It is a simple fact of life that what we love, we praise; that what we value, we praise; that what we enjoy, we praise; and in the praising, we show what it is that we love and value and enjoy. And that is true not only of natural life, the basic instinct if you will, of human beings, but it is particularly the case in the hearts of those who worship God, the God who is there.
Now we have an example of that on this Palm Sunday, going back to that story in the gospels where Jesus is descending down the Mount of Olives to the Valley of the Kidron, and then he’ll go up the other side towards the City of David. And we’re told that, as he descended on the donkey the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works that they had seen. “Glory in the highest,” they said. And then some of the Pharisees came to Jesus, and they said to him, “Master, rebuke your disciples. And he answered,
“I tell you that if these were to hold their peace, the very stones would immediately cry out.”
Luke 19:40
The very stones would immediately cry out. In other words, Jesus refused to comply with their demand for censorship. Stopping them from praising God was not a matter of the law, was not a matter of a religious decision, it is a matter of obedience to God.
“Praise the Lord, all ye his people. Praise the Lord all these creatures large and small.”
Psalm 148
Big creatures, small creatures, medium-sized creatures, whoever you are. “Praise the Lord,” the Bible says that repeatedly. And praise is natural, we’re going to find out. Natural to all that God has made. In fact, Jesus had said earlier that God could raise up children of Abraham, that is believers, from these stones. If you don’t believe, God is able to raise up children of Abraham, that is, believers from these stones. And what Jesus is telling these people is that God is never ever short, in short supply of praise. Silencing the disciples would never mean silencing the voice of praise to God that echoes from everything that God has made.
Now here in Revelation chapter 4, we are being taught that the universal volume of praise is continuous and unbroken. There are two groups in this fourth chapter, and both of the groups are angelic creatures. They are symbolic creatures, also, who represent things in the created order of things as well, as we will see. There are these living creatures that we read about, “each of them with six wings, full of eyes all around” and so on. We’re told earlier in the chapter that these living creatures are in the form of a lion, and an ox, and a human, and an eagle. And these creatures represent all the creatures. Creatures are basically made things, the things that God has made. They represent all animate and inanimate existence, and they also represent the Creator. That is, you see them “full of eyes all around and within,” these multiple eyes underline God’s omniscience; he knows everything that’s going on. They are God’s agents everywhere, in all of existence, doing his bidding, being his eyes and ears in everything that’s going on in created reality. And here we find these living creatures fulfilling the calling of all creation. We find it in Psalm 19:
“The heavens are telling the glory of God.”
Psalm 19:1
And the firmament – the actual, the actual existence of the universe, the planets and stars,
“the firmament proclaims his handiwork.”
Psalm 19:1
The ceaseless activity of nature under the hand of God is a ceaseless tribute of praise to God. And the praise follows the ceaseless activity of the Holy Trinity having created everything in the beginning. He goes, he continues to preserve and conserve his creation. This is what Jesus was meaning when he said on one occasion:
“My Father is working, and I am working. Because the Father does nothing without the Son, and the Son does nothing without the Father.”
And in terms of creating and now conserving the universe, both the Father and the Son are busy together, conserving all that they created in the beginning. And these living creatures, representative of all creation, have cause to praise God because God is the cause of all creatures. That is, he is the cause of their existing. For if his power were to cease even for a nanosecond — you understand if God’s will and power were to have just a nanosecond of ceasing, concentrated upholding of the universe — everything would immediately go into non-existence. Everything into non-existence. All things depend on God for their coming into existence and their continuing in existence.
So these living creatures have a vital work to do, and they teach us that the heavenly worship, that is, the worship in the heavenlies that we are mimicking, we’re drawing, from we’re trying to emulate in our public worship as God’s people here, that worship and our worship should first of all be the worship of the Holy Trinity. What does it say? It says this:
“they rest not day and night, saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!'”
