Sermon Transcript

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I’m reading this morning from Isaiah 6 beginning in verse 1.  “In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the train of his robe filled the temple.  Above him were seraphim, each with six wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying.  And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’  At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.  ‘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.’ Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.  With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’ 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!’”

0:01:38.6

According to the physiological society, physiology is the science of life.  It is the branch of biology that aims to understand the mechanisms of living things.  Now, needles to say, physiology is complicated.  At least it is to me.  I hold a Doctor of Ministry, not a Doctor of Medicine, so I do not presume to be an M.D. this morning.  But I learned this week that there are some things about physiology that help us learn about worship that I just want to briefly share with you.

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Physiology helps us understand, for example, how men build bigger muscles and women tone their muscles when we go to the gym and lift weights.  How practical can it get, right?  The physiology of muscle growth, I learned, boils down to three things- muscle tension, muscle damage, and metabolic stress.  Let me put it in layman’s terms to you.  When you go to the gym and you work out with those weights…And some of you are looking at me like, “I made a New Year’s resolution, but it’s February now and, well, we’re not back in the gym.”  Don’t mean to heap any guilt on anybody, myself included.  But when we go to the gym, when we lift those weights and the next day our muscles are sore, we hurt.  That’s a good thing, physiologically speaking.  That’s the way it’s supposed to be.  And here is why.  According to physiologists, the tissue you damage by lifting weights caused a release of inflammatory molecules and immune system cells that activate satellite cells to jump into action.  I know, that just went right over my head, too.  In other words, your body is repairing and rebuilding your broken muscle fibers that you broke and stretched while you were lifting weights.  And the net result is hopefully bigger and more toned muscles.  That’s the physiology of what we do in the gym.

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Now, according to physiologists, following your workout, the next 24 to 48 hours is critical because proper diet and rest will actually aid in the rebuilding of your muscles.  So much for the physiology lesson this morning.  I believe that what’s true in physiology is also spiritually.  The psalmist says it this way as it relates to worship.  “The sacrifices of God,”—are you ready for this?—“are a broken spirit.  A broken and contrite spirit, O God, you will not despise.”  Just like to tone your muscles and to build bigger muscles you’ve got to break them down.  No pain, no gain, right?  So it is in worship.  There is something about our worship muscle that grows when it proceeded by brokenness, a brokenness that leads to repentance.  Let me say it this way.  The brokenness of spirit that leads to repentance is an important, if not an essential way to build your worship muscle.  And sometimes it’s the only way that God can prepare us for new season of growth in our lives.  It comes through brokenness.  A brokenness that leads to repentance.

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Now, Isaiah 6 that I read just a moment ago introduces us to the ruined worshipper.  His name is Isaiah.  We could also call him the broken worshipper.  And let me just say on the front end, God is preparing Isaiah for a new season of growth. He’s preparing to call him and to send him out.  And in the process, Isaiah is caught up into this heavenly worship experience.  I read it just a few minutes ago.  To many of us, it’s a familiar passage of scripture.  We sing the hymn “Holy, Holy, Holy” in the church, and we’ve been singing it for hundreds of years since it was written.  And it comes from this passage primarily where Isaiah is caught up into this heavenly worship experience.  A worship experience that is pure and uncontaminated and unadulterated.  And he is caught up into this worship service.  And he hears the angels call out to one another and sing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”  And the worship is so pure and so uncontaminated and so real that he says the foundations began to shake in the presence of the Lord, and the smoke filled the room.  It’s an awesome, awesome worship experience.

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The apostle John gives us a similar glimpse to what worship is like in heaven in Revelation 4 and 5.  The book of Revelation, of course, is the revelation of Jesus Christ.  It reveals the mysteries of the apocalypse, as I like to say, the last days of planet earth leading up to the return of Jesus Christ.  And in chapters 4 and 5, John catches glimpse of what worship in heaven looks like.  While all this calamity is happening on planet earth from chapters 6 and forward that he’s going to reveal in the apocalypse, he begins with a picture of what worship is like in heaven.  And I won’t go into the details here.  You can read it for yourself.  But again, John records the words of the angels who sing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.”  John’s primary purpose in giving us that glimpse into a heavenly worship experience is to describe what he saw.  Isaiah’s primary purpose in writing this down in Isaiah 6 is to describe how he responded to it.  And that’s important for us to remember.

