Passionate Worship Isaiah 6 Intro Today we begin a sermon series on some of the elements of worship. It is a series that will be broken in half by a youth led service and a special service with our bishop! So, take good notes so we can pick up after these two special services. I don t interrupt a sermon series for just anyone! But for our youth, I ll do it. For a celebration of 100 years in service and ministry and bringing Hope to Hopewell, I guess I ll do it for that. And I suppose I can allow this for our bishop too! This series begins as we think about Passionate Worship. What do you feel when you worship God? Do you feel anything? If you do not, does that really matter? This reminds me of the Smothers Brothers! The Smothers Brothers once did a routine on TV that went something like this. Dick asked, What s wrong, Tommy? You seem down. Tom replied, I am! I m worried about the state of American society? Dick said, Well, what bothers you about it? Are you worried about poverty and hunger? Oh, no, that really doesn t bother me. I see. Well, are you concerned about the possibility of war? No, that s not a worry of mine. Dick continued, Are you upset over the use of illegal drugs? No, that doesn t bother me very much. 1
Looking puzzled, Dick asked, Well, Tom, if you re not bothered by poverty and hunger, war and drugs, what are you worried about? Tommy replied, I m worried about apathy. (bah bum, bum!) What is apathy? Apathy is not caring about the state of your country. Apathy is not caring about poverty and hunger and war and drugs. Apathy is a lack of feeling. But more than that, it seems to be a deliberate lack of feeling. A choice to not feel, or care, or empathize. It is like the App that fills your calendar so you can pretend to be busy. Suppose your friend is moving on Saturday. Are you free to help? The real answer is yes. The honest answer is no, because you re a human being and not a forklift. And also because you guys aren t really that close. If only you had something else planned so it would be easier to say no. Got This Thing is just that. The Web app uses your phone s location to populate your Google calendar with local stuff that s happening, pulled from public event information on sites like Eventbrite. Click on the Get Busy button and in an instant your blank schedule turns into a confetti of things to do. Nat Towsen thought of the idea in May during New York City Comedy Hack Day. The three-day event paired developers and comics together to build humorous apps. Towsen and his team spent about two days coding and preparing for the final pitch. They were ultimately crowned the grand prize winner s for this year s festival. More than a thousand people from 10 different countries have used the free service, and in the future, Towsen hopes to pull events from other sites, including Facebook. The app has real potential as it could make it easy for people to find things to do without having to do much. But, Towsen says half-jokingly, all of that is secondary: It s for people who want to avoid doing things. That is apathy in a calendarish way! It is not particularly passionate, is it? 2
ME When I think of passionate worship, I think about total surrender to God in worship. It has little to do with what we feel, or what we experience. This is because worship is not for us, it s not even about us. Worship is a gift that we give to God. The origin of the word worship is similar to the word worth. We think about what something is worth, its value. In Revelation, a great resource about worship, we hear the refrain: YOU You are worthy, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created (4:11). Do you participate in worship for yourself, or for God? What do you think about when you hear the words passionate worship? Is it about what you feel, what you experience? Or, is it about what you give to God, the God who is worthy of worship? Let s worship now, with Isaiah and see what God can teach us in his Word: GOD Is. 6:1 It was in the year King Uzziah died that I saw the Lord. He was sitting on a lofty throne, and the train of his robe filled the Temple. 2 Attending him were mighty seraphim, each having six wings. With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew. 3 They were calling out to each other, Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of Heaven s Armies! The whole earth is filled with his glory! 4 Their voices shook the Temple to its foundations, and the entire building was filled with smoke. 5 Then I said, It s all over! I am doomed, for I am a sinful man. I have filthy lips, and I live among a people with filthy lips. Yet I have seen 3
the King, the LORD of Heaven s Armies. 6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a burning coal he had taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. 7 He touched my lips with it and said, See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven. 8 Then I heard the Lord asking, Whom should I send as a messenger to this people? Who will go for us? I said, Here I am. Send me. 9 And he said, Yes, go, and say to this people, Listen carefully, but do not understand. Watch closely, but learn nothing. 10 Harden the hearts of these people. Plug their ears and shut their eyes. That way, they will not see with their eyes, nor hear with their ears, nor understand with their hearts and turn to me for healing. Is. 6:11 Then I said, Lord, how long will this go on? And he replied, Until their towns are empty, their houses are deserted, and the whole country is a wasteland; 12 until the LORD has sent everyone away, and the entire land of Israel lies deserted. 