SPEAKER_00: You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: The direction of praise and worship is not you.
SPEAKER_01: It's the throne of God.
SPEAKER_01: Fifteen times throne is used in this chapter alone, and 45 times the word throne is used in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't it great?
SPEAKER_01: There's no Congress in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: There's no Senate in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is not up for re-election every four years.
SPEAKER_01: He's on the throne 2,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_01: He was on the throne 5,000 years ago.
SPEAKER_01: He was on the throne a millennial past.
SPEAKER_01: He's on the throne now, and he's gonna be on the throne when he comes back.
SPEAKER_01: I guess he's gonna get up and get on his horse, and he's gonna come riding in.
SPEAKER_00: Today, Pastor Steve continues his series on the Book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_01: I just want to recap very quickly, and then we're gonna get into the message in Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: But I want to recap a little of what I said yesterday, and this is this is what I want to say.
SPEAKER_01: That in light of the racial divide, in light of domestic and international terrorism, what should the response at the church called the road be?
SPEAKER_01: I can't speak for other churches.
SPEAKER_01: I can tell you that Jesus was very clear in Luke chapter 4, verses 18 and 19 about what he came to do.
SPEAKER_01: He came to set the captives free.
SPEAKER_01: And there's no reference anywhere in the New Testament that it was to just one ethnic group.
SPEAKER_01: Matter of fact, he went to the Gentiles and went around the Jews, and the Jewish evangelism occurred after Pentecost in a mighty way.
SPEAKER_01: But then we know in Revelation chapter 7, and isn't it ironic that we're in the book of Revelation, that every race, every tribe, every linguistic group, every nationality will be at the throne someday worshiping together.
SPEAKER_01: So if you don't like Japanese, you better get over it.
SPEAKER_01: And if you don't like Europeans, get over it.
SPEAKER_01: If you don't like African Americans, get over it, because you're gonna be hanging out with them for eternity.
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's not it's unchristian, it's wrong, it's prejudicial, and it's demonic.
SPEAKER_01: Any form of prejudice, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_01: Now I've been to 27 nations of the world, and the food's way better out there than it is here.
SPEAKER_01: I'll just let you know.
SPEAKER_01: So if you ever get to travel, you you'll see a little bit of what the feast of the lamb is going to be like.
SPEAKER_01: But it is our conviction, starting with me, that our main responsibility as a church called the road, is that we would make the gospel so inviting and the kingdom of God so beautiful that when people see it, feel it, and hear it, they would want to become whole-hearted disciples of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Whatever race, whatever linguistic group, whatever ethnicity.
SPEAKER_01: And so I believe increasingly as I grow older that one of the great responsibilities of our church is that we would give a concise verbal explanation of who Jesus Christ is, and we would give a beautiful visual demonstration that can be seen of what the kingdom of God looks like.
SPEAKER_01: And so may through Springs Initiative and through different endeavors that God gives us, may we be looking for opportunities to cross barriers, to cross bridges, and to be different than others in the culture who are carried away by just their custom and their culture and they've never been set free.
SPEAKER_01: It's way, way less than one percent of Muslims that would strap a bomb onto their body and go blow people up.
SPEAKER_01: It's way, way less than 1% of white policemen that go out and beat African American young men.
SPEAKER_01: It is way less than 1% of African Americans that are gonna go and set up and shoot cops in a city street.
SPEAKER_01: So to let that small percentage be the narrative is wrong.
SPEAKER_01: May God, in the weeks, months, and years ahead, may we give a different narrative.
SPEAKER_01: A narrative of the church that's so outrageously unified and so extravagantly loving that the world would say, only God could be doing that.
SPEAKER_01: That's impossible.
SPEAKER_01: That's so radical.
SPEAKER_01: That's the message of John 17, when Jesus prays that we might be unified in love.
SPEAKER_01: Amen?
SPEAKER_01: Alright, if you have your Bibles, we're in Revelation chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: We didn't get all the way through our message last week because I talked too much about the other stuff.