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We would all like a little bit heaven to enter into our earthly worship experiences, wouldn’t we?  Whether it’s a corporate worship experience like this or a private worship experience that you might have had this week, we’d all like a little bit of heaven to show up in those times.  But what would it be like for us to show up in heaven?  What would it be like for us to experience pure, unadulterated, uncontaminated worship in the presence of a holy God?  We would love to experience that just like Isaiah did.  But having said that, are you prepared for how it will change you?  Are you prepared for how it will ruin you in a good way and prepare you for a new season of growth and a calling that God has in your life?  That’s what I want us to talk about this morning.

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I see Isaiah…in this heavenly worship experience, three things happen to him.  First, he is crushed.  He is crushed in his spirit.  Go back to verse 5.  He says, “‘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.’”  Go back to the beginning of verse 5 there, and just circle the world “woe.”  W-O-E.  It’s a word that is used often in the pages of scripture.  It literally means a condition of deep suffering or misfortune, affliction or grief.  Sometimes it refers to a cry of lament, a word of warning or judgment.  In fact, Jesus used this word seven times in Matthew 23 when He rebuked the Pharisees for turning worship and a relationship with God into something that it was not.  And He says, “Woe to you.  Woe to you.  Woe to you, religious leaders.”  It was a word of warning and a judgment that came from Jesus.

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Even in John’s apocalypse, the revelation of Jesus Christ, the word “woe” appears several times as the judgment of God falls upon the earth during the last days of planet earth, that time in Bible prophecy known as the Tribulation- the seven years of Jacob’s trouble that is future in Bible prophecy.  One “woe” after another after another after another is proclaimed in the book of Revelation.

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But here in Isaiah 6, Isaiah says, “Woe to me.”  I mean, it’s a condition of suffering.  It’s an affliction that has come upon him.  It’s a cry of lament and understanding that he is facing if not the judgment of God, the conviction of his sin, the strong conviction of his sin that crushes his spirit.

0:10:59.2

But Isaiah’s “woe” in chapter 6 must be understood in light of several woe’s leading up to chapter 6.  Back in chapter 5 there are five “woes.”  Remember, Isaiah is a prophet that is speaking out to the nation of Israel, who has drifted far, far away from her covenant relationship with God.  And certain impending judgment is coming against them.   I won’t read all five of them, but here is a sampling.  Like in Isaiah 5:11, “Woe to those who rise early in the morning, that they may run after strong drink, who tarry late into the evening as wine enflames them.”  Verse 21, “Woe to those who call evil, good, and good, evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.”  How about the verses that follow that, verses 22 and 23? “Woe to those who are heroes at drinking wine and valiant men in mixing strong drink who acquit the guilty for a bribe and deprive the innocent of his right.”  This is a description of a nation that is corrupt to the core.  And because of their corruption, God is bringing His judgment against them.  These five judgments fell heavily upon ancient Israel.  And they served as a warning to any nation, even our nation that strays away from God Almighty.

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But what’s interesting here is that Isaiah turns the focus in chapter 6 on himself and to his own wretchedness when he came face to face with the holiness of God.  He says, “Woe to me.”  Not, “Woe to them,” or, “Woe to you.”  Isaiah is caught up into the holy presence of God.  He is fully understanding the corruption of the nation and the society in which he lives.  But he lays that aside for a moment.  And what he sees in the nation in which he lives and what he hears coming from the lips of those corrupt people, he sees in his own life and he hears from his own lips.  And He says, “Woe to me, for I am ruined.  I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips.”  Rather than pointing a judgmental finger at them, he listened and found his own life and lips equally vile.

0:13:31.4

You know, you and I live in a corrupt world.  And sometimes we’re so much a part of the world we don’t understand just how corrupt our world is until we have a reminder like we did last week at the Super Bowl halftime show.  It once again proved the case that we live in a corrupt society.  Maybe you didn’t watch it, but you couldn’t miss the response from parents and religious leaders across the country who expressed their outrage and indignation at the NFL for another raunchy, sexually explicit halftime show on primetime television.  The Reverend Franklin Graham said, and I quote, “I don’t expect the world to act like the church.  But our country has had a sense of moral decency on primetime television in order to protect children, and we see that disappearing before our eyes.  This exhibition was Pepsi and the NFL showing young girls that the sexual exploitation of women is okay.”  Now, I share Reverence Graham’s conviction.  However…and I’m not the only one asking this question…why are we so surprised at the NFL?  They’ve been doing this for years and calling it entertainment.  And our society takes it in at entertainment.  

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Perhaps we in the church, though, should learn something from Isaiah’s response 2500 years ago when he caught a glimpse of the corrupt world in which he lived.  He says, “I live among people of corrupt lips.”  Time and time again he heard vile, dishonoring words spoken about God and about others in his society.  But could we use this outrage at the NFL as an opportunity to clean up our own act?  Doesn’t the Bible say judgment begins with the household of God?  Isaiah was caught up into this heavenly worship experience, and he said, “Woe to me.”  He saw the corruption around him, but he also experienced the holiness of God.  And he says, “Before I point the finger of judgment at somebody else, I’ve got to clean up my own act here.”

