SUNDAY LESSON, 7/26/20
REVIVAL: ENCOUNTER WITH GOD
John 4:23-24, Isaiah 6:1-8
Imagine what it must have been like for the prophet Isaiah to enter God’s throne room and see the Lord sitting mightily on His throne surrounded by powerful angelic beings praising their Creator calling out to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty…”.
Do we not understand that is what worship is? Worship is entering the throne room of Almighty God and praising Him for who He is and what all He has done for mankind. But is that what worship is to us?
Many who go to church to worship on Sunday mornings do so out of a sense of Christian duty. We enter the doors of the sanctuary, sit on our pews, and for an hour-and-a-half go through the motions of worship: singing, praying, partaking the Lord’s Supper, and listening to a sermon. And then we get up, go home, and repeat the same boring routine the next Sunday morning. We do all that without even realizing that behind the ritual and routine of so-called “worship” is Almighty God sitting majestically on His throne being praised by angels. As we enter the sanctuary, we are invited to join in.
When Isaiah finally looked past the ritual of worship into the throne room of God, it changed him. Worship was never the same. His life was the never the same. That’s what happens when we worship in SPIRIT and in TRUTH. True worship encounters God. Where there is no encounter with God, there is no worship.
John 4:23-24
23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”
Isaiah 6:1-7
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. 2 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. 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 seraphim 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.”