SPEAKER_01: So we're gonna take a little different tack and we're gonna go through Revelation 4 again, but I'm gonna be coming from the perspective of what I'm calling the six powerful laws of praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: Six powerful laws of praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: For you that are new here or here for the first time, we go chapter by chapter, verse by verse, through the Bible, and we're in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: But from time to time, we come to these passages, this pericope that God gives us, and there does seem to be something of a topic or a theme that's running through that, and that's the case here tonight.
SPEAKER_01: Most of you know that have been with us through the summer as we've been going through John's apocalypse, that John is the last of the Lamb's twelve.
SPEAKER_01: All the others are dead.
SPEAKER_01: He's been boiled in oil by the Roman authorities, or maybe even by Jewish authorities.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know exactly who persecuted him that way.
SPEAKER_01: So he's now in his 90s.
SPEAKER_01: This is probably around 95, 96 A.D.
SPEAKER_01: Domitian is in power.
SPEAKER_01: Domitian is a despot emperor, last of the of the of a particular reign of emperors.
SPEAKER_01: He considered himself Augustus, and so he pronounced himself as to be like God.
SPEAKER_01: He was within the year, he's going to be assassinated by uh leaders within the Senate.
SPEAKER_01: Christians are being fed the lions.
SPEAKER_01: The church is meeting in caves.
SPEAKER_01: This is probably where the churches had literally gone underground in Rome.
SPEAKER_01: I've been to the catacombs in Rome.
SPEAKER_01: And if you've ever been to the Cave of the Winds or something like that, it's kind of like that.
SPEAKER_01: You go in there and they were in caves worshiping there.
SPEAKER_01: And so if anybody, I mean we think it's bad here, you know, it's like if anybody should have been depressed and despondent, it's John, he's probably pretty lonely.
SPEAKER_01: He's on this volcanic island.
SPEAKER_01: Patmos uh in the Aegean Sea today is beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you go and just do a search on it, it's like, whoa, it's gorgeous.
SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't then.
SPEAKER_01: It's where they sent prisoners, and it's this volcanic, rocky island, and he has this vision.
SPEAKER_01: And and so we've just gone through the seven churches, and he's explaining with the seven churches what's happening in Asia Minor right then with each of those churches.
SPEAKER_01: But now, chapter four, everything changes in Revelation, and now for the rest of the book, from chapter four to twenty two, it's about the end times.
SPEAKER_01: It's about the last days.
SPEAKER_01: He gets, John gets a view of what's gonna happen in the last days that men and women you and I are living in.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, really, no better time to have a newspaper.
SPEAKER_01: I get the Wall Street Journal, to have the Wall Street Journal in one hand and the Bible in the other, opened up to the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: And so we're gonna start to see stuff that's gonna be really, really, I don't want to use the word exciting.
SPEAKER_01: That's probably not the right word.
SPEAKER_01: It's an intelligence briefing from God.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's an intelligence briefing from God so that we won't be discouraged, because we'll know that God is truly on the throne, and we're actually gonna see it.
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting that at the beginning of four, which is four to twenty two, he's on the throne.
SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
SPEAKER_01: In chapter 22, in the coming of the Lord in the sky, he's coming off his throne.
SPEAKER_01: He's on a white horse with a tattoo on his thigh.
SPEAKER_01: And so, King of kings and Lord of Lords is coming, and so we see him on the throne, and next thing you're gonna see him is on a white horse.
SPEAKER_01: This is no little child in a barn.
SPEAKER_01: This is no little baby in a manger, you know, and where we are, oh in a manger.
SPEAKER_01: You know, like we do when we do Christmas Eve service, like, ah, so nice.
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I dig that, that's cool.
SPEAKER_01: And I mean, I mean, we couldn't have the other without the other one.
SPEAKER_01: So, but but this is a reigning king.
SPEAKER_01: This is a ruling king on a white horse with a sword coming out of his mouth, and he is coming back, men and women, and he's going to judge as the uh Nicene creases the living and the dead.
SPEAKER_01: So we're we're getting ready to look at two realities.
SPEAKER_01: Listen now, two realities.
