You Might Be a Healthy Christian If... Worship is More than a Sunday Feeling

So I have these books in my library.

They're two little thin books, and they're two volumes of a set that a Nazarene

pastor by the name of Stan Toler put together.

They're actually cartoon books, or just little comics, little cartoons,

and each one of them, each page has a little cartoon.

And the title of the books are, is, well, the volumes are, You Might Be a Preacher

If, and there's different things in there. You Might Be a Preacher If this and that and stuff.

I want to share some of those with you this morning, but the first one I want

to share with you is a couple weeks ago when I started this series about You

Might Be a Healthy Christian If,

I told you the story about Christianus and Timotheus, the bus driver and the

preacher, preacher—you know, artificial names, made-up names,

obviously, that weren't true, you know—and I told you about those.

So the first one of these, you might be a preacher if, happens—has to do with

what I told you in that story.

You might be a preacher if people sleep while you're talking.

So none of that today. No sleeping while you're talking.

So here's some others. You might be a preacher if it's your job to comfort the

afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

You might be a preacher if you jiggle all the commode handles at the church before you leave. Yeah.

You might be a preacher if you're very irresponsible person.

If anything goes wrong, you're probably responsible.

You might be a preacher if you've ever received an anonymous U-Haul gift certificate.

Haven't got one yet? Just saying. You might be a preacher if you're leading

the church into the 21st century, but you don't know what you're preaching on Sunday.

You might be a preacher if you've had roast for Sunday dinner.

You might be a preacher if you've ever been roasted at Sunday dinner.

You might be a preacher if taking a nap on Sunday afternoon is a spiritual experience.

You might be a preacher if you've ever been tempted to stock the baptistry with catfish.

You might be a preacher if you exercise religiously.

Bible on his head. You might be a preacher if you've ever been asked,

so what do you do the rest of the week?

You might be a preacher if your boss won't give you Sundays off.

You might be a preacher if you only have two kinds, you only like two kinds of pie, hot or cold.

You might be a preacher if instead of pigging out, you partake of nourishment.

You might be a preacher if you overhear the head deacon praying,

Lord, you keep them humble and we'll keep them poor.

You might be a preacher if you've ever asked for the clergy discount at a garage sale.

You might be a preacher if you get paid weekly.

And you might be a a preacher if you get paid weekly.

You might be a preacher if instead of getting ticked off, you get grieved in your spirit.

You might be a preacher if you've ever wanted to give the sound man a little feedback of your own.

You might be a preacher if you've ever been asked where to plug in the Amplified Bible.

You might be a preacher if you've ever spoken for free and were worth every penny of it.

You might be a preacher if you've ever dreamed you were preaching only to awaken

and discover you really were.

You might be a preacher if you've secretly wanted the worship team to drench

you with Gatorade after a particularly good sermon.

You might be a preacher if your sermons have a happy ending.

Everyone's happy when it ends.

And in conclusion, the words, and in conclusion, mean absolutely nothing to you.

So you might be a preacher if, and you'll be understanding that our message

today is, because you might be a healthy Christian if worship is more than a Sunday feeling.

So have you ever been hungry? I mean, really, really hungry.

Some of you are thinking, yeah, I'm hungry right now, and I wish the pastor

would hurry up and skip his sermon,

and then let's get the communion done so we can get out of here and go beat

the Baptist to the restaurant before we get out on our fall color trip.

Have you ever had those hunger pains deep down in your stomach that cause a

gnawing, burning sensation, making a loud, growling noise, and progressively

making you weak and nauseous?

You have that feeling that if you don't get something to eat right now,

that you're going to starve to death on the spot.

The French have an old saying that provides insight for worship.

It says this, a good meal ought to begin with hunger.

It's hard to even enjoy a gourmet meal when you're not hungry.

It's hard to go to a buffet when you're not hungry.

It's like when you go to a buffet, you go to get your money's worth, right?

And when the Chinese guy at the Chinese restaurant is telling you,

we eat no more, you go home. them.

