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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.
8 But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. 9 And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs, 10 and the chief of the eunuchs said to Daniel, “I fear my lord the king, who assigned your food and your drink; for why should he see that you were in worse condition than the youths who are of your own age? So you would endanger my head with the king.” (Daniel 1:1-10)
I. Culture Works to Neutralize Godly Distinctions in Worship
There is a godly distinction that should and must exist in churches and it has become increasingly absent. Somewhere around 606 BC, Jehoiakim is in power when Nebuchadnezzar comes and begins to plunder the Temple of God. But don’t miss out on something vital here. It was GOD who allowed Nebuchadnezzar to come and do what he did. This was not a series of unfortunate events. This is the result of Israel’s continual apostasy. All this happened because Israel chose to go their own way, despite God making it clear what would happen if they abandon worshiping God alone.
Daniel was in Babylon, and Babylon was a pagan society in every sense. No regard for the true God as evidenced by the fact that they had attacked the land of Israel, desecrated the true God and taken all the people captive who wasn’t killed. And while Daniel was living in the breakers as it were, the crashing waves and the shifting sand of the surf, his soul was anchored on the rock. And so he was unshakable and indestructible. He was absolutely unwilling to compromise the absolutes that he believed were the law of God. And that is what anchored him to the rock of confidence even in the storms of captivity and Chaldean efforts to brainwash him.
It is easy to get off track. To compromise and appease the culture around us. We want to appear attractive, but an attraction to the world is vile to God. It takes intentionality to remain pure and godly, especially when it comes to our worship. I think in many cases we’ve lost our way in worship because we want it to be easy. We want Jesus to be hip. But one day we’re going to be like Josiah discovering the lost scrolls right there in the temple.
Worshipping God should be familiar to us, but foreign to the world; the world wants to remove our godly distinction. What does Nebuchadnezzar do? He goes after the youth. Never underestimate the power our young people have in culture. That’s why advertisers, entertainment, and media continually target them. Nebuchadnezzar changes their language, their philosophy, their diet, and their names.
By the way, the names they gave Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah are names of Babylonian deities. Interestingly enough, these four young men accepted the first, that is they accepted the new names; they accepted the second, there’s no indication that they fought against the education; but when it came to the third thing, changing their lifestyle, they refused it. Because that was the potentially devastating issue. The name change is merely an external modification. The educational process can be filtered through the law of God which they knew very well. But what they would not do was let their lifestyle be changed.
In survey after survey, researchers found that the lifestyles of born-again Christians are virtually indistinguishable from those of nonbelievers. The divorce rate among Christians is identical to that of nonbelievers. Christian teens are almost as sexually active as non-Christian teens. Pornography, materialism, gluttony, lust, covetousness, and even disbelief are commonplace in many of our churches. The problem is, churches resort to legalism and fundamentalism instead of Spirit-lead discipleship and transformation to bring change into our lives. It is the working of Grace and sound biblical instruction that digs deep into a man’s heart.
II. The Little Things Matter in Worship
If you don’t hear anything I say this morning, here me on this. Your appetite matters.
8 But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food, or with the wine that he drank. Therefore he asked the chief of the eunuchs to allow him not to defile himself. 9 And God gave Daniel favor and compassion in the sight of the chief of the eunuchs
Why would the royal rations of food and wine defile Daniel? The word “defile” (ga?al) is a cultic, a religious term. People who defile themselves become “unclean or unholy.” They are no longer allowed in God’s holy presence. So the first thing that comes to mind is that these royal rations were not kosher. They might include pork and other forbidden meat. Even with meat that God allowed to be eaten, the animals were not slaughtered properly. According to God’s law, eating such meat would make an Israelite unclean. But that would not account for Daniel’s refusal to drink the king’s wine.
There is a second reason why Daniel may have refused the royal rations of food and wine. Usually, a portion of the meat and the wine on the king’s table would first have been offered to the Babylonian gods. “Partaking of this food would have been an indirect act of worshiping the Babylonian deities.” When Daniel takes his stand not to eat the royal food and drink the royal wine, he takes his stand against the Babylonian gods and for the God of Israel. This is a dangerous position to take.