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Like Isaiah, perhaps what the church needs today is a fresh glimpse of the holiness of God.  And when that happens, be prepared for it to first crush and convict you of your own sin just as it did Isaiah 2500 years ago.  I believe when we worship God in spirit and in truth, sometimes the Spirit of God will do exactly what Jesus said He would do- convict the world concerning, sin, righteousness, and judgment.  It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to do that.  We often sing a song, “Come, Holy Spirit, You are welcome in this place.”  He’s even welcomed and has the right to bring conviction of sin to us.  And I just want to suggest to you, before God will take us on a journey into a brand-new season of growth in your life or in the life of our church, it begins like Isaiah began, where brokenness leads to repentance and a fresh new relationship with the Lord.

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Matt Redman is one of today’s most respected worship leaders and song leaders and writers.  And we sing many of Redman’s worship songs here.  He was reflecting on Isaiah 6 and Isaiah’s experience in the holy presence of God when he wrote, “Of course there is a time in worship to be joyful, content, even comfortable.  But there also comes a time when God will make us distinctly uncomfortable.  He puts us under the spotlight of His holiness where we begin to search our hearts even more closely.”  He calls it God’s tough love, “often severe, though always an act of kindness and never cruelty.”

0:17:59.5

Back to physiology for a moment.  It’s the soreness in the muscles the next day that tells you you’ve had a good workout.  And the body is working to rebuild and strengthen and tone the muscles.  And so it should be from time to time in the presence of the Lord.  When was the last time you were in a worship experience and you opened up your heart enough to allow the conviction of sin?  The Holy Spirit to do His job, to point out an area of your life or my life that is not rightly related God and to bring conviction to us to where we say, “Wow to me.  I’m not going to look at the speck in my brother’s eye until I remove the log in my own eye.  I’ve got to clean up my act before I ever tell the NFL to clean up their act.”  Judgment begins at the household of God.

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As we enter the holy (0:19:00.1) presence of God in true worship and the Holy Spirit simultaneously convicts us of sin, I believe a crushing of the spirit takes place.  Friends, don’t resist that crushing.  There is nothing unkind or cruel about it when the Holy Spirit is involved.  I agree with Matt Redman there.  It’s not an unkind or cruel crushing.  But it must happen in order to yield true worship in us.  Think of the crushing as sort of what happens to an olive in ancient Israel when they make that wonderful olive oil that they’re famous for and have been famous for dating back to biblical times.  When we’re in Israel, we go to a place where we see an ancient olive press.  And we learn that to get the oil out of the olives, the olives actually go through three crushings.  The first crushing (0:20:00.0) produces what’s called that 100% pure virgin olive oil.  It’s the best of the oil.  But there is still some oil in there, and it can be used for other purposes, like in makeup and other medicines.  And so it goes through a second crushing and a third crushing.  It’s the kind of crushing of that olive that produces a flow of something pure and something that can be used in a lot of different ways.

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We always make the connection between the olive press that we see up in the Galilee region and the time we enter into that garden where Jesus prayed on the night before He was crucified, that garden full of olive trees.  Gethsemane literally means “olive press.”  And you know the story of Gethsemane.  Jesus went there on the night before He was crucified.  And He was crushed by the stressful weight of the imminent cross.  And as He was crushed, He yielded His will.  He perfectly aligned His will to the Father’s will in one of the purest forms of prayer and prayerful worship that we can read in the pages of scripture when He said, “Not my will, but Thine be done.”  Jesus wasn’t crushed because of the conviction of His own sin.  He was crushed by the weight of our sin and the prospects of going to the cross and paying the penalty for it.  But there was a beautiful, kind but somewhat tender, cruel crushing that took place even of the Lord Jesus Christ.  And it produced something wonderful.  I’m just suggesting to you, we can talk about being true worshippers and transformed worshippers.  But there comes a time…And maybe that time needs to be now and maybe more frequent than we’d really like for it to be…When it’s time for us to get right with God.  When the conviction of sin comes upon us, and we’re crushed by the weight of it.

