[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 5pm or Wednesdays at 7pm if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison Church, you can find us
[email protected] be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast. Madison Church of Christ Sermons thanks again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:37] Speaker B: Thank you for joining us tonight at our midweek Bible study. We're glad you're here. If you're a guest, we're so thankful and we hope we can get to know you afterwards.
This summer series we're going to be having the Elders speak to us.
So this week we have Mike Doer. Mike Doer grew up in Huntsville and he attended FHU from 1984 to 1988. He met his wife Kim at FHU through the Sunshine Singers and they have been married almost 36 years. They are members with the Madison congregation since 2001, where he served as an elder since 2022. They have two daughters, Ashlyn Elmore and Ryan, and McKenna May with Elijah.
They have two grandchildren, Miles Taylor, who's 3, and Lily Bell Elmer, who's 4 months old.
Mike is an active is active with the Lads to Leaders program and serves as the coordinator for the Loudest Leader Songs in Nashville. He also has a Worship Leader certification from Texas Normal Singing School, where he continues to teach yearly classes and workshops as Worship leader.
He is now hoping to coordinate a Tennessee Song Leading School each June at fhu. He currently works at Leotis Dynamics and works on several DoD and NASA projects. The Artemis program uses software and firmware that was developed by Mike's team to measure oxygen, CO2 and humidity for the onboard astronauts. Once again, thank you so much for coming here tonight. We are so glad you're here. We're about to worship our God. So thank you.
[00:02:06] Speaker C: Right before we sing a song, we're going to sing several songs tonight in our lesson, so I'm going to give us a little introduction.
Our theme this year has been connecting, and tonight I'm going to follow the heels of some other good lessons. Already on Connecting we've talked about last week Talk about connecting through serving one another Serving in our ministries together, serving one another.
The week prior to that, we talked about a vertical connection to God through reading His Word. And tonight we're going to talk about probably another vertical connection as we talk about meaningful worship. Connecting vertically to God through meaningful worship. So just a few questions to go. What is meaningful worship? We've got to define some terms before we can go. So let me just ask the question and think about this to yourself as we go through some of the bullets here. Why are we here in this building right now?
Why do we come to this auditorium on Sunday mornings at 8:30 and at 10:30?
What are we doing? What's the purpose? Is it just to see everybody?
Yes, but there is a purpose and a much deeper meaning for why we are here. And that's what we're going to be looking at tonight.
Where are we when we come into this auditorium on Sunday morning and for our sessions like tonight and our devotionals together?
Where are we In Exodus, chapter three, Moses stepped in front of a burning bush. And what did God say?
Take your shoes off. Where are you?
Holy ground.
When we come before the throne of God, we are in essence on holy ground. We come into the presence of God in a humble and contrite, repentful heart, coming before God, his majesty and his greatness.
So what is worship then?
Is it just coming to be with friends? And that's a great blessing.
I love Wednesday night because it's the middle of the week and I've already had a few hard days at work and sometimes just coming to encourage one another and see each other. Maybe some of you have had great things happen and we want to celebrate. Maybe you've had a tough week and we need to pick you up and encourage you.
But it's more than just being here with our friends and it's more than just a social gathering.
It is a social gathering. It's good to see everyone, of course, but there's more to it. Rather, we get to come to worship, to honor, magnify the name of God.
And how does worship make us feel?
How does worship make us feel?
We ought to be awestruck.
We ought to be speechless if it were in front of the throne of God because of what he has done. We are talking about worshiping the Creator of the universe, and it's hard to describe those feelings, but that's what we're here for.
All worship should never be commonplace to us. And I'm afraid sometimes we can allow it to become that way.
What attitudes should we have with worship?
Well, we're going to talk about a few of those tonight, but one that comes to mind immediately is deep humility.
Who am I? I'm just a human being worshiping the Creator of the universe, Almighty God, paying honor and reverence to him, the value that he deserves, the devotion that he deserves. That's some of the things we're going to talk about that is meaningful worship. As we study tonight to get our minds, thought processes flowing here, let's read Psalms 96, and then we're going to sing a song together.
Psalm 96 is really a song as well. We sing part of that, but let's look at it together. Oh, sing to the Lord A new song. Sing to the Lord all the earth Sing to the Lord and bless his name Tell of his salvation from day to day Declare his glory among the nations his marvelous works among all the peoples. For great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. He is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols. But the Lord made the heavens.
