The Christian Worldview

Life of the Church

Good morning everyone, and welcome. And happy anniversary as well. For 129 years, Stuarts Draft Baptist Church has served this town. I think that’s amazing, and I thank God for the work He’s done, the work He’s doing, and the work He will do through this church.

I have just a few announcements to mention as we begin our worship service. First, I hope you’re hungry and I hope you’ll join us after our service for a fellowship meal (inside/outside?). I’ll be giving the blessing for the food at the end of the sermon, so you all can go ahead and eat without having to wait on me.

After that, Randal along with Larry Corhron and Simon Kinsinger will be doing a presentation here in the sanctuary about the history of our town. Really looking forward to each of those things, and we hope you’ll stay for both.

The men’s group will not be meeting tonight. We’ll resume that next Sunday. The men will also be having a cookout on the 22nd, and our next prayer breakfast will be on the 29th.

And we’ve made our goal for the Alma Hunt offering this year. Thank you for your offerings to inspire and equip our missionaries.

Amy Campbell is looking fir volunteers to help with a Love Inc meal that will be on October 24. She said they’ll be doing their regular meal of lasagna and salad. If you could help out with that, please see Amy.

I’ll ask you to pray for the nation of Israel, which is now at war. Pray for the Israeli people, and pray for the Palestinian citizens as well, because it’s always the innocent civilians who suffer most in any conflict.

Della, do you have an announcement this morning?

Jesyka, do you have anything this morning?

Sue, do you have anything?

Opening Prayer

Let’s pray:

Father we are blessed to be able to gather here in this place to worship you, and we’re so thankful to have served to this community for these many years. We pray You continue to work your will through us, that You continue to gather Your people in this place and grow this congregation according to Your perfect will, and that this church will always be a place of light, a place of love, and a place where people come to grow in their knowledge of You. Be with us in this service. Grant us the gift and the presence of your Spirit. For it’s in Christ’s name we ask it, Amen.

Sermon

During our testimony time last week, Richard Fontaine said something that struck me. He talked about all these empty chairs in our sanctuary and wondered why they’re empty.

We’ve had quite a few people who’ve been fighting viruses over the past weeks and some who are keeping safe by keeping at home, so there’s two reasons. We’ve talked about some other reasons in the past. But I don’t think any of them really hit the nail on the head of why so many churches now have so many empty chairs.

Covid is generally the reason most people suggest. Covid really did a number on churches. But I don’t think Covid did anything to churches except expose a problem that was already there. Today we’re going to talk about what that problem really is. Because on the surface, it doesn’t make sense that 69% of the people in this country call themselves Christians but so many churches are either empty or shutting its doors for good. Where are all those people? And more importantly, what are they thinking?

To answer that question, I want you to imagine an apple sitting on a table. If a gardener looks at that apple, they’re going to be wondering what kind of an apple it is. An artist will look at that apple and imagine the best way to paint a picture of it. A farmer will look at that apple and put a price on it. A child will look at that apple and think about eating it.

In other words, how you look at that apple depends on how you look at the world in general. And how you look at the world in general is called your worldview. Your worldview is everything you hold to be true. It’s what you believe is right and wrong, true and false, it’s the driving force behind every emotion and opinion you have. It’s like a pair of glasses. I need my glasses to make the world clearer. A worldview is the same way. It tells you how to think and behave. It affects every area of your life.

It also goes a long way in determining what kind of choices you make. And in your daily life, you have to make a whole lot of choices. Thirty-five thousand of them, in fact. Every single day. Now, just about all of those choices you have to make are small ones — what to wear, what to eat, what you’re going to watch on TV. If you had to actually stop and think about every one of those 35,000 decisions, you’d go crazy and never get anything done.

That’s why your brain makes those choices automatically. You choose without thinking about it. And the thing that chooses for you, the thing that decides what you should do and what you shouldn’t, is your worldview.

And everybody has one. Every single person, no matter who they are or where they live or what they believe, has a worldview. They have to, because without one, because all of those little decisions we have to make every day are all about choosing one option instead of another, and if you don’t have a worldview, every option is going to seem as good as the next. You’ll never be able to make a decision.

