In our service of worship, we declare the mighty acts of God. He has made all things, and then recreated them in His Son Jesus Christ. We are here today because we profess to believe this.
Now these declarations by God’s covenant people are potent, whether or not unbelievers are paying any attention to them whatever. But as our worship services, one week after another, represent such a gathering force that they cannot be ignored, unbelievers of various stripes begin to pay attention.
First, we must fix in our minds what the fundamental issue is—and that is the lordship of Jesus Christ over every aspect of life whatever, whether public or private. This proclamation—that Jesus is really and completely Lord—is a meat grinder that makes hamburger out of very different kinds of sacred cows.
For Christians accustomed to think of the lordship of Christ in personal and private terms, this very public declaration can be genuinely frightening. For some of them, dear saints, it is unsettling simply because they have been taught differently, and they are not sure of these so-called “new things.” To them, we simply invite them to a study of Scripture together with us. Others, better described as Pharisaical bullies (mint, dill and cummin cops), are afraid of this proclamation because if Jesus is lord of all His congregations, then it follows that they and their traditions of men aren’t.
Secularists are distressed by this glorious proclamation as well, and are outraged that there are Christians who are now refusing to be domesticated, who refuse to burn incense to Caesar. This new breed of Christian will not admit that their faith is a private affair to be indulged only behind their own eyes, and between their own ears, or in the privacy of their own homes unless zoning regulations prohibit—which of course they increasingly will.
Unfaithful Christians who are upset that other faithful Christians have broken the ungodly truce between God’s people and the idols do not hesitate to make common cause with the secularists. They will do it in the name of all kinds of high-flying phrases—their favorite being the importance of love—but when the time is ripe for reformation, thoughtful Christians will do more than instinctively agree whenever someone invokes the power of love. They will begin asking who defined love this way—Jesus or the idols?