Last week I made a statement that was significant.  It was the kind of statement that causes you to pause and re-arrange your thinking.  Or as Dwain said last week, “It gives you goose bumps.”  If you were here last week I’m sure you remember, “We who have faith in Jesus, who love and obey Jesus, become intersections of the two spheres.  Those who are in Christ have a piece of eternity within them.  The overlap of heaven and earth is within each of us as Christians.  The Spirit lives in you as the Temple of God.”

What I was talking about is this concept that heaven, where God dwells, is a different time space continuum than where we live on earth.   God lives outside of time while we live very much in time.  What time is it?  How many people are wearing watches?  In God’s place there are no wrist watches.  They wouldn’t work and would be of no purpose if they did.  So, there are two spheres of existence; God’s sphere, heaven and ours, earth.  But the really cool part of all this is there are places where the two realms intersect.  There are places, here on earth, which are also, there in heaven. 

The Old Testament is full of stories where this is the case.  Moses sees a burning bush and God tells him to take off us sandals because he is on holy ground; another way of saying a heaven/earth place.  Solomon builds a Temple to replace the Tabernacle and when he dedicates it the Holy Place is filled with a dark cloud, God/Human intersection.  Then when Jesus comes to this world he brings heaven with him.  Instead of a place that is the intersection of the spheres, the intersection becomes a person.  That is what we mean when we say the man Jesus was divine.  The real man Jesus in our time-space continuum existed also in the realms of heaven.  Jesus was an overlapping of the two realms.

But the part that gave us the goose bumps, last week, was what Jesus said he was going to do when he returned to the Father.

John 14:19-20   In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.  20 On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.

We, as Christians, are also the intersection of the two universes.  We, whom the Spirit lives within, are places where eternity and mortality co-exist.  We are the Temple of the Holy Spirit.  Do you feel them; the goose bumps? 

1 John 4:13 We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his  Spirit.

I also said, last week, that this concept of being a Temple of the Spirit, this intersection of heaven and earth, is a reason not to throw darts.  We are not rental cars.  We are special.  We are holy.  How can a glorious temple of God stain itself by saying hurtful things to other temples?  It is inconceivable for something special to profane itself by stooping to slinging mud.  We are not mud we are holy ground.  Our view of who we are is the first step toward not throwing darts. We begin to be holy when we understand that we are living in two realms.  This morning we look at the 2nd clue toward how to stop throwing darts. 
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This clue begins in the Revelation of John, the last book of the Bible.  John is in another of these holy places where there is a small door between the two spheres of existence.  John goes through and allows us a sneak into the heaven of God; to see a little of what is going on, on the other side. 

Revelation 4:1-5 After this I looked, and there before me was a door standing open in heaven. And the voice I had first heard speaking to me like a trumpet said, "Come up here, and I will show you what must take place after this."  2 At once I was in the Spirit, and there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it.  3 And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian. A rainbow, resembling an emerald, encircled the throne.  4 Surrounding the throne were twenty-four other thrones, and seated on them were twenty-four elders. They were dressed in white and had crowns of gold on their heads.  5 From the throne came flashes of lightning, rumblings and peals of thunder. Before the throne, seven lamps were blazing. These are the seven spirits of God.

John steps into the other side.  There he sees the throne of God.  We catch a glimpse of the creator of the universe.  What do you suppose you would do if you were John and you saw into the realm of heaven? I suspect, you would do what everything else is doing.

Revelation 4:6-11   Also before the throne there was what looked like a sea of glass, clear as crystal. In the center, around the throne, were four living creatures, and they were covered with eyes, in front and in back.  7 The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle.  8 Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."  9 Whenever the living creatures give glory, honor and thanks to him who sits on the throne and who lives for ever and ever,  10 the twenty-four elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever. They lay their crowns before the throne and say:  11 "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being."

If you were there you would do what the living creatures do, you would worship, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come."  You would do what the 24 elders do.  You would worship, "You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being." If you were altogether on the other side you would worship.  If you caught a glimpse of the eternal Creator you would fall to your knees and worship Him with all of your heart. 

