Monday Morning Mail, 17th June 2013

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Loving God | Loving Each Other | Loving our Community

Good Morning!


Yesterday was another really encouraging day of services. In the morning, we looked at Joshua 2, and saw how beautiful and wonderful God's love for us is – that he even took a pagan prostitute who trusted him, forgave her, included her in his people and used her as part of his plan to bless the world. If you weren't there, people say it's well worth a listen – do check it out on our sermons website. Yesterday evening, Andrew did another great sermon as the last in our series looking through the different genres in the Bible, with a look at Revelation 4-5. It's also well worth a listen.


One detail which struck me from Andrew's preaching last night was from Revelation 4:7-8. Andrew (rightly) didn't go into it in much detail, because it's not the main point of the passage, but I thought it was worth teasing out this morning.


John is seeing a highly symbolic vision of the throne room of God, and like most of Revelation, it isn't meant to be taken literally. In v7-8, he sees four living creatures, which look like a lion, an ox, a man and an eagle – the greatest known wild animal, the greatest domestic animal, the greatest bird and mankind, the king of creation itself. These creatures symbolise the greatest created things.


And yet these each have six wings and are covered in eyes. They aren't just the greatest created things – they have perfect mobility and perfect vision. They can go everywhere and see everything.


What does the very pinnacle of creation do, when it can go anywhere and knows everything? In v8, John tells us.


Day and night they never stop saying:

"Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."


The summit of all created wisdom, power and knowledge is worshipping God day and night without ceasing.


So often we don't feel like it though! So often we don't see reasons to praise God in our situations. And that is simply because we don't see enough. If we understood exactly what God is doing, exactly what his plan is and how wonderful it is, if we could see the whole picture, then we would never be able to stop praising him for how wonderful he is!


God bless,


John

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