When you think of worship, what comes to mind?

Is it bulletins, and church furniture or perhaps a soft breeze and a rock near the waters edge.

Is it Hymnals and songs sung accompanied by a piano or organ or your solo choir performance in the shower?

Is it a fiery sermon or perhaps one word such as “grace”?

Is it hands folded and on your knees or arms lifted and dancing?

Is it shouts of praise or simply silence?

Is it prayers of thanksgiving or heartfelt sighs too deep for words?

As I reflect on the idea of worship all of these images come to mind. Church bulletins remind me of what God is doing in and amongst a body of believers, church furniture reminds me this place is special and a rock by the water is a place I find solitude and solace. I love joining with the church in singing the great hymns and admit I have sung to God from the venue of my shower at home.

Worship is not defined by any building, posture, or act. Worship is not as much about the what as it is about the who.

Throughout Scripture we see worship of all kinds. Worship on mountain tops, by the ocean, in boats, and in caves. We see people standing, kneeling, dancing, and falling on their faces laying prostrate before the focus of worship

So, what is “worship”?

Worship:

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) Worship

1wor•ship \ˈwər-shəp also ˈwȯr-\ noun

[Middle English worshipe worthiness, respect, reverence paid to a divine being, from Old English weorthscipe worthiness, respect, from weorth worthy, worth + -scipe -ship] before 12th century

1 chiefly British: a person of importance—used as a title for various officials (as magistrates and some mayors)

2: reverence offered a divine being or supernatural power also: an act of expressing such reverence

3: a form of religious practice with its creed and ritual

4: extravagant respect or admiration for or devotion to an object of esteem 〈worship of the dollar〉

OR

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (Eleventh Edition) Worship

worship verb

-shipped also -shiped; -ship•ping also -ship•ing verb transitive 13th century

1: to honor or reverence as a divine being or supernatural power

2: to regard with great or extravagant respect, honor, or devotion 〈a celebrity worshipped by her fans〉 verb intransitive: to perform or take part in worship or an act of worship synonym see REVERE—wor•ship•per or wor•ship•er noun

People can worship all kinds of things - money, fame, power, idols.

For me, worship plain and simple is communing with the One and only true God. So, let’s pray and then we’re going to talk about what it means to worship and have truly Spirit Inspired worship. Let’s pray:

Let Us Worship Together

God of all praise and glory,

You call us to rejoice in you, to praise your name, to find comfort in your presence, to stand in awe, to bow in confession, to come and worship. And in your worship, you meet us there. Your Spirit proclaims truth, your Word anoints us with wisdom, and your roots grow deeper in our soul. Lord, you deserve our worship each day,. So, please forgive us when we forget what it is about, when we think ourselves too busy.Forgive us when we make it about what we desire or what entertains us. This sacred gift of wonder and love was meant to be so much more than we often make it. Yet we long to experience you, God. We need you. So, inspire our worship with your Spirit, so that our hearts and our lives are transformed by your wonder. This we pray to our living God who encounters us in worship. Amen.

Our passage for this morning comes from Isaiah chapter 6, it’s a bit of a long passage, so I’m going to read it slowly and just invite you to listen. Please, close your eyes and quiet your heart and prepare to hear from God’s Holy Word.

I’m only going to read the first 8 verses right now:

Isaiah 6:1–8 ESV

In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!” And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke. And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for 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!” Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.” And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

Leader: This is God’s Word to us.

Congregation. Thanks be to God.

Worship

We began this morning with a question: “When you think of worship, what comes to mind?”

Today (all too often in my view), when people talk of worship even in the church, we are often referring to a corporate worship service; even more specifically to the music in such a service. It is true, that is worship but it doesn’t come close to encapsulating all of worship. To label it as such paralyzes the fullness that is worship. It’d be like seeing an arm and assuming that was all there is to your friend. Yet when we see the arm of our friend, we know there is more because we know our friend. We know their face, their smile and their eyes, we know their shape, and we can recognize them from afar by the way they move.

I have often pondered what it would’ve been like for Adam and Eve to hear God actually walking in the garden. What would it have been like to talk with our Creator God without shame and without barriers of any kind? I long for that kind of full awareness of our God that in this world we will only know in part - but when the Lord comes we will know fully as we have been fully known.

Spirit Inspired Worship is not the self gratifying worship filled with stale ritual and divorced of meaning. It’s not consumer entertainment.

