His Perfect Love

Guest (Male): Pastor Matt speaks of the real purpose of the church, and it hasn't changed through the years.

Matt VanderVen: True worship takes place on the inside, within our hearts, our spirits, which is the dwelling place of God. Humans were created to worship God. Psalms, Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, all speak to this. And the purpose of the church, besides equipping of the saints that we read in Ephesians 4, serving the Lord, spreading the gospel, the purpose of the church is to be the object of worship to God. Cuz he's alone is worthy.

Guest (Male): Today on His Perfect Love, we continue Pastor Matt Vanderfven's new study of Revelation, and we aim to polish off chapter 4. Pastor Matt is about to draw our attention to the four living creatures spoken of in this chapter. Their purpose, plain and simple, is to worship God. And that's actually our purpose, too, as God's creation. We were created to worship God, not only in heaven, but here on earth. Here's Pastor Matt with a message recently delivered at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg, West Shore.

Matt VanderVen: So the four different faces of the cherubim are often taken as symbols, okay, this way of speaking back to Old Covenant Testament of Israel and pointing back. Now, do we know that dogmatically? No, that's just one idea that many scholars have said possibly. There's other ideas, okay? Some have taken these four faces and said, well, maybe this is symbolic of Jesus and how he's represented in each gospel, right? Maybe in classical church architecture, these four characters are repeated as a motif or something to signify both in heaven, on earth, and in the four gospels. I mean, um, maybe he's trying to say there's some connection, right?

Uh, different traditions have connected those four faces in different ways. Let me give you an example. Matthew, the book of Matthew here. You've been through your New Testament, many of you. Some of you haven't, and that's okay. The book of Matthew. Who What audience is that primarily written to? A Jewish audience, right? What do you think some scholars would say that what would be theirs out of out of the lion, out of the eagle, out of the ox, right? What do you think they would say? The lion, that's right. Matthew, the lion gospel, showing that Jesus as the lion of the tribe of Judah, the Messianic promise, right?

The Jesus Christ fulfillment of the Messianic promise given to the Davidic Covenant, as we know and again it's to David, okay? What about Mark? Right? Mark's a concise book of the gospel, immediately, immediately, immediately, right? What is Mark? Mark would be known as the ox gospel. Why? Because Jesus is presented in the book of Mark as a humble servant. An ox is a servant, okay? A worker. What about Luke? Well, Luke was a physician. He was a doctor, right? Doctor Luke, okay? But how is Jesus portrayed in in the Luke? He's a perfect man, the God man, but the perfect man.

Luke portrays him as the second Adam. That's where we get that idea of a second Adam. And what about John's gospel? John's gospel transcends in so many ways. It's not like the synoptics. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are not put together with John. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are synoptic, similar. Synoptic meaning similar. John is not. John is an entirely different gospel, and it's narration is different as we've studied it together. You know that. We've been through it together if you were with us. It reads differently. It's written differently, but the idea behind John is it's the eagle gospel, right?

Showing Jesus is the man from heaven in the sky still still approaching as again, other interpretations, but it's it's I think perhaps it's the safest to say that the four faces are important because they represent all of creation in its utmost excellence. I think we can all agree on that, right? Now, I want you to think about in nature and creation around us. The lion is the mightiest of all wild animals, isn't he? The ox is the strongest of all domesticated animals. The eagle is the king of all birds, and man is the highest of all creation.

Yet there's still some scholars that would say these four faces illustrate different personality of God's ministers. So some have said, well, maybe this is God giving us an illustration of humanity or of pastors or ministers or humanity that way. So maybe he's trying to signify the various gifts in which God has blessed you and I. And some would say, well, he gives some more courage and fortitude. And there's a portion of humanity that are like lions. Others are a little bit more meek and mild as humans, and they're more like an ox or a calf.