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Here’s the good news.  Following the crushing comes a cleansing.  Let’s read on in Isaiah 6:6.   Isaiah said, “Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar.  With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.’”  Aren’t you glad the cleansing follows the crushing?  And I would even slide in between the two something else that’s happening here.  The crushing leads to a confession, which then leads to a cleansing.  The crushing is found in the words “woe to me,” but then Isaiah quickly confesses, “I am ruined.  I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among people of unclean lips.”  He’s confessing that he has a vile, God-dishonoring mouth.  Is that your problem today?  Is that the sin that the Holy Spirit would point to your life?  Maybe it’s not an unclean mouth; maybe it’s something else.  Your eyes, your ears, your lips, your hands, your feet are filthy from your journey through this world.  And you’ve picked up the filth and the dirt and the sinful scum of this world.  And the conviction of sin leads you…it crushes your spirit but brings you to a point of confession that yields a cleansing.  A cleansing.

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And it’s that angel who flies across the temple there with some tongs.  Grabs a coal from the altar and takes it and touches Isaiah’s lips.  It had to sting some.  It had to hurt a little bit.  But it was healing.  And it was cleansing.  He says, “See, this has touched your lips.”  God is not afraid to touch that area of your life that is not rightly related to Him with something that might sting a little bit, but it’s a healing touch.  It’s a touch that will cleanse that area of your life and mine.  And he says, “Your guilt is taken away, and your sin is atoned for.”  That makes the crushing worthwhile, doesn’t it?  That makes the confession before a holy God, the coming clean before Him worthwhile if the heavy weight of guilt that I’ve been carrying around is lifted.  And when the guilt is lifted, guess what?  You don’t have to walk around in shame.  And don’t let anybody shame you, because you’ve been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ and your sins atoned for.

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In one sense, that happen once and for all for the believer of Jesus Christ when you put your faith and trust in Him.  That’s called justification.  And the blood of Jesus Christ was applied to your account, and your sins—past, present and future—were atoned for.  The guilt and the shame is lifted.

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But there is also a sense in which, as believers in Jesus Christ, we move from this idea of justification—something that happened once and for all here in the past—to sanctification.  Day by day, moment by moment as we’re being shaped and molded into the image of God, transformed as worshippers to look more and more like Jesus as we talked about last week from Romans 12, that’s the process of sanctification.  Positionally, cleansed, guiltless, atoned for in the presence of God.  Practically speaking, God is bringing our present and practical reality into alignment with our position as cleansed and atoned for sinners.

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And that’s why 1 John 1:9 is important to remember at this point of cleansing.  It says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  John is writing his first New Testament postcard to Christians.  And 1 John is all about, oh, not people coming into a relationship with God through Jesus Christ, but those who have come into a relationship with Him, how to maintain fellowship with Him.  And there is a difference.  I can be married to my wife and have a ring on my finger and a marriage contract and a marriage ceremony to look back on 25 or more years ago.  We are in relationship with one another.  But over those 25+ years, there have been times that we’ve been out of fellowship with one another.  That’s true of every married couple.  You’ve experienced that.  Something is just not right between you.  It’s not that you’re not longer married or no longer in relationship.  You’ve just broken the fellowship.  The same is true in our relationship with God.  We’re brought into a relationship with Him by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.  And once you're saved, you’re always saved.  You’re never kicked out of the family of God because of poor behavior any more than you’re brought into the family of God because of good behavior.  It was all because of what Christ did for you.  But as believers in Jesus Christ, as children in the family of God, sometimes we can be out of fellowship with our heavenly Father.  And sin is what breaks that fellowship.  Again, our journey through this life, through a corrupt, a wicked, sinful society, we pick up some of the smell and the dirt and the sinfulness of our society.

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So what do we do as Christians?  We go to 1 John 1:9. Hopefully the Holy Spirit has brought a moment of conviction and crushing to our spirit that something is out of step with the holy God.  And that conviction and that crushing leads to a confession.  And then there is a cleansing based on 1 John 1:9.

0:28:51.9

Hold your place here in Isaiah and turn with me to the book of 2 Timothy for a moment.  And this sets up the third thing that we see in Isaiah.  He was crushed.  He was cleansed.  2 Timothy 3:20 says, “Now in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for honorable use, some for dishonorable.”  Paul is making a comparison between something in the earthly world and in your home and the spiritual world.  He says, “Therefore, if anyone cleanses himself from what is dishonorable, he will be a vessel for honorable use, set apart as holy, useful to the master of the house, ready for every good work.”

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How many of you want to be useful to the Master for every good work that He has for you?  You and I have a work to do in cleansing ourselves.  In partnership with the Holy Spirit, who is sanctifying us, we have to be willing for Him to convict us of our sin on a regular basis.  Anytime we’re out of step or out of stride with the Holy Spirit of God and that conviction of sin comes, we confess, we receive cleansing, renewed fellowship and renewed usefulness to the Master.  See, Isaiah is learning all of this in a heavenly worship experience.  And he goes through this process as a ruined worshipper.  He is crushed.  He is cleansed.  There is confession in there.  All in preparation for a brand-new calling.

