2.7.06 The worship room
Isaiah 6 Isaiah's Commission
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!"
You remember that over the last couple of weeks we have been working through our core values. The first week had to do with fellowship – or how we relate to God and to each other. Last week it was around the message we have received from God and how we are to share it.
I was planning to span this over 5 weeks. But I have decided not to but to do tonight and finish with next week. In a couple of months we will come back to it and have another look. I didn’t want to core value us out!
And you will also remember that we have been using the house image.
The place where we live that separates us off from a footy club or the guides, or the uni society that exists to drain every bar in town and boost Coopers profits.
Tonight we enter the third room of the house where we reside as the people of God. The worship room.
I did think about calling this the throne room, but sometimes people refer to that as the toilet – so that cancelled that one.
I also did think about calling it the TV room because we seem to be very good at giving the TV our undivided loyalty. But then just decided to stick with the worship room. Simplicity is good I think.
So the worship room is tonight’s big theme.
I reckon if I asked you to describe what worship is you might well say its coming here for an hour or so on Sunday singing some songs, saying some prayers, hearing the Bible read and a sermon preached and not forgetting the cup of coffee afterwards. And if you were to say that you would be exactly right with the first of our core values.
1. We place the highest priority on gathered worship.
If anybody has ever listened to me over a period of time you would know that there are a couple of themes for me that remerge over and over again. One of them is that it’s important to meet together as a community to celebrate what God has done for us.
And recently I have come to understand that there is a wide variety of emotions that need to be engaged in our gathered worship.
Ecclesiastes 3 gives us a fair list, many of which apply to our gathered worship times. Let me read it out for you.
A Time for Everything1 For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.2 A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.3 A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up.4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away.6 A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away.7 A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak.8 A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.
But the thing is that we should meet. And even though there is great admiration in society for people who stand alone against all the odds there is no such thing as solo Christians. The bible and the church have never endorsed Christianity in solitude. Of course there are periods where you need to be alone but then there must be a coming back together.
The book of Hebrews reminds us to “not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another”. (Heb 10:25). If you read carefully through the book of Acts you will see just how many times the early church got together to bring their praises to God, to break bread, to hear the apostles preach and to pray.
The story of the minister and the old Scott farmer.
Let me tell you why it is so important for us to be here together every week;
It strengthens us, it bonds us together.
It reminds us who we are – the church
It helps us reframe life from Gods perspective
It unites us in a common purpose and allows us fellowship.
It knocks our rough edges off – the chair in the glass beads.
It lets us hear the message, the story of faith, from a different perspective.
But more importantly it gives God his due. We take an hour and a bit out of our week to remember first things first that he is God and we are his creation. – we worship him for the simple fact that he is worthy of our worship. We remember creation, cross and consummation.
And in this gathering together we remember just whose presence we evoke when we come here.. Isaiah 6 our reading tonight. What could Isaiah say but woe is me.
You see primarily Worship is dangerous. You come close to The Holy God. You will not always hear what you want to hear or feel or experience what you think you should.
And so to reflect the nature of God we work hard to make this the best event we can. We have a value of being excellent to the best of our abilities in corporate worship. I and the team here are committed to making this holy hour the best representation of what God means to us that we can.
But there is more to our core value of worship than one hour a week. So here is our second core value in the worship room.
2 we have a commitment to worship that permeates all aspects of our lives.
(there are a number of components to this one)
I used to be really worried as a kid. I had this huge dilemma on my hands. Because my parents would tell me about heaven. That it was a place where God was. The most wonderful place on earth, all the best things that you ever imagined were there. And I used to love that and really look forward to being there. But then the problems would start because they would say that when we got to heaven we would worship all the time. I cannot tell you how much of a tight spot that would put me in.
Because I did truly want to go to heaven but I didn’t like the one hour on a Sunday that I called worship. I didn’t like the songs, I didn’t like the seats, I didn’t like having to be quiet, I didn’t like being indoors, I didn’t like the moth ball smelling old ladies that used to rub my hair and tell me how big I had gotten but above all I didn’t like the sermons my dad used to preach!!
