“Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”
Revelation 5:12-13
We are now officially in Holy Week and Resurrection Sunday is quickly approaching! We’ll be closing out the series today by considering and practicing adoration of Christ for who He is and the work He did on the cross. Because we’ve spent time over the past few weeks considering our need for a savior, how great the gift of salvation is, and the joy set before us in spending eternity with the LORD, the only logical next step is adoration and praise to Him for these great gifts and who He is.
The Lamb
We have often heard of Jesus being referred to as “the Lamb of God”, meaning that he offered himself as a once and for all sacrifice, in our place so that we could be exempted from the spiritual penalty of our sin, which is separation from God. This substitution was symbolized and foreshadowed in the first Passover, when God “passed over” the homes of Israelites in Egypt. All of those who had demonstrated their trust in Yahweh to save them by sacrificing a lamb were spared.
This offering of self by a god to redeem his worshipers is unheard of in other religions. Every other belief system offers a path of (often ambiguous) achievements to be completed or appeasing sacrifices that must be made to assuage the god or reach the worshiper’s goal (whether that be a form of heaven, ultimate peace, morality or oneness with nature, etc.) Only Yahweh came into humanity and sacrificed Himself to restore our relationship with Him.
Hallelujah, worthy is the Lamb!
Worthy of Praise
In light of what we know about God, the idea that He is praiseworthy makes sense, but I’ll be honest, the idea that He desires our praise and desires to be glorified has not always been a comfortable one to me. We all know people, or maybe are one of those people, who require constant affirmation to feel ok. When we are around someone like this, we see them as lacking a sense of self-worth and rather draining. And because we can sometimes default to seeing God as merely a bigger human with human faults, we might think it rather petty and insecure of him to actually desire to be praised and glorified.
But this idea is quickly uprooted when we consider that God is completely other, completely self-sufficient. In fact, he doesn’t actually need us at all, he is love and contains love within himself, among the three persons of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit)
Acts 17: 24-25
The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.
He doesn’t actually need our praise to be ok, He desires our praise because we need to do it to be ok. Praising God and acknowledging him as our ultimate source is what we were made for and is the most natural response we could have when we begin to see the truth of who He is.
Worship and praise is not us flattering God, it is merely aligning ourselves with reality and telling the truth about who He is.
As John Piper puts it, “When he does all things “for the praise of his glory” as Ephesians 1 says, he preserves for us and offers to us the only thing in all the world which can satisfy our longings. God is for us, and therefore has been, is now, and always will be, for himself. Praise the Lord! Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.”
So in light of all of this, what prevents us from worshiping the LORD?
“In truth, we are never not worshiping. At any given moment, we’re directing our affections, attention, and allegiance either to the one true God or to idols that can never satisfy, comfort, or rescue us. That means I come into every Sunday gathering already worshiping something.” (from Bob Kauflin in Worship Isn’t About You)
What is blocking us from worshiping with our whole hearts? Distraction with urgent but less important issues? Disappointment at not receiving blessings we’d hoped for? Grief over tragedy we feel God could have prevented? Whatever the cause, let us lay those things at Jesus’s feet, knowing that he is familiar with all our griefs, and lift our hearts to give Him the praise He deserves.
Hallelujah, worthy is the Lamb!
Practice:
Praise through song:
After laying down your distractions and burden’s at the Lord’s feet in prayer, listen and sing along with a worship song that focuses on who the Lord is and what He has done. Some examples include: Your Great Name, How Great Thou Art, Revelation Song
Praise through service:
Ask the Lord to show you someone that is in need of extra His care today. Allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in being His hands and feet in the world around you.
Thank you for joining me in this series! My hope for all of us is that we head into this week with hearts full of a deep, grounded joy that overflows into celebration as we lift up our praise on Resurrection Sunday!
I would love to hear how this series impacted your celebration this year!
Bonus resources for further reflection:
“But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise — lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game — praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians and scholars. My whole, more general difficulty, about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value. I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are, the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. (Reflections on the Psalms, 93–95)” __ C.S. Lewis
Worthy is the Lamb Who Was Slain - Look at the Book Lab by John Piper | Duration: 14:34
By Chris Tomlin, Brian Johnson, Jason Ingram, Jenn Johnson, and Phil Wickham
A thousand generations
Falling down in worship
To sing the song of ages to the Lamb
And all who’ve gone before us
And all who will believe
Will sing the song of ages to the Lamb
Your Name is the highest
Your Name is the greatest
Your Name stands above them all
All thrones and dominions
All powers and positions
Your Name stands above them all
And they angels cry, Holy
All creation cries, Holy
You are lifted high, Holy
Holy forever
If you’ve been forgiven
And if you’ve been redeemed
Sing the song forever to the Lamb
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