“Holy, Holy, Holy

(The Discipline of Worship)

November 23, 2003

Rev. John W. Fowler

Scripture: Isaiah 6:1-10

I want to share with you this morning from the sixth chapter of Isaiah.

Verse one says:

If you are forty-five or older, you remember very well where you were and what you were doing when you heard that our President, John Kennedy, had been shot, and then learned that he had died — had been assassinated. I remember that I was in elementary school. I first heard the news in the office; I wasn’t being bad, I was just being sent there by one of my teachers to take something, and I heard them talking in the office about something terrible that had happened and our teacher told us that, indeed, our President had been shot and I remember going home and then discovering that he had, indeed died, and just remembering the shock and the disbelief that this had happened.

It was a similar situation in Isaiah’s time when Uzziah died. Uzziah had been the king for over fifty years. He had come to the throne at age sixteen. He had been a very godly king, one who was very worshipful, but when he became powerful he became filled with pride and pride led to his downfall. In fact, in 2 Chronicles, chapter 26, it tells us that he felt that he didn’t need to go through the priest to go into the temple and offer incense so he went in there to do that, but eighty priests confronted him and said, “You really don’t want to do this, King.” But he did it anyway. And they saw the leprosy begin to form on his forehead and then he was ready to get out of the temple. His downfall was his attitude about worship and his pride.

So Isaiah is devastated that we don’t have this king anymore, even though a bad ending, but still a godly king. And the Lord gives him a vision of the real king, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. And he had a vision of what true worship is all about, especially the worship that we see in heaven, and what I wanted to share with you today is what is most important to any church of Jesus Christ — is what we are doing at this time — is worshipping and having a divine encounter with Jesus Christ.

First of all, we see in this Chapter 6 you see that there is a vision of a Holy God. Whenever we worship God, most of all, what we want is that we offer our worship to God and that we have an encounter with our Lord; we have a vision of a Holy God.

Isaiah’s vision is maybe hard to understand. He sees the seraphs, the angels, six winged, and they are crying, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of His glory.”

It is similar to the sight we see in Revelation, Chapter 4, where John on the Isle of Patmos, is very discouraged that the church is undergoing persecution. He is exiled and God gives him this glimpse of what it is going to be like in Heaven when we worship our Lord. And it is hard for him to describe the beauty, but he knows that they are sitting around the throne singing, “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain.”

Reginald Heber, who was an Anglican priest, was tired of the hymn singing, just singing from the Psalms in his church, in the early eighteen hundreds, so he wrote his own hymn book, and one of those hymns was “Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty.” It did not become well known until after his death because his Bishop felt the church just was not ready for a hymn book that was arranged according to the seasons.

Christian Swartz, who is a director of the National Church Development Institute, did a very intensive survey of over a thousand churches throughout the world, seeking for that secret: what is the real key to a growing church, and especially what is the correlation to type of worship. Is it contemporary worship? Is it liturgical worship? Is it worship at different times? And he found out that all those were factors, but what was most important was: Is the service inspiring? And it really didn’t matter whether the service was more of a high church liturgical or whether it was more free form. What counted most of all: Were people encountering God? Was it inspiring? Were people coming away thinking, “What a great and mighty God that we serve?”

Jesus, in John, Chapter 4, had an encounter with the woman at the well. She was there at noontime because she didn’t want to be around anyone else, especially the other women. She had had some failed marriages; she was living with a man. But Jesus would take time with her. Jesus will do that. He will take time with anybody. He began to talk to her about her life and when he told her, “You know, you have had five husbands and the one you are now living with is not your husband,” she said, “Well, Lord, I perceive you are a prophet.” And then she began to talk about worship. She asked, “Now, where is the proper place to worship? Is it on Mount Gerizim,” (which the Samaritans thought was best) “or is it in Jerusalem?” And the Lord told her, “The place is not what is important for those who truly worship the Father worship Him in spirit and in truth.” What counts most of all in the worship service is the sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and also you are hearing the truth of the gospel whether in song, or in the scriptures, in the liturgy, and those who truly worship Him, worship him in spirit and in truth.

I grew up in a church that was small, but it became large pretty quickly, so I grew up in a large church, this size of even larger, and that was my experience until we received my first appointment to two little country churches, and we found out that it was a little bit different. The music program was a little bit different. In one of the churches I had a good piano player, but her custom was just not to show up now and then. And that’s just the way it was. It kind of upset me, but they said, “That’s all right, John. We have a couple of ladies who can play several hymns.” And on those days it didn’t matter what you had down on paper, you just would sing “What a Friend We Have In Jesus” and “Amazing Grace,” and that was fine. But they weren’t there one Sunday, but my father was there; he had come to visit. My father played in a jazz band and so he could play hymns and when I said, “Dad, I don’t have anyone to play the piano,” he said, “Well, that’s fine, Son.” So he went up there and he jazzed it up a little bit and they liked it. And they were impressed that he could play all the keys. So, they told him he could come back any time.

But with true worship, it doesn’t matter whether you have five hundred or fifty. It doesn’t matter whether it is in the Christian Life Center — I miss the Sanctuary, don’t you? This is a good place to worship. I’m looking forward to being back in the Sanctuary, as I am sure you are. But what counts most of all is that we have a vision of the Holy God when we gather to worship. We have an encounter with our Lord.