You know you've been there long enough, but you find out that you realize how

much more hungry you are, you eat more, you're prepared more for the meal.

And if you are beside yourself with hunger, even meatloaf with sawdust tastes good.

When I was growing up, I traveled with my dad when he was superintendent.

We went to different places, and at that time, meatloaf was cheap to make, okay?

Part of it was because the pastor's wives at every church we went to on Sundays,

when we were over at their house, they would have meatloaf for dinner,

and they had gone down to the lumberyard just the day before and gotten the

leftover sawdust to mix in with the—no, I'm kidding. They really hadn't.

But to a kid, that's what you thought anyway.

But you might be hungry if even meatloaf tastes hungry.

How much better do our potlucks taste when we're really hungry?

You know, you want to taste a little bit of everything, and yet if you're not

really hungry, it's kind of like, you know, why go through?

And yet when we approach worship with a hunger, with a need to be filled up

with the presence of God, an appetite to meet, we will always be filled up and satisfied.

I remember when we attended the Church of the Nazarene in Miami,

Oklahoma, we used to have a saying there that we were to come to church prayed

up and ready for a visit with God.

But when we come to worship filled up with our own self-sufficiency,

acting as if we have a handle on everything, as we know what everything's going

to happen, and if we're full of preoccupied thoughts, we probably won't experience

meaningful for worship at all, will we?

In fact, I remember one gentleman, it's not the one you know,

it's not the one you're thinking of, but I remember one gentleman,

one church, every Sunday morning he would come to me before the church,

before the service, and talk about things that needed to be done in the building.

And during the service, I could see him looking around at everything,

and after the service, he'd come back to me, he says, do you know we've got

cracks in the ceiling and all this kind of stuff.

And I'm like, what were you doing for the last hour besides looking at the cracks in the ceiling?

You know, when we come to church, we're to be ready for a visit with God.

We're to be ready to encounter the living God.

We're to be prayed up and ready for a visit with God.

Good worship begins with a deep, intense hunger for God's presence.

When was the last time we, you, me, all of us, have felt this just annoying,

gut-wrenching feeling that we need to know that God is present?

Morning's message is you might be a healthy Christian if worship is more than

a Sunday feeling. I want to have us read in Isaiah chapter 6, verses 1 through 13.

Isaiah 6 · chapter mention

Isaiah's Commission 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 with 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 flamboyant.

Whine, 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 said, 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. mighty.

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 I am, send me.

He said, go and tell this people, be ever hearing, but never understanding,

be ever seeing, but never perceiving.

Make the heart of this people calloused, make their ears dull, and close their eyes.

Otherwise, they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears.

Understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.

Then I said, for how long, Lord? And he answered,

until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted,

and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away,

and the land is utterly forsaken, and though a tenth remains in the land,

it will again be laid waste,

but as the terebinth and oak leave stumps when they are cut down,

so the holy seed will be the stump in the land.

Many years ago, there was a science fiction movie titled Close Encounters of

the Third Kind, in which the townspeople encountered space aliens face-to-face.

In this passage of Scripture this morning, we witness the story of the faithful

prophet Isaiah encountering the Lord Almighty face-to-face in a vision.

Whenever we see God lifted up and exalted with everything else,

over everything else, worship ensues when we see the God of the universe lifted

up over everything we have, even over all of our idolatry-type things that we

worship today, like money.

We know that God is the one over all.

Worship is an encounter with God. It's not just something we do to go out there.

It's a back and forth worshiping and talking with and relating with the God of the the universe,

and as we will come to see, you might be a healthy Christian if worship is an

everyday encounter with God.

Do you see anything interesting in the passage that we've read about Isaiah's

description of the place where he is when he has this vision?

There isn't any description of the place where he was when he had his vision,

but there is a description of the place where his vision is,

what his vision is about.

Isaiah tells us nothing about where he is when he's receiving a vision,

but he tells us about the vision of being in the throne room of God.

You see anything interesting about the day that Isaiah received his vision?

