Do You Have A Biblical Worldview? A Sinless Messiah

Do You Have A Biblical Worldview? A Sinless Messiah

(topical)

Intro

1. What is your worldview?

2. James Sire defines a worldview as, ¡§¡Ka set of¡Kassumptions¡Kwhich we hold (consciously or unconsciously) about the basic makeup of our world.¡¨

3. A worldview is a grid-work, a paradigm, a model, a framework for interpreting life, evaluating truth, and making decisions.

4. It shows itself on many fronts:

(1) abortion¡Kimage of God or evolved animal?

(2) gender wars¡KScriptural teaching or popular reasoning

(3) evangelism/missions¡Kdo all religions lead to heaven or not?

(4) shacking up without marriage or the sanctity of sex within marriage alone?

(5) homosexual unions¡K

(6) gambling verses investing, working

(7) drugs/drunkenness verses sobriety

(8) flippant divorce verses working at marriage

(9) indulging children verses training them in a balanced way

(10) holding people accountable for their behavior verses blaming society

5.. George Barna is America¡¦s leading pollster in matters of religion and morality; he is also a Christian. He reports that only:

¡§¡K9% of born again Christians and only 7% of all Protestants have a biblical world¡¨

Roman Catholics would be even less by Barna¡¦s definition

6. Although I have often disagreed with his direction for churches, I do appreciate his diagnosis of the problem.

7. In a recent study, he focused his statistical survey and found that 51% of protestant pastors held what he called a Biblical worldview¡K. a Biblical worldview is much more detailed¡K.but you cannot hold a truly Biblical view without these elements¡K

8. This 51% figure was very encouraging to me¡K.it represents a marked improvement over the last 25 years¡K.

¡K.for example, 25 years ago, only 10% of United Methodist ministers believed the Bible was true¡Kit is now up to 27%

9. But most distressing was the statistic that, even in churches where pastors do hold a Biblical worldview (by his definition, which is pretty broad and incomplete), only 1 out of 7 church attenders did.

10. I know we scored a lot better than that!

11. Although a Biblical worldview should include dozens of important beliefs, it must include these basic ones: (1) the accuracy of biblical teaching, (2) the sinless nature of Jesus, (3) the literal existence of Satan, (4) the omnipotence and omniscience of God, (5) salvation by grace alone, and the (6) personal responsibility to evangelize.

12. In the recent past, we have addressed the omnipotence and omniscience of God, the idea that God has all power and knows all.

13. In our next series, Romans, we will hit salvation by grace alone pretty hard.

14. So that leaves us with 4 subjects. Yet three of them we covered either in adult Sunday School (Satan and spiritual warfare), and Sunday night, (evangelism and the accuracy of Biblical teaching), so that leaves us with the sinless nature of Christ.

MAIN IDEA: If we are to have a Biblical worldview, we must develop Biblical convictions.

TS-------------„³ Today, we are going to look at one key crucial conviction by addressing two questions.

I. Did Jesus Christ Live A Sinless Life?

1. This is being aggressively challenged¡K.

Although most adults are aligned with either a Protestant (54%) or Catholic (22%) church, a large minority of Americans believes that when Jesus Christ was on earth He committed sins. Currently, slightly less than half of the public (42%) holds this view, while half (50%) say Jesus did not sin. The people groups most likely to contend that Jesus sinned include people under age 38 (49%), notional Christians (51%), and atheists and agnostics (62%).

(1) the DaVincci code: Jesus was married¡K.Mormons, 4 wives

(2) Why this would be wrong: knew He was a sacrifice¡K.would have been irresponsible

(3) You can¡¦t just invent things from the air¡K.

Too many people view religion as a choice to pretend¡Ktruth and objectivity have nothing to do with things¡Ksince they do not believe that the Jesus of the Bible was the Son of God, why not make Him into what you want Him to be?

I will give you my theological term for this way of thinking¡Kare you ready, ¡§flakeulus brainulus¡¨ or, ¡§Flaky Thinking.¡¨

(4) The heresy of gnosticism¡K.Gnostic gospels written after first century

(5) Credibility of sources is crucial¡K

(6) Suppose I wrote a document that said Abraham Lincoln dyed his hair black, and that his beard was false¡K.

(7) Two thousand years from now, someone might say, ¡§well, the author was born not even a hundred years after Lincoln died, there must be something to it¡K¡¨

(8) The real motivation for this challenge is simply an outworking of the attitude of sinful man as revealed in Psalm 2, (turn there)

Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the LORD and against his Anointed One. "Let us break their chains," they say, "and throw off their fetters."