Splendor and majesty are before him. Strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.
Ascribe to the Lord O families of the peoples. Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength.
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts. Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness. Tremble before him all the earth.
[00:07:19] Speaker D: We will glorify the King of Kings. We will glorify the Lamb.
We will glorify the Lord of Lords who is the great high Lord and all range in majesty.
We will bow before his throne.
We will worship him in righteousness.
We will worship him alone.
He is Lord of Heaven, Lord of earth. He is Lord of all.
He is Lord above the universe.
All praise to him we give.
So hallelujah to the King of peace Alleluia to the Lamb.
Hallelujah to the Lord of Lords.
Who is the great I am.
We will glorify the King of Kings.
We will glorify the Lamb we will glorify the Lord of Lords.
Who is the great?
I am.
[00:09:11] Speaker C: You want to follow along? We're going to be looking at Isaiah, chapter six, the first eight verses. We're going to read those on the charts. The slides are up there, but if you'd like to turn there in your own Bibles, you're welcome to. But what is worship? Now we've got our mindset. We're to glorify the Lord of Lords, King of Kings.
Worship is much more than just a formula.
It's just much More than plugging into the different things that we do, it's something we do.
There are acts of worship we participate in. There are avenues that we go through when we express our worship.
But worship is so much more than just those individual acts.
Worship must actually take place.
It's not just the things that we do.
I know for me as a song leader, is it singing the song or is it leading the song?
Is that alone worship?
It's part of it, but it alone is not worship.
There's more to it than that. When I put money in the collection plate, or when I turn it in in the baskets, or when I give online, is that worship? It's a part of worship. But is it the worship we're about to read about in our text?
And when we take of the Lord's Supper on Sundays, is it just a weekly ritual that we do? Is it tradition?
Is it worship by itself?
No.
Collectively, these things come together as our acts of worship, our avenues to worship. And then worship takes place. Giving honor, glory, lifting him up, and in essence, bowing down before him, or maybe even standing in awe. And standing up before God Almighty is part of worship as well.
Who is worship about?
I think you can already tell it's about God and only God.
It's not about us.
And yet I find myself sometimes struggling.
Isn't it about me?
Am I focused on the acts of worship to satisfy what I want to, what I want to get out of worship?
And that's wrong.
Worship is about God and what God wants.
I really want us to take. Really, really in depth, in your heart, in your soul, ponder what is worship and how am I supposed to worship.
The lesson is very personal.
Personal with me. And I hope it becomes personal with you as well.
Well, let's read our text. First three verses, Isaiah, chapter six.
In the year that King Uzzah died, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up and the train of his robe filled the temple.
Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings. With two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet. And with two he flew.
And one called to the other and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory.
Worship is about God.
And the scene here that Elijah is taken to the throne room of God shows that worship is about God himself. It's God centered.
And our relationship to him is so important.
Our relationship to God is not one way, it's two way.
We can pray to Him. That's. That's a way to communicate to God. God communicates to us through his word as we studied with Brent several weeks ago. What a wonderful way to do that.
But when it comes to our worship, it's a one way street to God.
It goes to God.
Is there a benefit and an encouragement and an edification in our worship assembly together? Yes. But is that the reason, number one, priority reason about worship?
No, the priority is God. God first. And our relationship to him is so important so that we can indeed center our worship upon God Almighty.
And there's going to be conflict that arises when we focus away from him.
Hey, that was a great new song we learned today. I love that song. Let's sing that song.
Well, why don't we sing those old hymns anymore? Well, I don't understand those old hymns. They have the thou and all the King James words in them. I don't understand those songs.
You see the conflict that we bring into our worship if we're not careful.
That communion talk was done today. That was beautiful the way that was done. And we focus on the acts of worship before God, which is our focus of worship.
So we have to be careful that we don't create conflict because we're thinking about how that affects me when worship number one is about God.
Y' all may get tired of hearing me say that, but I have to keep repeating it because I need to hear it as well. Worship is about God and it is not about me.
And I hear a few amens. Ron, he's got it going already.
Priorities about worship, we must maintain those priorities.
They're so important.
God needs to be first and foremost in our life.
Our faith in God, our faith in Jesus as the Savior are so important.
And having that relationship and that priority about worship is something we must, we must maintain.
Let's sing some more.
[00:15:51] Speaker D: Holy, holy, holy, Merciful and mighty.
Holy, holy, holy Lord God Almighty all thy words shall praise thy name.
