Part 6 - The Evangel Of Worship Series

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In 1940, a small country called Latvia in Europe was annexed into Russia. Most of us have never heard of it. It lived under the alien rule of Russian communism until they regained their freedom in 1991 when the iron curtain fell. They lost their freedom, their culture, their language, their identity. It was a time if terror especially in the church. Interestingly, during these times the church flourishes instead of recedes.

Can you imagine what is must have been like to endure such a thing? To lose so much of your identity. You don’t know how much these things are so important until they are gone. How would you cope? What truths would you cling to? How would you remain faithful to your former identity while at the same time assimilating and surviving in your new surroundings?

This experience is not merely an exercise of the imagination. We may not experience the hostility of communism take-over, but we should not be deceived. It is still happening. As citizens of heaven, we are aliens in this land that is not our own. The hostility of this world toward Christ still exists, pressuring us to conform to its values, beliefs, and methods.

The pressure is on us, in school and at work, to be like everyone else in the way that we dress and the language that we use. We are expected to laugh at certain kinds of jokes and gossip about certain kinds of people. If we want to get on and be promoted in the world of business, we are pressured to leave our values and religious beliefs

It is not all openly hostile. Some of it is because we’ve chosen to water down or even abandon principles. We fear being labeled by adhering to biblical truths of living and our faith. Some of the pressure is internal. We are told that we need to be more ‘culturally relevant.’ We need to be attractive to the world so that the world will be attracted to Christ.

After spending all this time and energy trying to be relevant, has the church gained ground or lost it? Has the church’s influence in the culture increased or decreased? In our attempts to become relevant, did we gained distinction or lost it? Has the church transformed culture or has the culture transformed the church? Have we blended in so well with the culture that we have finally become unnoticed and irrelevant chameleons? I appreciate the desire for attraction, but I also fear that in some respects we wind up losing our influence on culture in an attempt to be attractive to it. No other place is that more evident than in worship.

It is my desire for us, Grace Community Church, to regain our identity in Christ as citizens of a strange land and let our worship and our lives be an evangel to the truth of God. The Gospel is relevant on its own. It doesn’t need our help; it needs our faithfulness.

This isn’t anything new. Israel struggled with their godly identity against other nations. In 1 Kings we read how Solomon desired to be liked. He built a kingdom that looked like all the other nations and in the end, the nation was divided, the kingdom fell and Israel went into exile. While in exile many of the Jews simply assimilated into the Babylonian culture to the point that when they were given the freedom to go back to Jerusalem, many chose to stay in Babylon.

But there was a small remnant that intentionally sought to remain faithful to their identity. Even though they were strangers in a foreign land. And even though they were given a favor by the king to sit in his court. Daniel and his friends stood firm. The result was that when the king turned against them, the Lord was with them.

Now, I said all of that to tell you this: I think this is where the Church is today. God is looking for a remnant to be faithful to the gospel and so we have some lessons to learn from Daniel today as we continue our study Awaken to Worship. Listen to me about Daniel’s account:

In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon came to Jerusalem and besieged it. 2 And the Lord gave Jehoiakim king of Judah into his hand, with some of the vessels of the house of God. And he brought them to the land of Shinar, to the house of his god, and placed the vessels in the treasury of his god. 3 Then the king commanded Ashpenaz, his chief eunuch, to bring some of the people of Israel, both of the royal family and of the nobility, 4 youths without blemish, of good appearance and skillful in all wisdom, endowed with knowledge, understanding learning, and competent to stand in the king’s palace, and to teach them the literature and language of the Chaldeans. 5 The king assigned them a daily portion of the food that the king ate, and of the wine that he drank. They were to be educated for three years, and at the end of that time they were to stand before the king. 6 Among these were Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah of the tribe of Judah. 7 And the chief of the eunuchs gave them names: Daniel he called Belteshazzar, Hananiah he called Shadrach, Mishael he called Meshach, and Azariah he called Abednego.