Throne Room of Heaven - Part 2

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. Greetings God first family. It is truly an honor to be with you again on this week. And for anyone that is joining me for the very first time, my name is Brian Thomas and I greet you 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, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of the Bible. Well, last week we began looking at the throne room of heaven.

And so we're going to conclude things on this week. Last week we looked at the physical appearance of the throne room. And so this week we're going to look at the worship that is taking place. We saw that there is so much splendor as our Lord is there.

He is present. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit that fuels the throne room with His glory, with His majesty. And so we also saw that there is this great emerald rainbow that encompasses the throne. Just a beautiful picture of what is there and our Lord and His great love. He gave us a glimpse, a picture by way of the apostle John as he took him into the future by way of a vision. And so he is showing us that he is our Lord by way of the apostle John, what it is that we have to look forward to.

Because for those of us who put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ, we will be there someday. We will be at this great throne room of heaven. So I want to begin with the question, do you ever wonder what heavenly worship is like?

Because when we think about worship on the earth, a lot of different ideas come to mind. As we spoke about last week, there are churches in which the worship is very animated. It's very expressive. It's very loud.

I've heard of cases in which people, as they are entering the church service, the greeters are handing out earplugs because of the loudness of the music. Then there's the opposite end in which is very ceremonial. It's very liturgical. You're being told and instructed what to say and what to do.

And you're reading from a script. But we're going to look this week at what does heavenly worship look like? We've already seen this great throne and there's just so many great, wonderful things that are there. And again, in God, with all of his great love, all of his great power, he's showing us what we have to look forward to. Folks, those of us who are believers in Jesus Christ, and I encourage everyone under the sound of my voice to become a believer of Jesus Christ.

We have so much to look forward to beyond this life. So as we go into the message, let us look to our Lord for a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for this day. We thank you for this word that you have given us to show us a picture of what it is that we have to look forward to that is around your great throne room of heaven. It is my prayer that all things that are spoken, that it be nothing but sound doctrine and may you be honored and glorified in all things in the name of Jesus. Amen.

How do we worship our Lord? If we remember, if we go back to chapter three, the apostle John has just finished writing the letters to the seven churches and immediately upon doing so, he sees a door open to heaven. Now, I don't believe that this is a coincidence. I think that this is a picture of the rapture of the church because the apostle John, when this door opened, he looked and then he heard a voice that said, come up here. And we saw last week that this voice was that of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I truly believe that this is a picture of what is to come for the rapture of the church in which we are going to be called up to be with our Lord.

Now, there are different opinions out there. I know there are some who believe in a post tribulation rapture. There are some who believe in a mid tribulation rapture. There are some that are pre wrath.

There's some that are mid wrath. There are some that say the rapture is just a false doctrine. There is no rapture. There are different opinions out there, but folks, we don't divide over this doctrine. I truly believe that there are going to be believers that are going to be living in eternity, that some are going to be those who hold a pre-trib rapture view, some mid, some post.

I hold the pre-trib view. But the key thing about it is we do not divide. We don't break fellowship over this matter. What we must do, though, is be ready to meet our Lord at all times, whether it be by way of natural death or by way of the rapture, because the time is going to come in one way or another that we are going to put on an incorruptible body. The Bible says we're going to leave these corruptible bodies. So in one way, at some point in time, it will take place. But we left off last week with verse five in Revelation, chapter four.

So let's pick up where we left off. Revelation four, verse five reads, and from the throne proceeded lightnings, thunderings and voices. Seven lamps of fire were burning before the throne, which are the seven spirits of God.

We saw last week the seven spirits of God represents the seven old ministry of the one Holy Spirit. Now, I want to draw your attention today to the fact that this verse is telling us of the majestic nature of our Lord of God. It is telling us of his majesty, of his power when he speaks of lightnings, thunderings and voices. If you recall from Exodus, chapter 19, verses 16 through 19, we found that our Lord God appeared to the Israelites at Mount Sinai. And it says that he had voice of thunderings, lightnings, and the people were afraid.

They were afraid that they were going to die. And we see the same language in Psalm chapter 18, verses 12 through 15. And again, our Lord is referred to as having lightnings, thunderings and voices. It makes me think about here on this earth when thunderstorms come up and the lightning, the thundering. It can be nerve rattling at times. And I've seen little children that get quite afraid. I've even seen some adults that get afraid. And I actually know of a grown man who would go and hide in a closet when a thunderstorm comes up. So it can strike fear in you. I've seen people that have pets. The dogs will run for cover.

They run and hide under the bed or or under the couch or maybe under the arms of their their owner because they are afraid. And what we're seeing here on this earth, though, is just a small little glimpse, a taste of what it is like around the throne room of heaven, because the Bible says that there are great thunderings, there are great lightnings, and there is this booming voice of our God. It represents his fullness. It represents his completeness. It represents his perfection.