You would think that with 8 billion people in the world, there would be hundreds or even thousands of different worldviews. But actually there are only basically two.

There’s the secular view, and under that there are all sorts of different names that sound very smart but you don’t need to know. The secular worldview says that the physical world is all that exists. The only things that are real are what we can see and hear and touch and measure. Whatever your senses can’t experience doesn’t exist, including God.

Right and wrong isn’t really a thing either, because just like us, right and wrong are products of evolution. So what’s right for me doesn’t have to be right from you. We can disagree on something and both still be right.

The secular view also says that there’s no meaning to life. We’re all here by accident, there’s no plan, so you just make up your own meaning. You’re born, you live, and you die. That’s it.

Then there’s basically the religious worldview. Some people have an Islamic worldview, or a Buddhist worldview. A lot of people nowadays have a worldview that’s all sorts of beliefs from all sorts of religions bound up together. That’s called New Age belief.

But within that religious worldview is the Christian worldview, which hasn’t just shaped an entire religion but has shaped the entire Western civilization, including its laws, its science, and its education. That worldview has 8 points, and I’ll give those to you because we’re going to be talking about them for the next several weeks:

- 1. Right and wrong exist

- 2. Right and wrong is defined by the Bible

- 3. The Bible is accurate in everything it teaches

- 4. Jesus Christ lived a sinless life

- 5. God is the all-powerful, all-knowing creator of the Universe and still rules

- 6. Salvation is a gift from God and cannot be earned

- 7. Satan is real

- 8. Christians have a responsibility to share their faith

That’s the Christian worldview. It’s living life according to what the Bible lays out, and believing that your main reason for living is to love and serve God. It’s asking how Jesus would respond and then responding that way without a care at all about how the world will react. It’s learning to think like Jesus, because when we think like Jesus, we act like Jesus.

The reason I bring up this whole idea about worldviews is because it answers that question of why there are so many empty seats in churches. Because 69% of the people in this country call themselves Christians, but guess what? Only 9% of them live by a biblical worldview.

Only 9% of Christians look at each of those eight points I just told you and say not only, “Yes, I believe that,” and live like those eight points out.

They might think Jesus lived a sinless life, but they don’t believe the Bible is completely true. Or they might believe God is the creator of the universe, but they don’t believe Satan is real. If you say no to just one of those eight points, you don’t have a biblical worldview.

That is a huge, huge problem facing the church right now. I’d even say it’s the biggest problem. And sadly, it’s been like that for a long while.

That’s actually the reason why Paul wrote his letter to the Colossians. Colossae was a city in the region of Laodicea, which is now modern-day Turkey, and it was a major trade and business center. People from all over the Roman world came there to live and work, and of course all of those people brought their own beliefs and religions with them. The city was known for its acceptance of any sort of belief. It was pretty much “everything goes,” which sounds like our culture now, doesn’t it?

Because of that, the Colossian church was under a huge amount of pressure from the society around it, and the church was struggling because some of these other beliefs were infecting the Christians there. They were trying to hold on to their worldview but being bombarded every day by all these other worldviews.

Paul writes this letter to tell the Colossians that Jesus is better than every human philosophy, and the right way to live is to focus on heavenly things rather than earthly things. That’s what we’re going to take a look at today. Turn with me to Colossians chapter 2. We’ll be reading verses 1-10:

For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority.

And this is the word of the Lord.

Paul starts out by saying that he’s going through a great struggle for the Colossians, and that word is actually repeated from the last verse of chapter 1. It’s a Greek word that Paul uses in Philippians to mean “conflict.” He uses it in 1 Thessalonians to mean “contention”. And in both 1 and 2 Timothy, Paul uses that Greek word for struggle to mean “the good fight of faith.”

It might sound strange, but you should always be struggling for your faith. Your faith should never be something that you take for granted, and it should never be something that you just allow to sit there and never work on. You should always be working to grow in your faith — to have more knowledge of God, to understand more of the Bible — because your faith is like a muscle: if you don’t exercise it, you’re going to lose it.