SPEAKER_01: He's the door's gonna open, he's gonna walk into an invisible reality that John gets to see, and we get to see through the word.
SPEAKER_01: Jack Taylor says this.
SPEAKER_01: He's speaking of Revelation chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: All of us are faced with these two rims of reality.
SPEAKER_01: All of our troubles with depression and hopelessness rise at the point of our conviction as to which rim is more real.
SPEAKER_01: We deal with the tangible, the visible every day.
SPEAKER_01: We know that it is real.
SPEAKER_01: Bills must be paid, sickness and death are a part of life.
SPEAKER_01: There are fears and doubts and rejection.
SPEAKER_01: But there is another world, another rim of reality which vis for our attention.
SPEAKER_01: The spiritual, the heavenly, and the eternal.
SPEAKER_01: We tend to think of this as foggy, misty, and unreal.
SPEAKER_01: Yet this is true reality.
SPEAKER_01: The invisible is the real.
SPEAKER_01: So John sees Jesus not a Savior meek and mild, but an imposing figure with a huge rainbow behind him and a voice that sounds like many waterfalls.
SPEAKER_01: This is Revelation 4 and 5.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to be in Revelation 4 and 5 for the next couple weeks.
SPEAKER_01: Let me just say this before we open it.
SPEAKER_01: No book of the Bible besides Psalms has more about praise and worship than the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: So this aspect of praise and worship given to us from Revelation 4 and 5 is one of the key passages in all of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: So I want to talk about six powerful laws of praise and worship tonight.
SPEAKER_01: The invitation, the focus, the purpose, the direction, the power of praise and worship in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: When you worship the Lord, men and women, tonight, and you that are new to the road, we we teach the word first, we go into worship after that as a as a response to truth.
SPEAKER_01: You're entering into God's living room.
SPEAKER_01: We're about to walk into God's living room.
SPEAKER_01: So everybody here, probably whether you have an apartment, a townhouse, or a home, you have a living room.
SPEAKER_01: And you spend a lot of time in that living room.
SPEAKER_01: Probably the living room is second only maybe to the kitchen.
SPEAKER_01: And when you have as many kids as I have, the kitchen way, way, you know, outrules the living room.
SPEAKER_01: But with normal families, um, the living room is used a lot.
SPEAKER_01: And you have a living room that your wife, or maybe the husband, whoever, you went out and bought a couch that you liked and you bought chairs that you like.
SPEAKER_01: You didn't buy chairs, hopefully, you didn't buy chairs that your mother-in-law liked.
SPEAKER_01: Um, you bought chairs that you like.
SPEAKER_01: And so you are comfortable in your living room.
SPEAKER_01: If you come to my house, you're not totally comfortable in my living room because we do things different than you do.
SPEAKER_01: But God's living room is made for God.
SPEAKER_01: So we're entering into his living room, and this must be what God really digs.
SPEAKER_01: Um, because even on the earth, though God is sovereign, there's a battle going on, a fight going on with the demonic powers, and we know that Satan has been cast to the earth and that this is his home.
SPEAKER_01: And we just read in Pergamus that he even calls that particular city the throne of Satan.
SPEAKER_01: But there's no demonic or satanic powers at all in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And so this is God's living room.
SPEAKER_01: So let's start with verse one of Revelation 4.
SPEAKER_01: After these things I looked, and behold, a door standing open.
SPEAKER_01: You ought to highlight that, underline that, circle that in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: And the first voice which I heard was like a trumpet speaking with me, saying, Come up here, and I will show you the things which must take place after this.
SPEAKER_01: Here's law one.
SPEAKER_01: Don't miss this.
SPEAKER_01: Law number one in praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: The invitation of praise and worship is an open door to everyone.
SPEAKER_01: If you were in a prison in Siberia, you can worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: That door is open to you.
SPEAKER_01: If you're in Hungary like I was when we were smuggling Bibles back in the 80s in Hungary and China and doing all that, and we went into these clandestine underground churches, they were there was an open door as much to them as it is to us today, and they were worshiping the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, China, they were worshiping the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Hungary, they were worshiping the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: It is open to every one of us in this room.
