1. Serving God’s Purpose in Our Own Generation -in the world
-in our families
-in the body of Christ
I have been impressed with ministry that the Lord has given you in recent weeks:
Teaching on marriage and divorce
Teaching on getting along with one another in the assembly
Teaching on the authority of Scripture and its reliability
Teaching on prophecy
A series of the Life of John the Baptist
As I prayerfully considered what I should speak on a number of topics presented themselves but I kept coming back to this one. I will not be teaching anything new but I hope it will be fresh from my heart, from the Spirit of God and helpful to all of us.
-in one sense, I am only going to give you an outline of what I would like to speak about. Many points are worthy of a sermon in themselves but I can only indicate the importance of some of them and move on.

2. That in everything He [Jesus] might be preeminent. (Col. 1:18)
That in all things He might have the pre-eminence. (KJV)
Knowledge of the Word will not keep you, but affection for Christ will.
That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death. Philippians 3:10 JND)
And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.(Colossians 1:18-20 ESV)

3. David ... God testified concerning him: ‘I have found David son of Jesse, a man after my own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.’
“Now when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep;
Acts 13: 22,23,34
-it is only with the heart of God that we can properly serve our brethren and our neighbours

4. Serving Our Own Generation as a person after God’s own Heart we:
Know what we have/are in Christ.
Have confidence in our message.
Know the culture of the world we live in.
Know the culture of the professing church.
Ask, “How then can we live?”
-1st Encourage each other in the Lord.
-2nd Share our faith with confidence.
For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. Rom. 7:18
2. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. 8 Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God.
9 You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. Rom. 8:7-9
This is the structure of my talk.

5. 1. In Christ we Know: Six Points Unique to Christianity
1. God is a personal God, He is our Father.
2. He is the source of revealed truth in the Bible!
3. Jesus is the focal point of our message and reality.
4. We are “accepted in the beloved.”
5. The Holy Spirit dwells in us and works in us with power!
6. Grace is central to our message.
I ascend unto my Father and your Father, unto my God and your God. In Islam Allah is not once called father – Allah does not beget (Surah 112:3) –in the NT God is called Father over 200 times and is mentioned most in the Gospel of John.
John 7:17 -If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. Jn. 17:17 -Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. –difference between derived truth and revealed truth.
In all things He is to be preeminent.
We are “highly favoured” – loved as the Father loves Jesus “the only love Allah feels for humans is for those who have earned it.” (Eph. 1:6, Luke 1:28)
Eph. 3:20 – “according to the power at works is us.”
2 Tim. 2:1 Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. Grace is not a concept outside Christianity.

6. 2. We Have Confidence in Our Message.
“Hold fast the outline of sound words.” Which is why I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me. Follow the pattern of the sound words that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. By the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, guard the good deposit entrusted to you.(2 Timothy 1:12-14 ESV)
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
-essential to keep in mind these three facts when looking at Scripture
-1. God’s truth is absolute truth –God defines reality.
-at the heart of post modernism lies a patent self-contradiction –it expects us to accept as absolute truth, that there is no absolute truth
-2. God’s story from Genesis to the Revelation is the story of humanity’s redemption.
-3. Our story fits into God’s story.

7. The Story of The Redemption of Humanity
The Old Testament
Genesis
Exodus
Numbers
Joshua
Judges
1 Samuel
2 Samuel
1 Kings
2 Kings
70 Years of Exile
Ezra
Nehemiah
400 Silent Years
The Story of The Redemption of Humanity
2091 BC- Abraham
Babylo
Babylon
Job
Leviticus
Deuteronomy
KEY OT. What more could have been done in my Vineyard, than I have done in it? When I looked for good grapes , why did it yield only bad? Isa. 5:1-7
14 Gen.
14 Gen.
Ruth
Psa.,1 Chron.
1003 BC -David
Joel, Amos, Hosea
Prov., Ecc.,
Songs of S,
2 Chron.
Isaiah, Micah, Zephaniah, Habakkuk
Jonah, Nahum, Obadiah
14. Gen
-Hold your finger in chapter 11 of Genesis. – approximately 2000 years of recorded history has passed.
-Hold your finger at 2 Samuel chapter 1 – approximately 1000 years has passed from the call of Abraham – Genesis 12 to the reign of King David.
-Hold your finger at the end of the old testament – approximately 600 years from the reign of King David to the end of Old Testament recorded history.
-these inter-Testament pages which are blank, indicate approximately 400 silent years where there was no fresh revelation from God. The history of the events in this period were foretold in Daniel’s prophecy in the 11th chapter. God was not silent about them but he did not speak directly to anyone that we know of during that period.
-hold your finger from the beginning of the NT to the end of NT –written over a period of about 50 years but tells the story of eternity.
-So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations. (Matthew 1:17 ESV)
Abraham [2150 BC], David [1011 BC], Babylon [605 BC], Christ [30 AD]
Ezekiel
605 BC
Daniel
Babylon
Jeremiah, Lamentations
Esther, Haggai, Zachariah, Malachi
14 Gen.
Jesus Christ