Holy, holy, holy, Eternal being.
[00:17:50] Speaker C: So God is our focus and it's something we must protect at all cost.
Notice that holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
The whole earth is full of his glory. Did you realize you just sang that?
Not our glory, not the Madison Church of Christ. Glory, not the church's glory.
His glory, capital H, his.
That's what we're singing about, folks.
And we have to protect that because we live in a world in a society that says worship's about me. It's about us. It's about what we like, it's what we want. It's what we want to come away with on Sunday morning. And that is not the prescription we're reading about here in our text tonight.
It's not our glory, but it's his glory. There is a passage in Revelation 19 where John falls down before one of the angels in the throne room of heaven in the scene there that John is trying to describe. And he bows down before the angel and the angel says, see that you do not do that.
I am your fellow servant of your brethren who have the testimony of Jesus.
And he tells John, don't fall down to me. Worship God.
Even the angels understand who God is, and we're correcting John. In this particular instance, our focus is to worship God and we must protect that. That there's distractions all around us.
There may be internal distractions that you have. Maybe there's things in your life going on. Maybe it's health crisis or maybe it's a family situation, maybe it's a job situation that you're dealing with that can distract us from God being the focus.
Maybe it's external. Maybe there's things going on here. I'll tell you, one of the external distractions we had many years ago was when the tornadoes came through here. And we had services in this building with two generators out those side doors, worshiping with no power and a battery operated PA system.
Can I tell you that the memory I have of that Sunday was not about the tornadoes and not about our families that had been impacted by the damage.
It was the fact that we came with that external distraction and we worship.
We could not sing till the storm passes by because we were too touched.
We couldn't get through that song, but we worshiped even with an external distraction.
Maybe some of you have personal issues that you're dealing with.
We all do.
But we must maintain that God is the focus and work through those as best we can. Ask for help, get encouragement so that those distractions don't take us away from God being the focus of our worship.
We have to keep working on it.
I struggle with distractions all the time.
That's, I guess, part of what they say Mike's job is deal with distractions.
It's hard.
The lesson applies to me.
But it's something we have to keep working on and we have to keep at ought to happen that we put our heart and our soul into worship. And look at what else happens when we make worship a priority. Look at verse four.
And the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called and the house was filled with smoke.
Joe, we're on a pretty Good solid foundation with this physical building right now.
But if this building were to shake, we'd all be running.
And if it filled up with smoke, we'd call the fire department.
When we enter the worship assembly of God, it ought to happen in our hearts that there should be some trembling and shaking and some awestruck feelings going on.
When we worship with God in the presence of God, we ought to have a very reverent fear. Not as scared. I'm not scared of God, but I am in awe in the reverence of God.
God spoke this creation into being in six days.
And then I, Mike Dozier, I a human being can stand before his throne room and worship him.
That's reverent fear and that's awestruck.
It will cause me to shake.
That's a wow factor for me.
And as Brandon did such a great job describing Mount Sinai to us Sunday morning, what was going on on the mountain when God descended at Mount Sinai? Did the mountain shake and was there smoke?
That's God.
God was on that mountain. And folks, when we become worshipers before God, there's going to be quaking and shaking and smoke.
That's the power of God.
Maybe not physically.
How about in our hearts?
Do we put that kind of effort into our worship? How about in our lives?
Do we prepare for worship by the lives we live Monday through Saturday?
Do we prepare for worship on Sunday? By preparing on Saturday, are we putting everything into worship with the reverent fear that's going to be necessary by preparing for it in our daily lives?
How about in our praise?
We can raise the roof with a lot of songs. And I love that about this congregation.
Love it.
I can only imagine when we get to the reverent fear and the awe and the wow factor of what true, meaningful worship is, how much more that praise can become.
Trembling with thanksgiving, I'm allowed to worship the God of the universe, and I'm actually able to call him Father.
I can tremble with thanksgiving over that. And because of his son's sacrifice and God's willingness for his son to give that sacrifice, what wonderful thanksgiving I can have as I worship God in the very presence of his stone room.
Our spirits should quake at the present presence of the most high God.
Let's sing about that song.
[00:25:22] Speaker D: On Zion's glorious summit stood a numerous host redeemed by.
While everlasting end Eternal love shall feast their soul and see from this forever
[00:26:17] Speaker C: you
[00:26:20] Speaker D: rise in succession to their you rises of session to.
