On 8th January 2023, Pr Moses Tay delivered a sermon at Gateway Christian Fellowship in Malacca. It was part of a series called Finding Hope in Revelation.
Pr Moses began by showing a cartoon which had first appeared in an American magazine in 1941. A crashed plane was in the background. An engineer was carrying a roll of papers under his arms, walking away and saying (in the caption), “Well, back to the old drawing board”. This phrase has become popular and means that one goes back to the original designs to see how to get back on track again to find out what’s wrong, make the proper corrections, and move on from there.
“When we have lost hope, we’re going to get back to the drawing board. The worship found in the Chapter 4 and chapter 5 in the Book of Revelation is like a drawing board for all of us in finding hope again. Once we can touch the centre of the universe – the throne room of God – we can get our bearings, know where we are and the directions that we have to take, then we can find hope.’
Pr Moses reminded the congregation that worship is a very important subject in the Bible. Worship represents everything that is crucial. If we are able to worship correctly, then we will be blessed beyond measure.
John 4:23
“ This is the hour, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father is seeking such people who worship Him.”
“I see worship in spirit as Acts of worship. We come to church, we lift our hands, we sing songs, we bow down, we dance, whereas worship in truth is not only worship according to the Word of God, but it sets up a whole life of worship.
“The worship in spirit is inspired by the Spirit whereas the worship in truth is obedience to the word of truth. When we do a piece of work, we do it as a worship unto God. A sermon is a worship. A mechanic sees repairing a car as a worship unto God. Worship is all through the whole life. How we take care of money, how we relate to our spouse and other people, how we handle things according to the word of God, that is how we worship in our lives.
“We need both of them. If we have worship in the spirit without the life of the worship, the acts of worship may be empty. If we live a life of worship without the acts of worship, over time we will become prideful simply because there is a sense of self-achievement. As we feel we have achieved something by being holy and obedient, pride comes in.
“With the acts of worship, there is a sense when we come into the presence of God, there is a humbling effect over us that it’s not all about us, but it’s about God. By building in the acts of worship in a life of worship, it maintains us in a proper stand so that we won’t get over prideful and we know how to humble ourselves before God.
“We can’t talk about worship without describing the uniqueness of God. Our Christian worship is unique because we worship a unique God. The worship of Jehovah God must be unique. When we think about the words that we use in worship, we must realize that it says something very important that we have to acknowledge, otherwise Jesus Christ is just one of the gods like many other gods in the world.
Below is the distinctiveness of YHWH:
1. YHWH is monotheistic.
This is the foundation of how the Hebrew writers and the Jewish people understand. There is no other god besides Him.
2. YHWH has no origin story.
YHWH has no beginning. He is uncreated.
3. YHWH engages in no combat.
He does not need to fight because He is the Lord of all and powerful over all. Our God is so supreme that we’ve never heard of Him fighting with other gods to maintain His supremacy. God in the beginning was already supremely Lord over all. Nobody is even equal to Him or a rival to Him. Worship songs that say this out will make us to exalt our God.
4. YHWH has no divine consort.
He does not need to marry anybody to produce some more things.The Bible is very clear that God has no wife or wives. God created everything through His word. That is how unique our God is.
Pr Moses used Exodus 20:3: “You shall have no other gods before me” to emphasize that Jesus Christ cannot be worshipped in the same way as all the other gods. When we come to church to worship God, we must keep in mind the uniqueness and distinction of God. Unlike the popular saying that all roads leads to Rome, Jesus says He is the only way. Outside of Him we’ve got no way to go to the Father. We must accentuate, emphasize, distinguish and differentiate these things all the time in our life. It makes our worship proper. Otherwise, we don’t worship aright the God whom we serve. This is how we raise the honour of God.
In their social engagement, the Greeks always try to teach people how to increase praise for some men of honour. Pr Moses borrowed from the Greek rhetoric lessons to apply to our Christian worship. The more we extol the uniqueness of God, the higher we raise Him. There are five ways to increase praise, exemplified in the following phrases:
1. ‘No one’
They will describe God in a way where no one else can do it. No one but Him, no way but Jesus. Revelation 5:4 “And I began to weep loudly because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or to look inside”. It’s important that this scroll be taken up and read. What is inside is crucial to the whole plan of God’s salvation for us. If no one could read this, nothing else could further happen. This is reserved for someone who can go to the cross and shed His blood for the forgiveness of all the people in the world.
2. ‘First’
He is the first in time, in primacy and also in quality. In all things He may have the pre-eminence. He is the first born of creation, the first fruit of resurrection.
3. ‘Alone’.
Jesus alone got our salvation. He alone achieved and obtained the redemption for all of us. He agonized alone in the garden of Gethsemane while His disciples were asleep. He went to the cross alone. He went into hell alone and fought off the demons. He has overcome sin, death, the worldliness in the world, and finally, Satan. All this He did by Himself.
4. ‘Difficulty of task.’
Psalms 49:7-8
”Truly no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice.”
5. ‘A deed that benefits many people..’
..By His act of being a sacrifice of the cross, by shedding His blood..
“Coming to church, it is not just to sing. As you sing in your mind you try to distinguish how different this Jesus is, how unique this Jesus is, how great He is. His one drop of blood saved the whole world. His one sacrifice draws many people to God. It was a difficult task but He did it all by Himself. His status is one, whom He has no rival. There is no equal. There is none like Him. Songs are all built in there to create this stirring of heart once in a while to show you your God is different from all the other gods. If the other gods are like that, go and worship them. But they cannot be like that. They are not like that. That’s why it makes your Christian worship different from all the others. Otherwise you will be worshipping idols.”
Pr Moses then explained the order of the 5 hymns of worship and the worshippers in the book of Revelation to show that the greater God is, the greater the number of people should worship Him.
“When you come to this drawing board to see how we can find our way. In our Christian life, we sometimes tried experiments and our plane crashed and crashed and crashed. You’ve got to come back to the drawing board. Look at the design again. Look at the plans again. What’s happening in Heaven is your kind of life. The story of Heaven is your story. The story in Revelation chapter 4 and chapter 5. You’re there to show the distinctiveness of your God and worship Him, so that you could join together with angels and saints and elders and living creatures to bow down and say ‘Amen!’ to the glory of God. Amen!”
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