When you experience knee pain and you go to the doctor, what do they do? They diagnose the problem and find a solution that will help ease the pain. They try to get to the bottom of what's really wrong so you can heal.

That's essentially what we have going on here in chapter 6. We expect God's plan to be enacted - we expect the world to be put back together. Nope. We get violence. All the evil around us has to be exposed. God is getting to the bottom of what's really wrong so that the world can be put back together. And God is waaaaaaayyyyy more patient than we are. So patient, that it's easy for us to give in to a kind of fatalism. Welp, I guess evil is going to win after all cuz the world has gone crazy and out of control.

Then we get chapter 7. Yeah, the world is still going crazy, but it's not out of control. God is still on the throne watching over the faithful while the world goes crazy.

But, they only see this vision while they're gathered around the throne in worship. Is this whole book about worship? Uh, yeah. It is. It's in worship that we get the divine perspective.

It's also significant that there's a great multitude there. We can not forget about the power of gathering with people who believe the same things about God that we do. A community, when bound together with a common purpose, can transform and improve lives within and outside of it.

But when we leave this place on Sunday morning, we take our worship with us. The Benediction isn't an ending - it's a sending. This bears repeating, a lot. A mystic man of faith named Brother Lawrence writes about the phrase, "Coram Deo" - "before the face of God." All the little things we do, we do them Coram Deo. We practice the presence of God. This helps us sustain our faith, enliven our hope, and expand our love and helps us live in the ways of the Lamb.

Speaker: Aaron Vis

Scripture: Revelation 6:1-17; 7:1-17

http://bible.com/events/48921208