else! For the next couple of days we will consider the hope of God’s perfected worship. What will it be like, at last, for us finally to offer our God the worship of which he alone is worthy? This should be a question we ponder quite seriously, longingly, and with great hope. For the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever, and our only hope of doing so is through the provision of the gospel of God’s grace.
I emphasize “God’s” worship because it’s his honor, pleasure and delight we should be most concerned about when we gather to worship our glorious and gracious Triune God-Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Because of sin, God’s worship and his worshippers, like everything else in creation, were terribly broken. This resulted in our worshipping anything and everything other than the only one who deserves our awe, adoration, affection and allegiance. This is what the Bible calls “idolatry”-giving anything or anyone the heart-worship that only belongs to God.
Our sinful brokenness as worshippers can also be seen in the ways we worship “worship” more than we worship God. The worship of God has atrophied to the point where it’s like standing in the food-court of a shopping mall trying to decide what flavor our worship taste-buds are hankering for today. The very fact that we talk so much in terms of either liking or not liking a particular service of worship reveals how desperate we are for the Day when our consuming passion and delight is the Other-centered worship of the one true living God, and that is precisely what John envisions-the whole redeemed family of God worshipping God for his sake and glory, period!
In Rev. 21:15-16, the apostle John actually describes the New Jerusalem with the imagery of the cubical dimensions of the Holy of Holies of the temple in Jerusalem. But, appropriately, he infuses those measurements with steroids! His point? When Jesus returns to make all things new the very realm in which we will spend eternity can best be described in terms of the unbroken, un-fettered, unfiltered, uninhibited worship of the Triune God. The entire new heaven and new earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of God as the waters cover the sea! Ponder that though and we will pick up here tomorrow!