This sermon can be listened to online by visiting:
http://www.cayafellowship.com/2007/09/02/not-just-another-sunday-part-2-praise-worship/
In this message we continue our look into making our weekly fellowship experience at CAYA, “not just another Sunday morning”.
As I was looking through the purpose driven life, I came to chapter 13, “Worship Can be a Witness”. Here Rick Warren discusses 12 convictions about worship. What struck me as pretty interesting was point number 5 “Worship is a powerful witness to unbelievers if God’s presence is felt and if the message is understandable”. No it’s not the statement which was interesting, it was when he referenced Isaiah’s “call to ministry” as a “powerful worship experience”. I had never imagined this piece of scripture as being a worship experience at all, yet as I began to read this God began revealing to me this very understanding.
So, today we look into Isaiah 6:1-8 through the lens of praise and worship.
The Realization - worship happens whenever!
1a In the year that King Uzziah died
He was a godly and good king, who burned incense in the candle when he wasn’t supposed to and was inflicted with leprosy, a condition which he lived with until his death. At 16 he was named king at a difficult time, after his father was assassinated but was able too rise through this difficulty and as a result led Israel for 52 years. As king, Uzziah (from 2 Chronicles 26):
modernized, reorganized and restructured the military in a manner that allowed him numerous victories.
rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in a way that made them much more easy to defend (Assyrian historical reliefs)
rebuilt the famous port town of Elath, a major seaport King Solomon had created where major imports were brought in from African countries and India (2 Chronicles 8:17-18).
He rebuilt towns and cities across the kingdom
He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD, just as his father Amaziah had done. 5 He sought God during the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear [b] of God. As long as he sought the LORD, God gave him success.
He’s not perfect, but even when he tried to light the incense in the temple when he was not supposed to while arguing with the priests and leprosy began to form on his face, the priests grabbed him a puled him from the temple to save him - to be so loved that even when you mess up people will save you is a great thing!
And when he dies, the nation is in mourning for a long time. Yet it is during this time of mourning that worship still happens.
We should realize that worship happens when times are wonderful and joyful, but also when times are troubled and heavy. As we worship together, there will be tears with the cheers, joy with the pain, sunshine with the rain - all at the same time. And it’s OK.
I think Kirk Franklin said it best in “Why we sing”
Someone asked the question
Why do we sing?
When we lift our hands to Jesus
What do we really mean?
Someone may be wondering
When we sing our song
At times we maybe crying
And nothing’s even wrong
I sing because I’m happy
I sing because I’m free
His eye is on the sparrow
That’s the reason why I sing
The Requirements
The Lord must be present!
1b, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. 2 Above him were seraphs, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.
Isaiah begins by saying that in this worship experience he saw the Lord, and he gives us a description of what is was that he saw. We can see through these word what it was that made this experience so different. We can see the presence of God in his experience.
If we are praising and worshipping God, then it is an absolute requirement that God’s presence must be felt in our worship. If the Lord is not present then what are we doing? And why isn’t He there?
The Message must be present
3 And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory."
I went back and forth from this, but I finally came to this:
“Worship is expressing our love to God for who he is, what he’s said, and what he’s doing” (Warren)
These pieces are conveyed to God and others through songs, through prayers, through testimonies, through sermons, through writings, through dance, through music, through pictures - in all these things however there is a message from the person who is praising.
Shouldn’t the message be comprehended by God? Should the message be comprehended by others, too? I believe the answer is yes, if we are serious about spreading the love of Christ with others.
Acts 2:1-13 - The miracle was that each person heard the message in a language they understood. And because of this 3000 were saved.
I remember a friend I had in college whom I took a road trip from VA Tech to Boston with. Along the way we stopped in DC to have dinner at a friend’s restaurant. The food was really good, the restaurant was good, the only problem was that I didn’t understand ANYTHING. You see, he was Korean, his 2 friends we ate with were Korean, and they would only talk in English everyone once in a while during conversation. Needless to say, I didn’t feel to comfortable, welcome, or even free to engage in conversation because the message wasn’t comprehensible for me.
Is the message we are presenting during our worship something cryptic, hidden, estranged, back door. Sure, there may be somethings that a Christian worship experience contains that everyone doesn’t fully understand, but can it be comprehended in a way that opens the door for Christ. Or is it something that is empty or even worse, drives people away from Christ. The Results
Reveals God’s power
4 At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
Sometimes the unexpected and unexplainable can happen; so it may not be an earthquake or smoke, but there can be suicidal tendencies eradicated, marriages that are mended, friendships created, and someone who we never expected can offer their life to Christ.
Reveals our brokeness
5 "Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty."
I love the way the King James version tells this: for I am undone!
When I was a kid, maybe 8 or 9, I baked a chocolate meringue pie with a homemade peanut butter crust for my dad for Father’s Day. The only problem was that I hadn’t fully mixed the peanut butter with the gram-cracker crumbs so the crust was lumpy, utterly un-crust like and never settled; I used instant pudding filling instead of the cook and serve kind so when I baked it the filling just turned into a soup like consistency; and since I woke early to make this as a surprise, I used an old hand-crank mixer from the wall and didn’t mic the meringue long enough so it resembled a melted marshmallow rather than stiff peaks on the pie. It was severely undone! Amazingly, my Dad still ate it.
He or my mother said nothing about it’s quality; but the amazing thing was that I never realized how bad the pie was until he tried to cut it and eventually ate it - but when he pulled it out I then realized it for myself.
Worship can have a way of helping us see what the undone parts of our lives are too, in a way that is not offensive, critical, and comforting, even.
Restores us
6 Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. 7 With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for."
Point blank - Sometimes we just need God to touch us, to wash away our guilt and the wrong things we’ve done. Worship can do just this.
Regenerates Us
8 Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" And I said, "Here am I. Send me!"
Worship can fuel and pick us up for the day, for the week, and sometimes it can even be a catalyst for sending us to do something great for Christ. Not even just missionary work, but at our homes, our jobs, our schools - wherever God may have for us to go!
