worldview

Worship and Worldview: the Intersection of Church and Culture

Our summer sermon series is titled “Worship and Worldview: the Intersection of Church and Culture.” Like you, I’ve watched with concern the speed and trajectory of our current cultural values and morals. What was presented politically and societally just a few years ago in terms equality and acceptance has become a demand from cultural progressives. Increasingly, the Christian worldview and its accompanying values are becoming marginalized in our nation. As Christians, we grieve the trajectory of our nation’s morality. We grieve the loss of values and morality that we held dear. But what do we do about it? How do we as Christians live in a spiritually foreign land? How do we prepare our children and grandchildren to not only live with biblical values, but uphold them against the torrent of progressive ideology? 

I’m going to try to address these questions and others from the Bible during this summer sermon series. 

In recent years, I’ve read a variety of books around these themes:The Benedict Option by Rod Dreher, Pagans and Christians in the City by Stephen D. Smith, The Gathering Storm by Albert Mohler, Love Thy Body by Nancy Pearcey, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by Carl Trueman, and Desiring the Kingdom by James K. A. Smith. I’m currently working through several other books in preparation for this series: Soul Searching by Christian Smith, We Will Not Be Silenced by Erwin Lutzer, The Gospel of the Kingdom by George Eldon Ladd, Prepared to Give an Answer by Timothy Sanders, Letter to the American Church by Eric Metaxas, Handing Down the Faith by Christian Smith and Amy Adamcyk, and You Are What You Love by James K. A. Smith (among others). Desiring the Kingdom is one of my more interesting reads this year and provided some terminology that has been helpful in developing this sermon series. If you would like to join me in workin through these issues, I would encourage you to read one or more of these books this summer. 

We are living in a pivotal time as Christ-followers. The Bible offers us guidance, understanding, and help as we navigate these tension-filled issues because we are not the first generation of God’s people facing marginalization and challenge to our worldview and worship. We need a biblical framework to help us address contemporary challenges and practices. What the Bible says about these topics is important, and we need to faithfully understand (worldview) and practice (worship) what the Bible teaches. 

I invite you to join us for these topics. Plan to attend whenever you are in town. Watch/listen online when you are not able to join in person. Moms and dads, please note the subject material for the July 23 sermon from Leviticus 18 on “A Biblical Worldivew in a Culture of Pagan Sexuality.” This sermon will not be explicit, but it will deal with subject material that is aimed at explaining pagan sexuality in contrast with God’s expectations for his people. 

If you’d like to follow along with our sermons, you can join us in person at Wilkesboro Baptist on Sundays 8:00 AM, 9:30 AM or 11:00 AM. If you can’t make it in person, you can follow along for videos of our worship services on Vimeo, YouTube, or FaceBook. Wilkesboro Baptist also has a podcast channel where you can catch our sermons each week. You can find them here or subscribe to Wilkesboro Baptist Church on iTunes.

  • June 25 Text: Daniel 1. Title: “What it Means to be Christian in a Spiritually Foreign Land.”Theme: Daniel models what it means to think and live biblically in a pagan and wicked culture.
  • July 2  Mission Trip Report from our student trip to New York City. 
  • July 9 Text: Daniel 2:31-49. Title: “Developing a Kingdom Mindset in a Society of Ungodly Leaders.” Theme: Daniel and his three friends develop a heavenly, kingdom-oriented perspective in a pagan land. 
  • July 16 Text: Daniel 12:1-4. Title:  “Technology and a Christian Worldview.” Theme: Daniel prophesies about the increase of knowledge in the time of the Gentiles. 
  • July 23 Text: Leviticus 18 . Title: “A Biblical Worldview in a Culture of Pagan Sexuality.” Theme: Applying a Christian worldview in a society of contemporary sexual immorality requires understanding holiness and sexuality from God’s perspective. 
  • July 30 Text: Ecclesiastes 12:13-14. Title: “Vanity and The Best a Man Can Do.” Theme: Since we live in a society full of vanity, how do we manage to think and live biblically? 
  • Aug 6 Associate Pastor Tad Craig 
  • Aug 13 Text: Philippians 4:4-9. Title: “Memorization, Mind, Community and Christian Thinking.” Theme: Christians have the privilege and resource of the inner life and their mind under the direction of God. 
  • Aug 20 Text: Acts 17:22-34. Title: “Gospel, Apologetics, and a Pluralistic Culture.” Theme: Learning to discern religious, cultural, and philosophical patterns aids Christian thinking and witness. 
  • Aug 27 Text: Psalm 67. Title: “Christian Worldview and Mission.” Theme:Ultimately, Christian thinking recognizes and lives by God’s purpose in the world: fear, worship, and salvation through us to the nations. 

Here are a few overarching interpretive observations that should help us navigate this series and these topics: 

  • The United States is not Israel, nor does the United States represent people of God today. The United States would be more accurately described as Babylon or Rome in terms of values and morality. We should keep this in mind as we reflect on what it means to live in a sinful society as the people of God. 
  • Christ-followers are the people of God. The people of God make up the kingdom of Christ. The kingdom of God is an overarching theme in this series and helpful for how we see our role as the church in the culture today. 
  • We need both worldview (thinking) and worship (liturgies) to shape us cognitively and formatively as God’s people. Our orthodoxy (what we believe) and orthopraxy (what we do) must be informed and formed by Scripture. It will not be enough to think rightly about these issues. We need to be formed by biblical liturgies and spiritual disciplines to live faithfully as God’s people today. 
  • We must be active and intentional to know and articulate our worldview and practice Christian worship (liturgies). If we remain passive regarding the biblical worldview and worship, the secular and pagan liturgies driven by media, politics, education, entertainment, and social media will form us and our children/grandchildren to the prevailing values around us. Our recourse must be a commitment to thinking biblically and worshiping faithfully. 
  • The church must function as a place where the people of God can be rooted and fruitful. We must pray for sinners, share the gospel, speak up on these issues, vote, and engage society with our voices and actions. But we need to be aware that we may not be able to bring our values back from the immoral brink we’ve already crossed. We are watching the collision between unfettered sexual freedom and religions freedom. Whether or not we are able to affect change in our society, the church must remain a community of the King: Christ followers and Jesus worshipers. 
  • As the people of the Kingdom of Christ, we should have courage and confidence. The angel in Revelation 15 announces: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Rev. 11:15). We should be courageous for our King is the King. We should have confidence because no matter what happens in our culture and in our world, the kingdom of this world will become the Kingdom of our Lord. 