Isaiah had a vision of the Holy God and also he saw that his sins were forgiven. One of the great gifts that we receive in worship is forgiveness of sins. Any time you come into the presence of the Holy God, you realize that, as he said, "Woe to me! …….For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips,……”

What is unfortunate is, oftentimes, when people come under conviction worship services, that is as far as they get. They come under conviction and they even confess their sins, but they don’t move on in to hearing the good news, especially that you hear when we worship with Holy Communion here, the Good News that Christ died for the ungodly. The Good News is that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. The Good News is that Christ gave His life upon the cross that we many know forgiveness of sins — not that we would have guilt and feel bad the rest of our lives and never enter into receiving His forgiveness.

Isaiah knew and prophesized of a Messiah who would come and set the captive free.

In Isaiah, Chapter 9, some six hundred years before He was born,

In Isaiah, Chapter 53, he said it this way:

Isaiah could see well into the future of the Messiah who would come and set the captive free.

Two different examples of the forgiveness of sins we find in the New Testament that I want to share with you.

First of all there is the rich, young ruler. The rich, young ruler is like many people today. They come under conviction and then they dodge God; they just don’t want to hear. He was confronted with his attitude about his possessions. He had great possessions. He wanted to follow Christ. He wanted to know: what am I lacking?

And Jesus told him, “Well, you need to sell all your possessions, give them to the poor, and then come follow me.”

He went away. Why? He didn’t want his life changed that dramatically. That’s not what we want. And sometimes we do that. We come under conviction; God calls us to change. We don’t want to change, and we walk away. And then we have people like Peter. Peter, who denied his Lord, very vocally denied his Lord, “I don’t know who you are talking about.” And then, as predicted, the cock crowed, and He wept. But, on the seashore (John, Chapter 21), Jesus, the Risen Lord, asked Peter three times, “Do you love me, Peter?” (tape change)

(tape change)….And then, also, what happens when we worship our Lord, we come in the presence of the Holy God, we receive the good news, the forgiveness of sins; we are set free to serve him; we lay aside those weights and sins which seek to bog us down, and then we are empowered to serve. In Isaiah, verse 8 it says:

That’s what happens when we truly worship our Lord. No more do we focus on ourselves like we don’t have enough talent or wherewithal to serve the Lord. We get our minds off ourselves and on God and if God has called us to do whatever He has called us to do, that’s fine; He’s going to empower us; He is going to show us what to do, and guide us.

For Isaiah, the calling was to be a prophet to call the nation back to God. And for the most part, it was a thankless task because the people didn’t want to come back to God. But his job was to be faithful — not necessarily successful — but to be faithful.

Jesus, in his sermon in His hometown, stood up and read from Isaiah, Chapter 61. This was really what Jesus’ ministry was all about. It says:

And then He closed the book and said, “This has been fulfilled in your hearing.” They didn’t want to hear that He was the Messiah. They didn’t receive Him.

But when we receive our Lord, He empowers us to serve Him. As we prepare for the Advent season, what a great time to recharge your life of worship. How do you do that?

Well, one, take time to be still and to pray. What a great time, especially, to focus on private worship, family worship. Make your little Advent wreath. Use the devotional guide. It doesn’t have to be long, but the fact that you just get together and you light the candle, and you read the little devotional. You worship the Lord. It takes time; it takes some planning, but you quiet yourself. It’s also a time to pray. You find the time that works best for you, but it’s a time that you don’t allow yourself to become too busy. Let it be like Lent: Give up something and draw closer to Him. Be still and know that the Lord is God.

It is especially a time to praise Him. Christmas has the greatest music that has ever come about, not only in this church, but in the community, on television, radio, tapes. Listen to the great hymns of the church at Advent, at Christmas. Think of Handel’s “Messiah”. You need to listen to it. Sing it. It will inspire you, of the Word made flesh.

And then as we worship Him, especially, bring Him into your heart, your mind, your soul. As Jesus says, when we truly worship Him (and it is for Him) what we are doing is loving the Lord our God with all our heart, and our soul, and our mind, and our strength. And then we love our neighbors as ourselves.

Let me close with an inspiring example and they are the Pilgrims. This Thursday, as you gather, enjoy your food; enjoy your fellowship; enjoy your football and whatever. But remember the Pilgrims. And they did, yes; they came; they ate; they played games, so there is precedent for eating and ball on those days.

But why did they come to America? Why did they go to Holland in the first place? Because they were Separatists. They weren’t like the Puritans who wanted to purify the Church at that time. They felt it was too far gone. The King or the Queen told them how you could worship; they didn’t like that. They wanted a little more variety; they wanted to be free in their worship, especially, they really wanted to be free to worship the Lord the way they felt called to worship Him. So, they went to Holland, and there they had freedom, but life was very hard. They were immigrants, and after twelve years they felt called to come to America. They had heard of how people had come here and starved, but they came anyway. There were a little over a hundred people in the ship, about the size of this Christian Life Center. Sixty-six days at sea. Most of the time it was stormy. I just can’t imagine how seasick I would have been the whole time.

But they came. They didn’t know how to live in the wilderness. Many of them died. But they were faithful. Every Sunday they would gather to worship on the hill. That was the high point of their week. And God blessed them. They were ordinary people who loved God. They were ordinary people that what was most important thing in their lives was worshipping their Lord.

What a tremendous difference it will make in our lives when we have this vision of a Holy God who forgives us of sins, who empowers us to serve, and we give thanks to Him, and we praise His name. Let us pray.