8. The New Testament
Mark
John
Acts
The Revelation
Matthew, Luke
The Letters Romans, 1&2 Corinthians,
Galatians, Ephesians Philippians, Colossians,
1&2 Thessalonians,
1&2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James,1&2 Peter, 1,2&3 John, Jude
Key To Bible. He made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reach their fulfillment –to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. Eph. 1:9,10
Our Stories
-Where does our story fit into God’s Story?
- you can find a description of your heart in the addresses to the seven churches in Revelation 2,3. Your story starts now and continues into eternity.
-you have laboured and not fainted - Ephesus
-be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. - Smyrna
-you hold fast my name and have not denied the faith -Pergamos
-Hold fast till I come. -Thyratira
-you have a few names which have not defiles their garments -Sardis
-you have a little strength, have kept my word, and have not denied my name. –Philadelphia
-I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. “Behold I stand at the door and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come into him, and will sup with him and he with me.” –Laodicea
Handout Bible Outline if available.
Babylon

9. The Gospels–The Facts of Christ The Epistles – The Fruits of Christ
The Gospels–The Facts of Christ 1.
Matthew
Son of David, Christ as King.
Genealogy starts with David (Matt.1:1) 2
Mark
Christ as Servant.
No genealogy for a servant, characterized by the word “immediately.” 3
Luke
Christ as Son of Man.
Genealogy starts with Adam (Luke 3:3) 4
John
Son of God, God the Father, God the Holy Spirit.
No genealogy for the Son of God. (John 1:11) 5
Acts
Early church history and action of the Holy Spirit.
The start of the gospel going to Jerusalem, Judaea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)
The Epistles – The Fruits of Christ
Sample of my hand out

10. 3. WE are aware of The Culture of The World we live in
1. As the influence of Christianity declines, the influence of secularism and Islam is increasing in our country. 2. Society has embraced new moral parameters [personal autonomy, gender identity, sexual orientation, euthanasia, abortion, same-sex marriage…etc.] 3. Pluralism is deeply entrenched in our society. All worldviews are equally valid, there are no moral absolutes.
-Society has embraced new moral parameters [personal autonomy, gender designation, Euthanasia, abortion…etc.] – when you apply to some universities you are given 50 different ways you can identify yourself with respect to gender. Now, on Canadian Passport you can mark an X for gender other than male or female. Children are being exposed to questioning their gender in elementary school and in some cases as young as 5 years old.
Gender – A recent survey – more than 2/3rds agree that gender does not define a person the way it used to. 60% think gender lines have blurred, 2/3rds say their generation is pushing the boundaries of what it means to be feminine and masculine. As a result 42% feel that gender roles today are confusing. You can be one thing one day and another the next. Facebook has arranged that you can select your gender from a list of 50 different categories. Refer to charter schools in California and Minnesota that introduced “transgender curriculum” to five year old students and intentionally did not inform the parents.
Euthanasia and the culture of death – no thought of being made in the image of God and that God needs to be left in control. Abortion and recent law passed in Oregon.
The biblical base for morality in our society has been abandoned.
-this has been a process extending over the last years.