And it just shows the power that he has. And the thing about it is we don't have to fear it, though, because we are on his side. We don't have to fear our Lord, but we are to reverence him.

We are to to have the fear in the sense of respect and honor, but not fear in the sense that we are afraid of him because he is love and he wants what's best for us. Let's continue by looking at Revelation Chapter four, verse six. Before the throne, there was a sea of glass like crystal. And in the midst of the throne and around the throne were four living creatures full of eyes in front and in back. The first living creature was like a lion, the second living creature like a calf.

The third living creature had a face like a man, and the fourth living creature was like a flying eagle. This is a very interesting text as what is present around the throne room of heaven. We we often don't think about these things, but this is very interesting as we see these four living creatures having eyes around front and back full of eyes. Well, when we look at this text, the sea of glass, I will admit I cannot be dogmatic as to what this sea of glass means. It could convey stability as a glassy sea is calm, is undisturbed by by winds and by storms. But it is definitely a magnificent picture, regardless of what it means, because if you stop and think about it for a moment, I've seen great lakes, magnificent lakes, huge lakes that in every direction you turn, there was water. So think about the largest lake that you've ever seen. And now imagine that it is a complete sheet of glass.

Think about how it's going to sparkle, how the sun bouncing off of the rays and how beautiful that would be. Well, this is a picture of what we see here around the throne room of heaven. It is definitely things that we we just can't fathom in our human nature as to how beautiful, how glorious this is. But this sea could be, one, the church at rest. That is one thing it could represent. It could also represent the word of God, because we see that the the sea of glass in Solomon's temple represented the word of God. And normally when we look in scripture, sea refers to people. When we come to Revelation Chapter 15, we're going to find that the tribulation saints are seen standing on a sea of glass. But again, folks, this is a beautiful picture of what is in heaven.

Eyes have not seen nor ears have heard the great things that are there. And I just imagine this great, beautiful, magnificent glass sea of glass that is just sparkling in the glory and the splendor of our Lord's presence. If we look at Isaiah Chapter six, verses one through three, we find a description of the seraphim. It tells us there in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple.

Above it stood seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two, he covered his face. With two, he covered his feet. And with two, he flew. And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. Now, I want you to keep those verses in mind as we go forward. Ezekiel Chapter one, verses five through six and then 10 through 11 mentions four beings that represent the noblest. They represent the strongest, the wisest and swiftest among God's living beings. Remember, there was one who had a creature. He was a creature like a lion. There was one that was like a calf. There was one that was like the face of a man. And then there was a fourth creature that was flying like an eagle. This is very intriguing as what we see going on around the throne room of heaven.

What is present there? And so before the throne, again, this sea of glass, like crystals in the midst of the throne and around the throne. And then we see these creatures with eyes front and back. And then there's one like a lion, like a calf, like a man and one like an eagle. And what does the Bible say that these creatures praise the Lord?

Now, as we look a little closer at these creatures, the functions could be as follows. The lion could represent the leader of the kingdom of the animals. Most people will say, yes, the lion is the king of the jungle.

The calf is the leader of the domestic animals. And then we see the man who is the leader of the angelic host responsible for the human race. And then we also see here a flying eagle, the leader of the kingdom of the birds of the air. This is this is just to me, I find this so intriguing when we we know that this is what is present around the throne room of heaven. It also could be that these four beings represent the highest order of celestial beings who lead in worship.

It's just it's just amazing what we see here that is going on around the throne room of heaven. These creatures that something that we can't imagine what it's like on the earth. I mean, we know what a lion looks like. We know what a calf looks like. We know what a man looks like. We know what a flying eagle looks like. But but then we see these these wings that they have.

And so it's something that that we can't really fathom as to what they really look like. But the Bible again tells us that eyes have not seen nor ears heard the things that are in store for all who put their faith in Jesus Christ. So my question to you, have you placed your faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ? If you've not trusted him as your Lord and Savior, I want to encourage you today to do so because there is peace.

There is great joy. Your life is going to be changed in a way that is so radical that you won't believe. You will say that the only way it could happen is by way of the power of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So I encourage you today.

Come to him. Don't listen to the lies of the devil in which he tries to convince you that you've done too much wrong, that you've been too sinful, that Jesus will not accept you. The shed blood of Jesus Christ washes away all sins. The shed blood of Jesus Christ can redeem you from anything. And so I want to encourage you today that if you've not trusted him as your Lord and Savior, put your faith in Jesus Christ today so that you can have eternal life.

Your life will be changed in a way and you will never regret it because you will have joy that is eternal. You are tuned in today to the God First program looking at the throne room of heaven. Don't go away.

