Throne Room of Heaven - Part 1

Welcome to God First with Brian C. Thomas, a program committed to encouraging you to put God first while viewing life through the window of the Bible. Now, in honor of the one and only true God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, let's join Brian C. Thomas for today's message. Welcome to God First week. And for anyone that is joining me for the first time, my name is Brian Thomas and I greet you today in the name of our wonderful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

And as always, we give honor to the one and only true God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of the Bible. Well, today we are beginning a new series within the book of Revelation and we are looking at worship. Do you ever wonder what heavenly worship is like?

Do you ever wonder what God's throne is like? Well, we're going to begin today by looking at worship and look at what is taking place in heaven around the throne of God. And when we think about worship, a lot of different thoughts can come to mind. You're thinking about church settings and what is happening in churches and you see a lot of different practices, a lot of different styles, a lot of different preferences. There are some churches that are very loud.

They're very animated. They're very boisterous when it comes to worship. I've been a part of those churches where people are running around the church and some people would sort of lightheartedly describe it as rolling in the aisles. So you see that kind of worship. I've heard of churches in which as people are entering the church service, the ushers or the greeters are handing out earplugs because the music is so loud. And then I've been a part of church service in which there's the smoke and it's dark and you have the smoke and lights like a concert. And so that's on one end of the spectrum. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you can have the very ceremonious type of worship service to where everything is very liturgical. You're being told what to do and what to say and how to act. And there are some people that say, well, that doesn't seem genuine.

It doesn't seem like it's really coming from your heart as far as giving worship to our Lord. And I'm not here today to debate or to talk about whether that is the case or not. But those are the opposite ends of the spectrum. And then, you know, you have what's in between.

And the majority of people usually fall somewhere in the middle. But we see a lot of different preferences, a lot of different styles when it comes to worship. And so we're going to look today at heavenly worship. What is going on around God's throne? We're coming from Revelation, chapter four, verses one through 11. And what we find is that when the apostle John, when he finished pinning the letters to the seven churches that we saw in Revelation, chapter three, the next thing that he sees is a door open to heaven in Revelation, chapter four, verse one. It reads after these things, I looked and behold, a door standing open in heaven. And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me saying, come up here and I will show you things which must take place after this. Again, the first thing to happen to John after describing the seven churches is he's being taken up into heaven.

Now, I don't believe that this is a coincidence. John, he is the last remaining of the apostles. He was a member of the universal church. And what I believe what we have here is a picture of the rapture, a picture of the rapture of the church. This invitation comes from Jesus Christ himself. And we see the same terminology used in Revelation, chapter one, verse 10, in which it states, I was in the spirit on the Lord's day and I heard behind me a loud voice as of a trumpet. And we see here in Revelation four one, John hears this voice and the voice was like a trumpet speaking with him saying, come up here and I will show you things which must take place.

Again, I think this is a picture of the rapture of the church, because when we look at John, chapter 14, verses two through three, this is a great verse, a great passage of what our Lord promised us, those who have put our faith and trust in him. He said, in my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am, there you may be also. That is what's so great about our Lord. He came to the earth. He became part of mankind. Yes, Jesus Christ was God. He was God in the flesh, God the son. He came out of a perfect heaven.

All the luxuries, all the splendors, all the wonders of heaven. But he came to this earth because he knew that mankind needed a savior. He saw that sin had came and corrupted mankind and that mankind was eternally destined to hell because of the fact that, well, there has to be a sacrifice for sin.

There has to be a payment for sin. But the thing is, it takes a perfect sacrifice. And no human being could fulfill that because no human being is perfect.

Never has been or ever will be, except for the one, the man, Jesus Christ. And yes, he was fully man, but he was also fully God. And the great thing about it is he made a way when he came to this earth. He died for us. He sacrificed his life, but then he rose from the dead. And before he ascended, after rising from the dead, he said that I am going to prepare a place for you.

He says, I am going to come again and receive you that where I am there, you may be also. You see, the great thing is that when a Christian dies, the soul and spirit goes to heaven to be with Christ in the father's house. The body remains in the grave until the resurrection, which happens at the rapture of the church for Christians. There are some out there who will teach soul sleep. They say that when a person dies, that their soul is just in a state of sleep, that they are not conscious. Well, the apostle Paul stated to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. I don't see any other way to look at that, that when we close our eyes on this side of life, when we die physically, we immediately open our spiritual eyes into the presence of Jesus Christ. That should bring so much comfort to people who have lost a loved one, especially for ones who are parents and who have lost a young child. You are grieving for that child and you're wondering about that child. Where are they? How are they doing?

What are they doing? Well, you can rest assured that that young child, if they've not yet reached the age of accountability, that the day they died, when they closed their eyes, the next moment they were in the presence of Jesus Christ. In all his splendor, in all of his majesty, they're standing there in awe, seeing Jesus Christ face to face. And that is the case for all who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. And so at the rapture, the body is going to rise from the grave and be reunited with soul and spirit that is coming down out of heaven with our Lord. And I believe that this rapture takes place before the tribulation.

There are different beliefs out there. There are some who believe it happens in the middle of the tribulation, some at the end, some in the middle of the wrath or just before the wrath. But either way, the rapture is going to take place. And I believe what we see here is a picture in which our Lord is calling the Apostle John. He took him in the spirit to the Lord's day, to the future.

And he's saying, come up here as John sees this door open. As we look at chapters four and five of Revelation, we see a vision of heaven. When we come to chapter six, we see the introduction to the tribulation. And I believe that the Bible is showing us here that John is a symbol of the church being taken away before the tribulation begins. Revelation 3 10 says, because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial, which shall come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth. You see, for those of us who have put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we're not to be here during this hour of trial. We're not to be here during this time of testing in which the world is going to come unglued, in which demonic spirits are going to run rampant. Spiritual warfare will be to a level that we've never seen before. .