Grateful Worship

Months ago, I picked out Psalm 107 for Thanksgiving week, but my plan changed last minute. Each day in my prayer time I focus on a different attribute of God. I praise God for that attribute, but I also frame requests within that particular attribute. Monday’s attribute is God’s holiness, and Isaiah 6:3 is one of the verses I read regarding God’s holiness. This past week I kept returning to Isaiah 6:3, meditating on it, dwelling on each phrase, and thinking how it applied to worship and prayer. I’ve been using it to pray for friends and family this, and finally decided in the middle of the night that Isaiah 6:3 is what I should write on, so Psalm 107 will keep for another time.

Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts;

the whole earth is full of His glory!

Isaiah 6:3

Even if this is a familiar passage to you, I hope you will discover new things as I did. Isaiah is given a vision of the Lord seated on His throne while seraphim called out to one another “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory!” There is much that could be learned from Isaiah 6, but for today I want to focus on how verse 3 alone can enhance our prayer and worship.

The first thing the seraphim call out is that God is holy, holy, holy. This is the only attribute of God that is repeated three times. In the Hebrew it conveys the strongest superlative or highest degree of holiness. In other words, God is completely set apart from all creation. There is no one and nothing that can begin to compare to God. He is completely transcendent, and His holiness applies to all His other attributes. For example, because God is holy, His faithfulness is beyond the faithfulness of any other being. No one is like God in His perfect faithfulness. His other attributes are the same.

Holiness can also include God’s absolute moral purity. We can relate this to God’s righteousness. There is no one perfectly righteous (Romans 3:10) except God. For those in Christ, His righteousness has been imputed or given to us. God calls us to be holy as He is holy, but we could never be holy apart from Him.

Now let’s take God’s holiness and apply it to prayer and worship. First, we can praise God for His holiness. “Who is like You, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like You, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders” (Exodus 15:11). Let your heart and mind be awed by God’s holiness. We can continue to worship Him as we think of His holiness in relation to each of His other attributes. Let this shape the way we bring our requests to God. Our holy, holy, holy God is the One we are praying to. Who else would we turn to? Who else can we trust? Who else is the only One worthy of all our praise? Our holy God hears us, is with us, and is for us.

We can then express gratitude that when we struggle with anxious hearts, anger, fear of man or another sin, God still sees us with His Son’s righteousness. We can be grateful that God has set us apart for Himself to be holy as He is holy.

Second, the seraphim affirm God as the Lord of hosts. When Lord is in all capital letters, it represents YHWH (Yahweh), the personal name for God translated I Am. Here in this phrase, it describes God as a divine warrior. This name reflects God’s sovereignty and omnipotence. God is sovereign over every detail in our lives. There is nothing that takes Him by surprise or that He did not purpose. He has all power. “No wisdom, no understanding, no counsel can avail against the Lord” (Proverbs 21:30). As Lord of hosts, God has all power to accomplish His purposes in our lives. We worship God as Lord of hosts, sovereign, omnipotent God, and we can present our requests to Him with confidence knowing that He is in control of all things and has all power to carry out His purpose in our lives.

Third, the seraphim call out that “the whole earth is full of His glory!” The whole earth – there is nothing in creation that is outside of God’s rule. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein” (Psalm 24:1). We can trust God and not be afraid because God’s rule is over the whole earth.

Is full of His glory – We don’t have time to cover all that God’s glory means but be assured that God’s splendor is revealed in all His works especially in Jesus our Savior. As we struggle with trusting God, God is graciously surrounding us with His glory as a reminder of who He is and what He has done. Start with looking in the mirror. You are made in God’s image. You can’t see them at work, but your heart is beating, your lungs are taking in the oxygen you need, your spleen is doing whatever spleens do. God created you unique. He formed every cell in your body and knew you before you were born. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. In the world around us, there are mountains, oceans, trees, flowers, and the platypus. God’s glory fills the earth. Pray for eyes to see and lips to gratefully worship. Be encouraged by His displayed glory knowing that He is still awesome in glorious deeds and doing wonders.

Isaiah 6:3 will probably never be a go-to Thanksgiving verse, but I hope it has led you, like me, to grateful worship of the holy, holy, holy Lord of hosts who fills the earth with His glory.

Reflection

1. What about God’s holiness causes you to gratefully worship?

2. What about the Lord of hosts causes you to gratefully worship?

3. What about God’s glory filling the whole earth causes you to gratefully worship?

4. How do each of the above three things encourage you in a current struggle with sin or a time of suffering? How can you make them a prayer as well as worship?

Sample prayer:

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, You are holy, holy, holy. You are absolute moral purity. Thank you that Jesus’ righteousness is imputed to us even when we are anxious and don’t trust You looking to idols who can never begin to compare with You. As holy, holy, holy God, You are completely set apart from all creation. There is none like You, and You who are holy hear us, are with us and for us through our struggles and our joys. You are the Lord of Hosts. You are completely sovereign over everything including the things we choose to be anxious about. You are Lord of Hosts, the divine warrior. Help us to remember that You have all power to accomplish Your purpose in our lives. There is no wisdom, no understanding, no counsel that can avail against You and Your purposes for us. Finally, the whole earth is full of Your glory. Thank you for Your grace and mercy in filling the world around us with daily reminders of who You are and what You have done, reminders that You are glorious, so that with awe of You we will grow in our faith and trust You with all that our anxious hearts seek after. In Jesus’ glorious name, amen.