The Colossian church was in trouble because they were being swayed by some sort of false teaching. Paul hints to what this false teaching was but never states it flat out, and maybe that’s a good thing because it can stand for any false teaching that’s common in the American church today (and there are a lot of them — remember that 9% who actually live out a Christian worldview. Probably about half of that 69% of people who say they’re Christians attend church on Sunday, which means that about a quarter of the Christians in this country aren’t hearing a biblical worldview from the pulpit).

One of the biggest reasons why the Colossian church was being swayed was that they weren’t working on their faith. Paul’s praying for them earnestly, and he tells them what he’s praying for in verses 2 and 3.

First, in verse 2, “that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ.”

This verse describes perfectly what church is for. First, it’s so your heart can be encouraged. It’s tough to come to church and sing hymns and read the Bible and hear a sermon and not be encouraged. Monday through Saturday the world can just drag you down. Sunday is for lifting up.

Second, it’s to be knit together in love. The people sitting around you here? This is your family. Not by flesh (though in some cases it is) but by the Spirit of God. These people are your support system. They’re the ones who pray for you and take care of you and check on you. They’re the hands and words of Christ to help pull you through your worst times.

And third, church is the place where you learn about your faith. It’s where you learn about the richness of what you believe and how that can sustain you. Where you receive more of the understanding and knowledge of God’s mystery, a mystery that’s so great because it both satisfies you and leaves you wanting more. It’s where you learn to think like Christ, so you can live like Christ.

People say they can be Christian and not attend church regularly. I think if you don’t attend church regularly, you won’t be a Christian for long — at least not a Christian with a Christian worldview, and if you’re a Christian without a Christian worldview, then you’re just everybody else. God made us as relational beings. We need each other. So without church, where will you get that spiritual encouragement? Where will you get that family of supporters? Where will your faith be strengthened?

Where will you grow in your knowledge and experience of Christ? Because that support you find in your church family is what knits us all together, and as we love each other, Christ reveals himself more and more. That’s so important, because, verse 3 says, in him “are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

Now, let’s take a look at that phrase. It’s very common in the Bible to compare anything valuable with treasures of gold and silver. The word treasure means the most valuable thing possible, not just the thing we think is most valuable. To God, the most valuable thing possible is the wisdom and knowledge of Christ. Those are two different things. The wisdom Paul’s talking about here is what you need to know for your salvation, which is Christ’s death for your sins and his resurrection and ascension. The knowledge Paul’s talking about is that in Christ, we have everything we need to live a life that God approves.

But those things are hidden, Paul says. They aren’t given to you all at once. Meaning you have to work on your faith. You have to guard it, and grow it, and feed it, because that faith is what sustains you. That faith is what defines your worldview. You cannot call yourself saved if you come to church one Sunday, get baptized, and then never give God another thought. Because that means you don’t take your faith seriously.

Jesus is all or nothing. He says, “Everything you could ever want and everything you could ever need, all the wisdom and knowledge, is in me and me alone. Not in some book you read. Not in some podcast you listen to. Not in some politician you vote for. And especially not in your own opinions. It’s in me. So search for me, everyday, and I promise you will not be disappointed.”

That’s Paul’s prayer for the Colossians, in verses 2-3. And he tells them exactly what he’s prayed for in verse 4 — “that no one may delude you with plausible arguments.”

That was the threat happening to the church in Colossae. People were trying to come into the church to infect believers with worldviews other than the one preached by Christ. And these people had great arguments on the surface, just like all those other worldviews today have some good arguments on the surface. That’s why Paul says you have to be firmly planted in Christ. You have to be firmly planted in scripture, because otherwise you’re going to be deluded. That word in the Greek means “to beguile.” It means to be fooled.

There’s an old country song from the 90s with a chorus that says, “You got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.” That’s so true. If you aren’t firm in your faith, you’re going to fall for a false faith you might not even realize you adopted until you’re standing before God’s throne and He’s asking you, “What happened? Why did you think My Son wasn’t good enough?”

That’s why church is so important. That’s why getting fed spiritually at church is so important. And that’s why if your family or your neighbors or your friends aren’t going to church, you need to be on them. You need to bug them until they can’t stand it anymore, because you’re not just talking about church, you’re talking about their eternal souls. These are people you want to spend eternity with. Don’t leave them behind. And I don’t care if they come to this church. There are plenty of great churches out there. Just get them somewhere — as long as they’re being fed.

