People instinctively go to church with the hope of being made to feel good through being there – and in the highest sense, that is absolutely right – but God’s way of getting us to that point also means facing up to what we hate about ourselves.

Public worship can all too easily feel lacklustre and mundane, not just for a congregation, but also for the one entrusted with leading it. This is not some new phenomenon. It has been a challenge for the church throughout its history. Indeed, it was at such a low point in the history of worship, in the time of Isaiah, that God told the people that the ‘worship’ they offered outwardly was contradicted by the attitude of their hearts inwardly. Far from being the ‘sweet smelling aroma’ of praise God intended it to be, it was a stench in his nostrils. God is not fooled by false worship, nor is he indifferent to it.

It is noteworthy that Isaiah himself knew something of what this was like in his own personal experience of God. He describes it in what is undoubtedly the defining chapter of his prophecy.

It relates to a particular experience he had in the temple – quite possibly in the context of worship. Isaiah was no stranger to the temple, or to the worship offered there. But what happened on this occasion was nothing less than a profound encounter with God in all his greatness. Its significance embedded itself on this man’s heart in a way that was to alter the entire course of his life and ministry. It was the fact that there, on that day, he was brought face to face with the majesty of God.

It came in the form of a vision. The fact that its backdrop was the temple is significant. Everything about that building was designed to point away from itself to the heavenly reality it represented (He 9.24). But in this supernatural encounter granted to Isaiah, the reality burst in upon his consciousness in a way he had never known before.

It is impossible to imagine what that must have been like. But if we think of someone who had grown up with a picture of the Philadelphia Eagles on their wall, but then got to meet the team in person is perhaps a pale reflection of it.

As never before Isaiah was gripped by the awesomeness of God – ‘upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple’ (Isa 6.1).

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