We'll be right back after this short message. You are listening to Brian C. Thomas on God First. For more of Brian's teachings, please visit Godfirst.org to browse our extensive library of material. There you will find devotionals, blogs, articles, and audio messages available as MP3 downloads on various topics such as salvation, Bible prophecy, marriage, and the significance of Lesson Israel, just to name a few.

You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter and visit our web store. So please visit us at Godfirst.org. Now, let's return to the conclusion of today's message.

Welcome back to the program. My name is Brian Thomas and you are tuned in to God First. If you want to hear this message in its entirety or any of our previous programs, please visit us at Godfirst.org. That's G-O-D, the number one S-T dot O-R-G. You can also write us. We would love to hear from you at God First Bible Fellowship, P.O. Box 266, Knightdale, North Carolina 27545. Again, please write us.

We would love to hear from you. So let's pick up where we left off. Revelation chapter four. And we have come to verse eight. We find here the four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. Now, let me pause right there for a minute. Remember when I gave you the description of the seraphim from the previous chapter of Isaiah, chapter six, verses one through three?

Let me read that to you again. In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on the throne high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above it stood seraphim. Each one had six wings. With two, he covered his face. And with two, he covered his feet. And with two, he flew. And one cried to another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of hosts.

The whole earth is full of his glory. I love the way scripture interprets scripture or how scripture ties to scripture, because we see the same thing stated right here in Revelation four. Verse eight.

Again, the four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within. And they do not rest day or night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy Lord God Almighty, who was and is to come. Verse nine. Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever and cast their crowns before the throne, saying, You are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things and by your will they exist and were created. This is a beautiful picture.

It is a very, very beautiful picture. Jesus Christ is the object of worship in heaven. Now, when we come to this verse, maybe the cause of worship at this point could be that the church has been raptured. But either way, still, worship is continually taking place in heaven. And the Bible says here in this verse that he created all things. John Chapter one, verse three says all things were made through him and without him, nothing was made that was made. And so we see the worship of our Lord. We see how when these creatures with these eyes all around, with these six wings each, that when they start worshiping our Lord, that the twenty four elders fall down before him and worship.

Let me ask you the question. Do you ever have times in your life when you fall down and worship our Lord? And I don't mean just in church. I mean, just in times of your day to day goings. Do you do you feel a desire to fall down and worship him? You know, there are times when I'm walking around in my yard.

I love to do outdoor work and I just love enjoying the great outdoors. And as I walk around and I look at the the great creation of our God and I look at the trees, I look at the sky. And if it's getting to be nighttime, I look at the stars and then I look at the home that he's blessed me with. And there are times when I would just go down to the earth before the Lord and I would just bow before him and I would just start to praise him.

I would start to honor him and just thank him because it is by him. It is by his power. It is by his glory. And that is not to even mention the fact that he gave us eternal life, the opportunity for eternal life. If you accept it by dying on the cross, he came out of a perfect heaven to this earth so that we could have the opportunity for eternal life. And that is why we see here in the scripture, he says, you are worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power for you created all things.

And by your will, they exist and were created. It is a beautiful picture of what is taking place in heaven. We see the creatures, we see the elders, they are worshiping our Lord. They are honoring him.

They are referencing him. So let me ask you this question. Are you excited about the wonders of heaven? There are people that are holding on to this life on this side of of life, to this earth. And I see so many cases in which a person that is coming close to death. Now, I'm not saying that we run around and just we're looking to die and that we're hoping to die.

I'm not saying that at all. Now, there are people who are suffering greatly through through ailments and things that they do say they wanted to go ahead and go to be with the Lord. But our Lord is going to call us at a time when he's ready, when he has decided that our purpose on this earth has been fulfilled.

But until then, we are to occupy until he comes. But the thing about it is I see people that seem to get so down and out and so discouraged because of what is going on in this life, because of things not panning out the way they wanted it to. Maybe they don't have that spouse that they dreamed of. Maybe they don't have the children that they dreamed of. Maybe not the home or the dream job or the money, whatever it is. There are people who just feel like failures because things haven't panned out in life in the way they had hoped it would. Now, I'm not discouraging having dreams and ambitions.

I'm all for that. But what I want to get through to you today is that this life is not the end of the story. There is an eternal life that is coming for everybody. For those who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ, it is going to be eternal life living in the presence of Almighty God for all of eternity. And he says that in the Father's house are many mansions and he's going to take us to that place to where we will have many mansions. And then the Bible says that the day is coming when heaven is going to come down to earth. But it's going to be a new and improved earth is going to be a renovated earth in which our Lord is going to rid it of all sin. And so that is going to be the eternal home for all who believe in Jesus Christ.

So are you excited about that? Don't hold on so tight to this life, this fallen world, this sinful world, this sin sick world, because there are greater things to come. When we look back in eternity.

