The model of worship which is often assumed is taken from the theater. In this model, the pastor is the performer, God is the prompter, and the congregation is the critic. A family came home from Sunday worship and spent the lunchtime dissecting the service. They criticized the lay leader's dress, the choir's anthem, the choice of hymns, and the pastor's sermon. At last the youngest boy spoke up, "Well if you ask me, I think it was a pretty good show for a dollar."

What this boy said is very true. We get out of worship what we invest in worship -- and not just financially. It is not the pastor as performer, God as prompter, and congregation as critic. Rather it is congregation as performer, pastor as prompter, and God as critic. Worship requires our total involved best as performers and as hearers. Worship, even worship in preaching, cannot be a spectator sport.

Our Sunday worship is structured on the pattern of the sixth chapter of Isaiah. From time to time we have used these sections as headings in our order of worship.

(Read Isaiah 6:1-7)

First, God calls us to Himself!

This heading reminds us of is that we are here at the invitation of God Himself. We are not a voluntary society of do﷓gooders but a family of chosen disciples. We are not even a family because we necessarily like each other and always get along -- although, hopefully, we do. We are a family because we have been bound together in one body by the imitative of Jesus Christ.

Because God has called us as one family, it is very appropriate that we greet each other as we come to worship. One thing that characterizes our congregation is the abundance of “happy chatter” before worship. One guest compared the coffee fellowship between services to a party. That’s great!

But also take time to prepare yourself -- and to allow others to prepare themselves. Worship awareness involves being open to those about us and also being open to God in private prayer. There is a time for both.

Second, “we worship Him.”

Worship begins with a recognition of who God is -- "holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory." Worship continues with a recognition of who we are -- "I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips."

This speaking and response is the essence of worship. We speak to God in our corporate and individual prayers, our music, and our common confessions of faith. But in these things we are not just telling God who He is -- like He needs a reminder. We are also clarifying our own focus on who God is -- so that we are truly worshiping God and not just adoring our own ideas about God.

If we truly hear what liturgy like our call to worship is saying and don't just repeat by rote as we sometimes repeat the Lord's Prayer, it has much to teach us. And as our focus on God is clarified we also learn more about ourselves. We begin to measure ourselves not against each other but against the holiness of God. Confession and the receiving of pardon is the natural result -- "then one of the seraphim flew to me, with a burning coal in his hand which he had taken from the altar with tongs. And he touched my mouth with it and said, 'behold, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin is forgiven.'

Third, God speaks to us and we respond!

(Read 6:8)

There are three ways which God normally speaks to us in worship.

First, God speaks to us in the sacraments. Next Sunday we will look at the sacrament of baptism. The following Sunday we will focus on the Lord’s Supper. Second, God speaks to us through the scripture. The Bible says that the word of God is sharper than a two﷓edged sword -- piercing through to the heart. Expect God to use that sword on you.

When I visit other churches, it is interesting to note how the scripture is introduced.

In some churches the introduction is “listen for the Word of God.” The idea of “listening for” is that somehow or another, God’s word may be hidden inside all the Bible’s human words -- and it’s up to you to find it if you can. Who knows, it might be in there somewhere?

In other churches like ours, it is “listen to the Word of God.” We say it this way because we are confident that the Bible, even though written through human beings and bearing the stamp of their personalities and times in history, is in fact the Word of God. The Bible is more than human. It is inspired -- breathed by God Himself. The words -- all of them -- are those that God wants us to hear. This is one reason I tend to preach through entire books in consecutive order. I do this because I am convinced that the whole thing is God’s word and that I have no right to choose just my favorite parts or to skip over the parts that make us squirm.

I can’t skip around. I can’t pick and choose. For we believe that God also speaks to us through the sermon. .

The sermon is intimately related to the reading of scripture or else it is not a sermon. The word for preparing a sermon is "homoletics" which breaks down into the Greek “homo...same...lecti...saying." The purpose of a sermon is to say the same thing as the scripture is saying in such a way as to apply it to our own lives and contemporary situation.

The preacher is not the creator of the Word of God for the congregation. Instead, he or she is like a cook who prepares the good food God provides for the Sunday dinner. The role of the preacher is to present the feast in an appetizing way without masking the flavor or destroying the vitamins. My whole goal is preparing a sermon is to allow God’s Word to make its own point -- and not impose on the Bible what I think it ought to say. God knows what you need to hear much more than I do.

What is the sermon supposed to accomplish? What should be the result of a pastor giving fifteen or so hours a week, week after week?

As I understand God's call on a preacher there are two primary things that should happen as a result of preaching. One hopefully happens every week and the other happens as a result of many years spent listening to sermons. The second goal is simply to get a grasp on the content of scripture. My hope as a preacher is that over the years we will grow together in our understanding of what the whole Bible has to say.

The first goal, however, is what I really want to have happen in this congregation. That goal is to establish and re﷓establish a relationship of trust between God and His people.

Reconciliation of the profoundest sort is the true business of the preacher -- somehow to facilitate a spirit of openness, of trust, of at﷓one﷓ment at the deepest level. P.T. Forsyth characterizes it as the time where "what is made and what has done the making; come together." The trust comes when we recognize that what God did in the "there and then" of scripture has tremendous implication of love for the "here and now" of our own lives. Preaching means keeping the traffic moving in both directions between the Bible and life until His story and our stories become so intermingled that they are inseparable.

But this only happens as the message is understood. One writer tells of going to preach in a strange church. After the sermon a woman came up to him and said, "I was a little afraid we might not be able to follow you since you're a professor. Our minister is good but sometimes he preaches over our heads."

