“A Passion for Worship”
(Isaiah 6:1-8)
Series: The Pursuit of Passion (1 of 5)
4-2-06 (AM)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
First Baptist Church Henderson, KY
- I invite you to take your Bibles and open to Isaiah, Chapter 6.
We are beginning, this morning, the first of five special messages this month in our April emphasis, “The Pursuit of Passion.” There are five main reasons we exist as a church. The five purposes are worship, ministry, evangelism, discipleship, and fellowship. Our heart’s cry this month is that God would renew our passion for each of those five areas. And so we begin this morning asking God to renew our passion for the first of those five areas, and that is worship. We want to have a passion for worship.
Now I really believe God led me to this text in Isaiah as we listen to what the Bible teaches about true, authentic, biblical worship. We’re reading a passage of Scripture where the Prophet Isaiah encounters God. What transpires in that encounter instructs us about real worship.
- Stand in honor of the reading of the word of God.
1 In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.
2 Above it stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.
3 And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!”
4 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke.
5 So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts.”
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar.
7 And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.”
8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
- Pray.
“O God, you are holy; holy, holy, holy. We bow before You this morning in the presence of your holiness. We ask You to renew our passion for worshiping You. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Introduction:
As the staff began to pray about this special emphasis in April, God led us to call the emphasis, “The Pursuit of Passion.” And as I reflected further on that title, I couldn’t help but think of a similar title, the title of a classic devotional book by A.W. Tozer, a book I highly recommend entitled, The Pursuit of God. Tozer was a godly man who died in the early 60s. He was a minister who authored some 40 books and one of the hallmarks of his ministry was his desire that the church be engaged in true, biblical, worship.
Tozer was highly critical of what passed for worship in so many American churches of his day. For example, he said:
“It is now common practice in most evangelical churches to offer the people, especially the young people, a maximum of entertainment and a minimum of serious instruction. It is scarcely possible in most places to get anyone to attend the meeting where the only attraction is God. One can only conclude that God’s professed children are bored with Him for they must be wooed to a meeting with a stick of striped candy in the form of religious movies, games, and refreshments.”
Hear again that last line: “One can only conclude that God’s professed children are bored with Him for they must be wooed to a meeting with a stick of striped candy . . .”
Kent Hughes, current pastor of the College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, echoes Tozer’s earlier concerns. In his book, Disciplines of a Godly Man, Hughes writes, “The unspoken, but increasingly common assumption of today’s Christendom is that worship is primarily for us—to meet our needs. Such worship services are entertainment-focused, and the worshipers are uncommitted spectators who are silently grading the performance.”
I’m afraid these statements are too true of far too many evangelical churches today. As people enter into the sanctuaries every Sunday they may as well be given scorecards to rate the performance, because that’s what it has become. People perform and the audience rates the performance. They rate the preaching, the singing, the musicians, the technology, the clothes people are wearing, they even rate the heating and air conditioning. Everything gets a score.
Ask people to define worship and most will tell you something about what happens in the sanctuary of the church they attend. They’ll tell you about the kind of music played—fast or slow, contemporary or traditional, they’ll tell you about the preacher—whether he’s funny and engaging. They’ll tell you about the convenient time they meet, how the schedule “fits in” to your busy work week, and so forth. But God is not mentioned.
I really believe God led me to this passage in Isaiah to help us recover biblical worship in the church. And one of the reasons I so strongly believe this text to be an appropriate text to teach us about worship is because it doesn’t even mention the things we usually hear when worship is defined. You will not read here in this text about a conveniently-scheduled church service. You’ll not read here about an engaging 30-minute sermon. You’ll not even read here about music. Those things, in and of themselves, have little to do with true worship.
I was reading this past week a selection from a book by Matt Redman. Redman is a contemporary Christian artist who wrote a book entitled, The Unquenchable Worshiper. In chapter 8 of his book, Redman writes about how God inspired the words we heard the praise team sing earlier. Remember when they sang, “The heart of worship?” Redman said he wrote that song after an experience in his church. He said their church got to a point where they had become spiritually dry. The music was good, but it had only the sound of professionalism. He said they had begun to rely too much on the performance of the music and too little upon God. And so, one day, the pastor decided the church would strip away all musical instruments for a season. There was no sound system to be seen, no band to lead. The church was led to think about what they were bringing every Sunday as an offering to God. In time, the church learned to bring their hearts to God, the offerings of their hearts. And so Redman writes, “Stripping everything away, we slowly started to rediscover the heart of worship.” He said, “After awhile, the worship band and the sound system re-appeared, but now it was different. The songs of our hearts had caught up with the songs of our lips.” And so Redman wrote the song we heard the praise team sing earlier, singing about what happens when the music fades and all is stripped away. Remember the chorus?