Some have said, well, some have more wisdom or prudence, and they you know, they're more like a typical man in in adoration of God. Others are still more piercing with some kind of insight. People we've met, they just have that supernatural discernment. They see things. They're very perceptive on situations, almost like an eye like an eagle, enabled to just peer into things, rendering things like an eagle would. I think the one thing we can include in all of this because we really just don't know. We can't say dogmatically or matter of fact. The one thing we can say here this morning and we need to understand that at least what we understand that God is trying to communicate to us through John is that all heaven worships and that these four living beings are dedicated to worship.

And just like they were created for that purpose, so are you and I. We have been created to be worshipers. And this biblical concept of worship involves praising God and giving him the glory with our lips and our lives, with our words and our deeds, with our physical bodies and our spiritual hearts. Worship that pleases God must be authentic, offered with clean hands and a pure heart, right? So what is a worshiper? Or one that praises God. In the Bible, worship describes both a way of life and a specific activity. Praising and an adoring, expressing reverence from God, both publicly and privately, are specific acts of worship.

In a broader sense, worship refers to really an overall lifestyle if I can say that way, of serving and glorifying God, reflecting his glory to others. When the Old Testament prophet Jonah, and I'm speaking of Jonah chapter 1 verse 9, when he said to them, he says, I am a Hebrew. I fear the Lord. If you look up the Hebrew word that he uses there for fear, it actually means I worship, reverent the Lord. I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land. And that sound like we were just reading in heaven how God is being praised for all his creations, too.

Here the prophet Jonah was praying that and praising him. Again, he was speaking of a lifestyle wholly dedicated to glorifying God, just as we read this is the these beings in heaven, the elders and the saints gathered doing that. The apostle Paul also defined worship as an all-encompassing way of life, okay? If you look in your Bibles, Romans chapter 12 verse 1, right? Many of us have memorized it. Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, right? Specifically, he's saying in view of God's mercy, right? To offer your bodies as what? Living sacrifices. And he says it so clear, holy and pleasing to God.

He then says, this is your reasonable service, right? What is he trying to say when he says reasonable service? This is your true and your proper worship. That's what he's saying there. When we think of reasonable service, sometimes we're like, oh, that's one of the ways I'm supposed to bring service to God. No, no, no. What he's saying is he says, this is your true, your identity, your true and proper worship must be all in. There is no such thing as a half worshiper, half in the world, half in the kingdom of God. Can't do it.

As a matter of fact, he specifically spoke of that in the latter times. He said, we're going to worship him in spirit, not in the flesh. In spirit. When we worship God, it must be in spirit. It transcends what happens on this earth. The specific acts of worship is to celebrate God's worthiness and greatness by giving honor and glory to His name. Worship can be expressed in words. We see it in shouts, singing. We see a bowing down. We see people raising hands, holy hands, many other ways. David liked to dance. The psalmist urges the faithful to enter into the act of worship.

We covered this and we were in Psalm 95. Some of you may remember that. Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud the rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. Did you know that the Greek word for worship means to encounter God and to praise him? At that time, it got translated to the local people in the early church. What they understood the Greek word as it kind of got changed to mean is that it was a kiss to God, literally translated.

That's how they would translate worship, that worship meant that you were coming up and you were kissing the face of God. It's how it was understood. But the original in the Hebrew in the Hebrew also and in the Greek, it meant to encounter. If you break down the word in the Greek, that's actually what it means today. It's made up of two words. It means to encounter God, experience him fully, and to praise him. As I said, the rabbis would also say to kiss the presence of God. That's an intimate, very very personal, very close idea here.

For centuries, the Jewish people had encountered God in the temple for worship. But when Jesus had arrived on the scene, he spoke You remember he spoke of himself metaphorically as the temple. John chapter 2 19 and 22 through 22. Through His resurrection from the dead, Jesus became the spiritual dwelling place where God and His people would meet. You see, this is all very important. Jesus made it clear that the physical location of our worship really isn't relevant any longer. It doesn't matter where you are. Your shower could be your place of worship. Your church always ought to be your place of worship.

Every time you come in here, we ought to always worship. John chapter 4 verses 23 and 24. Yet the time is coming and has now come. He said this. He declared this. When true worshipers What does that mean? Born again believers, true born again believers, will worship the Father in the spirit of truth for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth. It's a non-negotiable. It's a non-negotiable for the Christian. True worship takes place on the inside, within our hearts, our spirits, which is the dwelling place of God.