Revelation 4:8
These living creatures belong to the category of the cherubim or the seraphim, and here they are, here they are using words that the seraphim in Isaiah chapter 6 used when Isaiah had a vision of God high and exalted, filling the universe, the universal temple, with his glory. And he heard the seraphim as they sang:
“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
Isaiah 6:3
The threefold holy is undoubtedly a reference to the Holy Trinity. “Well,” you say to me, “Liam, you said undoubtedly. Well, I’m not sure. Show me how it’s a reference to the Holy Trinity.” And you’d be right to ask me that question because, actually, I was just going to answer it for you. When you go to Isaiah chapter 6, you ask yourself the question: Who did Isaiah see? He tells us, he saw the Lord, he saw Yahweh, he saw the God of Israel high and exalted. He saw the God of Israel in his glory. That’s what the seraphim said. The seraphim saying,
‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
Isaiah 6:3
But when you fast forward in your Bible to John chapter 6, and there’s reference there to Isaiah, sorry, John chapter 12, there’s reference there to Isaiah 6. And you asked John the question: “Who did Isaiah see?” John answers by saying this – John wrote these words when he saw Jesus’ glory — the glory of Jesus is the glory of the Lord God of Israel — “He saw Jesus’ day and spoke of him” — says the Apostle John. So there’s that. The “Holy, holy, holy” refers to the Holy Trinity. If it refers to Jesus, and it refers to the God of Israel, the Father, it refers to the Holy Trinity by extension.
And then this word, this word “Lord”. In Judaism, there is only one Lord, and yet when you read the New Testament you read that God is Lord. The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, and the Spirit is Lord. God, considered as the Trinity, is Lord. The Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Spirit is Lord. You have Jesus. Jesus when he tells us to baptize people in the singular name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Later on in our passage, we’re going to read about the creation of the world. And that reference to creation points us both to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. We have an example of this in First Corinthians chapter 8:
“Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things, are all things, and through whom we exist.”
1 Corinthians 8:6
Each of the elements then helps us to see that the blessed Trinity is in place here.
“Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty; who was and who is and who is to come.”
Revelation 4:8
A trinity of trinity’s highlighting the fact that we worship the Holy Trinity. And we worship the Holy Trinity. This is a title that God takes on himself in Isaiah 40:
“To whom will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.”
Isaiah 40:18
This is a description that is used when the angel comes to the Virgin Mary and tells her of this miraculous supernatural work of conception in her womb, and he tells her that the one who is being formed in her womb is the “Holy One of God.” The Holy One.
What do we mean when we talk about holiness we talk about holiness? You and I talk about holiness against the stark background of the unholiness we find in our own lives and in the world we live in. Unholiness is the imperfection of every rational creature in themselves. Unholiness is what makes fallen creatures fallen, fallen angels fallen, fallen people fallen. Unholiness is what makes our ways and our works imperfect and impure in the eyes of God. But in God there is holiness. His ways and his works are perfect. He is holy in his nature. The Bible says:
“He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.”
Habakkuk 1:13
He comes to us, and he urges his people
“‘Be holy, for I am holy’ says the Lord.”
1 Peter 1:16
Holiness belongs to God’s nature and essence. God is holiness itself. God is holy all the way through. The Bible talks about the “beauty of holiness.” Moses sings, “Who is like you, majestic in holiness?” Isaiah urges God’s people “By the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy.” Jesus teaches us to pray “hallowed” that is, holy “be your name” when you’re talking to the Father. “There is none holy as the Lord,” we read in First Samuel. And it is the Triune God that is holy. Jesus prays to the Father, “Holy Father.” Jesus says, referring to himself, “These are the words of the Holy One.” Revelation 3. And of course, there’s the blessed Spirit who is the Holy Spirit. Holiness belongs to the Triune God and his perfection. When we think about holiness, I think our thoughts should probably kind of fall into three categories.