Our lives on this earth is going to seem like just a blink of an eye in comparison to eternity. Maybe you're struggling in life, maybe you're suffering through some things, but I'm encouraging you to hold on and hold out because there are great wonders that are waiting for us. There are great things that are going to to to cause us when we are in the presence of our Lord to fall down and worship him.

But I don't want you to wait until the end. I want you to have that heart of worship for our Lord. Even today, you heard the saying that you you praise him in advance. So I want you to go ahead and praise him now in advance.

Don't wait until the time comes in which everything is just right. Yes, he is the one who deserves all the honor. He's the one who's deserving of all the glory. And maybe again, you are suffering right now. And I'm not trying to to minimize it. I'm not trying to make light of what you're going through, whether it's physical suffering, whether it's emotional, psychological, whatever it is. But I just want to encourage you that there are so many great things that we have to look forward to. And we're going to see as we continue to go through this series, as we continue to go through the Book of Revelation, the great things that are in store for all who put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. You know, it calls to mind God's character, the sacrifice of his dearly beloved son, Jesus Christ. When you think about the sacrifice that he made, you must praise him. You must recognize his power.

You must understand his greatness. And it's the Holy Spirit that leads us to worship him. But if you are spiritually depleted, if you are spiritually poor.

The the desire for genuine and the longing for praise will not be there. And that is why you need the Holy Spirit. And that is why I ask you today to accept Jesus Christ and invite the Holy Spirit to come in. You know, I've been at churches and I have seen how there is a lack of desire to praise our Lord. One of the things when I'm in church, when when as a minister, when I am upfront leading the service, I try to encourage people to give praises to our Lord. Now, I'm not a worship leader. I wish I could be a worship leader, but I don't have a senior voice.

But in between songs as we're transitioning in services, one of the things that I just love to do is to encourage people to give praises to our Lord. Now, one of the things that I've always said is that I would never try to take people out of their comfort zone, because I understand that people have different personalities. Some are not comfortable with a lot of outward expression. They're introverted people.

And I'm certainly a reserved person myself. And I would try I would not tell people to do any more than to give the Lord a hand clap of praise. But I will encourage I will say, praise him.

Let's let's just give him honor, give him glory. And I don't understand it when I see people in church that don't have a desire. Again, I understand that maybe you're not quite comfortable, but I want you to ask the Holy Spirit to release you if you're resistant to praising God. I want to encourage those who are leaders of the churches to encourage the people to invite the Holy Spirit in and to just freely worship him, because it's amazing as to how you when you begin to worship our Lord, how things begin to change, problems in life go away. Marriages begin to get healed. People's physical bodies begin to get healed.

You can go in all down and depressed. But when you give praises to our Lord, you will come away rejoicing. And it will be something that you says this can only be from the Lord because it surpasses all understanding. So I want you to pray to ask God to free you from that resistance, because there are so many things that our Lord has in store. We cannot imagine the great things that he has in store for all who put their faith and trust in you.

But again, it needs to be genuine. You know, I was at a church once and it was one of those preachers who love to give instructions to what to do. And I was sitting in that present and he was constantly telling people, turn to your neighbor and say this. Turn to your neighbor and do that.

Turn to your neighbor and whatever. You know, so I'll be honest, I participated for a while. I was a visitor at this church.

My first time visiting. But after about the sixth or seventh time of him saying, turn to your neighbor and do something, I stopped because I said, this is not genuine. This is not real. And he took offense to it because he actually call. He didn't call me out individually, but I do think he had me in mind. I don't know if there's anyone else that took the same approach, but he said, some of you are sitting out there like you crazy. If you don't want to participate, go sit in the back corner somewhere.

And I was very tempted to get up and walk out, but I did not. But I'm saying that to say this, our worship, our praise to our Lord should be genuine. We don't go to church to to go to a performance. We don't go to church.

You know, I was thinking to myself, if I wanted to go somewhere and get all these instructions, I would join an aerobics class. But that is not why I'm there. But I am there to give genuine worship, give genuine praise to our Lord.

I want to encourage you to do the same. There are great things that are waiting in heaven for us. Trust in Jesus Christ. Trust in our Lord. He loves us. He loves us all. No matter what you're going through, put your faith and trust in him.

If you've never given your heart to Jesus Christ, I encourage you to do so today because you will experience a joy. You will experience experience a renewedness, a redemption that can only come through his power. He is worthy of all the glory. He is worthy of all the honor. He is truly worthy of all the praise. On that note, that is going to do it for this week.

Please come back and join us again next week. Until then, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel. And to the only wise God be glory through Jesus Christ forever.

Amen. You've been listening to the Bible teacher, Brian C. Thomas, founder and president of God First. Brian and God First reserve all copyright protection under applicable law. Our copyright policy is available at our website, Godfirst.org. Until next time, remember to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Bless God's great nation of Israel and seek first the kingdom of God.