11. 4. The internet and Smartphones are transforming how we get information and how we relate to each other.
5. Pornography and sexual immorality is pervasive in our society. These sins destroy the loving relationship of married couples and the spiritual thinking of all Christian involved in them.
- we live in a secular nation where moral values become a matter of personal opinion or private judgment rather than something grounded in objective truth.
-we function independent of any moral absolutes. There is no absolute right or wrong, there is no “truth” reference point.
- No other set of ideas or standards has replaced the collapse of this moral foundation.
-it is not apparent what generally accepted culture will emerge but the battle for a biblical base as the foundation for our culture has been lost. The secularists have won out in Western Civilization.
3. Pluralism is deeply entrenched in our society. All worldviews are equally valid, there are no absolutes except, of course, that there are no absolutes. –Do you get this??
4. Smartphones iGen: Why today’s superconnected kids are growing up less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy- and completely unprepared for adulthood – and what it means for the rest of us. by Jean M. Twenge – professor of psychology at San Diego State University.
5. Pornography –every second -$3000 is being spent on pornography, -28,300 internet users are viewing it-372 internet users are typing adult search terms into search engines
-every 39 minutes a new pornographic video is produced in the United States.

12. 4. We are Aware of the Culture of the professing Church
1. Many nominal Christians have a distorted view of God.
2. Nominal Christians are fast transitioning to non-Christians (nones).
3. Six out of 10 evangelical young people leave the church at the transition time from youth to young adult.
4. Christians are facing open antagonism in their workplace.
5. The authority of Scripture has been called into question within the evangelical church.
6. God speaking “extra-biblically” with “conversational intimacy” is being promoted.
7. The “trajectory” model of interpretation is on the increase.
Many nominal Christians have a distorted view of God.
-Moralistic Therapeutic Deism – a belief system that embraces the existence of a god who demands little more than to be nice, with the central goal of life to be happy and feel good about oneself.
2. Nominal Christians are fast transitioning to non-Christians (nones).
Who is a “none”
Male – 56% are male, 64% of atheists are male
Young – 33% under 30 have no religious affiliation. [9% those 65 and older]
White – 71% white, 11% are Hispanic, 9% black, 4% Asian [82% for atheists and agonistics]
Not necessarily an atheist. -68% say they believe in God or a universal spirit -30% say God exists, 27% of nones say there is no God
Not very religious. -72% seldom or never attend religious services.
A Democrat- 75% of them voted for Obama, 23% for John McCain
In favour of abortion and same gender marriage being legal. 73% in favour of same sex marriage [53% of the general public]
Liberal or Moderate – over 75% identify themselves this way
Not necessarily hostile toward religion -52% say religious institutions protect and strengthen morality.

13. Six Megathemes that emerged from the Barna Research Group
1. The Christian Church is becoming less theologically literate.
2. Christians are becoming more ingrown and less outreach oriented.
3. Growing numbers of people are less interested in spiritual principles and more desirous of learning pragmatic solutions for life.
4. Among Christians, interest in participating in community action is escalating.
5. The postmodern insistence on tolerance is winning over the Christian church.
6. The influence of Christian culture and individual lives is largely invisible.
 Most likely a westerner. 30% of none live in the west [25% of Americans do]
 -most are not atheists –they just reject any specific religion.
-what do you hold – nothing in particular!
3. -the single most important social influence on the religious and spiritual lives of adolescents is their parents
-there has been a decrease in evangelism in the West.
4. Many Christians do not perceive the spiritual warfare going on behind the visible world.
-when the 9/11 Memorial was dedicated, no formal prayers were offered, and no clergy were even invited. There was an interfaith prayer vigil at the National Cathedral featuring the dean of the cathedral (supposedly representing Christian faith), but the invited guests did not include a single representative of Christianity, much less of evangelical faith. On the slate were a rabbi, a Buddhist nun, an incarnate lama, a Hindu priest, the president of the Islamic Society of North America and a Muslim musician.
-orthodox Christianity tends to be disqualified on the grounds that it argues for a truth that is unchanging and universal.
Souls in Transition: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Emerging Adults
Committed traditonalists – 15%

14. 5. HOW THEN SHALL WE LIVE?
How can we serve our generation as a person after God’s own heart? (Acts 13:22)
First , as believers we encourage one another in “our most holy faith” and sometimes if we feel isolated we need to do what David did. “David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.” (1 Sam.30:6)
Selective adherents – 30%,Spiritually open – 15%,Religiously indifferent – 25%,Religiously disconnected – 5%,Irreligious – 10%. 40% of all emerging adults are clearly distanced from religion. They neither care to practice religion not to oppose it. They are simply not invested in religion either way. – “It just does not matter that much.”  -The explosion of people in this category has huge implications for us a Christian believers. -Christians in the Global North comprise 80% of all Christians in 1920 but today they make up less than 40%. Christian affiliation in Africa has risen from 9% to 48% in the last 100 years.
Along with what was mentioned in Paul’s letter to the Romans we:
1. We recognize that massive changes have happened, and are continually happening in our world.
“We are not in Kansas anymore.” Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. (Exodus 1:8 ESV)
2. We are not to have the spirit of fear. We know God is on our side. “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. (2 Timothy 1:7 ESV) - we have to be like Daniel and his friends who in a secular environment purposed in their heart not to “eat of the kings meat,” and regardless of what would happen to themm would not bow to the king’s image.