Humans were created to worship God. Psalms, Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, all speak to this. And the purpose of the church, besides equipping of the saints that we read in Ephesians 4, serving the Lord, spreading the gospel, the purpose of the church is to be the object of worship to God. Cuz he's alone is worthy. That 's why we gather. And worshiping God means crediting God or Jesus to the absolute worth that he alone deserves. He's our creator. He's our redeemer. He's our Lord, certainly our friend. And the Father and the Son receive worship. The holy angels worship God, and something very important we ought to pay attention.

All of heaven, the angels themselves don't receive worship. They actually rebuke anybody that tries to worship self. What it would be like if humanity took a note on that. There is too much self-praise and self-worship today. I want you to think about how many of you employed at companies where you work. You have to do a 360 review. Part of that review is you have to turn around and blow your own trumpet. What have you done and how have you added value to the company in the last year? And it's all about praise, praise, praise.

I've done this. I've done that. I've done this. I 've done that. And then the 360 portion is your peers come around and what do they say? Yeah, he's done this. Yeah, he's done that. Yeah, she's done this. What happened to people being able to reflect on the fruit? Do you remember how I said Jesus came when he first came to Israel? He says, you're all leaves and you're no fruit. Uh, from an outward appearance, he was at a distance. It looked like leaves. It looked like it was going to be a healthy tree. But as he got up close to it, you know when he inspected it, you know what he found?

No fruit. Not a single bit of fruit. So let's be fruit inspectors today. And I'm going to I'm going to close with this here. I want you to think about the days we're living. God says we worship in spirit and truth. These things needs be. If I asked you, how many of you think your the world here is crazy? How many of you think the world is going out of control? I agree that God's given them over to a debased mind. Romans 1 2 teaches that. But there's not a single thing that's happening out of control.

No matter where you are in this political climate, if you're happy with the new administration coming in or you're not happy, none of that's relevant to me to be quite transparent with you. I don't care. I do what I'm going to do and you do what you're going to do regardless of an administration cuz I don't worship a political savior. I worship Jesus Christ the savior. And I'm not looking to a political savior. And I'm going to also give you some free advice here this morning. That's something I just wrapped my head around recently. And I want you to think about this.

He says they're going to say peace and safety and then sudden destruction. Would you echo peace and safety when everything's going really well? Is that a thief in the night? Or is it when things are not going well? No, when it's not going well, you expect God, you're going to come and save us and get us out of trouble. As a matter of fact, is that not what Israel's going to do? Covenant Israel. Right? He's going to turn around. It says very clear in the Bible, the people, the nation of Israel, when that covenant's broken three and a half years through the tribulation, they're going to raise out and go, Jesus, Messiah, help us.

And Jesus is going to come. We're going to come with him and that'll be the end of the great tribulation. Do you realize we're so close? I need everybody here to understand this. We're so close. Okay? Just give me a couple more minutes of your time here. I just want you to just just take this in for a minute. How close we really are. So I want you to think about the days we're living and what we are seeing around us and how it appears things are oh, things are going to get bad. You got Netanyahu.

Many of you know who he is. He's Israel's prime minister, right? He's giddy like a school boy, right? He's kind of skipping, right? Some of you know what that is. Some people I don't even know if kids skip anymore. But skipping up Maybe some of you skip. He's skipping down the road, right? And I don't blame him because he finally has someone that he believes is going to be a true ally in office that's going to come along and have his back, right? He 's going to He's going to feel like that, right? And that's good.

So he is already uttered peace and security. He did that at the United Nations. He did that in Congress just a couple years ago. Well, now you have somebody coming into political office that's going to have Israel's back. And I love that. Please don't misunderstand me. But what I'm saying is is this is going to this is going to bring an author in a time over people are going to say, wow, we really are and we in Israel is really going to experience peace and safety because if Iran or any of the surrounding nations try to invade Israel, America and NATO and some of the other surrounding nations are going to come to Israel's side.