SPEAKER_01: If you choose, for example, to come here on Saturday night and just not worship, you can do that.
SPEAKER_01: Totally fine.
SPEAKER_01: And in this church, nobody's gonna, you know, talk to you about it or anything like that.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care how you worship.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, some people do Superman worship, some people do waiter worship, some people do, you know, standing at the bus stop worship.
SPEAKER_01: I don't care.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not the position of your body, it's the attitude of your heart.
SPEAKER_01: Right?
SPEAKER_01: So it's an open door.
SPEAKER_01: So John is just hanging out.
SPEAKER_01: He it says he was in the spirit on the Lord's day.
SPEAKER_01: So it was it was sometime around 95 or 96 A.D.
SPEAKER_01: He's in the Spirit, probably praying, and the Spirit of God comes upon him, and he has this apocalyptic uh revelation from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And so you have an invitation every day, men and women.
SPEAKER_01: You can worship as much or as less as you want to.
SPEAKER_01: Some people take a, you know, you got your iPod, and uh, and for some of us it's uh it's a Christian music station or something, but but you can, it's an open door.
SPEAKER_01: Demons can't stop you from worshiping the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: When you choose to start worshiping the Lord, you enter into, listen up, you start, this is important.
SPEAKER_01: You line yourselves up with what's already happening in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that cool?
SPEAKER_01: So when you worship the Lord, you know, I don't know God's will, I don't know if God wants me to take this job, I don't know if God wants me to go to this church, I don't know if God wants me to buy that house, all those things that we all deal with, right?
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, if you don't know God's will, then the best way to get into God's will is to do the one thing that you know is always God's will, and that's praise and worship Him.
SPEAKER_01: Because you line yourselves up with heaven, and guess what?
SPEAKER_01: He downloads his heart to you.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm gonna be speaking at Chapel Hills Church in the morning on loving God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_01: And that's what I'm gonna say is that, you know, if we start lining our hearts up with God and God sees it, he's like, oh yes! Finally they get it.
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't, he God doesn't care what kind of car you drive, God doesn't care about your accomplishments, God doesn't care about your bank accounts or your achievements.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah, I mean, he does.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he doesn't want you poor or anything, but I mean, he wants you to, he cares about it.
SPEAKER_01: But what he really cares about is your heart.
SPEAKER_01: You understand that?
SPEAKER_01: That when you love him with all of your heart and you start you're lining yourselves up with heaven, and praise and worship is the means.
SPEAKER_01: It's one of the greatest, not the only means.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, when you tithe, when you give, that's loving God with your heart, soul, mind, and strength.
SPEAKER_01: When you went and painted houses with the Springs Initiative in that section of Colorado Springs, you're loving God with all your heart.
SPEAKER_01: So, but this is one of the primary means that God gets our heart, and he downloads his heart to our heart when we line ourselves up with his living room.
SPEAKER_01: So I love it.
SPEAKER_01: Like tonight, I was looking around, man, if we really progressed over the last year as a young church.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember when we first started out, it's like, yeah, you know, kind of the veterans, you know, they're they they were in it, but but now so many of you really enter into worship.
SPEAKER_01: And I remember in the early days, you know, it's like so many of you just looking around, like, who's here?
SPEAKER_01: You know?
SPEAKER_01: And dude, get over it, you know.
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of the same people as last week, so quit looking at them, you know.
SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, and so now if you're single and everything, and I know what you guys are looking for, and that's okay, you know.
SPEAKER_01: Best place to look, you know, right here at church.
SPEAKER_01: I told a guy the other day, I said, dude, the reason you keep messing up with all this stuff with the girls is, man, you keep going to the wrong places, man.
SPEAKER_01: You need to meet her at church, and we got some beauties at our church.
SPEAKER_01: You should come.
SPEAKER_01: He better not ask out my daughter, though.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 100 says this.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 100 says, Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you land.
SPEAKER_01: Serve the Lord with gladness, come before his presence with singing.