Because if they’re going to have a Christian worldview, they need that encouragement back up in verse 2. And they need that love knitted together. They need that full assurance of understanding and knowledge. And now in verse 5, we’re given two more things we need — good order and firmness. So let’s look at those two words.

First, order in the way that Paul is using it here also means strength. If your faith is orderly, your faith is strong. So how is your faith made orderly? According to Paul, making church a regular part of your life is where you start, but that’s not where you finish. It’s regular prayer, too. And regular reading of your Bible. And it’s taking what you learn from all three of those things that making them a part of your everyday life. What you believe doesn’t matter, even if it’s the truth. More people need to understand this. It doesn’t matter what you believe. What you believe only matters when you turn those beliefs into action — when you live it out.

I talked to Evelyn Howell this week. Evelyn’s my Amen lady. She’s going through an illness and welcomes your prayers. I went into that conversation thinking, “Okay, gotta pick Evelyn up here. Gotta make sure she’s encouraged and that her faith is still strong.” Well, if you know Evelyn, you know how ridiculous it was for me to think that. By the middle of our conversation, Evelyn was preaching to me. Doesn’t matter what news she gets from the doctor, God’s still in charge. God’s still going to take care of her. He’s either going to make her better and keep her here or He’s going to take her home and really make her better.

She said, “We preach it, but it doesn’t matter if we can’t live it.” I’ll amen that.

She said, “Too many people walk around this life all worried and sour like they’ve been baptized in lemon juice.” And I’ll amen that.

She said, “We’re known by our fruit, and that’s what I’ve always been — a fruit inspector.”

And I’m writing all of this down as she’s saying it, thinking, You want to come to church Sunday and preach my sermon for me?

Because that’s all exactly right. Jesus says, “Don’t tell me what you believe. The world’s full of talk. Show me what you believe.”

An orderly faith does that, and an orderly faith also means a firm faith. That’s the other part of verse 5. If you have an orderly faith and if you’re living out that faith, you’re going to have a faith that isn’t swayed by what the world says. Because who cares what the world says? You know what Jesus says, and in him — back up in verse 3 — is all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

And Paul says all of this flat out in verse 6. He says, “You received Christ Jesus the Lord. That’s wonderful! That’s the best thing you can ever do. But that’s just half of it. Now walk in him. Now let your actual life — your worldview — be guarded and guided by him.”

Then Paul tells us just how that’s done in verse 7. First, you have to be rooted in Christ. It is not what you think, it’s what he thinks. It is not what you believe, it’s what he knows and has told you through the Bible. It’s not what your eyes see or your ears hear, and in fact it’s not even you at all, because you — your self, the part of you that wants to go out and do things on your own because you think you know better than God does — that part of you must become less and less every day. Jesus must become more. If that’s what’s happening in your life, if you’re saying no to yourself and yes to him, then you are rooted in him.

And once you’re rooted in him, you can be built up in him. You know that old saying, “God loves you just the way you are”? That’s only half right. God does love you just the way you are. He also loves you too much to leave you that way.

If you’ve been given Christ, the king of the universe, the one through whom all of creation was made, and if you have been given the promise of a life of perfection that will never end, and if you have been given the promise that he will be with you always, that he will guide you through every bright day and every dark night, Paul calls that a firm foundation. And what’s a foundation for? It’s to build something on. Build your life on that foundation, because what’s built won’t crumble.

And how do you build on that foundation? You make sure your faith is established. That word in the Greek means “to confirm.” Paul is always talking about this in his letters, and here is where so many Christians — the ones who stop going to church but the ones who come to church every Sunday too — get wrong.

Knowing what to believe is important — that’s the eight points of a Christian worldview. But why believe it? What reasons can you give to support what you believe? How do you know Jesus lived a sinless life? How can you believe Satan exists? How do you know there is a God?

That’s what we’re going to be talking about for the next eight weeks. I’ll give you a quick preview, though — the Holy Spirit, the Bible, classic church teaching, and your brain give you absolutely concrete and iron-clad reasons for your belief.

