Heaven is filled with unending adoration of the Triune God. It’s not that there will be times of feasting, and times of worship (it isn’t uncommon today for people to limit the word “worship” to singing praise to God), but that every action in heaven will be a form of worship. In fact, the Bible frequently depicts heaven as God’s true temple, and temples are places of worship.
Just think of Moses’ construction of the tabernacle. God gave Moses very specific commands about how the tabernacle was to be built, and this was because it was to mirror God’s dwelling place in heaven. In the book of Hebrews we read that the Old Testament priesthood that served in the temple “served a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, ‘See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.’” (Heb. 8:5) The earthly tabernacle was a visual aid that gives us an earthly representation of the heavenly reality. Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman III gives us a glimpse into the tabernacle:
The air inside the tabernacle was often cloudy from incense and the smoke of sacrifices, the latter coming in from the outside. Nonetheless, as one stood in the tabernacle and looked around, he would see a deep blue background with images of cherubim looking as though suspended in midair… it is hard to miss the idea that the impression was to be a heavenly one. As one walked into the tabernacle, he would be symbolically transferred from an earthly location to a (symbolically at least) heavenly one.
This same experience is carried into the Jerusalem temple built by Solomon. When Isaiah received his vision of God’s throne room in heaven, he saw with his own eyes the angels worshipping God saying, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory.” (Isa. 6:3) The glimpses we receive of heaven throughout the Old Testament confirm that it is fundamentally a place of praise.
When we turn to the New Testament, heaven is also depicted as a mountain of worship, “Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” where there are innumerable angels in festal gathering (Heb. 12:22-23). In the book of Revelation, we learn that in the New Jerusalem God himself will be the temple (21:22), and elsewhere we see God’s throne surrounded by all creation crying out, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!” (Rev. 5:13) Imagine singing the praises of God with people from all places and times, alongside of angelic creatures whose beauty our minds can only begin to fathom. Perfected voices will sound off in an antiphonal chorus of saints and seraphim, magnifying the one who is enthroned, and the redeemer of humanity, the Lamb!
Footnotes
Longman III, Tremper. Immanuel in Our Place. Pg. 29