But wait a second, if we are the intersection of the two spheres, if we also live in the other realm, then what should we already be doing?  Worshipping!  What is it that temples are for?  Worshipping!  “Hey, I am a Temple of God! I live also in the other realm.  I should be all about worshipping!”  Thus the 2nd clue begins to make sense.
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Worship is the time when we are living more on the other side than on this side.  Worship is the time when the veil between the two spheres is thin. This is a fascinating thought.  We who believe in Jesus and have become Temples of the Spirit are able to worship because we have a direct connection to heaven.  We may not see as clearly as John saw in Revelation 4, but the help of the Spirit we can cross the veil and there bow before the throne of heaven and worship God IN HIS PRESENCSE! Wow, that is fantastic.  It all makes sense.  It all hangs together.  We are Temples so that we can worship.

Worship is when we are focused on giving God praise and proclaiming He is worthy.  Notice the connection between worship and worthy.  What did the 24 elders say?  “You are worthy, our Lord and God.”  That is worship.  When we really worship, we connect to the other sphere of existence; we attempt to get out of time and into that realm of timelessness; we attempt to connect to God and there proclaim that he is worthy of all our adoration. 

We know how to do this. Have you ever been to an exciting basketball game? Have you been watching the NBA playoffs?  There has been a ton of games when at the last fraction of a second the ball leaves the shooters hand and the buzzer sounds and the ball arcs from way back and hits nothing but net and the game is won.  Then, then what does the home town crowd do who has just won the game at the buzzer?  They erupt in praise.  They burst out in worship. Their team is worthy.  Their team is magnificent.  The crowd worships.  That is the same spirit we must connect to when we worship.  We praise the God of the Universe because he is worthy!

Sidebar; I think that is why sports are so popular.  That is why so many go to games and watch them on TV.  It is doing what we were created to do.  We are created for worship.  We are designed to adore.  We are wired to praise that which is worthy.  But really what we are created to do is worship God.  We are designed to be Temples of the Spirit; beings who live in both worlds. This is what Jesus was saying to the woman at the well

John 4:23-24   Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.  24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

We must worship is spirit.  We must connect across the divide and truthfully praise the one who is worthy.  This is getting us closer to get to the 2nd clue. 
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N.T. Wright has a chapter in his book, “Simply Christian which discusses worship.  On page 148 he discusses two golden rules of spirituality.  The first rule is, “You become like what you worship.” Listen to a couple paragraphs.

“When you gaze in awe, admiration, and wonder at something or someone, you begin to take on something of the character of the object of your worship. Those who worship money become, eventually, human calculating machines. Those who worship sex become obsessed with their own attractiveness or prowess. Those who worship power become more and more ruthless.

So what happens when you worship the creator God whose plan to rescue the world and put it to rights has been accomplished by the Lamb who was slain? The answer comes in the second golden rule; because you were made in God's image, worship makes you more truly human. When you gaze in love and gratitude at the God in whose image you were made, you do indeed grow. You discover more of what it means to be fully alive.

Conversely, when you give that same total worship to anything or anyone else, you shrink as a human being. It doesn't, of course, feel like that at the time. When you worship part of the creation as though it were the Creator himself—in other words, when you worship an idol—you may well feel a brief "high." But, like a hallucinatory drug, that worship achieves its effect at a cost: when the effect is over, you are less of a human being than you were to begin with. That is the price of idolatry.”

That is the 2nd clue to how we learn to stop throwing darts; we worship.  Remember I discussed the third law of Newton’s behavior. Stated it is that for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction?  If we attempt to brute force our behavior; “I will just stop.  Just say no!” We get the backlash of a desire to do the very thing we wish to stop. It is not a very effective way to accomplish change.  But if we, instead, begin to worship God; if we focus on his awesomeness; if we praise him for who he is then we will slowly but surely become like him and at the same time become more of who we were intended to be as humans. 

That is the 2nd clue to stop throwing darts, or stop any sin.  We worship.  As we learn to cross over to the other sphere and there worship God we will be molded more and more into the image of his son.  Worship transforms us. And that too should give us goose bumps!