Does it tell us the day? No. We have nothing to tell us what day it was.

He wasn't in there on the Sabbath. We don't know that it could

have been we don't know where else we have we know

that it was in the year that king Uzziah died or another name for Uzziah was

Azariah and we we see that in the history of this the Isaiah was a prophet during

the time of two or three kings rules and Azariah was one of those.

But we don't see anything about when specifically this took place.

It appears that Isaiah had his encounter with God wherever he was on any given day of the week.

He could have an encounter with God, a vision from God, wherever he was.

It didn't have to be in the throne room. It didn't have to be at church.

It didn't have to be in a tent blind out watching the colors and listening to

the squirrels and talking back to the birds. No.

Not really. Isaiah was in communication with God and in worship of him so continually

that visions were a natural part of his experience with God.

Can you imagine that? Being so in tune with the Heavenly Father that every word,

every day, you're getting an encounter, another encounter with him.

He was not bound to worship only in the temple on the Sabbath day.

How often do we come to church on Sunday morning hoping to receive something

from the pastor and from the Lord when we haven't spent any time in worship all week long?

We come to church on Sunday morning to be built back up from being beaten down during the week.

Instead, wouldn't it be awesome if we We came to church on one Sunday morning

celebrating what God had done in and through us the week before, ministering to others.

Can you believe what that would change in our worship services around the United

States and around this world if our Sunday mornings were celebration of what

God is doing all the time right now?

You've heard it said before, and I'll say it again, our corporate worship time

on Sunday is only as good as the synergy of our private times with God on Monday through Saturdays.

If our private times in worship are meaningless and non-existent,

then our corporate worship is also meaningless and non-existent.

We're just here to greet with each other and have some donuts and some coffee

and sing some songs and go home the same way we came.

We can't experience the presence of God together on Sunday morning if we're

not in his presence privately all week long.

A legalistic Christian sets apart one day for worship. The faith-filled life

says every day is the Lord's day.

When we worship God privately every day, it will change our corporate worship

and revival will happen.

And when we are more engaged in corporate worship, then it will change our Monday,

our Tuesday, our Wednesday, our Thursday, our Friday, and our Saturday,

and keep repeating that over and over and over again.

So when we see Isaiah experiencing and encountering the living God in the sixth

chapter of Isaiah's book, we realize that he's experiencing three very real senses.

The first one is this, he's experiencing the sense of God's presence.

When the presence of God is seen, it is an awesome, it's a holy,

it's a terrifying thing in its power.

If we understand and see what Isaiah saw in the year that King Uzziah died,

I saw the Lord seated in the temple, seated on his throne, high and lifted up.

And it says, the train of his robe filled the temple.

The train of his robe refers to the righteousness of God. And when he saw God,

it was a fearful thing. And what did he say after that?

Sense of God's presence. What did he say after that? Woe is me.

I'm a man of unclean lip among a people of unclean lips, and yet I have seen the Lord.

His first word out of his mouth was, first words was, woe is me.

When we experience the presence of God, when we are in the presence of God,

we understand the power and the presence of God, and we realize who we are in that.

Isaiah was depressed, was disappointed, was disheartened, was dejected over

the king Uzziah's death, and probably over the unruliness of the Hebrew people.

He thought, why am I doing this job as prophet?

You ever wonder why you're doing the job you're doing? So what did he do?

He sought the face of the Lord.

He didn't have to drum up or invoke God's presence.

He just waited for God to show up, he sat there and he waited for God to give him a revelation.

And when God came, it was far more than he had ever expected or anticipated.

When God shows up in his full presence in your life, you cannot anticipate what's going to happen.

Because if you do, it's not him that's doing, it's you. If you are invoking

God's presence, it's you that's doing it.

But when God shows up in his power and his presence, you'll know it.

The sight of the Lord must have been disheartening, must have been breathtaking.

This masterful being seated high on a throne so that everything mortal had to

look up to see him, says his train or his glory filled the temple so that there

was no room for anyone to stand.