In our text this morning, Isaiah has a vision where he sees the throne of the Lord, and the train of his robe fills the temple. Above him are the seraphim or angels (a seraph is an angel, seraphim is the plural of seraph), and they have six wings, and they are calling to each other:

Isaiah 6:3 ESV

And one called to another and said: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

And then it says, “the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke.”

Imagine what it’s like, the mere mention of the one on the throne by the angels causes the foundations to shake! And Isaiah realizes who he is in comparison to the one he is now seeing, and he cries out:

Isaiah 6:5 ESV

And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for 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!”

Years ago I was on a private retreat. As part of my routine there I went to the chapel for a time of prayer and as I entered the vestibule of the chapel I suddenly had an overwhelming sense of the holiness of God from within the chapel. In that moment I was instantly aware of seemingly every sin I’d ever committed and all the ways I’d fallen short of God’s glory. I was stopped in my tracks. In that moment I felt like I could not enter that chapel. I began to sob knowing how I’d grieved God, I felt dirty, unworthy, and to be honest unloveable.

Perhaps this is something of what Isaiah felt in that moment. I definitely felt lost. Then it says one of the angels flew to him and having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken from the altar, he touched Isaiah’s lips and said, “

Isaiah 6:7 ESV

And he touched my mouth and said: “Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.”

This is the reality for each of us who has confessed our sin and professed Jesus as Lord.

Our guilt is taken away.

Our sin is atoned for.

So what is Spirit Inspired Worship?

Spirit-Inspired Worship

Spirit Inspired Worship is where you and I are drawn by the Holy Spirit into the presence of God and recognize God’s holiness and that we are “the disciple Jesus loves.”

Spirit-inspired worship is a gift of God’s wonder! We get to encounter the awesome mystery of the God who longs to be known in relationship with us. We can worship anywhere - alone or together. But God did create us to be in relationship - not only with our Creator God, but also with one another — is there any wonder in the Greatest Commandment Jesus gives two? He said the greatest commandment is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength. And the second is like it, to love your neighbor as yourself.”

As we experience God together in community we better understand our relationship with God as individuals. We worship together because through prayer and supplication, through the Word proclaimed and the sacraments celebrated through the songs of praise and the passing of the peace — God meets us there. Worship is our lifeline to the Holy God. Our worship should be active participation into the living relationship with the triune God; thus all should feel welcome and have a place. Worship should challenge, teach, transform, convict, and call us into deeper relationship with God and one another; not gratify our comforts and entertain our desires.

The apostle Paul wrote to the church in Rome:

Romans 12:1 ESV

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

Living sacrifices… - such a beautiful picture of who we are. It was God who breathed life into us, yet a sacrifice dies. We are constantly dying to ourselves to open ourselves to the lives God has for us.

In his book: The Indwelling Life of Christ: All of Him in All of Me, Ian Major Thomas relates a story of going to a voice coach teaching him to breathe. He says,

She barked at me: “Expire”!…Then she barked again: “Inspire!” She then preached to me a magnificent sermon. “You will never, ever learn to aspire,” she said, “until first you have learned to expire; otherwise, you will only perspire!”

With every step we take into the future, we can say, “With Christ I died, and now through Him I live, as He shares His Life with me on earth on my way to heaven, and then forever.”

That is what it means to be a Christian. With every step you take, you first expire: “Lord Jesus, I can’t; You never said I could.” Then you inspire: “Lord Jesus, You can, and always said You would!”

Thomas, Ian Major. The Indwelling Life of Christ: All of Him in All of Me (Kindle Locations 1207-1210). The Crown Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Worship is an encounter with God that we understand and do not understand. It is where we lose ourselves and gain Christ in us. It is an act filled with mystery and awe, but in worship we have the opportunity to express our deepest desires to God and listen for God’s voice. In worship we also experience the call to serve and be in mission.

In the closing verse of our passage today we read:

Isaiah 6:8 ESV

And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.”

Worship is more than what we do in a sanctuary on a Sunday morning. It is how we live our lives. Breathing deep of the awesome breath of God. Way back in the beginning we read that God breathed life into us. In the Gospels we read of John we read of Jesus blowing on the disciples and saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit” and it inspiring them for mission.

As we worship the same God - though we are separated by place, and perhaps time - know that we’re coming together. My prayer for each of you is that in worship you would be drawn closer to God and therefore closer to one another. Mission Woods is a growing place: growing closer to God, to one another, and to our community.

With every step you take, first expire: “Lord Jesus, I can’t; You never said I could.” Then inspire: “Lord Jesus, You can, and always said You would!”

The Word of the Lord, Thanks be to God.

Let’s pray...