Holy,
[00:26:45] Speaker C: holy,
[00:26:49] Speaker D: holy, Holy.
[00:28:09] Speaker C: Are you beginning to feel that we're worshiping.
So if we're not going to get distracted from the focus being on God, it means we're going to have to carefully attend to that so that we continue to not get distracted.
As I mentioned before, there are things and distractions and problems and troubles that arise.
I heard a phrase given several times in the past and I use it a lot. Sometimes we just need to let go and let God.
That's hard.
A lot of engineers in here. What do engineers do? We want to fix it.
You know what, folks?
God can fix it all.
And sometimes coming before his throne and worshiping him in the way he deserves our worship, the meaningfulness of our worship to him, things will work out and can be fixed.
Those things can take away from our focus on God.
They become part of our selfish desires, things that we want to see, things that we need.
And it takes us away from the God centered, not me centered and not man centered. It takes us away from being God centered. We have to be careful about that.
We have to ask the question from time to time, Holy God, what is it that you want from me through worship? What is it, God, that you want from me? Mike Dozier, God, what is it that you want from this congregation?
God, what is it that you want from your church here today in 2026?
And when we start thinking about what God wants and ask those questions, worship does not become about us, it becomes about Him.
It's a focus upward and not an outward or inward focus.
I know he's told us in His Word, here is how I want you to worship me. I want you to do these things. I want you to pray to me. I want you to remember the sacrifice of my son Jesus in the Lord's Supper. I want you to sing praises to me. I want you to make a sacrificial offering. I want you to share with each other in the reading and proclamation of my Word.
And I want you to do these things every first day of the week, because that's my day.
That's very clear in his word. God is asking for us in that worship prescription. We see examples of it in the Book of Acts and in Paul's letters of how the early church worshiped. We have historical records of how the early church worshiped in the synagogues and the kind of worship that they had, the acts of worship.
But today, the world we live in, we're not giving it our all and giving it my best. When I'm concerned about me and when the world is concerned about them, and when worship turns into entertainment, and when worship becomes about everything but God himself.
We know of churches in this city that have all the lights, all the instruments, and it becomes a concert, an entertainment.
We know of other churches that it's focused about what they get.
And I'm going to keep saying it, not about us, it's not about them.
It's about God worship. Being God centered means our primary reason must not be to get personal rewards or achieve personal goals, no matter how worthy or desirable that goal may seem to be.
And it's not to receive that emotional feedback, that stimulation or that level of entertainment or let me just say in our term, that level of edification that I expect from a worship assembly.
It's not about that.
Will that come when we worship properly? Yes, it's a byproduct, but God is number one.
When I give it my best and my all, then the byproduct of edification comes back.
And it's not about me, what I'm looking for.
So verse six in our text. I mean verse five in our text.
And I said, woe is me, for I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.
What was the struggle here?
Isaiah's response. And our worshiper response.
Humility, great humility is what we ought to be bringing in our worship assemblies together.
A repentful heart.
I do this sometimes when I'm teaching class. Anybody been perfect today, raise your hand.
Not me, because I've made mistakes.
I come with a repentful, humble heart when I come into worship.
And a song that I learned two years ago that we're beginning to learn, we've sung a few times here in singing class. The title of the song is Confession. But the backstory of why that song was written, because the author of the song said, do we come to worship today with confession on our hearts when we take of the Lord's supper and the fruit of the vine? Am I drinking that fruit of the vine that represents his blood in a confession state of mind for what I've done this past week?
If I'm being truly humble and repentful in a meaningful worship assembly, I should be in that mindset and I should be in confession mode.
And again, there's no room for complaining or comparison when we start thinking about who did that or who did this.
Well, what do we want our visitors to say when they come to worship with us?
Oh, I really love the Madison Church of Christ. That was a great assembly service. That was a great song service.
The minister did a fantastic job, great delivery.
And I just love the way they did the Lord's Supper. Is that what we want them to go away with?
I hope that's not the only thing they go away with. But what would be better is if they went away saying, I felt God in that worship assembly today.
I felt the presence of God as I worship today.
My mind during the Lord's Supper was taken to something that I really needed to think about. I was blessed by partaking Lord's Supper this morning.
That's what we want our visitors to say. And folks, that's what we want our members and family members in this congregation to say when they leave here. It's not about Brandon blessing. It's not about Andrew. It's not about the song leader. It's not about who did the acts of worship. It's about was God worshiped.
