You Might Be A Healthy Christian If......... (Series)
Worship is More Than A Sunday Feeling.
Isaiah 6:1-8
July 29, 2001 First Baptist Church, Chester, Illinois Mike Fogerson, Speaker
Introduction:
1. The French have a proverb that provides insight for worship.
A. "A good meal ought to begin with hunger."
a. It is hard to enjoy a good meal when your not hungry.
b. When your hungry....ANYTHING tastes good!
B. When we approach worship with a hunger...an appetite to meet God we will always be fulfilled and satisfied.
a. When we come to worship filled up with our own self-sufficiency or full of preoccupied thoughts, we probably won’t experience meaningful worship.
b. Good worship begins with a hunger for God.
2. We are continuing the "You might be a healthy Christian if......" series, with You might be a healthy Christian if...Worship is more than a Sunday feeling.
A. Isaiah 6:1-8
[1]In the year that King Uzziah died, 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. [3] And they were calling to one another: "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." [4] At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. []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." [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." [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!"
a. Isaiah had a close encounter with God at the temple.(Essence of the Text In A Sentence)
b. Worship is an encounter with God. (Essence of the sermon in a sentence)
B. I hope you allow Sunday worship to change your Monday. (Sermon Objective)
a. Which transition do you need to make for worship to change you? (Probing Question)
b. Let’s look at three transitions that take place when real worship happens.
(Transitional Sentence)
I The first transition that happens is......God shows up. (vv:1-4)
A Isaiah was in the temple, but he wasn’t alone.
a Isaiah was depressed, disappointed, dishearted, dejected over the death of Uzziah. Where did he go? CHURCH!
b The doorposts shook (God’s power) and smoke filled the temple (God’s presence). God showed up!!!
B God showed up for church in 740 B.C.....does He show up in 2001 A.D.? Absolutely!
a Some of us see God as a cosmic Customer Service Manager that shows up when we flick a switch or have a problem.
(IL.) Check approval or a price check at Wal-Mart. Cashier flicks a switch and a CSM shows up....eventually.
b God was the first person here today! (You didn’t see Him when you came in?)
C Albert Thorwaldson finished his famous sculpture of Christ. (Christ’s arms are out stretched and His head is bowed.) He invited a friend over to see the sculpture.
a The friend admired the work, but critiqued "I can’t see the face of Christ."
*To this Albert replied, "If you want to see the face of Christ, you must get on your knees."
b Only when we worship Christ as servants...on bended knees can we see God clearly.
*We should have humility not pride, meekness not arrogance.....
*God shows up when we look up. We see nothing or nobody else when we look up.
T.S.: When we see that God shows up for worship, He brings on the next transition.
II The second transition that happens is.....We Fess Up. (vv:5-7)
A When Isaiah saw the awesomeness of God, he saw how lack he himself was.
a Isaiah says "for I am ruined." ruined: damah (Hebrew)
* He’s saying:"At one time I was okay, acceptable....compared to everybody else I was alright. But now..I have seen God and now I know that NOT okay or acceptable.
b The people that Isaiah compared himself too were not okay either......their losers too!
*Isaiah is confessing his sin. (Unclean lips) He either was harsh with someone or he was silent when sin should have been confronted.
B When we see how great God is, we’ll see how ordinary we are.
a Everyone of us is flawed, sinful, blemished.
b True worship makes us confess that were messed up!
*Confession is the only way sin can be forgiven.
C We may think we look like George Clooney or Julia Roberts....but then we look in a mirror.
a We REALLY look more like George Costanza or Julia Childs. The mirror tells us the truth. WE get to see how we really look.
b We see our love handles, spare tire(s), receding hairline, clogged pores...the real us.
*When we have an encounter with God...we see the real us and it’s that bad. It should make us fess up.
T.S.: Real worship will only take place when we make the third transition.
III The third transition that happens is......We step up. (vv:8)
A When Isaiah confessed and repented, he have an offering.
a "Here I Am. Send Me!"
*Isaiah was not perfect, worthy......He was simply willing to step up to do what ever God wanted.
b Isaiah was a changed man when he left that church. He walked a different person!
B If worship doesn’t change us, it hasn’t been worship.
a Romans 12:1 "I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God -this is your spiritual act of worship. (Italics mine)
b When we enter into God’s presence, we see our flaws, confess & repent and do what God wants us to do....daily.
C Let’s pretend I’m the CEO of a company and you’re my assistant. I’m going to Europe to take the company international and I’m going to leave you in charge of the operations here in Chester. I’ll right you a letter ever week to let you know what I want done while I’m gone.
a I go to Europe and I write you letters every week. In six months I come back.
*The grass is grown up in front of the building.
* The receptionist is doing her nails, popping her gum listening to her favorite disco music.
*The carpets are filthy and the trash is overflowing in the trash baskets.
*I ask her where the manager is. Down the hall.
*I bump into you in the hall. You’ve just finished a chess game with the sales manager.
*I tell you that I need to see you in my office. (Which has been turned into a television room so the employees can watch their soaps in the afternoon.)
*Didn’t you get my letters?, I ask
b Oh yes. We had a letter study every Friday night.
*We read them and studied them. Some of us have memorized a sentence or two. A few of us have memorized entire letters! We read every letter you sent us.
*Okay, you got my letters, you studied them and mediated on them, discussed them and even memorized them...But what did you do with them?
*Do? We didn’t do anything with them.
*When we come to worship and God shows up, we fess up....we should do something with what we have ben given. We need to step up!
Conclusion:
1. Worship is more than a Sunday feeling. Worship is an encounter with God. (ESS)
A. We’ve looked at three transitions that take place when real worship happens.
a. God shows up. (We’ve got to look for Him. Bow)
b. We fess up. (We see our flaws and confess/repent our sin)
c. WE step up. (We make ourselves available for service to God. Here I am. Send me!)
B. I hope you allow Sunday worship to change you for Monday. (Objective)
a. Mature/Healthy Christians come to a service with a different mind set.
b. It’s not what will they get out of the worship, rather it’s how can they bless God today in this service.
2. Which transition do you need to make for worship to change you?
A. When things are going bad, we usually think things will get worse. Worse will take us to worst.
a. God teaches us a lesson in most English dictionaries, if you look up the word "Worse" there is one special word that separates Worse from Worst. The word "WORSHIP" is between them.
b. When circumstances seem to be going from worse to worst...remember that worship is what separates the two.
B. Which transition do you need to make for worship to change you?
a. Some need to look for God...he’ll show up.
b. Some need to fess up....confess & repent.
c. Some need to step up...do something for God.