When we think about the holiness of God, we must think about that which makes him above us, above us. We might want to talk about a transcendent majesty, that is greater than us, that is lofty and high. Now God is not high and up there in any kind of physical, geographical, interspatial sense. God is everywhere present in all of his fullness. God is Spirit. You can’t tie him down, you can’t place him anywhere, because he is everywhere in the actual sense. But he uses this language of spatiality or spatialness in order to communicate with us. He wants us to think of God as being high and lifted up in the sense of being greater than us, above us, above all comprehension, above all comparison, above all composition. To be God is to be holy.
When we sing “Holy, holy, holy,” God is lifting up our chin. When he gets us to sing those words, it’s as if he’s coming along alongside us and he lifts up your chin to look up towards him. Did your mother ever do that to you? My mom did. “Frequently, annoyingly, but she did when she wanted me to look at something, she would get my chin and she would hold it up to make me look up. Sometimes she would complain about my posture when I was walking, and she would push my back in and my chin up so that I walked straight. But this is what God does for us when we, when we’re commanded to sing praises to God, and we’re commanded to lift up our voices towards him.
He comes alongside you, and he lifts up your chin and he says, “I want you to look up beyond the wasteland that is this world. I want you to look up above all that is wrong and difficult and tormenting about existence here. I want you to look up and I want you to see the glory of the Lord. Look at the holiness of God. Lift up your eyes to the hills, from where your help comes. This is the amazing thing about God; that he is exalted, but he comes alongside us and he says, “Look up at the Holy One.”
And when we think of God in his holiness, we think not only of that which places him above us, but that which places him apart from us. He is different from us, in his utter moral perfection he’s different from us, in all that he does he is holy. He can no more not be holy then he cannot be. He is holy in all his works and ways, so that every attribute of God, everything we can say about God is holy all the way through. He is never not holy in his love, in his justice, and in all of his ways. And yet different though he is from us, utterly set apart as he is from us, he makes the moves again.
Not only does he come to lift up our gaze towards him because he’s high, he comes alongside us, and he makes the moves towards us. He enters into a covenant with his people. He calls himself the “Holy One of Israel.” That means the Holy One of these covenant people with which he has made a covenant arrangement. He is our Holy One, he is our Holy God. He wants to be known as that. The Holy One of Israel. Who would want to be associated with Israel? Who would want to be associated with the Israel of God today, that we call the church? Who would want to be associated with the mess that our Christian churches are in so many ways? But he does. The Holy One comes to make us into a holy nation.
“God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.”
1 John 1:5
But he comes out of the darkness, as it were, into the darkness of our lives, and he shines his light into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. And his holiness speaks not only about what sets him above us, and apart from us, but also against us. Because of our unholiness, because God passes judgment of sin. But what does he do? How does he deal with us when he is against us because of sin? How does he deal with us? Does he stay on his throne and make pronouncements? The whole business of Jesus coming into the world, of the incarnation, is that God is coming towards us. He is coming with grace towards us. He is coming with love towards us. And his, in his blinding holiness, Jesus is “God with us.”
And in the holiness of his life, holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, he is sinless in his humanity. But he comes towards the sinner. You know, you see this, you hear, you see God’s action in a human way when you look at Jesus and how he deals with sinners. How he deals with the woman taken in adultery. How he deals with that that woman at the well of Samaria. How he deals with the man who has been a robber and a deceiver. How he deals with that, with that taxman Matthew who’s been who’s been pumping money people for money and taking more money then for himself. How does he deal with these people?
He in his holiness reaches out towards them, and towards you, towards me. This is the great wonder of the Gospel. Because he wants us to know, in the language of Isaiah, “Your redeemer” that is, your savior, your deliverer, “is the Holy One of Israel.” Remarkable. His holiness is implacably opposed to our unholiness, and yet it is he who makes known his mercy to us. His coming to our rescue, his taking on our cause, his bearing our sin, his purifying our nature, his binding himself to us by way of covenant. This is the One to whom we come, and to whom we offer our praise. With all nature “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. Father, Son, and Spirit, who was and who is and who is to come.”