SPEAKER_01: Know that the Lord, he is God.
SPEAKER_01: It is he who has made us and not we ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.
SPEAKER_01: Enter into his gates with thanksgiving and into his courts with praise.
SPEAKER_01: Be thankful to him and bless his holy name.
SPEAKER_01: And so, men and women, every day you're faced with two realities.
SPEAKER_01: One reality is the three-dimensional world of making money and your job, and you're depressed, and you're hopeless, and you're hurting.
SPEAKER_01: And then there's this other reality that you can't see, but it's heaven, and heaven's worshiping, and these, I mean, Revelation 4 is really kind of spooky, I have to admit.
SPEAKER_01: It's uh 24 elders and creatures and seraphim and cherubim and eyes all around, and it's weird, man.
SPEAKER_01: It's like some kind of a science fiction movie.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, it's clear all through scripture.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Daniel talks about it, Ezekiel talks about it.
SPEAKER_01: So everybody who has these visions sees this.
SPEAKER_01: It's a real reality, and when we worship him, we're taking, for a moment in time, we're taking our eyes off this reality, and it is a reality, don't get me wrong.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta show up to work, you gotta work hard.
SPEAKER_01: Proverbs is really clear on the importance of prudence, but that when we take our eyes off of just that and we move up and we start to worship the Lord and line our hearts up with heaven with that open door, it cleanses us.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, it cleanses us for the three-dimensional world.
SPEAKER_01: Because it's really hard to praise the Lord and be depressed at the same time.
SPEAKER_01: It's super hard.
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of us are depressed, and some of you carry massive amounts of shame.
SPEAKER_01: And you know what?
SPEAKER_01: That's okay.
SPEAKER_01: Because everybody's got shame.
SPEAKER_01: And you've heard me talk a lot about shame.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to go into a bunch about shame here today, but we carry shame.
SPEAKER_01: But the way, one of the ways to break shame, according to 2 Corinthians 4, is to let the light shine on it, and one of the ways the light shines on it is through praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: And so it's an open door, and I consider that kind of like a law.
SPEAKER_01: So now look at verse 8.
SPEAKER_01: The four living creatures, each having six wings, were full of eyes around and within, and they do not rest day or night.
SPEAKER_01: This is one of those passages that Count Ludwig von Zinzendorf came to, which started the Moravian prayer movement in the 1700s, by the way, day and night prayer, saying, Holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who was and is to come.
SPEAKER_01: Now it's interesting.
SPEAKER_01: Do does everybody's Bible have three holies here?
SPEAKER_01: Okay, most manuscripts actually have nine.
SPEAKER_01: Now, why they changed it, I know why they changed it.
SPEAKER_01: It was based on a particular interpretation in the 1800s that became prevalent, especially with the Schofield Bible.
SPEAKER_01: But nine times that's literally what most of your most ancient manuscripts say is nine.
SPEAKER_01: Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the point is, and this is law too, the focus of praise and worship is on who God is, not just what he's done.
SPEAKER_01: Who God is, he's holy, he's almighty, he's first, he's foremost, he's righteous, he's holy.
SPEAKER_01: And I I love the old hymns.
SPEAKER_01: Because I think many times they do better justice to the holiness and the righteousness and the beauty of God than even some of our newest choruses.
SPEAKER_01: And one time we were coming in, this was years ago, I don't even know if these guys are on the radio anymore, and there was this guy from a decidedly particular perspective that was just hammering the new courses.
SPEAKER_01: He was calling, I think he called it 7-Eleven worship.
SPEAKER_01: You know, seven verses said eleven times.
SPEAKER_01: And they were just making fun of it.
SPEAKER_01: I remember one of my kids said, Dad, that's us.
SPEAKER_01: We do that.
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah.
SPEAKER_01: I remember I got red on one side of my face, you know.
SPEAKER_01: But no, and so I'm driving and everything, I'm thinking about it.
SPEAKER_01: I said, you know what?
SPEAKER_01: My standard is not what this guy says on the radio.
SPEAKER_01: What's the Bible do?
