Revelation 19:10 –
Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said, “No, don’t worship me. I am a servant of God, just like you and your brothers and sisters who testify about their faith in Jesus. Worship only God. For the essence of prophecy is to give a clear witness for Jesus.”
I find it interesting that the angel differentiates between worshiping others and worshiping God in this verse. He also separates Jesus from God. I think this is a difficult thing for many to understand and really grasp when you see writings like this. We can get into a long discussion about the trinity and the true meaning.
Let’s just say that many “religions” do not worship Jesus because they feel it would be violating this and the first two commandments since there are many verses that show Jesus separate from God. Again this is a very long and drawn out discussion which I have even made more complex by including quantum mechanics.
Again in simplistic terms if we worship Jesus as the disciples did, I believe we are safe in not violating the terms of the first two commandments. I think the focus here is not worshiping other servants of God or stuff God has given us. We need to keep our focus on God and His glory and not dilute it with other “stuff” that will eventually take us away from God. God is the only one worthy our worship and Jesus being God or even “just” the son of God is worthy of that also.
As we get into this often by parse out attributes of God and worship them as God. The two most common attributes that get worshiped are “love” and “nature”. People love to worship “love” and say “if God is “love” why does this happen?” They go down the rabbit trail of only focusing on love and actually dismissing God since he is judges and punishes us. Or “nature” becomes a God and its importance gets placed over all. God gave us nature to enjoy and use, not to worship. We can worship God while in awe of nature, but much of the “environmental movement” makes nature God. The key here is love God and worship all of God, not just bits and pieces you like.
Now the rest of this chapter is an interesting read because it talks about the rider on the white horse. Funny if you think about it, that western’s whose hero rides in on a white horse has biblical roots! The rider here fights with his words and verse 13 even says he is the “Word of God”. If we remember in James how the tongue is very dangerous and can set ablaze a forest. This also shows how the “Word” from the tongue can also pierce evil and win over all.