That's what we want the takeaway to be.
There'll be no comparisons and there'll be no complaining about who did what.
If we get this right, we're not going to worry about time either.
Yeah, I'm worried about time because the bell's going to go off, but we don't worry about time in worship.
Paul preached till midnight. Y' all ready to go?
Eutychus fell out of the window.
Anybody want to volunteer?
Barry and Cindy took me to Kim and McKenna to Africa. One year. Would you like to know how long that worship that was? Sunday out in the brush?
3 and a half hours.
And we greeted each other in a line twice to be sure that everybody was greeted and said hello and hugged.
Time's not a matter. Time doesn't matter.
God deserves all the worship we can give him. And if we're watching the clock and if we're worried about getting to Cracker Barrel before the line gets too long, we're not focusing on meaningful worship like we ought to. Time should not matter then get an amen on that one.
It's not what I want is unimportant.
It's what a holy God deserves, because it's not about me, it's about him.
And I'm going to talk about this very carefully. But there is physical and spiritual posturing.
I'm not going to suggest that we have to stand up and raise our hands, and I'm not going to suggest we have to get on our knees.
But are you in your hearts?
Are you in your souls?
And when we have that quaking, that awestruck, that reverent fear.
We are worshiping God.
Is my physical and spiritual posture where it needs to be, or am I just sitting in the pew like this?
We need to think about our response in how we worship.
I don't remember the song Sunday.
Yeah, actually I do. It was the song of Moses.
That song got me Sunday and I teared up to sing the last part of the song.
My posture was sorrowful.
Have you let your emotions get involved in worship so that you can be moved with the awesomeness of who God is?
Just think about it.
[00:39:19] Speaker D: On bended knee I come with a humble heart.
I come out and before your holy
[00:39:38] Speaker C: throne,
[00:39:45] Speaker D: Lifting holy hands to you as I pledge my love on you.
I worship you in spirit I worship you.
[00:40:25] Speaker C: One of the seraphim flew to me, having his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said, behold, this has touched your lips and your guilt is taken away and your sin is atoned for.
The last part of our response is that we are healed.
Meaningful worship brings healing. It brings comfort, it brings forgiveness.
And that is a wonderful blessing to know that our sins have been taken away at the cross so that I can worship a Holy God.
Verse 8 and I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send and who will go for us?
Then I said, here I am.
Send me.
See, there's actions to come after worship. Meaningful worship brings action.
It motivates us for good works.
We should be pumped up and fired up, ready to go out into this world outside. This is the outward focus of what this congregation should be doing.
Because we have worship to God encourages us to be active in serving, in teaching, in righteous living, doing the right thing when everybody else is doing the wrong thing.
Showing people that we care and that we love them, and allowing ourselves to be changed, to be better.
I like a clean slate.
And every time we come before worship, it becomes a clean slate. Ready to go back out into the world before the next worship assembly.
That's why Wednesday night is so important. We get to come midweek and clean that slate again.
Get pumped up, get fired up, get motivated again, encouraged to go out and do good things.
So meaningful worship. What is it?
I summarized it in these four ways.
It's holy ground.
Approaching the throne of God with awe and reverence, just as Moses did before the burning bush.
That's how we should approach worship. Each and every time we are allowed to worship, it is God focused.
It is not about us, it is not about me, and it's not about anything that we want.
He deserves it all.
It's true humility.
It's bowing before his holiness without our pride, without our self centeredness.
Again, it is not about us, but it is our humility before the very throne of God. And lastly, it calls us to action, calls us to surrender our will, surrender our lives to his will through obedience and being ready to go work, connecting through meaningful worship.
It's a vertical connection. We don't need to get it wrong.
Will we get it right all the time? No. That's why we serve a forgiving God.
Because he's ready to forgive and ready to give us a second chance. Let's pray and then we'll close.
Our Holy Father, we are indeed grateful for being in your presence tonight before your very throne room. And Father, it is indeed our privilege to come before your throne on so many occasions, and especially on your day, the Lord's day, to worship you.
Father, help us individually to do what we need to do as individual Christians to make worship meaningful to you as you would have it to be. Father, help us collectively as a congregation, come together and worship you as your family here in Madison.
And Father, help us to reach outward to those outside these walls and let them see you through how we worship and how we live and how we serve because we are given the privilege to worship you.
Father, we thank you for your son, the sacrifice he made that allows us to approach your very throne.
It's through his name we pray. Amen.