Sight must have been awesome and terrifying at the same time because the seraphs

who were worshiping him had to cover their faces from the overwhelming glory and Shekinah glory,

the shining that was there, and they had to cover their feet in his presence

because their feet were probably dirty from going out in their travels to spread the message.

Oftentimes we think that there were only two seraphs' presence,

but the Scripture doesn't say that.

In fact, there may have been thousands of seraphim present that day,

because it says the sound of their voices shook the temple.

Now, I remember many, many, many, many years ago, I mean like 100 years ago,

maybe not quite, but my first Promise Keeper clergy event,

I had just entered the pastorate, I was an assistant pastor at the Church of

Michigan, and the National Clergy Conference conference for Promise Keepers

was going to be happening in Atlanta,

Georgia, and my pastor said, senior pastor said, you're going with us whether you want to or not.

So we went, and I'll tell you when we went into that amphitheater or that arena,

Coliseum there in Atlanta, it was the Georgia Dome.

When the sound of the voices of the pastors began to sing and even began to

shout praises and even began to pray at one time, everybody praying at one time,

literally you could feel the stadium vibrating where you were standing up in

the upper tiers of the Colosseum.

You could feel it vibrating. So I can't imagine what this was like for Isaiah

to be in this vision of this temple of God and seeing this temple where God

was there and the seraphim were calling out and singing and praising God so

loudly that the doorposts and the thresholds shook.

Now, that might have been terrifying, even at that point.

But we see that Isaiah experiences it as a sense of absolute awe.

Whatever the case, Isaiah had never experienced anything like it before. Right?

I've heard many people say that if God were to physically show up in their church,

they would shout and holler and dance. And you see videos of people doing that.

But I tell you what, if God were to truly show up in our presence,

if God were to come in his manifold presence in among us, I don't think we could

do anything but fall on our faces like Isaiah said, did, and shout out, woe to me.

I'm a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips, and yet mine eyes

hath seen the living Lord.

The artist Albert Thorlundsen finished his famous sculpture of Christ.

Jesus' arms were stretched out and his head was bowed way over.

He invited a friend over to see his finished work. The friend admired the work

for a moment, then he critiqued it, saying, I can't see the face of Christ because his head is bent over.

And the artist said, yeah, I did that on purpose.

You see, if you want to see the face of Jesus, you have to get down on your knees and look up.

Friends, if we want to be in the presence of God, if we want to experience the

presence of God, we have to be on our knees looking up.

The second thing we see of this is it gives us a sense of our own sinfulness.

When Isaiah was engrossed in worship, he realized his need, this need to get on his knees.

When he sensed his own sinfulness, when he saw the awesomeness and holiness

of God, he saw how much he lacked in himself.

He cried out, "'Woe is me, and I am absolutely ruined and damaged.

I am undone.'".

Undone means to be raveled. You finish a project, knitting or sewing or whatever, and it's done.

But to undone something is ripping it apart.

And at this point, Isaiah is saying, I am absolutely undone. I am torn apart by this.

One of the problems with us today is that we don't have a complete sense of

the purity and holiness of God.

Everything is tempered by our vision of those around us.

Isaiah saw himself compared to the Hebrews around him, and it didn't appear

too bad. He thought, I'm not so bad.

But when he came face to face with God, even his own wickedness became quickly

apparent to him. Woe is me.

I am absolutely ruined and rattled and torn out.

When we see how great and awesome and pure God is, we'll see how unclean we

are. everyone around us is flawed and sinful and blemished, but so are we.

And when we look at ourselves and we allow God to use his surgical knife to

look in with us and see if there's any wicked way in us and cleanse us from our unrighteousness,

we begin to realize how meaningless and sorry we are.

And then when we encounter God face to face, we're compelled to fall on our faces in confession.

And the third sense that Isaiah had in this is a sense of responsibility and servanthood.

May acknowledge God's holiness and we may adore him and we may come and pray

our prayers to God and think everything is great for us, but that's only partial worship.