Everything about what Paul’s saying comes to a head in verse 8. This is his warning to the Colossians and to us: “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”

Paul calls it a philosophy. We call it a worldview. Those false ones out there bombard you with their slick words every day. It’s on the television, it’s on the internet, it’s in the movies you watch and the music you listen to. Paul calls all of that deceit, and he warns us not to be taken captive by it, or not to be drawn away from what you’ve been taught is true.

In this verse, Paul takes all the false teachings of this world and puts them into three categories. First, the philosophies or the other worldviews. The ones that say there is no God, there is no Christ, there is no nothing other than what our senses tell us is there.

Second, there are human traditions. Every human solution to human problems is doomed to failure. Every idealist who says humanity can build a future of peace without religion needs to read about Stalin. Every person who says government and not God is the answer needs to get their head out of the sand. Every person who says we are basically good people instead of people infected by sin needs to take a good look around. Human ideas and human solutions only get us into more and more trouble.

The third category Paul lists is sounds like a strange one. It’s “according to the elemental spirits of the world.” Most scholars believe that what Paul’s talking about is legalism. It’s taking God’s truth as it’s laid out in the Bible and adding our own rules to it. It’s twisting the Bible to mean something other than it really means in order to satisfy our own selfishness. So you get the prosperity gospel. You get liberal Christianity. You get Mormonism and Jehovah’s Witness. You get everything but the truth. And the truth, Paul says at the end of verse 8, is Christ.

In other words, if your worldview takes anything away from Christ — God isn’t real; truth is relative; you don’t have to worry about obeying Jesus because he’ll forgive you anyway — or if your worldview adds anything to Christ — Jesus doesn’t just die for you, he wants you to be rich; God gave us the Bible, but He also gave us this other holy book — then your worldview is wrong, and your soul is in trouble.

Jesus is the measuring stick. Because, in verse 9, Jesus is God. They’re the same. And if you’re a believer, if you’re saved, then, in verse 10, God is the boss. He is the ruler of your life. He calls the shots. He has the authority, not you, and certainly not anyone else.

There are a lot of things about Christianity that tend to be a little complicated because we complicate them. Your worldview isn’t one of those things. Paul says either you have a Christian worldview, or you don’t. There’s no middle ground. That’s why your faith has to be kept strong, like the faith of this church has been kept strong for 129 years.

When I was moving some of my things into the pastor’s office a year ago, found an old notebook of church attendance and tithes that had left in one of the drawers. A very old notebook, in fact, from the very early 1900s, back when this church was over on Main Street. It was amazing to look through that book. Attendance on most Sundays was in the single digits. The tithes were sometimes sixteen cents. But God took care of this church, didn’t He? Grew it, sustained it, and prospered it to where it is now.

But what about the church in Colossae, in that region of Laodicea? What happened to that? Did they manage to cling to that Christian worldview, or were they swayed to another? There’s not much mention of it outside Paul’s letter, but there is one important one.

Turn with me to Revelation chapter 3. These are Christ’s words through John to the seven churches in Asia, and in chapter 3, verses 14-18, here’s what Christ has to say to the Colossian church:

“And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation.

“‘I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see.”

Pretty rough, isn’t it? How important is it for you to keep to the Christian worldview? Would you want Jesus saying that he’s going to spit you out of his mouth? These were people who considered themselves Christians. Saved. Secure. But without living a Christian worldview, Jesus says they’re wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. So we better be clear on what we’re supposed to believe and how we’re supposed to live, and we’ll start on that next week. For now, let’s go to the Lord in prayer.

Father we are so thankful for Your continued presence in our lives, and for the gift of salvation through the death, resurrection, and ascension of Your son. And we are thankful this day that You continually teach us the paths You wish us to walk, that You continually fill us with the wisdom to know what salvation means and the knowledge of how to live out that salvation. Fill us with a hunger for Your righteousness, and give us a desire to walk in Your ways rather than the world’s. Bless the good food we’re about to eat, bless the many hands that made it, and bless our time of fellowship. For it’s in Christ’s name we pray, Amen.