Interlocked Lesson 4 Part 1

3 Responses to the Pagan Worldview

We’ve been talking the past few weeks about the consequences of sin.

So now that we know those, what is our response?

How do we respond as believers in Christ when we are confronted with sin’s reach?

Hopefully, it’s to pray, seek God, seek fellowship with other believers.

Hopefully it’s NOT to shrink away, isolate, and hide.

That’s where sin wants to keep us.

But many in our world see the effects of sin in our world, don’t know what to call it, and then choose to still follow its effects.

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There are 2 worldviews that are opposed to one another.

The Bible says God created the world.

The education system says evolution is true.

Now I know from previous weeks, you may not be confronted with evolution as much where you are now, but make no mistake, in college or in life in general, you will certainly be confronted with it.

As such, there are 3 responses to these conflicting worldviews.

Surrender the truth

Reinterpret the truth.

Confront lies with truth.

SO this morning we are going to start to go through these.

Surrender the truth.

In the 1700s and 1800s some people argued that we should only understand the world from what we can see around us.

We should only consider natural forces.

Anything supernatural or spiritual should be rejected.

As a result, the Bible itself suffered.

- People began to reject the supernatural way God made the universe in Genesis 1.

People argued the creation and fall narratives of Genesis 1-3 are just moral stories or fables, but that they are not true.

People argued Adam and Eve were not real.

The garden of Eden was not real.

That much of the Old Testament has wise, moral teachings but that it is not historically true.

That hell is not real.

In short, people rejected the truth of Scripture and instead believed in whatever they wanted to believe.

Today we call this secularism. Humanism. It’s the idea that whatever man says is right and true, is.

Whatever God’s Word says is true is not and should be rejected.

It’s important to remember we aren’t talking about the 2000s or 2010s here…

I’m talking about the 1700s and 1800s.

Then something terrible happens in the mid-1800s.

Darwin proposes his theory of Evolution.

And surprisingly, many in the church began advocating for Evolution.

People in churches even began rejecting God’s word and accepting Darwin’s theory.

Why?

For one thing, math and science were taught in schools at that time, but philosophy and the importance of learning not just what to think but HOW TO THINK was not a priority.

Critically thinking through ideas, wasn’t cultural.

So in the case of evolution, rather than pushing back, culturally it was simply accepted.

Rather than look at what they believed and using scripture as the basis for all else, churchgoers absorbed a pagan way of thinking.

They surrendered the truth of God’s word.

And honestly, I think we still feel and even behave in a similar way today.

We are quick to surrender the truth.

Look at the chart on the screen (Bottom of page 4)

Hebrews 11:1 “1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

We must never give up on what we cannot see.

We would never give up on love or oxygen, and although we cannot see these things, we live our lives daily, physically and emotionally reliant on both of these things to sustain us.

But jut as Surrendering the truth is dangerous, so is those who try to reinterpret the truth.

2. Reinterpret the Truth.

SO how did these people handle Evolution and other ideas that rejected the Spiritual world and only accepted the natural?

*Show graphic page 5.

The try to twist the Bible.

They said science can’t be wrong.

And some of the Bible contradicts with science

We must have misunderstood the Bible then.

Therefore, we need to reinterpret the Bible.

As a result of this line of thinking, the way people thought about God’s word became very muddied, murky and confusing.

Rather than interpreting science through the lens of Scripture, they reversed it.

They interpreted the Bible through the lens of science.

The problem is, Science is a moving target.

At one point in time, it was thought that a grain of sand was the smallest particle in the universe.

However, then they realized something called a proton was smaller than sand.

Then they found things even smaller.

Even when I was in school I learned that the smallest thing in the universe was an Atoms made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons.

But now they have found Quarks which are even smaller than protons and neutrons.

Science is always discovering.

But when you elevate science over Scripture, you will always run into problems.

Evolution was dangerous because it was different from normal science.

Normal science presents a hypothesis, that can be tested via experiment, and then you draw conclusions based on the tests.

Evolution is a theory or hypothesis, but it couldn’t be experimented or tested.

*Show graphic page 6*

Another way people tried to reinterpret the truth was effectively combining Evolution with Genesis.

This presents the gap theory.

The gap theory is basically this. From Day 1 to day 2 in creation, some people believe that there could have been thousands or even millions of years in between those days rather than one literal day.

The Gap theory also treats Adam and Eve more as mythical rather than literal.

In other words, there weren’t 6 literal days of creation, there was thousands or millions of years and Adam and Eve and the earliest people could have been more myth rather than reality.

Here’s why this is a problem.

What does Scripture say about reinterpreting the truth of creation?

The Old Testament claims the creation narrative literally:

Exodus 20:11 “11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”

There is no other way to understand this verse. It’s surely referring to literal days.

The New Testament took the creation account literally.

In Luke’s genealogy of Jesus, He mentions Adam. Luke 3:38 “38 the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

Why would Luke include Adam in the genealogy of Jesus if Adam wasn’t a real person?

Jesus took Genesis literally.

Luke 11:50-51 “50 so that the blood of all the prophets, shed from the foundation of the world, may be charged against this generation, 51 from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I tell you, it will be required of this generation.”

Abel was the son of Adam and Eve killed by his brother Cain. Why would Jesus refer to a mythological person?

Additionally, Jesus quotes from Gen. 1:27 and Gen. 2:24 in

Matthew 19:4-6 “4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.””

The point here is that If we disagree with the Genesis account, we disagree with Jesus as well.

If we disagree with Jesus, we might as well throw out the whole Bible.

3. Paul also took Genesis literally.

a. Romans 5:12-13 “12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned— 13 for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.”

b. Romans 5:18 “18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men.”

c. Again, Paul, one of the early founders of the church establishing the church on Jesus, the cornerstone full of grace and truth…

Why would he center Romans 5 on Adam if Adam wasn’t a real person?

Because Paul believed he was and that all of Scripture is God’s Word.

Another truth in Scripture that people try to suppress is that of Genealogies

4. In Gen. 5 and 11, we have very detailed genealogies.

In Gen 5 especially, you can track how the time of Adam’s life to Noah was about 1600-1700 years.

If the Gap theory were true, and Adam was created on day 6, when did God rest on day 7?

Are we supposed to believe Adam lived 930 years, the flood happened 1000 years later, and God rested for 1000 or a million years in between?

The math just doesn’t make sense folks.

This is why Science is helpful.

But the truth is God’s Word.

If Science says one thing, but God’s Word says another, we must remember to Trust His Word.

Not blindly though… no not at all.

With careful care and observation, God’s Word will always lead us to the truth.

Science is based on man’s FINITE knowledge of God.

Scripture is based on creator-God’s INFINITE knowledge.

APPLICATION:

Today:

We have a response.

May we never surrender the truth.

May we never reinterpret the truth.

May we always seek truth.

Like we sang this morning:

John 14:6 “6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

We need to dedicate our lives to the truth.

Anything worth believing is worth testing.

2 Timothy 2:15-16 “15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. 16 But avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness,”

Do you care about the truth?

Do I?

I don’t want to have my parents faith.

I don’t want to have my grandmas faith.

I want to have a faith in Christ that is my own.

That was worked out by me.

That was put on trial in my mind and found approved!

Why?

Because this is how we grow.

This is how we become Romans 12

Romans 12:1-2 “1 I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”

Seek the truth above all else.

Next week we will look at Counterattacking what is False.

How do we as Christians not only stand for the truth, but defend it when necessary.