9/14/58

Scripture: Isaiah 6: 1-8

Text: Isaiah 6: 1; “I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up.”

The sixth chapter of Isaiah is one of the best known in the literature of the prophets. In it is a vivid account of the making of a prophet. Isaiah had been accounted a prophet for some time. In fact he was present at state functions as an official representative of the religion of his people. But his official capacity was not enough to satisfy him, nor to meet the demands of God upon him and his people.

This chapter is a rare kind of autobiography. It records how the call of God reached a man, and how a prophet came into being, not by appointment of the king, but by the divine call. Isaiah writes down his experience, with the details vividly before him.

Few men are willing to recount to others the most intimate and sacred moments of their lives. But Isaiah had a purpose in doing so. He writes without ecstatic passion, but simply and directly of what has happened in his experience.

Isaiah had reached a parting of the ways in his ministry. It was some 7 centuries before the Christ was to appear. And King Ahaz finally rejected the prophet’s appeal to trust in God. Rather, the king turned to seek security in Assyrian protection.

Isaiah must have felt that his ministry was futile. And so he withdrew from the political scene to let matters take their course. His voice was not to be heard in the counsels of men.

He looks back over years of divine warning, reproach and threatened judgment. As a testimony against his obdurate nation, and as a witness to his own faithfulness to his commission to speak for God, he writes down the substance of the vision of right that he had received. It is not so much that he had composed the words, as that the vision had been given him -- that he had been sent by God to speak these things, and that the rejection of the prophet by his people was thus a rejection of God himself.

Scholars conjecture the circumstances of Isaiah’s vision. At some great religious festival held during the year that their former king, Uzziah, died, Isaiah was present in his official capacity as prophet. Standing with the priests at the altar, he watched the splendid and beautiful pageantry of the ancient ceremony, so rich in symbolism, and color, and music. To the worshippers, it was fascinating drama, but perhaps nothing more.

But to the spiritually sensitive Isaiah it was much more. In his soul, he had walked with God, and had grown more aware of spiritual and eternal values. And there came to him an awareness of the divine reality, behind the motions of men in the pageantry of worship. The earthly scenes and concerns faded from his mind, and he was alone, seeing the Lord high and lifted up upon his throne. He uses words to describe his vision of God, but they are not adequate to frame the vision of the Holy One. “His train filled the temple,” says Isaiah.

Not only did be become acutely aware of what is holy. He also cries out in the self-discovery of his own insufficiency: “Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips --- for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

He had had a vision of the holy, of his own sin, and of his own dependence upon the Lord. That was a first step in the making of a prophet. God can do little for men who do not know that they are sinful nor feel their uncleanness in the presence of the holy.

But Isaiah’s experience also had the swift answer to this consciousness of the sinner. The divine mercy comes with forgiveness, cleansing, strength. Isaiah felt his unclean lips touched as if by a fiery coal. He felt forgiven. That was a second step.

The third step was dedication. Isaiah was to speak to others about their sin and to point the way whereby they could know of their forgiveness. There have been many who have felt the glad release of forgiveness only to be stuck at that point. God persists with another question, in intense personal reality. “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah did not debate the obligations of forgiveness. He answered the call. “Here am I; send me.”

There is a good deal in this narrative of Isaiah’s experience that suggests the real meaning of worship. There is (1) the awareness of the holy and his own sense of unworthiness and sin; there is (2) an assurance of forgiveness; and there is (3) a dedication of self and a purpose to serve.

Sometime during the past year, the pastor and people of a church in another state were discussing worship. An older person mentioned how much it meant to her each Sunday to come into the presence of God. A young man differed with here somewhat. He said, “I don’t see that it makes much difference --- I come for the sermon, and the rest of the service is merely trimming.” An hour later, a young mother was urging the pastor to preach a sermon on worship. And so, in due time, he did.

Many of us share in the common confusion about worship. And hence, this sermon today. For some, this sacred hour on Sunday morning means more than any other hour of the week. For others it is habit. Possibly for all of us it means that we are seeking, even when we do not know it. We would like for this hour to be a high and holy experience wherein we come into the presence of God. But somehow it often eludes us. We keep trying because sometimes it does not elude us. And we know ourselves lifted by a holy presence.

