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Missions, Worship

Worship Matters Part Five: True Worship Motivates Mission

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God has never redeemed anyone to complacency Tweet this!!

If the only purpose of your salvation was to get you to heaven, God would have raptured you up to heaven the moment he made you alive in him. Instead, He has saved you to a purpose! Maybe you don’t know what this purpose is? Well, news flash: if you’re a Christian, you’re sent…if you’re a Christian, you’re to be on mission!

This passage in Isaiah is a great picture of this sending. Isaiah’s sins are atoned for and immediately he is sent. And he is a willing volunteer! When we encounter God in true worship, we will be motivated to heartfelt service. Our aim is to please the One who enlisted us (II Tim. 2:4)!

True worship always motivates mission. Any time you catch a glimpse of the glorious holiness of the Savior, it is a natural response for you to desire to long for others to experience him as well. God is worthy of your worship; He is worthy of your church’s worship; He is worthy of your friends/family/coworkers’ worship; He is worthy of the worship of the nations! Your desire should be to see them worshiping the same Savior!

Isaiah was good about not forgetting his fellow Israelites. He included them is his confession of sin (“I dwell among a people of unclean lips”) and he included them in his missions efforts (“Send me!”). He wanted his fellow Israelites to encounter this amazing God the same way he had. Unfortunately, the message he was tasked with preaching to them was less than encouraging (see 6:9-13).

John Piper has a great explanation of the motivation for missions. His says in his book Let the Nations Be Glad, “Missions exists because worship does not Tweet this!.” This is a great understanding and explanation of why we do missions. We don’t do missions because missions is our main purpose. We do missions because worship is the main purpose of humanity and not everyone is worshiping yet!

There is a beautiful cycle that God has established in moving his disobedient people toward being true worshipers. It begins with a revelation of God (“I saw the LORD”). The revelation of God’s holiness leads to repentance (“Woe is me!”). Repentance leads to worship (“Here am I!”). And worship leads to mission (“Send me!”). The cycle repeats because missions is the propagation of the revelation of God!

REVELATION –> REPENTANCE –> WORSHIP –> MISSION

One day, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.” On that day, “every knee shall bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Until the glory of the LORD fills the earth as the waters cover the sea, our response is “Here am I! Send me!”Tweet this!

How do we do this? Here are three levels of application:

True Corporate Worship: The Church that Worships Together, Witnesses Together

In your church services, may your worship be in Spirit and truth, and may that in turn motivate you to do missions together until the earth is covered in worshipers!

True Individual Worship: Private Worship Motivates Personal Evangelism

May your private devotional life be so passionate that it ignites a fire in your bones that cannot be quenched until the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD!

True Family Worship: Family Worship Produces a Picture of the Gospel for the World to See

Did you know that marriage was created as an image of what God’s relationship with the Church is supposed to be? If marriage is the shadow, Christ and the Church is the vignette. Your marriage and your family are to mirror the gospel to all those around you. When they see your unconditional love for your wife, husband, they see Christ’s unfailing love for his unfaithful Bride. When they see your willing submission to your husband, wife, they see the Church’s willing obedience to her Head, Jesus Christ. When the world sees your nurturing love and discipline of your children, they see God’s love for His people, for God disciplines the ones he loves.

Go to “Worship Matters Part One:  Seeking True Worshipers“

Go to “Worship Matters Part Four:  True Worship Is Jesus-Driven“

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Godliness, Worship

Worship Matters Part Three: True Worship Requires Repentance

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In Isaiah’s vision in chapter six, the heavenly temple is quite literally bursting with the glory of God. The train of God’s robe was already filling the temple, indicating God’s majestic glory. And if that was n’t indication enough, as soon as the seraphim begin to shout God’s praises back and forth to one another, the foundation of the heavenly temple itself begins to shake and smoke fills the temple. This place is literally bursting at the seams with God’s glory!

And there, in the midst of it all, feeling completely out of place, is little Isaiah. He knows the truth. He knows that he doesn’t deserve to be in this glorious place. He doesn’t deserve to be in the presence of the glory of God. He knows that he should be utterly destroyed in the glorious presence of this thrice-holy God. He doesn’t belong. Simply being in the presence of this holy God demonstrates very clearly to him the stark contrast. He is a sinner.

Just like the foundation of the temple, so Isaiah himself trembles at the holiness of this great God. He is so struck with the holiness of God and his own sinfulness that he is only left with one option:  repentance.

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!
– Isaiah 6:5 –

True worship of the holy God of the Bible requires confession and repentance Tweet this!

When Isaiah says “I am a man of unclean lips,” he is indicating a deeper reality of his heart. Jesus said, “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Luke 6:45). Your mouth is directly connected to your heart. Whatever is in your heart is going to come out of your mouth. This is why Jesus also said that it’s not what goes into a person, but “what comes out of a person is what defiles him,” (Mark 7:20). The mouth is the conduit of the heart. Your mouth is the litmus test of your heart Tweet this!.

So when Isaiah confessed that he was a man of unclean lips, he was confessing that he was sinful to the core. He saw more clearly than he ever had before that he was sinful at heart. Sinful at root. David had a similar vision of his sinfulness after being rebuked by the prophet Nathan:

For I know my transgressions
and my sin is ever before me.
Against you and you only have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.
– Psalm 51:3-5 –

We are no better than Isaiah. We are no better than David. We are just as sinful, just as wicked. If you desire to worship God in all his glorious holiness, you must learn this about yourself, confess your utter sinfulness, and repent. Any attempt to worship God without repentance is not only rejected by God, but is an abomination to him Tweet this!.

The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD,
but the prayer of the upright is acceptable to him.
– Proverbs 15:8 –

True worship requires repentance. And worship is the only thing that will not get boring throughout the endless ages of eternity. You ever wonder why you get bored and dissatisfied with things so quickly? Why does that new toy that brought you so much joy at first now just sit in the closet or garage? Why is it that nothing fully satisfies you? C.S. Lewis describes this phenomenon well:

If we find ourselves with a desire
that nothing in this world can satisfy,
the most probable explanation is that
we were made for another world.
– Mere Christianity –

Worship is why you were created, only thing that will fully satisfy you, and worship requires your repentance Tweet this!.

Here are three applications:

True corporate worship:  Corporate worship requires corporate repentance.

Our worship gatherings must include an aspect of “we are a people of unclean lips.” When we get together to worship God, if we are not struck with God’s holiness to the extent that we are driven to repentance, we are not experiencing God’s holiness in a tangible enough way.

True individual worship:  Individual worship requires repentance.

For help in this area, two passages that are extremely helpful are Psalm 32 and Psalm 51. Use these psalms as templates for prayer. They will walk you through how to appropriately respond to God’s Word in repentance.

True family worship:  Family worship requires repentance.

When a family is committed to repentance and reconciliation, there is great joy in that family. A family that is constantly emphasizing forgiveness and biblical communication is at peace.  Even when there is sin (and there always will be on this earth), that family knows that repentance will come, forgiveness will follow, and reconciliation will win the day.

It brings incredible joy to know that even when your family sins against you, you can rest in the hope that they will ask for forgiveness and you will forgive; or when you sin against your family, you will ask for forgiveness and they will forgive you.

And that’s what the gospel is all about: the joy of reconciliation.

Go to “Worship Matters Part Two:  True Worship Begins with the Bible“

Go to “Worship Matters Part Four:  True Worship Is Jesus-Driven“