SPEAKER_01: The Psalter is the book of Psalms, and I'll give you a great example.
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna go through it all, but just sometime this week, look at Psalm 136.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 136, for his mercy endures forever 25 times in 26 verses.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're kind of one of those people that really has a problem with that, I just say that it's biblical.
SPEAKER_01: There is a biblical aspect.
SPEAKER_01: So I like both.
SPEAKER_01: I like both.
SPEAKER_01: I like hymns, and you'll hear hymns almost every set that we do.
SPEAKER_01: We almost always have a hymn because they're so beautiful, and I also like the newest stuff that comes out with the beauty of that, too.
SPEAKER_01: Whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne and they worship him.
SPEAKER_01: Law three.
SPEAKER_01: The direction of praise and worship is the throne of God.
SPEAKER_01: The direction of praise and worship is not you, it's the throne of God.
SPEAKER_01: Fifteen times throne is used in this chapter alone, and 45 times the word throne is used in the book of Revelation.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't it great?
SPEAKER_01: There's no Congress in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: There's no Senate in heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is not up for re-election every four years.
SPEAKER_01: He's on the throne 2,000 years ago, he was on the throne 5,000 years ago, he was on the throne a millennial past, he's on the throne now, and he's gonna be on the throne when he comes back.
SPEAKER_01: I guess he's gonna get up and get on his horse and he's gonna come riding in.
SPEAKER_01: But the reality is he's not up for re-election.
SPEAKER_01: He's on the throne, he's sovereign, he's in control, he's not worried, he's not.
SPEAKER_01: We are, and we should be in many ways, because sometimes worry can be good if it drives you to work, you know, if it drives you to action.
SPEAKER_01: Not just being in the mud of it all.
SPEAKER_01: Um, Psalm 40, you know, the Miery mud.
SPEAKER_01: But the reality is, is that God has placed his son, the Lamb, that's actually in Revelation chapter 5.
SPEAKER_01: It seems to be that God the Father is on the throne and God the Son is next to him, the Lamb that was slain.
SPEAKER_01: And this, men and women, is a central point of praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: When we come here, that's why I challenge you to be here on Saturday night, and when we go to Sunday morning, be here and try as best you can.
SPEAKER_01: It's really hard, but try to drop all of your problems, all of your issues, because I know you fight with your wife or your husband all the way to church.
SPEAKER_01: That's a that's an American custom.
SPEAKER_01: It's uh you're not really spirit-filled unless you fight all the way to church.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but but anyway, when you get into church, I'm being facetious a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: Um, but when you come in, that's the reason I that's one thing great about being a pastor, is I always have to leave early.
SPEAKER_01: So I drive alone, baby.
SPEAKER_01: It's nice.
SPEAKER_01: Today I got a slurpee.
SPEAKER_01: I went to 7-Eleven and got a slurpee.
SPEAKER_01: I haven't had I haven't gotten a Liz, I got a Slurpee.
SPEAKER_01: I know, it's bad.
SPEAKER_01: You weren't with me, so I could go get it.
SPEAKER_01: She would have just killed me.
SPEAKER_01: You're not, you're going, that's just full of sugar, and nah, nah.
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, mom's not here.
SPEAKER_01: Charity, you want to go to 7-Eleven?
SPEAKER_01: Let's go, you know.
SPEAKER_01: So he went and got a slurpee.
SPEAKER_01: But um, my first one in 10 years.
SPEAKER_01: That's the reason I'm anointed tonight.
SPEAKER_01: Ah, Spirit of God, come.
SPEAKER_01: But the central point of the book of Revelation is Jesus on the throne.
SPEAKER_01: And you see what happens when you realize that is when you come in here and you're willing to drop all your struggles of that week and turn, you know, your phone off and all that, and then of course you come in and you find out we're in a church that has an app, so then you turn it back on, and while you're watching, you're doing the sermon notes on the on the road app, and then thing, you know, I got a Facebook.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder what that is, you know.
SPEAKER_01: I don't know why we do this.