Join us in prayer and participation during this summer sermon series. May we remain faithful as the people of God in the Kingdom of Christ.

Word of the Week: Creator

Where did you come from? I’m not asking where you’re from in the sense of the place of your birth/family history. Rather, I’m asking, “Where did humanity come from?” Are we products of evolutionary naturalism? Were we created? Does the biblical picture of creation as detailed in Genesis detail where we are from? Are our ancient ancestors from Africa 200,000 years ago?

These questions intersect philosophically, theologically, scientifically, and anthropologically. We might be tempted to leave these discussions to the academics and philosophers. However, as followers of Jesus, our faith literally begins with creation. Not only does the Bible begin with the creation narrative, but faith in God finds its root in the doctrine of creation. The book of Psalms highlights the Lord as Creator (Ps. 8, 19, 24 just to name a few). When Paul preaches to polytheists and philosophers at Athens, he begins with the Lord as Creator (Acts 17:24).

As we continue these posts on the doctrine of God, we’re going to spend a couple of weeks answering questions about creation. God as Creator forms the foundation for our faith.

Question # 1—Why the doctrine of creation? 

Answer: We must explore the doctrine of creation and seek to know the Lord as Creator because every worldview must answer the question of origin.

The Bible teaches that before creation, only God existed and that God created ex nihilo—out of nothing. The Hebrew word bara means “create.” It is a technical term that is reserved specifically for God’s act of creating. It is used 50 times in OT, and God is always the subject of the verb “create.”

Nearly every worldview has an origin story, and every worldview (for it to be valid) must account for the origin of the universe.

In his book, Genesis in Space and Time, Francis Schaeffer summarizes the 4 options regarding origins:

  • “Once there was absolutely nothing, and now there is something.” This is not really a serious answer and has not been held by philosophers over the years.
  • “Everything began with an impersonal something.” This answer leaves no room for personality to exist in the universe. As such, it is a view that falls staggeringly short of experiential reality.
  • “Everything began with a personal something.” This is the only explanation that accords with reality—human personality and the universe as we know it. This is also what is tacitly observed in many of the ancient creation accounts—why people have almost always subscribed to gods. However, when getting behind those worldviews, only biblical, Trinitarian Christianity answers the why and what questions behind creation. Only biblical Christianity as a worldview sufficiently explains the intrinsic nature of love and communication. 
  • “There is and always has been a dualism.” This answer falls apart when we press the dualism on the specific interactions between the competing tensions like: Yin/Yang; ideas/matter; or brain and mind. Dualistic answers tend to lean toward one end or the other and fail to articulate a way forward together. (Francis Schaeffer, Genesis in Space and Time, 10-11).

Schaeffer, correctly I believe, leaves us with a personal Creator. The Bible tells us that this personal Creator spoke the world into existence ex nihilo.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth

Genesis 1:1

Question # 2—Why the biblical creation account when there are other creation narratives? A common criticism of the Bible’s claim is: “There are numerous creation myths, and they cannot be literally true.”  

Answer: The biblical creation account in Genesis is unique in the accounts found in history and worldview. 

Creation by Yahweh is unique in the ancient creation stories. God announced in history and by revelation his claim upon all. In contrast other creation narratives allude to strife between deities, chaos, and disaster that result in the creation of the world (Michael Horton, The Christian Faith, 325).

Yes, there are dozens of other creation narratives, and not all of them can be true. But just because many are not true, does not mean one cannot be true. What one must do is evaluate the claims. The violence of the Egyptian narrative where gods like Typhon kill the fertility god, Osiris only to have him resurrected stretch the imagination. Intra-deity violence is also present in the Indian creation account as well as the Greco-Roman and Babylonian accounts (Horton, The Christian Faith, 325).

Reading Genesis 1-2 sounds tame and matter-of-fact in comparison. This is the point. The biblical account is certainly miraculous, but it is also straightforward. It is written, not to defend God, but to declare him.

Question # 3—Why does it matter what we believe about creation? 

Answer: It matters what we believe about creation because where the story begins determines how the story can finish. 

If the universe was not created, then how did it come about? Genesis assumes God’s existence and thus points us to a God who can be known and worshiped.

To have a worldview that ends with hope and assurance, one must have a framework that accounts for it. If one’s worldview begins with an origin narrative that does not account for morality, love, hope, relationship, peace, fulfillment, purpose, or eternity, then those very normal human longings remain unfulfilled. Personally, I believe one of the main reasons why our world is so full of chaos, disruption, and destruction is simply because we have rejected what God made known to us through creation.

As I was driving into the office today, I saw the most beautiful sunrise. The clouds had a deep almost purplish gray. The sun was shining behind the clouds with hues of orange, pink, and deep peach. It was art. It was a work of art that humans can only hope to imitate. The biblical doctrine of creation accounts for this beauty. The scene led me to worship. And that is the primary reason for the biblical doctrine of creation. God the Creator is worthy of our worship.

For today, look at creation and pause to worship the Creator.

Photo by Dawid Zawiła on Unsplash