0:30:51.8

And that is where we go back to Isaiah 6:8. He says, “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!’”  There is a clarity that comes to Isaiah in this moment.  He was crushed.  He confessed.  He was cleansed.  But then he says at the beginning of verse 8, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord.”  In the context here, the word “then” marks the sequence of time.  After crushed and confessed and cleansed, oh, “Then I could hear the voice of the Lord.”  The psalmist says, “If I regard iniquity in my heart.”  In other words, if I love my sin more than I love God and I continue in my sinful ways.  “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.”  You can pray all day long, and your prayers will go no higher than the ceiling in the room in which you’re in if you’ve not taken that conviction of sin and allowed it to become a confession and the cleansing before a holy God.  Then He’ll hear your prayers.  But more than that, then you’ll hear the voice of God.  Not only can you not speak to God when there is sin your life that is not dealt with the way that Isaiah deal with his, but you won’t hear with clarity the voice of God.  Isaiah says, “Then I heard the voice of God.”

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The scariest place for a follower of Jesus Christ is to say, “Yeah, I’m in relationship with God, and I go to church.  But I haven’t heard from Him for a long time.”  And I’m not talking about hearing little voices where they want to check you into some place.  How does God speak to us?  Primarily through His Word.  But this is a book unlike any other book.  It is not like the bestseller you pull off the shelf or that classic in literature that you pull off the shelf.  This is not front living and active Word of God.  And God will take and words on the printed page.  And as the Holy Spirit bring them to life, they’ll speak to you.  I’ve had that experience numbers of times throughout my life and my ministry where these words just leap off of the page and into my spirit.

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As a believer in Jesus Christ, you have the Holy Spirit.  Remember, part of worship in spirit and in truth is aligning your spirit with the Holy Spirit and being able to discern His voice as you travel through life’s journey through the Word of God.  And His voice will never contradict the Word of God.  

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But here Isaiah in the holy presence of God—crushed, confessed, cleansed—now he hears the voice of God.  And a calling comes.  “Whom shall I send?   And who will go for us?”  It kind of gives you the sense that the Lord’s been calling out, calling out to the nation of Israel.  “Will somebody go on our behalf?”   The “our” here is the holy trinity- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  “Who will go for us?”  One God who expresses Himself in three distinct persons.  “Who will go for us?”  It doesn’t seem like anybody has their ears tuned to what God’s been saying.  Isaiah does now.  And he responds to the calling.  And he says, “Here am I, Lord.  Send me.”  Previously, maybe he never said those words because he didn’t hear the voice of God with clarity because his lips and what came out of his mouth were as vile and as corrupt as anything else that he saw in the world.  And the only way he got to place where he says, “Here am I, Lord.  Send me,” because he heard the clear voice of God, was to stop pointing the finger of judgment at somebody else and to say, “I’ve got a log in my own eye.  I’m not going to worry about the speck in somebody else’s eye.  Judgment begins at my household.  I’ve got to get myself right with God.”  And when he did, oh my, did a new season of growth and ministry opportunity open up for Isaiah.  A clarity came in his life.  There is nothing like a crushed spirit that leads to confession and cleansing to bring clarity and the clarity of God’s call in your life.  Watch out, world, when the church gets to this point.  We’ll have such clarity on what God wants us to do that we say, “Here am I, Lord.  Send me.  I’m available.”

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The ruined worshipper responds to the call of God like a missionary.  Here am I, Lord.  Send me.  How easy is that for Isaiah to say.  It might have been difficult before, but now that everything about him is aligned to the holy, holy, holy of God, he is a cleansed vessel.  He is called.  Now he’s committed to the mission of God.  And he doesn’t say, “Send me if…,” or, “Send me when…,” or, “Send me here,” or, “I’ll go there, but not…”  No, just, “Here am I, Lord.  Send me.” There is such clarity and such commitment in his response here.  And it’s an act of worship.

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What we do with our time, our talent, even our treasure, friends, is a holy act of worship long before we ever gather for a portion of an hour and sing a couple of songs, which is a whole other discussion about worship.  What you bring to that moment that we call a worship gathering, oh my.  If we all had an Isaiah experience before we got here on Sunday, what a pure, uncontaminated worship experience we might have as a little bit of heaven came to earth.  And all of this is preparing us for the day when we get to go home.  And the Lord is shaping us, and He’s molding us into true worshippers, because that’s what Isaiah experienced in heaven.

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