Partial worship is just giving us, giving God what we have right now.

We may go on to confess our sinfulness. Our worship is still incomplete.

Worship is only complete when we continue by stepping up to the plate and presenting

ourselves in service to the Almighty God.

What do we say? What do I say at the close of every service now? Remember?

Go now and, yeah, go and serve a world that desperately needs Jesus.

That is our spiritual act of worship.

Isaiah said, Here am I, Lord, send me, when the question was given to him.

God had not yet told him where he was going or who he would be going to or what he would be doing.

God just said, who is there that can I send?

He didn't say, this is what I want you to do. Are you willing to do this?

Or who can I send to go do this? He said, who will go for me?

And Isaiah cried out, here am I, Lord.

Send me. When we come to that place where we experience the presence of God

and the power of God and our own sinfulness and realize then we have a responsibility

to carry on out and we fall on our knees and say, Lord,

here am I, send me. That's the completion of that worship.

Worship of God, when we come full circle and go out and doing that.

Isaiah was in no way perfect or worthy, but he's willing and faithful.

If worship doesn't change us, then we really haven't worshiped.

If our being saved doesn't transform us and change our lives,

then we really haven't been saved.

If it doesn't create a new person within us, we really aren't following Jesus, right?

How many people do you know who complain about their church or pastor because they're not being fed?

When Jesus was giving living water to the Samaritan people at the well,

he taught his disciples that we are fed by serving others the good news of God.

We aren't fed by what we get on Sunday morning. We're fed by what we're doing, giving to them.

He says, I have food you you don't even know about.

When they asked him, you know, you need to come aside and eat,

he says, I'm being fed, because I'm doing the work of the kingdom,

I'm doing the work of God.

Romans 12, 1 says this, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy,

to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God.

This is your reasonable and spiritual act of worship.

The Greek words for worship and servitude are almost synonymous in Scripture

Scripture, coming from the same exact root word.

And when we enter into God's presence, we see our flaws, we confess,

and we repent, and we do what God wants us to do on a daily basis.

And it's not just singing praises to God, it's not just worshiping by reading

Scripture, it's not worshiping by praying, it's worshiping by serving and telling

others what God is doing on an active basis in our life.

So let's pretend I'm chief executive officer of a company and you're my vice president.

Going to Europe to start expanding our business, and I'm leaving you in charge

of the operations here in my absence.

I'll send you an email every week to let you know what I want done while I'm

gone. After about six months in Europe, I return home.

The grass and the weeds are overgrown in front of the office.

The bushes are untrimmed. Everything is horribly unclean. The windows on the

doors are horribly dirty.

The receptionist is sitting at the front desk, popping her gum while she's doing

her nails while listening to her favorite rap music on the radio.

The carpets are filthy and the trash baskets are overflowing.

I asked the receptionist where the vice president is.

She said, down the hall, as she's chomping on her gum. I bump into you in the

hallway coming out of a side room where you've just finished a chess game with the sales manager.

I tell you that I need to see you in my office, which I find out has been turned

into a TV room so the employees can be entertained.

Didn't you get my letters? I said, oh yeah, we got every one of them.

In fact, we have a letter study every week on Sunday mornings and on Wednesday nights.

We do it in the library of the place.

We have these letter studies. We read your letters word for word,

and we analyzed the definition of the words.

We discussed them quite thoroughly, and some of us even memorized a few of the sentences you wrote.

We made photocopies so that everyone could have a file copy and a notebook on their desk.

And I say, okay, so you received my letters, you read them and analyzed them,

you discussed them, even memorize part of them. But what did you do about them?

What did you do about what I asked you to do? Do?

We didn't do anything, but we sure felt good studying your letters.

Depart from me, wicked servant, for I never knew you.

Worship is more than a Sunday feeling. It is an everyday encounter with a holy

God that draws us to confess and be transformed for service.

Bible studies are great, but if we aren't transformed, they're just word studies.

So how is it with your worship?