Even before the Psalmist prayed, “O come, let us worship,” mankind sought the assurance of God’s presence and care. Sometimes man has used crude and superstitious means to find it, but he has always sought it. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee,” says Augustine. And we know that he is right. We need God, because we were made by and for the Divine Will; and we are incomplete without Him.

How then can we come close to God? How can these earth-formed tools of prayer and hymn and ritual bring blessing to us? We are like persons reaching for the sky, yet unable to hold it in our arms. We have eternity in our hearts, and time on our hands, and the two often refuse to blend.

Of course we need to attend only a few different churches to know that worship takes on many forms of expression. Some are good; some not so good. Some are bad. Some are so people-centered that they never get beyond where people are.

All of them intend to bring folk into the presence of God, and the test of any hour of worship should be whether or not this does happen.

While many forms are used to express our worship of God, a few tested principles are usually present if we come close to the Divine Presence. They are graphically pictured in the experience of Isaiah. His very words are inadequate to describe his experience, so he clothes the experience in symbolic pictures. Usually that is the case. True worship is an art that defies any contained description in human words. So let us examine this experience of worship in Isaiah, repeated every week by millions of devoted souls, in order that we may effectually say, “O come, let us worship.”

(1) The first experience is what one man has called the “upward look,” away from ourselves. Isaiah, in the quiet dignity of the temple, “saw the Lord, high and lifted up.” With words tumbling over one another, he says, “I saw the Lord, high and lifted up ... his train filled the temple .... above it stood the seraphim ... praising God and saying, ‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God of hosts, the whole earth is full of his glory’ .... and the house was filled with smoke.” These are words of poetical rapture. If wood or coal smoke should fill this room we should immediately be alarmed. Even the smoke of an ancient sacrifice burning on a stone altar would startle us. But Isaiah’s “smoke” is not so literal. It is Isaiah’s poetic way of trying to convey how the presence of God seemed to him to fill the whole place.

Isaiah has stopped thinking of himself and has looked up. He started by praising God. He fastened his thought on something beside himself. It is not an “emotional jag,” and it is not introspective. And it is a far cry from the skeptic.

In our time, psychology has come into its own. We are likely to carry some of it to extremes. We have heard a great deal about how “religion is in us,” how if we think earnestly enough we can develop techniques to “have faith in faith,” and “peace of mind.” The more we analyze ourselves, the more we think we are setting up our own little gods to do something for us. But this amounts to starting backwards. For true religion puts God first, and ourselves second.

God is not a gimmick by which we get a psychological “tune-up.” God is Lord, Creator, and Judge. Before Him we bow in adoration, and awe, and praise. Perceiving the majesty of God, Isaiah says, perhaps almost breathlessly, “I saw the Lord, high and lifted up.”

This is what the devout soul should be able to experience every Sunday in this church. And what we do in worship is an attempt to put us in mind of His presence, so that we are reached by Him.

After bowing our hearts in a reverent moment or sentence of silent prayer, our first act is to sing a hymn. It is not just any hymn, nor just any melody. It is a hymn of praise to God. It may be something like: “Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” or “Come Thou Almighty King,” or “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation.” The first hymn is a hymn with the upward look.

Today’s hymn begins with the cry of the seraphim in Isaiah’s vision -- “Holy, Holy, Holy!” Hymns, you see, are not just some strange ceremony. They are prayer set to music. If they are vital it is as their words become our prayer; their melody our mood. The first hymn is one to lift us out of ourselves into God’s presence, until we “see the Lord, high and lifted up.” We are called to that worship; we sing praise with the Doxology; we invoke or beseech the presence of God; we pray in the words and spirit of our Master and Teacher, Jesus Christ. Our praise continues in the responsive reading of holy scripture, in offering and anthem. In all of this we are led to get our minds off our own selves and our own concerns and, together with the great company of saints, to get our minds on God. When our praise means that we are altogether forgetful of self in the presence of God, then we have joined in a high and holy experience.