This matters to us immensely. The food we eat is not just about our physical health. It speaks to your appetite. We are all hungry for something. What are you trying to satisfy in your appetite? Money, power, lust, greed, selfishness, control, you name it.
“Isn’t this how Satan still operates today? He may violently persecute believers in some parts of the world, yet often he works more effectively by seducing and deceiving us into forgetting God and thinking that our blessings come from somewhere else. He wants us to forget the truths expressed in those Hebrew names, that God is our judge, as well as the one who shows us his grace. He wants us to forget the uniqueness of our God and the help that only he can provide. He wants to control the educational process, so that our children grow up immersed in his worldview and his philosophy of life. If he can further instill in us a sense of dependence upon the material comforts that make up our way of life, or certain pleasures of this world that we have grown to love, then he can far more effectively draw us away from the Lord. His fundamental goal is always to obliterate our memory of the Lord, to reeducate our minds to his way of thinking, and to instill in us a sense that all of the good things in life come from the world around us and from the satisfaction of the desires of our own flesh.” (Daniel, Reformed Expository Commentary)
11 it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth; this defiles a person.” (Matthew 15:11)
III. The Witness of True Spiritual Worship
11 Then Daniel said to the steward whom the chief of the eunuchs had assigned over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, 12 “Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. 13 Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king’s food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see.” 14 So he listened to them in this matter and tested them for ten days. 15 At the end of ten days, it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king’s food. 16 So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables.
I need to close this and so I’m going to do so with these words: How we chose to worship God is a testimony of what we truly believe. Jesus said God is looking for worshipers in Spirit and Truth. What does Jesus mean? God is looking for Daniels to take a stand. You are witnesses to the world. Not with mere words, not with just preaching, but our lifestyles and worship. How we conduct and how we approach our Sunday mornings are powerful evangels. I think the church worshipping together is one of the most powerful evangel’s God gave to us. But then also the lifestyles we live that reflect that Sunday morning witness.
God is looking for Daniels today to be faithful. Daniels that are passionate about their time in worship. Daniel will be witnesses for God in their words, their songs, and most of all, in their lifestyles.
13 “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. 14 “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:13-15)
If I can give you a spiritual principle it’s this: Sin produces doubt. Sin produces doubt, fear, questioning, hesitancy. Righteousness produces confidence and security. And Daniel in a sense is saying, I’ll put my life on the line because I believe that if I obey God, He will honor that obedience. Now don’t go beyond the intent here and conclude that if you eat only vegetables and drink water, you’re going to be more healthy than anybody else. That is not the point. The point is, if I obey God and take the highest spiritual position, I believe God will honor that. That’s faith. Because if there had been sin in Daniel’s life, he would never have confidently put himself in that position.
Friends, if Daniel wasn’t faithful with the little things, would he be able to be faithful when he was thrown in the lion’s Den? Would Daniel’s friends go into the furnace or bow before the statue? All of this was a powerful witness of God. It required spiritual strength that can only be found in the pure at heart. Can we be faithful today with the little things in our worship, honor the work of the Lord as Holy, honor the worship of the Lord as holy, approach our time with God with the highest amount of reverence so that we may hear from Him, “Well done.”
Take it to the Cross
Close
Pray
Sermon Notes
1. Culture Works to Neutralize Godly Distinctions in Worship
2. The Little Things Matter in Worship
3. The Witness of True Spiritual Worship
Study Notes
1. Have you ever had to adjust to a new culture or a new name, or living in a place that was not consistent with your values or faith? What was challenging and what was not challenging about it?
2. How does our culture today ask us to compromise with being faithful to God?
3. How do you see the church standing up to things in our culture that are not godly?
4. What do you see God calling you to do in your life to remain faithful to Him even though those around you are asking you to compromise?