15. What does this encouragement entail?
According to Paul’s last written words to Timothy :
-preach the Word, be instant in season, convict , rebuke, exhort with longsuffering, teach the doctrine, watch in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an evangelist, fill up the full measure of your ministry, interact with other believers and continue to establish the bonds between them, fight the good fight , keep the faith, and know the Lord is with your spirit.

16. Second, share our faith with confidence.
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, …For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, “The righteous shall live by faith.”(Romans 1:16-17 ESV)
For years I knew what I believed to be true and I had confidence in the Word of God but I did not understand how other people thought and I often felt intimidated when in conversation with some of my friends. I read the Universe Next Door – a Worldview Catalogue by James Sire and have not had those feeling since.
1. What is a worldview?
2. How does our worldview compare to those around us?
3. How do we witness to our secularist friends and neighbours?
One of the ways we can effectively relate to and interact with our neighbours is to understand their worldview and interact with it. Only the Lord can give us the wisdom needed to present the truth of the Gospel in an effective way. Invariably the gospel penetrates our consciousness through our conscience, our knowledge of right and wrong. Ultimately, everyone has to come to the point that the publican came to in Luke 18, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” There are several paths that can lead to that critical point:
1. The Goodness of God leads you to repentance. Rom. 2:4.
2. Therefore, knowing the terror of the Lord we persuade men. 2 Cor. 5:11.
3. Be always ready to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear. 1 Pet. 4:15

17. We need to understand our unbelieving neighbour’s worldview & share the Gospel in that context.
4. In Acts 17, Paul quoted from the contemporary poets to make his points but in the end spoke from the stance of revealed truth and said, “God now commands all men everywhere to repent. Because he has appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he has ordained; by whom he has given assurance unto all men in that he has raised him from the dead.”
5. In Acts 13, where he was talking to a Jewish audience, he takes a different approach. He takes them through an abbreviated history of Israel up to and including the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, their Saviour. The end point of his preaching is, “Be it known unto therefore, men and brethren, that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins : and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which you could not be justified by the law of Moses.”
We need to have discernment from God to know what approach to take.
Opportunities abound if we are equipped by the Holy Spirit with the knowledge to give a reason of the hope that lies within us.
-we have to recover the art of Christian persuasion.
-win people and not arguments, in a manner that is true to the Gospel
-most people are not open to what we have to say and many are hostile.

18. Assumptions that are common to all world views.
What is a world View?
It is a set of assumptions which we hold, consciously or unconsciously, about the basic makeup of our world.
Assumptions that are common to all world views.
Something exists; something is there.
The great question is, what is the something?
What are some of the assumptions you have about the world around you? What is the ultimate reality? It is the box top of the puzzle. What is the unifying picture.
Os Guiness
-”There are too many people who do not want to believe what we share or even to hear what we have to say and our challenge is to help them to see it despite themselves”
-”There is no one anywhere and at any time to whom we cannot speak constructively.”
-”The art of persuasion challenges us to be more decisively Christian in our communication.”
-”There is an art to the advocacy of truth.”
-”True to the biblical understanding of creation, Christian persuasion must always take into account the human capacity for reason and the primacy of the human heart.”
-”True to the understanding of the fall, Christian persuasion must always take into account the anatomy of an unbelieving mind in its denial of God.”
-”True to the incarnation, Christian persuasion always has to be primarily person-to-person and face-to –face, and not argument to argument, formula to formula, media to media or methodology to methodology.
-”True to the cross of Jesus, Christian persuasion has to be cross-shaped in its manner just as it is cross-centred in its message.
-”True to the Holy Spirit, Christian persuasion must always know and show that the decisive power is not ours but God’s.”
“As God saw our sin, so He sent his Son, and as God sent his Son, so we share our faith.”