I want to say that a battered church that’s been locked out of its buildings for so long, that’s been kept from its sacraments for so long, and God’s battered people who’ve been excluded from the assembly of the saints, this is what they need. They need to focus their gaze, apart, away from themselves, on this God who is blisteringly holy, but who invites his people because he wants to be the Holy One in our midst. In our midst. We worship the Holy Trinity. We worship the only Sovereign.
So far, we’ve seen these living creatures represent all creatures that have been made, the work of the world of things and of nature, and they cannot but praise God. You say, “How does a quark, or a supernova, or a planet, or a star praise God?” It praises God simply by existing. By existing. Well, hear what they say:
“Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who’s seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. And they cast their crowns before the throne.”
Revelation 1:9-10
If the living creatures represent the cosmos, the twenty-four angelic beings that represent the ecclesia, that represent the church in worship, they represent God’s people. And these two actions, the actual, the actions of the living creatures and the action of these twenty-four ancient ones, are coordinated as being simultaneous. Nature and church must ever unite in praise of God. There’s a sense in which the people of God – those twenty-four represent the people of God, Israel before Christ and after Christ – the people of God give voice to what inanimate nature cannot say.
We’re leading their praises; we’re expressing their praise of God. And so they come, they come there before God’s majesty. He is the only Sovereign, and we’re reminded that he reigns eternally. The language here is “unto the ages of the ages.” It’s “forever and ever” in English. It’s unto the ages of the ages; there is no beginning, no end. He exists, he acts, he works as he pleases. These beings, the living creatures, and are a part, they’re at the very top of God’s creation, they’re angelic beings. There are various ranks of angelic being. There are the archangels, with like Gabriel and Michael. There are gradations of powers and authorities, they’re the cherubim and the seraphim. These four living creatures, we find them referred to 600 years before John in Ezekiel.
“Behold, a great cloud of fire, a brightness, and in the midst the likeness of four living creatures. And they had four faces: the face of a human, the face of a lion, the face of an ox, the face of an eagle.”
Ezekiel 1:4-7, 10
Embracing everything in the created world. And then these ancient ones who represent the Israel of God – the church before and after the coming of Christ. And they sing glory, honor, and thanks. They publicly recognize God’s doxa, that is, God’s glory — the sum of his divine attributes. They direct towards him the honor or reverence that is due to him. And they offer thanks for all that he is, all that he does, all that he gives to us.
Now I want you to notice that in this whole section of chapter 4 of Revelation, the focus is not on the spiritual realm of our Christian lives, but the natural realm of our Christian lives. It’s about creation. You know there is a form of spirituality that you find from time to time in the Christian world, which thinks that to be a Christian is to engage in certain spiritual activities – prayer, Bible reading, or whatever. Now don’t get me wrong – somebody will write in and say, “Were you dissing Bible reading and prayer?” – of course I’m not, of course I’m not. But what this teaches us is that the Christian life is far bigger than that.
The Christian life is your life, it’s your existence, it’s what you do when you’re sleeping, when you wake up in the morning, when you go through your day, with all the interactions you have with other people and with nature around you. It’s the entirety of natural life. God has given to us the entirety of natural life. He gives us life and breath and existence. And it’s our whole existence that is here, brought before God as an act of worship. We worship the only Sovereign. He’s sovereign over absolutely everything, everything in creation. Absolutely everything.
Well, we worship the Holy Trinity, we worship the only Sovereign, we worship the worthy Creator. If the doxology of the cherubim in verse 8 has to do with the holiness, and the almightiness, and the everlastingness of God, that is, God’s essential nature, the doxology of the twenty-four ancient ones has for its theme the glory of God in his works, that is, in the things that God does that are exterior to himself. The Psalmist says,
“He commanded, and they were created.”
Psalm 148:5
In the book of Daniel we read,
“He does according to his will among the hosts of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘what have you done?'”