But the upward look is only the beginning of the experience. For once we have seen God, (2) we are forced to take a quick, and even discouraging look, at ourselves. That is what always happens! When we see God, we soon see ourselves. That happened to Isaiah. He did not see himself as any righteous, pious man who was close to God. Against the sheer white light of God’s perfect holiness, he saw himself as the imperfect, sinful man that he was -- “a man of unclean lips,” he says. And he cries out, “Woe is me, for I an undone. I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”

That is why there is in our worship some prayer of confession, some admission of our shortcomings and need. Who are we to presume upon the presence of God, even when we have praised Him? Are we not pitiably small in the presence of his holiness? We see ourselves in a true and sober light. The more virtuous we seem to have become, the more subtle are our sins of pride. And so we come to confess our sins in prayers such as this: “Thou alone knowest how often we have sinned, in wandering from thy ways, in wasting thy gifts, in forgetting thy love.”

Confession is nothing new in Protestant worship. It is as old as religion itself. It is as old as Isaiah; it is found in John Calvin’s liturgical services. There is a humility in confessing our sins, which transports us into a sense of proportion, and puts us in our place as God’s children, seeking his grace. Through Jesus Christ’s teaching, sacrifice and atonement, we are assured of God’s pardon and forgiveness. And once more we know our restoration in Him.

As we return, week after week, we, with multitudes of other Christians around the world, see who we are, and what we are, because we have come into the presence of the Most High. We have geared our sights to His; we have confessed our own past and received pardon, and we are given hope for the future. But we dare look inward honestly at ourselves only after we have looked upward to God.

There is yet another step in Isaiah’s experience, and ours. (3) After looking upward, and inward, we are bidden to look outward. Remember what happened to the prophet? When he felt that his sin was pardoned, he heard something say to him, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for me?” Then said Isaiah, “Here am I; send me.”

We Americans are called activists; we are always ready to “do something.” Whatever it is, we are forever at it. We even become confused about the Christian life. We put so much stress on good works that we forget Who calls us to do good works. Hence we hear people say, “Well, he never goes to church, but he’s a good man, doing good deeds.”

We do not always quite know what we are busy about, but we’re busy!

When we come before God, see him in his glory and then see ourselves in contrast, we find out what He wants us to do, where He wants us to be used, how He puts our lives to work. The outward expression in service comes after the upward search and the inward examination.

And so in the service of worship there is instruction and meditation. Here is the word of God. What does he have to say to us today? Here is a sermon; is there a truth in it that I find is meant by God for me? And here is the closing hymn, where I dedicate myself once more to God. I receive a benediction and leave the house of God to let my worship be continued in my serving.

O come, let us worship! How great is this hour, each week. It is much greater than simply an exercise of passing around ideas and sharing moods. From prelude to postlude, as we sit, bow, stand with God’s children, in God’s house, on God’s day, we enter into the holy of holies.

First we empty out our full container of self and let God come in; the upward look in hymn of praise, Doxology, anthem. Then the inward look as we confess our sins, receive the reminder of God’s pardon, and know what God wants of us. The third act is to become equipped for living --- the outward look, as we hear His call, and heed his voice.

Now and then I have heard a worshipper say, at the close of Sunday service, “Now I know what I’m going to do” ---- and usually he does it well.

Three such hymns as we have in use today help us do it. The first: “Holy, Holy, Holy!” looks up to God in praise. The second: “Dear Lord and Father of mankind” looks in to self in examination. The third, “Lead on, O King Eternal” will look ahead to living as we step out as God’s children. The hymns are our prayer of praise, of examination, and of dedication. Indeed, the entire service is but a kind of prayer expressed in music, word and offering. We lift our voice and heart to God, and He answers us through Scripture, sermon and blessing.

You see, worship is not man-to-man. It is man-to-God-to-man. And the way we feel is secondary to the fact that we do worship. We do not need to search for God. He is not lost. He is waiting to come into our lives if we simply open our being to Him.

Our first obligation is to worship God. “The chief end of man,” in the words of an ancient catechism, “is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” And in our worship we may be sure that the vision, the peace, pardon and power will be ours.

Worship the Lord!

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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, September 14, 1958.