Worldview Matters Series

Worldview Matters

CCCAG August 12th, 2018

Scripture- John 13:21-38

Intro:

I am a little bit of a history buff.

Let me define history-

History is the exploration of decisions and I'm fascinated by digging in to how decisions were made in the past.

One of the historical areas that fascinates me the most is watching how 80 million people in the 1930’s followed a madman into the bloodiest war that is ever been recorded. Many of you here may have some distant memories of that war or its aftermath.

Of course, I'm talking about World War 2 and the country I’m referring to is Germany.

80,000,000 people subscribe to the madness, racism, fear mongering of one little man named Adolf Hitler. Not only did they let themselves get talked into going to war with the entire world, but many of them participated in acts of war and human atrocities never before seen in the modern world.

After the war was over, many of the senior Nazi leadership were put on trial for war crimes. Most of them used a criminal defense called superior orders. This criminal defense essentially says I was simply following the orders of those people above me. It became almost a running joke that everyone of the Nazis on trial simply kept repeating the phrase “Bistfer es Bitsfer” which translated into English means orders are orders.

Whenever I read something about people in the past, particularly when they make really bad decisions, I try to put myself in their shoes and think the way they think and see if I come up with the same solution they did. If we were to do that with pre-war Germany, this is what they faced- 1930s Germany were still reeling from its defeat in World War one, poverty and economic depression or everywhere, the pride of the German people was that an all-time low until one man rose up from the crowd and says let's make Germany great again. One of the ways he did it was by dividing the German people and putting all the blame for the condition that they were in on one group of people- Jewish immigrants.

And we all know what happened from there.

You may ask yourself what does this have to do with the Bible in general and the gospel of John chapter 13 in particular?

There is the bit of wisdom that says that Those who ignore the mistakes of the past are doomed to repeat them in the future.

These German officers had subordinated their conscience is to a wrong belief. Even though many if not most of them claim to be Christians, they would put aside the very basic teachings of Biblical and Christian morality and even human decency further greater glory of the third Reich.

I use this extreme example to highlight the importance of having a correct world view that is based solely on God’s word.

Having a wrong belief is deadly to you spiritually.

In particular, having a wrong belief about who God is or who Jesus is and what their expectations of you are have eternal consequences.

Here in chapter 13 we see 2 different reactions to Jesus washing the feet of his disciples. The two reactions we see are because these two men’s worldview affected their ability to see what should have been a very basic teaching by Jesus on loving each other.

This part of chapter 13 has three basic divisions-

First we see Judas and his reactions.

Second we see Jesus teaching and explaining why he did what he did in washing his disciples feet as an object lesson to the entire gospel message he is been teaching them for the last 3 years.

Lastly we see Peter and his misplaced zeal.

We're going to look today at the wrong ideas that Judas and Peter had about Jesus, his message, and his coming Kingdom. It's my hope that the Holy Spirit will use these examples to search us and know us and point out any wrong idea we have about God and His will for our lives.

Prayer

I want us to start with this thought-

Judas and Peter, even after three years of intense training with Jesus, still had wrong ideas about what the Gospel and the Kingdom of God meant to the world.

Can any of us argue that Jesus is the best teacher about Jesus? Yet both men allowed an errant worldview to taint what Jesus had been telling them for three years and change it in their minds into something that would benefit only them.

Let’s look first to Judas and explore some of his life and what his motivations where for betraying Jesus-

I. Judas

When we see a horrific event in the news, like a mass shooting- what is the 1st questions asked?