So what a beautiful time to say peace and safety. That's first. The second one. Have you been noticing the frequency of storms? The Bible says in Matthew 24 gives you very specific on I'm a student of the scripture. Study to show thyself approved. The Bible commanded each and every one of us to be able to get in defense why we believe in the hope we have within us. We're told that very clearly in the scripture. So when I think back at what that calling or command by Jesus Christ is directly, he doesn't want me to be surprised in the days in which I'm living and which is what's coming.

He wants us to be all aware, eyes wide open, so we don't have fear and tribulation. No, while everybody's running this way, we're running that way, getting people saved, right? During a crisis or that moment. Well, just recently, how many of you know what an or fish is? Some of you Anybody in here? Raise a hand if you know what an or fish. So seven people. That's okay. It's a start. It's interesting. When you go back through history and you look up what an or fish is, it's something that they've been able to correlate that when you start First of all, there are very deep sea fish.

They're hundreds and hundreds of feet down below. They don't typically come up to the 100 200 ft level of the sea. They're very very deep type fish. However, just like we have NOAA and we can track things as we have been for the last 40 and 50 years, uh, climate, rain, all those kinds of things, salts, the salinity of the ocean, all of these things, pH, all this is we calculate all this. We track all this, right? So one of the things they've correlated and and I know there's a folklore off over there about this, and that's not where I'm going, is that they have noticed because some people of ancient used to say, oh, when we see those that meant we are going to have a tsunami.

But the interesting thing is there's something that happens when these storms are going to start and the climate around us begins to change like a Ni-o or Ni-a or however you say it. And what happens is these fish that are normally very deep sea fish, they come more shallow. And for whatever reason, they don't survive and they begin to wash ashore. And just recently in California on the beach, they've been starting to find them. And typically whenever these things happen that you start to have very severe storms. Now, I'm not a prophet or a son of a prophet.

I'm only describing to you what we know as a correlation. But Jesus told us in the last days, he said, these are going to be labor pains. When you start seeing these storms, earthquakes, hurri- in all of these things, he says, get ready. And what we're always taught in scripture is not to isolate any one of those because again, we can go back to NI-A NOAA and we can see how often earthquakes have been happening, how often hurricanes. We can track all of that. And if you did, and I encourage you to be students of science, you would go back and find that the intensity and frequency has increased.

As a matter of fact, we have missionaries that are coming from going from this church down to North Carolina in December to do what? To help all those that are still devastated down there, that have houses still at 3 4 ft full of mud, that they have not been able to go and live, and they aren't getting the help from FEMA, they aren't getting and they're basically camping out in the middle of their home with tents or what was their home. So we're taking all the stuff you guys have brought and we're taking it down in a trailer.

We're taking people down and we're going to go minister. We're going to go meet the needs. Aaron's leading a team to go down there to do that. You guys have been praying. Praise the Lord for that. But it's real and it's happening. And those that saw that storm as compared to people that have done this before said, man, this is unlike anything we've ever seen. The gravity is beyond anything we've seen with any previous storm that we've been involved in from a missionary perspective. So we have a frequency intensity check. The next thing he told us that would be happening is this famine and pestilence.

When you start to see those things, pay attention. Just this week, we're having the school, right? We have we're bringing in food for the school. We have a thanksgiving, uh, before they go on break. I went out. We bought carrots and all these things and food to cook for the kids. I had to return all the carrots. Why? Because it come up on the news that says, oh, all these carrots have E. coli. You got popular food chains that just had E. coli outbreaks and they had to stop. Now you listeria outbreaks. I literally went on the website.

I started checking how often and compared to the frequency ground beef just in the last 48 hours. Just some of you saw that 150,000 lb of ground beef. People already have it in their freezers and fridge cuz it's been out there for a little bit, but they just noticed it. They have to recall all that now. How do you think the pestilence is going to come in the famine? So many of us thought, well, it just wouldn't be it would affect the supply chain. How about the fact that the food gets contaminated and it's no longer edible because it's got bacteria.