“I’m coming back to the heart of worship, and it’s all about You, All about You, Jesus. I’m sorry, Lord, for the thing I’ve made it, when it’s all about You, all about You, Jesus.”
So this passage reminds us that biblical worship is not primarily about music. Biblical worship is not primarily about what we call “worship styles” and “worship times and schedules.” I want to talk to you about what happens when worship is authentic, when worship is true, when worship is biblical. What does this worship look like? What happens when worship is biblical? First, when worship is biblical:
1. We will Commune with a Holy God (1-4)
A holy God. That’s the first thing that gets your attention in the first few verses of this chapter. God is a holy God.
Isaiah tells us that his encounter with God happened “in the year King Uzziah died.” That’s the year 740 BC. And Isaiah says, “I want to tell you something that happened to me in that year I will never forget. I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and the train of His robe filled the temple.”
Isaiah continues describing his encounter with God in verse 2: “Above it (that is, above the throne where God was sitting) stood seraphim; each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.” Seraphim is the plural form of seraph. A seraph is an angelic kind of being created by God to glorify Himself. Our minds fail us to fully appreciate exactly what these creatures look like. The word “seraphim” is literally, “burning ones.” These heavenly creatures remind us of the burning glory of God.
What the seraphim do with their wings is symbolic. Isaiah says, “with two he covered his face.” That symbolizes the utter purity of God, that to gaze upon Him is a bit like looking into pure sunlight. Then Isaiah says, “with two wings each seraph covered his feet.” That action symbolizes the humility of these heavenly creatures. So the covering of their eyes and feet said, “We dare not look upon God, nor stand in His presence.” It is the holiness of God. Verse 3:
3 And one cried to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts; The whole earth is full of His glory!”
4 And the posts of the door were shaken by the voice of him who cried out, and the house was filled with smoke (smoke, symbolic of the presence of God).
The LORD God is described as holy, holy, holy. The word holy is repeated three times for emphasis. The Hebraic way to underscore something was to repeat it for emphasis. It’s one thing to be holy. It’s another thing to be holy, holy. And it’s still another thing to be holy, holy, holy. Seven out of every twelve references to God’s name in the Old Testament contain the word “holy.” And the point of each of these winged creatures is that God is utterly holy in all His attributes.
See, holiness is the chief attribute of God. The seraphim do not cry out, “Love, love, love” or even, “Mercy, mercy, mercy,” but they cry out, “Holy, holy, holy.” Why? Because more than anything else, God is a holy God. Holiness is God’s chief attribute. It is the main thing that makes God who He is.
Think of the colors of a rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. And all of those colors are embodied in pure white light. You know that when you take a prism and you allow pure white light to shine through the prism. The prism separates that light into many colors. The holiness of God is like pure white light. It is His chief attribute in which every other attribute inheres. Because God is holy, He is perfect love. Because God is holy, He is perfect mercy. Because God is holy, He is perfect grace, perfect power, perfect knowledge, and so forth.
God’s holiness is that quality of God that makes Him separate from every other created being. We are separated from God because of our sin. God is separated from us because of His holiness.
So when worship is biblical, you and I will commune with a holy God. Now, I wonder if that’s what you really think about every time you get up in the morning. And I’m not just talking about Sundays. I mean Mondays through Saturdays, too. You and I were created for the purpose of worshiping God, whether we worship Him individually or collectively. You worship God by the way you think, by the way you talk, and by the way you walk.
But God is a holy God. And you and I are not worshiping Him rightly if we’re not communing with Him as a holy God. Someone said, “If you really want to know what a people think about God, watch how they worship Him.” Dear God, renew our passion for worshiping You as a holy God. Give us a fresh vision of Your holiness.
When worship is biblical, we’ll commune with a holy God. Secondly, when worship is biblical,
2. We’ll be Contrite before a Holy God (5)
Look at Isaiah’s response to the holiness of God in verse 5:
5 So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts.”
When Isaiah encountered God’s holiness, he saw his own sinfulness. He said, “Woe is me, for I am undone! I am a man of unclean lips.” That’s his way of saying, “I am not even worthy to speak a single word because I am in the presence of holiness and I know my heart.” And Isaiah could say, “And it’s not just me. We’re all sinners. I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Paul says in Romans 3:23, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Do you remember what Jesus said in Matthew 12:34? He said, “Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.”
Isaiah’s heart is not clean. Because his heart is not clean, his lips are not clean. He cannot speak. Do you see his contrition here? When worship is biblical, we’ll be contrite before a holy God. We’ll be broken. We’ll see our sinfulness when the pure white light of His holiness shines upon us.