Daniel 4:35
Listen to the elders:
“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”
Revelation 4:11
What’s he saying there? He’s saying that the Divine will made the universe an idea, and then the Divine power gave material expression to that idea — without any gap of time, by the way — when it comes into God’s, when God creates it in his mind by his will, it comes into existence by his Word.
So the praise then involves praising God for the original creation, and for its present existence. It is the Holy Trinity that is still in view, since creation is the common work of the undivided Trinity. All outward works of God existed in his mind before they were created by him. The knowledge of God comes first, and then all things in relation to God.
So I want to say this: what is our first and greatest thought as human beings? It is the thought of God. What is our primary, foremost doctrine? It is our doctrine of God. What is the fundamental tenet of our religion? It is that God on whom everything other than God depends, and for whose glory everything other than God exists. What is the core reality behind creation and nature? The core reality is the God who made it. And what is the great gift of the Gospel? The highest gift of the Gospel is forgiveness of sins, of course, being put right with God, being reconciled to God, but if you were to ask Jesus what is the highest gift – it’s this:
“That they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.”
John 17:3
And what is the nature of this great God? He is Holy Trinity. He is only Sovereign. He is worthy Creator. You see the triple holy? You see the three titles “Lord,” and “God,” and “Almighty”? Do you see the threefold name “who was and is and is to come”? “This is a trinity of trinity,” says one scholar. As our confession, creeds say, “The Father, holy. The Son, holy. the Spirit, holy. The Father, God, The Son, Lord, the Spirit, Almighty.” Attracting the threefold triune praise of glory, honor, and power. He is the origin of all things. “You created all things.” All things, bar nothing. His will is the instrument through which he brings all things into being. And all things receive their existence constantly from him.
I had a moment this week, I had Chloe in my arm. Chloe is my dog, by the way, not one of my daughters. Though frequently I call her by one of their names — much to their annoyance — but anyway, Chloe was in my arm. And I was thinking of this, this particular part of the sermon, believe it or not, and it kind of struck me: here’s this little creature in my arm, she’s alive and breathing, she exists, and I said to her, I don’t know if she understood what I was saying, but I said to her, “Do you know God is giving you this existence? This existence – you’re breathing, you’re alive, you’re in my arms, and God is giving to you your existence.” And I held her for a moment, just feeling her alive.
And men and women, this is the reality of what God does for us. You wake up in the morning and you are breathing. God is giving you existence. Are we thankful for that? He gives existence to these higher powers, these spiritual beings, and from them he elicits praise. They join the wild animals, the domesticated beasts, the humans, the birds of the air, the precious stones, the cosmos, in praise of their Maker.
Beloved, God is the first cause and the last end of all things. By his power they are made according to his will and for his glory. And so the Bible begins with creation, so we should begin there. We shouldn’t rush to the spiritual blessings – which are wonderful, and which enable us in a sense to appreciate creation — but we should begin where God helps us to begin, with an appreciation of what God has made.
You know, on that first Palm Sunday, the disciples did their part. They went and got this colt, the donkey. The colt it did its part; it bore Jesus. It had never been broken in, but it behaved itself while Jesus was sitting on its back, all the way down that hill and all the way up again into the City of David. The palm branches that lined the way, they did their part. The people’s voices, they did their part, praising their Maker, as they saw him humbly riding on a donkey’s back. And if the humans had been silent — remember, what Jesus said – “the very stones would cry out in praise of God.”
Beloved, it is our great privilege, it is our highest occupation, to praise God. Next year will be the 50th, no,
it’s not, two years will be the 50th anniversary of my ordination; and I remember we sang a hymn there and the words of one of the verses never leaves me:
“I’ll praise my Maker while I’ve breath;
Isaac Watts, I’ll Praise My Maker with My Breath
and when my voice is lost in death,
praise shall employ my nobler powers.
My days of praise will never be passed
while life or thought or being lasts,
or immortality endures.”