I wanted to go to heaven but I didn’t want to worship for the rest of eternity!!!
Finally I discovered that the definition of worship was far more than one hurried hour where my dads talking filled half of it!
Worship encompasses all of our life. Our whole life is worship. If you want to follow Jesus then you have no other option but to think this way. And that’s not a comment I make often.
Listen to a well known passage from Romans 12:1 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sister, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – (why) this is your spiritual act of worship.” This implies that all of life is about worship – about Giving God the glory.
You see, to portion out our life into different segments is the great danger of the Christian life. There really is no such things as a Sunday Christian. You don’t clock your Christian life on when you wall in the door and then off again when you walk about. We are followers of Jesus when we fill in our tax returns, go to the footy, when we drive, when we work, pay or bills, speak with the Indian calling about the new mobile phone deal, play, sleep, watch TV, hire DVDs’ go on the internet and every single other activity that humans can do.
This church has long had the slogan “a 7 day a week church” maybe we should think in terms of “7 day a week worshipers”. All of our life as Christians exists to bring glory to God.
The thing is though there is more to this than meets the eye. to live your life where God is in every part - does something to us. To live your life in an attitude of worship changes us and in the process transforms us. So as part of this core value I want to affirm that growth is the norm is for every Christian. People who have a passion for God, who worship with their every breath have a hope for life that can been seen by everyone. They have something there that stands out from the crowd. Its like they have been in the room with the living God who’s train fills the temple and their life has been touched with the coal from the alter.
Don’t you want to be like that!? I know I do.
My friends tomorrow morning when you wake up ask God to help you be a 24/7 worshipper. As God to help you pray, ask God to give you eyes to see where he is working in the world.
But not only does it make a difference to you but it makes a difference to us You see I suspect that our corporate worship reflects the hearts of the individuals. The quality of what we have here in part comes from what we bring collectively.
My friends let me encourage you to hunger for God, an enthusiasm for life, faithfulness in prayer and a life that worships every single minute of the day. And let me call to you every Sunday night to gather here and be the church.
Isaiah 6 Isaiah's Commission
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!"
You remember that over the last couple of weeks we have been working through our core values. The first week had to do with fellowship – or how we relate to God and to each other. Last week it was around the message we have received from God and how we are to share it.
I was planning to span this over 5 weeks. But I have decided not to but to do tonight and finish with next week. In a couple of months we will come back to it and have another look. I didn’t want to core value us out!
And you will also remember that we have been using the house image.
The place where we live that separates us off from a footy club or the guides, or the uni society that exists to drain every bar in town and boost Coopers profits.
Tonight we enter the third room of the house where we reside as the people of God. The worship room.
I did think about calling this the throne room, but sometimes people refer to that as the toilet – so that cancelled that one.
I also did think about calling it the TV room because we seem to be very good at giving the TV our undivided loyalty. But then just decided to stick with the worship room. Simplicity is good I think.
So the worship room is tonight’s big theme.
I reckon if I asked you to describe what worship is you might well say its coming here for an hour or so on Sunday singing some songs, saying some prayers, hearing the Bible read and a sermon preached and not forgetting the cup of coffee afterwards. And if you were to say that you would be exactly right with the first of our core values.
1. We place the highest priority on gathered worship.
If anybody has ever listened to me over a period of time you would know that there are a couple of themes for me that remerge over and over again. One of them is that it’s important to meet together as a community to celebrate what God has done for us.
And recently I have come to understand that there is a wide variety of emotions that need to be engaged in our gathered worship.
Ecclesiastes 3 gives us a fair list, many of which apply to our gathered worship times. Let me read it out for you.
A Time for Everything1 For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven.2 A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest.3 A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to build up.4 A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance.5 A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away.6 A time to search and a time to quit searching. A time to keep and a time to throw away.7 A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak.8 A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace.
But the thing is that we should meet. And even though there is great admiration in society for people who stand alone against all the odds there is no such thing as solo Christians. The bible and the church have never endorsed Christianity in solitude. Of course there are periods where you need to be alone but then there must be a coming back together.