I’ve told you before about my first car, my 1971 Ford Maverick that I bought with my own hard-earned cash, all $776 dollars of it. That car was a pretty car. It was fire-engine red. Remember that old lead-based paint they used to use? They don’t use it anymore, but that paint made that car look good. You really didn’t need to even wax it. Just wash it. And from a distance or at night, that car looked really good. But when you got up close to it and the light shined upon it, you could see the hundreds of paint chips, flaws, and scratches. Light revealed the imperfections.
Isaiah is saying, “When I was confronted with a holy God, something happened to me. I gazed upon His holiness, and I was gripped by my own sinfulness. The pure white light of God’s holiness revealed my imperfections.” This same thing happened to Peter when he caught all that fish. Remember? He said, “Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.”
When worship is biblical, that happens. When we commune with a holy God, we’ll be contrite before a holy God. There is no room for pride in our gatherings together. We dare not come to this worship service with a score card in our hands. We dare not come into this building and sit down smugly in our pew, fold our arms and say, “Okay, preacher, move me.” We dare not come with a scowl upon our faces ready to rate everything that happens. If we do, we’ve missed the heart of worship. It’s not about you. It’s not about me.
When you encounter the holiness of God, it breaks you. And it can happen while you are singing a song, it can happen while the choir sings, it can happen while someone prays, it can happen while someone preaches, but it needs to happen for worship to be biblical. You and I enter into this place realizing our sinfulness. We come to worship the One True God and we remember how we acted the previous week. We remember what we said or thought or did. We remember what we said even this morning and we are broken—contrite before a holy God.
When worship is biblical, we will commune with a holy God, we’ll be contrite before a holy God and then, thirdly, when worship is biblical:
3. We’ll be Cleansed by a Holy God (6-7)
Contrition leads to cleansing. When we gaze upon God’s holiness, we are gripped by our own sinfulness. And that leads to cleansing, the forgiveness of sin. Look at verses 6-7:
6 Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a live coal which he had taken with the tongs from the altar.
7 And he touched my mouth with it, and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; Your iniquity is taken away, And your sin purged.”
One of the seraphim flies over to Isaiah and touches his sinful lips with a live, burning coal from the altar. That action symbolizes the cleansing of God. The coal was taken from the very altar itself, the holy place where incense was burned and animals sacrificed for sin. And the seraph says, “Behold, this has touched your lips; your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.”
God’s cleansing of Isaiah’s sin through the seraph is a beautiful foreshadowing of the atonement of Christ. Like Isaiah, we tremble at the presence of a holy God. God is separated from us because of His holiness. We are separated from God because of our sinfulness. We gaze upon His holiness and we are gripped by our sinfulness. We realize that we can bring nothing to God to improve our condition. We are sinners through and through. We may try to live a good life, but we still sin. We may try to be good people at work, good neighbors, good business and community leaders, but we know too well the inner recesses of our hearts. And out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.
We would cry out with Isaiah, “Woe is me, for I am a person of unclean lips!” How can I fix this problem of my sinfulness? Well, I can’t fix it. I’m a sinner. Someone must fix the problem for me. And just as Isaiah received the atoning, forgiving, cleansing work that came through the seraph, so you and I must receive the atoning work of Jesus Christ.
“Nothing in my hand I bring; simply to thy cross I cling.”
When worship is biblical, we will commune with a holy God, we’ll be contrite before a holy God, we’ll be cleansed by a holy God, and number four:
4. We will Commit to a Holy God (8)
Once we’ve been cleansed, we’re ready to commit. Isaiah has been cleansed from his sin, so when God calls him, he’s ready to go. Verse 8:
8 Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying: “Whom shall I send, And who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I! Send me.”
Do you note the progression here? Confrontation with holiness leads to contrition, which leads to cleansing, which leads to commitment.
I mean, there’s a change that takes place in the response of Isaiah in verse 5 and verse 8. In verse 5, Isaiah says, “Woe is me, for I am undone!” In verse 8, he says, “Here am I! Send me.”
That change takes place because Isaiah has experienced God-given cleansing. God can’t really use us in a powerful way until we’ve experienced cleansing from sin. And I’m talking about something on-going. Every time we worship, we come before God, receiving His cleansing. That’s why, after a worship service, we can sing, “Lord, here am I.”
“Here am I!” We sing that often in our invitation, “Master thou callest, and this I reply: ready and willing, Lord, here am I.”
Someone said, “The world’s greatest ability is availability.” When you think upon the fact that God has forgiven you of your sin, you want to serve Him wherever He leads. You want to do that. You want to worship Him through singing, through preaching, teaching, evangelism, and ministering to others. If you don’t want to serve the Lord, it may be because you have never experienced His forgiveness.
Conclusion / Invitation:
(after salvation invitation)
Bow your heads. I want to lead you in a prayer to renew your passion for worship. “Dear God, forgive me for not coming for the right reason. Forgive me that corporate worship has not been a priority. Forgive me for silently keeping score (etc.). Renew my passion for worship this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.
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