Now it is perhaps natural for preachers to feel a twinge of pride of accomplishment when he or she hears that they have preached over the heads of the congregation. After all, it’s part of seminary to make us stretch your mind? We have spent years in training, and if sometimes you don't quite understand what we are talking about, well, that should just make you have a bit more respect for our superior understanding. Right? Wrong!

For God has not sought to amaze us with communication that is "over our heads." The incarnation in Jesus Christ that we are about to celebrate shows God’s desire to speak to men and women so that He can be clearly understood. Even the term "mystery" in the New Testament goes hand in hand with the concept of understanding. The purpose of preaching is not to amaze but to communicate. And the purpose of the communication is the establishment of that relationship of trust. As Romans 10:17 declares, "faith comes from hearing and hearing from the word of Christ."

Jesus said to His disciples, "The one who hears you hears me." But as I prepare for worship, I am aware that I have not and cannot preach the pure gospel. As it passes from the scripture to the page through the mediation of my life and mind it cannot help but be changed or even twisted in some way. All human preachers must preach out of their own need and out of their own sinfulness and out of their own failure as well as their own hopes and own life experiences.

In fact, it is only the Holy Spirit who makes preaching possible at all.

Sometimes I hear a preacher read the text and then say, "I want to share with you this morning." I suppose it is meant innocently enough. But sharing will not do it. If all I am doing here is sharing what I myself have appropriated from the scripture or my own religious experience, then listening to me talk is a waste of your time.

But preaching is more than sharing. Preaching is at least in part an ongoing miracle of the Holy Spirit in which the sermon says more than I am aware I am saying. In some way, Christ Himself is speaking His Word through my words or even in spite of my words.

At times I have had people tell me that they have a hard time keeping their mind on a sermon -- some other preacher’s sermon, of course. They keep thinking about other things. At times that can be a problem -- if what is being thought about is the menu for the week or getting new tires for the car. But at other times that distraction can be a blessing. It can be the Holy Spirit taking you aside and saying. "We'll let Dave go on with the sermon. But this is the part I want to talk over with you." That’s one big reason we include an outline of the sermon in the order of service. It’s so that after you and the Holy Spirit and done talking between your selves, you can see where we are and rejoin the flow. The other reason for the outline is so you can show your children that the sermon really is going somewhere and has a planned stopping point.

I have said this before but it's still important. Sometimes when I preach I take very careful aim in a particular direction only to discover later that the target has fallen in a place I wasn't aiming and wasn't even aware existed. That is the ministry of the Holy Spirit in preaching -- taking the words I speak and making them hit the target that needs to be hit. That’s why you may sometimes say, “How did Dave know?” I don’t know. But God does. And God cares enough to confront you. If it were not for that every Sunday miracle, preaching and listening to sermons would be without power.

However, the Holy Spirit does require our openness and our attention if He is going to teach us.

Listening is not easy. It is an activity and a strenuous one. Tests have shown that when a listener is concentrating, there is increased heart action, faster circulation of the blood and even some slightly increased body temperature -- sounds like love or the flu. The listener must be willing to put out the energy the task requires.

The Swedish government sent an expert to advise some Lapplanders on better housing. A large crowd assembled at the meeting hall but refused to go in. The Lapplander's spokesman explained, "They want to know what you will pay them." "Do you mean that I should pay them for hearing me talk?" the government expert asked. "Of course," the Lapplander said, "it's easy to talk, but listening is hard work."

Your first obligation in preaching is to come expecting to hear and receive. It is amazing what you will find when you are looking for something!! You may not find what you expected but you may find something else you can use much better because your powers of observation will be activated.

My good friend Jim Berkley, while he was pastor of the Dixon, California Community Church received his Doctor of Ministry degree. A couple of weeks after he got the degree a woman in the church said to him, "Your sermons are so much more meaningful to me since you became a doctor." Now his sermons weren't any different. But she was expecting to hear more and so I believe she did hear more.

Your second obligation of openness to the Holy Spirit is prayer -- prayer for yourself and prayer for the preacher. You will be surprised at how much you will receive even from old, dry sermons when you pray. It could even be that God will answer your prayers and help the minister communicate what you need most.

One of the keys to good sermon listening is to come with some definite questions in mind. You may ask, "what need is this sermon trying to meet? What is the central idea or point of the sermon? What action does it ask for? How does the sermon explain this part of scripture? The questions should also be personal. What does this sermon say to me? What difference should it make in my life? What difference will it make?

The only time Christians are supposed to think of themselves first is while listening to sermons. Then the rule is "self first, others second." We are not to listen and say, "Ole Jim really needs this, " or "I hope June's listening real close to this part, " or "He really told off the sinners today."

The Holy Spirit doesn't apply God's word to other people in our hearing -- even our spouses or children. He applies it to us.

When you come to hear a sermon, come expecting to receive. Come prepared with prayer for yourself and the preacher. Come open to asking personal questions to draw forth a personal response. Come prepared to grow in faith for, as Paul wrote, “faith comes from hearing the Word of God.”

One cynical writer has pictured the church as a space exploration society which meets in a rocket. Every Sunday morning the society gathers in the rocket. The fuel is tested, there is a lecture on space travel -- and then everyone gets out and goes home until the whole thing is repeated the next Sunday. But the rocket never gets off the ground.

If that is true, much of the point of worship has been

missed. This is the point encompassed in the concluding focus of our morning bulletin, “God sends us into His world. "And He said, go and tell this people."

Sermons are preached on Sunday morning so that they can be lived in the world on Monday. For true worship is not found in what we hear, but in what we do.