SPEAKER_01: This is ridiculous, but anyway, we do.
SPEAKER_01: So you come in and listen to what I'm gonna say.
SPEAKER_01: When you know that Christ is on the throne in your worship, and then you make a choice to rejoice, you make a choice to worship him on the throne, guess what that does?
SPEAKER_01: That enthrones him on the throne of your heart.
SPEAKER_01: He's already on the throne in heaven, but he's not always on the throne in our heart.
SPEAKER_01: But when we come into praise and worship and we say, Lord, I lift you up, I bless you, I praise you, I thank you, I love you.
SPEAKER_01: You're on your throne, you're sovereign, you're righteous, you're holy, you're enthroning him in your heart.
SPEAKER_01: And guess again, you're aligning yourselves up in an even deeper way with what's already happening in heaven within your heart.
SPEAKER_01: And the 24 elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and they worship him who lives forever and ever, and they 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.
SPEAKER_01: Law four.
SPEAKER_01: The purpose of praise and worship is to give glory to God.
SPEAKER_01: Praise and worship is not about us getting a blessing, it's about Him getting a blessing.
SPEAKER_01: And you know, because we've had some really interesting praise and worship at this church in these early two years.
SPEAKER_01: Have we not?
SPEAKER_01: We've had some times where we don't know what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01: And we've had times where it's been unbelievably beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: And guess what?
SPEAKER_01: In the future, at the road, we'll have times where we don't have an absolute clue what we're doing.
SPEAKER_01: And there'll be times where it'll be beautiful.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
SPEAKER_01: What matters is that the best we could, the best of where our hearts and our talents and our gifts are, we blessed God.
SPEAKER_01: Do you know that there are times in our life where we are seemingly by the world's standards at our worst, but in God's heart we're at our best?
SPEAKER_01: That where you feel like an abject failure, and God is proud of you, and God is rejoicing over you.
SPEAKER_01: And you can have times where you just think you're the hottest thing since Billy Graham, and you're so full of pride, and God is saddened by our pride.
SPEAKER_01: And so the purpose of praise and worship is to give glory to God, not glory to us, and not to our church, or not to our band, or not to our worship leader.
SPEAKER_01: It's to give glory to God.
SPEAKER_01: That's the purpose of your marriage, is to give glory to God.
SPEAKER_01: It's the purpose of your singleness to give glory to God, it's the purpose of why you go to the job you have.
SPEAKER_01: God has an assignment for every one of us in this room.
SPEAKER_01: And as you're faithful to that assignment by giving him glory, his heart is warm toward you.
SPEAKER_01: And he and he opens doors that no man can shut, and he shuts doors that no man can open because you're where he wants you to be.
SPEAKER_01: Psalm 22, 3 says, You are holy, O Lord, enthroned in the praises of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: And so when we when we give glory to God, we're enthroning him in our heart.
SPEAKER_01: We're enthroning him.
SPEAKER_01: And as we enthrone him, that gives him freedom to do whatever he wants to do in our life.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that exciting?
SPEAKER_01: As we enthrone the Lord in praise and worship, that's actually an invitation and freedom for him to do what he wants to do in our lives.
SPEAKER_01: Law number five: the power of praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: The power of praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: All of us have despair.
SPEAKER_01: All of us struggle with death and pain and hard times.
SPEAKER_01: But the power of praise and worship, listen, is a God-given garment of joy.
SPEAKER_01: It is a God-given garment of joy to ward off heaviness and depression.
SPEAKER_01: Praise has the power to break the power of depression and loneliness.
SPEAKER_01: Praise breaks off heaviness.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 61, 3.
SPEAKER_01: To console those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for a spirit of heaviness.
SPEAKER_01: So when we are depressed and we're lonely and we're hopeless and we're hurting, make a choice to rejoice, to praise him and to thank him, even when you don't feel like it.
SPEAKER_01: Paul was despairing.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Corinthians 1.8 says this, for we do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were burdened beyond measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life.
SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine that?