Some of you Anybody here study microbiology? Study microbiology. Start studying microbiology. You're going to learn a lot about this cuz it breaks it down into what's happening with our food supply, uh, bacteria, fungus, uh, fungi as you know it, protozoa. You start studying these things. You start realizing what's really happening in our food. We've not seen anything like this before to this degree, to this magnitude. Okay? And then the third, he says they're going to say wars and rumors of wars. What are we on the brink of? Or so they would say. We're on the brink of World War.

When I tell you there's wars and rumors of wars, it's not yet. But the labor pains are amping up. It's getting very close. All of heaven, please notice and this is how I want to close. You and I, some of you may be a little bit frightened here this morning because of what I just went through. Maybe you hadn't correlated those things. Maybe you hadn't done some of the data or research to see all of this and realize, oh my gosh, he's right. Like this is all really happening and it's the frequency and intensity that Jesus spoke about.

And it's all culminating right now like we've never seen before on the scene. And maybe some of you are sitting here and going, why I I'm I'm fearful. Well, Jesus says, I give you what? Love, power, and a sound mind. I don't give you fear. I want you to look to the throne room of God. What is everybody doing as we just are leaving them this morning? You are worthy, oh Lord, to receive glory, honor, and power for you created all things and by your will they exist and were created. Is everybody running around heaven going, oh, what are we going to do?

No, what are they doing? Including all the saints in heaven. Are they turning around going, but my loved ones, my family members, they're on the earth. What's going to happen to them? Nervous? No, what are they doing? They're prostrated before God and they're worshiping. Why? Because you and I serve a sovereign God who's in control and there's nothing that 's going out of control. There's nothing that's crazy. God said these things needs be. The end is not yet, but I am coming and I am coming soon. Look up because your redemption draws nigh. Be ready.

I pray when I come, I find those worthy, those doing my work, the work of my father, my father's business. He says because true worshipers are going to be those in these last days that worship me in truth and in spirit. You cannot operate in these last days without walking in the spirit. Galatians 5. You don't want to fulfill the lust of the flesh. What do you do? Walk in the spirit. You and I were created to be worshipers. We're not created to run away in fear. We're not created to move to another country, another state because we don't like things that are going on.

We're created to lift holy hands and worship a holy God who is sovereign. He's on the throne. He's madly in love with you and we're madly in love with him. So when you walk out of here today, you walk out pieced out. You walk out of here knowing your calling and election is sure. You walk here knowing you were created to be a worshiper just like these four living creatures. They have a plan and a purpose, and God doesn't make a mistake, no matter how funny looking they are. Notice I didn't say you're funny looking.

Or you didn't say I was funny looking. The point is we're worshipers and we were created to worship.

Guest (Male): It's clear worship will be a big part of the experience in heaven, and it's something we should be engaged in here on earth as well. You're listening to His Perfect Love, and Pastor Matt Vanderfven just completed Revelation chapter 4. If you missed any portion of it, it's not too late to catch up. Just head over to hisperfectlove.org or oneplace.com where we have them all archived for you. We're thankful for the listeners that come alongside of us with their prayers and financial support. If you're interested in supporting this radio ministry, there's a place to do that at hisperfectlove.org.

Together we can reach people with the love and truth of God in these last days. Pastor Matt loves to hear from his listeners, even just a quick hello telling him where you hear the program and how you're blessed by it means a lot. Email us there at the website hisperfectlove.org. And whether you live in or around Mechanicsburg, PA or will be visiting the area soon, we'd love to have you join us for a service at Calvary Chapel Harrisburg, West Shore. Sunday morning services begin at 8:30 and 10:30. We have a midweek service, too, Wednesdays at 7:00 p.m.

You'll find us at 28 North Locust Point Road in Mechanicsburg, PA. Go to ccharrisburg.org for more information. Well, that'll do it for today, but come back next time when Pastor Matt will again study the book of Revelation with us here on His Perfect Love. His Perfect Love is brought to you by Calvary Chapel Harrisburg, West Shore.