19. A worldview has to:
Satisfy human needs, [points to what gives you ultimate satisfaction and purpose]
Correspond to reality, [explains why the world system appears the way it does]
Be liveable! [gives you practical guidance on how to live in the present]
Many worldview fall short of this but this is the goal. Do you think the beliefs that your parents have, and that you have, explain the world you observe? Do you feel you have enough resources to get the guidance you need to live the life you desire to live?

20. A world view will answer the following questions:
How did we get here? The question of origins.
What is the nature of man? The question of who we are.
What is the basis of “right and wrong.” The question of ethics.
What gives our life meaning? The question of significance.
Where are we going? The question of destiny.
We have to realize that we live in a pluralistic world. What is obvious to us may be a “lie from hell” to our neighbour next door.
This is where the framework of the Christian world view starts.
The Old Testament is a revelation from God in view of His earthly people Israel. Moses was given this revelation about 1475 BC., at least 2500 years after Adam was created. All of the history of the earth prior to his life was recorded in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Revelation is absolute in its nature. The truth we arrive at from observation and deduction is derived and subject to our errors of interpretation.
By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Hebrews 11:3 ESV)
He did not create a formless earth but “the heavens and the earth.”
For thus says the LORD,who created the heavens (he is God!), who formed the earth and made it (he established it; he did not create it empty, he formed it to be inhabited!): “I am the LORD, and there is no other. (Isaiah 45:18 ESV)
It would be strange to hear of an ordered heavens along with a “formless earth” as the firstfruits of God’s creative activity.

21. In the beginning God ….. ..created.. ..the heavens and the earth!
God created the material universe but is not part of it. He is outside of it. He created matter and energy.
He was not created. One of the main points made by the atheist Richard Dawkins in his book, The God Delusion is the question he asks, Who created God? This question assumes that God was created –It is a category mistake- God was not created! He is in a different category from His creation. If you think about it is the only thing that makes sense. Something cannot come from nothing. Creation must have come from a non-material source.
The atheist believes:
-everything in the universe (all space, time and matter) came into existence from nothing at a point in the past. –the Big Bang! We can agree with them on this.
-When the Bang Theory was initiated by scientists who were studying general relativity and quantum mechanics, many of them did not want to believe it. Robet Jastrow, a scientist writer [God and the Astronomers] at the time and an agnostic wrote, “At the present time, the Big Bang Theory has no competitors. Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset  -

22. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
he created him;
male and female
he created them.
. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind, supposedly a very objective mind, when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend conflict does not exist, or we paper it over with meaningless phrases.”
Here are several typical quotes from a scientists of the time;
Walter Nernst – to deny the infinite duration of time would be to betray the vary foundations of science.
Philip Morrison (MIT) – I find it hard to accept the Big Bang Theory, I would like to reject it.
Allan Sandage (Palomar Observatory) –It is such a strange conclusions.. It cannot really be that true.
In these statements you see the importance of World View. And agnostic/atheist scientist rejects scientific evidence because they do not want to acknowledge a possibility of God.
We accept the Bible as revealed truth. It is absolute. Our interpretation of it is not.
-there must ultimately be harmony between the correct interpretation of the biblical data and the correct interpretation of scientific data.
A Case in Point
-the Copernican view of the solar system - a heliocentric system, or the Ptolemaic/Aristotelian view of the solar system – a geocentric system.
-Martin Luther, John Calvin both rejected the heliocentric system.
-in 1632 Galileo in his book Dialogue Concerning Two World Systems attached the geocentric view espoused by Roman Catholic Church
-now most accept the heliocentric view that the earth spins on its axis and moves around the sun at an average speed of 30 km/s (about 67,000 miles a second) and takes a year to complete its circuit.
-the Bible could be understood to teach that the earth was fixed. But it does not have to be understood that way.