The book of Hebrews reminds us to “not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another”. (Heb 10:25). If you read carefully through the book of Acts you will see just how many times the early church got together to bring their praises to God, to break bread, to hear the apostles preach and to pray.
The story of the minister and the old Scott farmer.
Let me tell you why it is so important for us to be here together every week;
It strengthens us, it bonds us together.
It reminds us who we are – the church
It helps us reframe life from Gods perspective
It unites us in a common purpose and allows us fellowship.
It knocks our rough edges off – the chair in the glass beads.
It lets us hear the message, the story of faith, from a different perspective.
But more importantly it gives God his due. We take an hour and a bit out of our week to remember first things first that he is God and we are his creation. – we worship him for the simple fact that he is worthy of our worship. We remember creation, cross and consummation.
And in this gathering together we remember just whose presence we evoke when we come here.. Isaiah 6 our reading tonight. What could Isaiah say but woe is me.
You see primarily Worship is dangerous. You come close to The Holy God. You will not always hear what you want to hear or feel or experience what you think you should.
And so to reflect the nature of God we work hard to make this the best event we can. We have a value of being excellent to the best of our abilities in corporate worship. I and the team here are committed to making this holy hour the best representation of what God means to us that we can.
But there is more to our core value of worship than one hour a week. So here is our second core value in the worship room.
2 we have a commitment to worship that permeates all aspects of our lives.
(there are a number of components to this one)
I used to be really worried as a kid. I had this huge dilemma on my hands. Because my parents would tell me about heaven. That it was a place where God was. The most wonderful place on earth, all the best things that you ever imagined were there. And I used to love that and really look forward to being there. But then the problems would start because they would say that when we got to heaven we would worship all the time. I cannot tell you how much of a tight spot that would put me in.
Because I did truly want to go to heaven but I didn’t like the one hour on a Sunday that I called worship. I didn’t like the songs, I didn’t like the seats, I didn’t like having to be quiet, I didn’t like being indoors, I didn’t like the moth ball smelling old ladies that used to rub my hair and tell me how big I had gotten but above all I didn’t like the sermons my dad used to preach!!
I wanted to go to heaven but I didn’t want to worship for the rest of eternity!!!
Finally I discovered that the definition of worship was far more than one hurried hour where my dads talking filled half of it!
Worship encompasses all of our life. Our whole life is worship. If you want to follow Jesus then you have no other option but to think this way. And that’s not a comment I make often.
Listen to a well known passage from Romans 12:1 “Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sister, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – (why) this is your spiritual act of worship.” This implies that all of life is about worship – about Giving God the glory.
You see, to portion out our life into different segments is the great danger of the Christian life. There really is no such things as a Sunday Christian. You don’t clock your Christian life on when you wall in the door and then off again when you walk about. We are followers of Jesus when we fill in our tax returns, go to the footy, when we drive, when we work, pay or bills, speak with the Indian calling about the new mobile phone deal, play, sleep, watch TV, hire DVDs’ go on the internet and every single other activity that humans can do.
This church has long had the slogan “a 7 day a week church” maybe we should think in terms of “7 day a week worshipers”. All of our life as Christians exists to bring glory to God.
The thing is though there is more to this than meets the eye. to live your life where God is in every part - does something to us. To live your life in an attitude of worship changes us and in the process transforms us. So as part of this core value I want to affirm that growth is the norm is for every Christian. People who have a passion for God, who worship with their every breath have a hope for life that can been seen by everyone. They have something there that stands out from the crowd. Its like they have been in the room with the living God who’s train fills the temple and their life has been touched with the coal from the alter.
Don’t you want to be like that!? I know I do.
My friends tomorrow morning when you wake up ask God to help you be a 24/7 worshipper. As God to help you pray, ask God to give you eyes to see where he is working in the world.
But not only does it make a difference to you but it makes a difference to us You see I suspect that our corporate worship reflects the hearts of the individuals. The quality of what we have here in part comes from what we bring collectively.
My friends let me encourage you to hunger for God, an enthusiasm for life, faithfulness in prayer and a life that worships every single minute of the day. And let me call to you every Sunday night to gather here and be the church.
posted by Jonathan at 4:30 PM
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