13 If even a tenth a remnant survive, it will be invaded again and burned. But as a terebinth or oak tree leaves a stump when it is cut down, so Israel s stump will be a holy seed. We need to realize that worship is for God. But we can easily lose sight of this. Sometimes people say, We re church shopping. This reminds me of the old fairy tale: This soup was too hot. This soup was too cold. This soup was just right! We form opinions about all of life; we are comparison shoppers, and we make most of our decisions in this way. This has seeped into worship recently. Some have described this as the worship wars : contemporary versus traditional, my favorite style versus your favorite style, and music often becomes the scapegoat in all of this. There is real, passionate worship in any and all styles, but they say going down the road of style leads us to the wrong place. It places everything in the context of my preference or your taste. Worship is unique in that it is NOT about your preference or mine. It is something else altogether. 4
It s not for us. It is for God. It is the offering of our very best selves to God. There is a deep vain in the biblical tradition of worship, of giving our very best offering, our first offering, the first fruits of the harvest, to God. Christians worship on the first day of the week. Sunday is the first day, not the last day. God s people were instructed to give of their first fruits to God. Worship is an offering of our best selves, our real selves, to God. We see a rich picture of what worship looks like in Isaiah 6. Isaiah is in the temple, overwhelmed with the beauty and glory of God, and he hears the voices singing, Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is filled with his glory (v. 3). This is nothing other than an experience of praise. Then something happens. After praise, if it is authentic worship an experience of the holy we see ourselves in a different way. Isaiah makes a confession, an acknowledgment, a true statement about himself. Woe is me, I am lost. I am a man of unclean lips and I live in the midst of a people of unclean lips (v. 5). When we worship God, we are somehow changed. This is NOT the purpose of worship; it is NOT about us, but by experiencing God we are transformed. Then there is good news, an intervention: our guilt is taken away, our sins are forgiven. The God of the Bible is powerful and mighty, holy and beyond us, but at the same time gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love. Our guilt is taken away, our sins are forgiven. But that is not the end of worship. Worship is more than a relationship between God and the individual. When worship is authentic and passionate, when it is an experience of the holy, there is unfinished business. God has our attention. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send, who will go for us? Isaiah responds: Here am I, Lord. Send me. If we have entered into the world of the Bible we are a long way from church shopping; we are a long way from sizing up the deity that matches our tastes, our styles, and our status. The roles have been reversed, the world has been turned upside 5
down, and all of a sudden we are a part of someone else s agenda. Worship is all about praise, confession, and forgiveness, and from worship there flows a desire and a call to reflect God s glory beyond the temple, outside the sanctuary into the world. So there is the invitation: Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then there is the response: Here am I; send me (v. 8)! Worship is NOT about us; yet when we have worshiped God, we are transformed, we have begun to experience the new creation, and we are filled with a deep desire to reflect God s glory in the world. Without worship, everything else is threatened. We see our gifts as our own possessions, the world as a resource to be used, our neighbor as competition for the goods that we would seek for ourselves, and the truth as whatever spin we can put on it. Without worship, we easily deceive ourselves and ignore others. Without worship, we can wander off into all kinds of places, and none of them is the place God wants for us. Passionate worship changes all of life. Worship is really something of a miracle. We may comment that, our attendance was a little down this morning. I am just amazed that anyone comes to worship. Why would anyone leave the comfort and warmth of their bed on a Sunday morning, put expensive gasoline in their cars, search for a parking place that sometimes is some distance away, sit in a room that is usually either too hot or too cold, sometimes next to people you don t even know? Why would people do this? It makes no sense, UNLESS there is a God who is real, who is above us and beyond us but also beside us and within us, who created and sustains all things, who is worthy of our worship. 6
Close There is a song that we used to sing every week as the last song at the Metro Worship service at First Baptist Church on Monument Avenue in Richmond. The song is called the Heart of Worship. It says well what I want you to hear. When the music fades and all is stripped away, and I simply come. Longing just to bring something that s of worth that will bless your heart. I ll bring you more than a song, because as song in itself is not what you have required. You search much deeper within through the way thongs appear You re looking into my heart. I m coming back to the heart of worship, and it s all about You Jesus. I m sorry Lord for the thing I made it when it s all about You, it s all about You Jesus. How can you help but worship? The Sticky Sentence: God deserves our Passionate Worship, because He is worth it, and it s all about You, Jesus. Let s pray to God, He s worth it... 7