Are you a good worshiper? How well do you prepare for worship? But the most important question may be: How does worship change you? How does it shape your life and transform your personality? So often we don’t prepare; we just show up. We basically say, “God, I’ll meet you at the corner of Hurry and Rush, and have a blessing wrapped for me, to go.” Or we say to God, “Text me or tweet me…I don’t have much time.” 

 

Granted, we are incurably religious. We have heart hungers, and we couldn’t stop looking up even if we tried. William James once wrote, “We and God have business with each other” and our lives are not complete until we figure that out. So the question is not, “Do we worship?” but rather, “Whom do we worship and how well do we do it?”

 

Enter Isaiah, who spoke 2700 years ago to a tiny nation in the Middle East. Isaiah had a powerful worship experience that launched and energized his work, and he wanted us to know about it, an experience that made him leave church different than he came in. Our text is one of the most familiar in the Old Testament, and it has been serving as a worship guide to the church for centuries. Note the shape of worship that is found here: PRAISE, CONFESSION, FORGIVENESS-PARDON AND RESPONSE. Now it doesn’t matter whether the worship service you attend is charismatic or high church liturgy, rural congregation or mega-church, 11^th century mass or 21^st century campfire, if it is authentic worship, these four elements will be present. They are present in this morning’s worship. Think about it.

 

PRAISE…Isaiah saw God high and lifted up. An earthly king had died, but the King of Kings is never sick, never off duty, always on the throne. Earthly leaders come and go. God never moves off God’s throne. The attending angels cried out, “Holy, holy, holy!” In Hebrew there is no comparative and superlative (as in good, better, best, or rich, richer, richest). So to intensify a meaning, it was repeated. It was an antiphonal chant. From one side, “Holy!” From another, “Holy!” And then the response, back again.

 

What does it mean that God is holy? First of all, that is an existential reality: God is not like us. It also takes on moral quality: God is not like us in character and action. He is pure and sinless.

 

The doors shook, smoke filled the place. God was shrouded in mystery, yet very present! And a God small enough to be managed, manipulated or completely understood wouldn’t be much of a God. Be careful saying things like, “I didn’t get much out of worship” or “I didn’t care for the choir anthem today.” God isn’t our trained seal, jumping through our hoops and doing Sunday tricks for us. Remember: we the worshipers are not king, God is! God is Holy God! We praise God because God is the center of worship, not us.

 

CONFESSION…Once Isaiah caught a glimpse of the transcendent, glorious God, he knew he was a sinner! (Woe is me…” v. 5). “I’m toast!” Think about it. When you do you notice those dirty windows in your house? Not at night. Not on cloudy days. But when the sun is gloriously revealing what is always there, but only seen clearly in the light. The famous Danish sculptor Thorwaldsen completed a statue of Jesus, his arms outstretched and head bowed. A friend commented, “I can’t see his face.” The sculptor replied, “If you would see the face of Christ, you must get on your knees.” Do you see the paradox? We have to accept our creatureliness in order to experience our true self-worth; we have to accept our sinfulness in order to experience grace. This is the first step in becoming a Jesus-follower—admitting our sin and need.

 

FORGIVENESS-PARDON…A hot piece of stone was taken from the altar fire and pressed to Isaiah’s lips. Ouch! A hot stone on your lips? Perhaps worship should come with a warning, like those cups of coffee from McDonalds: “warning: contents are hot.” “Do not attempt this without heavenly supervision!” But you see, there is no forgiveness without pain. There is no pardon without the Cross. He was pronounced cleansed, freed from sin AND guilt (both are crucial!), vv. 6-7. Both are important, because what good is $10,000 in the bank if you don’t know you have it? What good is forgiveness if you have no assurance, if the guilt is lingering? Here is the cure for two groups of people here this morning: those who are mired in self-hate and those stuck on themselves, full of pride. God’s forgiveness and pardon. We can’t give it to ourselves. It must come from God.

 

RESPONSE…”Here I am; send me” (v. 8). In Hebrew, it is a crisp, two-word surrender. “Me…send!” He went from “woe is me” to “go is me.” The worship cycle is never complete until we have had an opportunity to respond. Isaiah got a vision of God, of himself and now, of others. His has been an upward look, an inward look and an outward look. In the small churches I used to pastor there was only one exit from the church. Everyone went out that same door. A sign above the exit read, “Enter to worship; depart to serve.”

 

Barbara Brown Taylor explains the difference between an audience and a congregation. An audience is entertained by someone else’s take on truth, and they TALK about it afterward. A congregation is engaged by a common take on truth and they DO something about it afterward Christian Century, July 25, 2006, p. 31].

 

That going and doing for Isaiah was one thing; for you, it will be something else. It might be a mission trip. It might be helping in VBC this week. It might be a quiet work of Stephen Ministry, befriending and listening to someone in need. It might be as simple as inviting someone else to come to church with you and share the journey. It may be discovered by asking the simple question, “Who’s going to need me this week? Where is God working that I may join in?” We enter to worship; we depart to serve.