23. Windows of Life Condo The Courtyard of Life Theism God Exists Deism
Naturalism
God Does not Exist
Nihilism
Existentialism
Pantheistic Monism
Post Modernism
The Courtyard of Life
World Views
We will focus on the fifth and seventh floors only today. We will compare the two world views comparing the answers to some of the questions listed above,

24. The Flow of Human Thought in Western Civilization
These two worldviews are in opposition to each other. They are symbolically represented by the two structures found at opposite ends of the Champs Elysees in Paris, France. One of them is a large open cube: almost 40 stories tall and 100 meters wide, covered in glass and white marble. Construction started in 1985 and was completed in It is a modernistic art sculpture called La Grande Arche. It represents the modern, secular worldview of France’s current government, a worldview without God. The other structure is the famous Notre Dame Cathedral, one of the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe. Its construction was started in 1163 AD and was completed in 1345 AD. The cathedral was built during a time when God was considered the prime reality by those in power. God and the Bible were the benchmarks for morality but it was distorted by the teaching and behaviour of the Roman Catholic Church. As the cathedral can easily fit inside La Grande Arche, so too the religious heritage of France was swallowed up by the current secularism which has its roots in the French Revolution and the Enlightenment. The answers to the five basic questions of the Theistic and Atheistic worldview are compared below.
Theistic Worldview
Secular Worldview

25. The Two Major Competing World Views of Western Civilization
Theistic World View
-God is the ultimate reality and engages and intervenes in ours.
-an open box; God intervenes in our world.
-we worship God who is outside the box but who interacts with it.
Secular World View
-God does not exist, matter and energy is all there is.
-a closed box; it is not open to interventions from outside.
-men worship what is inside the box
Do you get this? Can you describe what is in these slides in your own words?
How can your life be significant if matter and energy is all there is? Meaning and significance are correlated.

26. God
-the Big Bang!
-gods, Man, Animals and Plants –the Cosmos/Universe
-all essentially just matter and energy, no spirit, soul or mind.
Man
-Animals and Plants
-The Cosmos/Universe
-God sustains all activity according to His designed laws and His personal intervention in our lives.
-God is Light and God is Love. He establishes the benchmarks of all morality. He defines what is love, hate, right, wrong, good, evil, sin, righteousness…
-He tells what “ought to be” compared to what is.
-death is the beginning of eternity with God or in hell with the devil and his angels.
-All events are a result of cause and effect or random singularities.
-man is the measure of all things.
-the “God words” right, wrong, good evil, love hate…are defined by society, there is no absolute morality.
-there is no rational basis for saying something “ought to be.”
-death is the end of man/personality.
When God met Adam and Eve in the garden after they had disobeyed him and eaten of the forbidden fruit, God asked them “Where are you?” Where are you???
What Box are you in?
These diagrams represent two very different world views
-worldviews involve truth claims about reality but these beliefs are often held in pre-reflective and unexamined manner, often for emotional and intellectual reasons.
-many people fail to bring their world views into critical focus.
-a Christian world view, at the deepest level, system of truth claims or assertions about reality.
-Genesis 1 is a foundation stone in our world view.
-A world view involves at least four components, origins, ethics, the meaning of life, and destiny. Our topic today deals with origins and ethics.
-Origins - in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth!
-Ethics - ”and the Lord said, behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.” –conscience
-“All scripture is breathed and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.”2 Tim. 16,17
Meaning -“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and follow me… For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? … For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his father ,,,and then He shall reward every man according to his works.” Matt. 16
Destiny – “For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain…to depart to be with Christ; which is far better” Phil 1:21,23

27. 8 Finally...whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen ….—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.
(Phil. 4)

28. Basic Worldview Questions
Basic Worldview Questions
Theistic Answer
Atheistic Answer
How did we get here? The question of origins.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Man is created in the image of God and thus possesses personality, self-transcendence, intelligence, morality, gregariousness and creativity.
God does not exist. Matter and energy is all there is. Life evolved from inanimate matter over millions of years
What is the nature of man? The question of who we are.
Man is made in the image of God and has a body, soul and spirit.
Man is just a biochemical machine which dances to the tune of his DNA.
What is the basis of “right and wrong?” The question of ethics.
”and the Lord said, behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.”
-“All scripture is God breathed and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” 2 Tim. 16,17
There is no right and wrong, good or evil, love or hate – all ethics are culturally defined. There is no absolute truth.
What gives our life meaning? The question of significance.
-“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself and follow me… For what is a man profited if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul? …the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his father … He shall reward every man according to his works.” Matt. 16:
Life is “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” There is no ultimate meaning in life. It all ends in a “black hole.”
Where are we going? The question of destiny?
“For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain…to depart to be with Christ; which is far better” Phil 1:21,23
When you die that is the end of you. There is no eternal existence of anybody.