SPEAKER_01: Yet, he writes just a few lines later, he says, This, for the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who is preached among you by us, by me, Sylvanus, and Timothy, was not yes and no, but in him was yes.
SPEAKER_01: For all the promises of God in him are yes, and in him, amen, to the glory of God through us.
SPEAKER_01: So here's Paul saying, I'm despairing of life itself.
SPEAKER_01: It's so heavy.
SPEAKER_01: But I was consoled by the promises of God.
SPEAKER_01: And I give glory to God, and I choose that my yes and my so be it, my amen, is a triumph in Christ, that he might get glory even through my despair.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that amazing?
SPEAKER_01: That we can come to that place in our life where we can be despairing and God can still receive glory.
SPEAKER_01: Depression and praise are incompatible roommates.
SPEAKER_01: Put on the garment of praise.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta put it on though.
SPEAKER_01: You gotta put it on.
SPEAKER_01: So put on that garment of praise.
SPEAKER_01: The supernatural choice.
SPEAKER_01: Lastly, law six, the productivity of praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: The productivity of praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: Praise or the lack of it permits or prohibits productivity on the earth.
SPEAKER_01: See, well, how does it, you know, Steve, how does this really relate to my job, my marriage, my family?
SPEAKER_01: Listen to what I just said.
SPEAKER_01: The productivity of praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: Praise or the lack of it permits or prohibits the productivity of the earth.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord created all.
SPEAKER_01: I believe he created the trees and the streams and the mountains to give glory to God, to clap praise unto him.
SPEAKER_01: The heavens that you see at night tonight.
SPEAKER_01: You'll probably be a beautiful heavenly host that you'll be able to see tonight, giving praise to the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: When we praise him, it releases production on the earth.
SPEAKER_01: This on my wife's wedding band is etched on the inside of her wedding band, Psalm 67, verses 5 through 7.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read it to you.
SPEAKER_01: Let the peoples praise you, O Lord, let all the peoples praise you, then the earth shall yield her increase.
SPEAKER_01: Fascinating.
SPEAKER_01: Let the peoples praise you, O God, let all the peoples praise you, then the earth shall yield her increase.
SPEAKER_01: God, our own God, shall bless us, God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.
SPEAKER_01: So even in church planting, all that church planting is, is a worship center that sends out someone to start another worship center.
SPEAKER_01: And to the degree that there's power in that worship will be the degree to which they have an impact on darkness.
SPEAKER_01: Because there's one thing we do know that Satan hates is he hates praise and worship because that's the living room of God.
SPEAKER_01: And so, men and women, try this for the next 30 days.
SPEAKER_01: Take time every day to praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: To take just two or three songs and just worship him when you're going to work, or put on your iPod or in front of your laptop and just worship him, because praise releases, I believe, maybe it's angels, maybe it's uh heavenly creatures that actually do battle against the enemy and begin to open up light where there's been darkness before.
SPEAKER_01: 2 Chronicles 20, 19, Jehoshaphat's not sure what to do, and the Lord tells him, then the Levites of the children of the Kohites and of the children of the Korahites stood up to praise the God of Israel with voices loud and high, and then God releases angelic powers that destroys the enemy.
SPEAKER_01: Remember Paul and Silas in Acts 16, they're in a prison.
SPEAKER_01: They begin to worship the Lord, they begin to praise him, and there's an earthquake, and the chains are broken off, and the doors open up.
SPEAKER_01: I don't get that.
SPEAKER_01: That is super weird.
SPEAKER_01: That is super weird, but they're but it's there.
SPEAKER_01: And so there's power released through praise and worship.
SPEAKER_01: And so, many women, I challenge you and encourage you.
SPEAKER_01: Let us be a church where we do the best that we can with the resources we have and the heart that God's given us to worship and to praise the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And let's let's do it tonight.
SPEAKER_00: You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.
SPEAKER_00: We hope you have been blessed by today's message.
SPEAKER_00: To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.
SPEAKER_00: If you are walking through a difficult time, we want to pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: Go to theroad.org, click on the ministries tab, and go to our prayer page to send us your prayer request.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.