Freedom in Christ Lesson 4: The World’s View of the Truth
Focus Verse:
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)
2 And do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what
is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Objective: To understand that Christians need to make
a definite decision to turn away from believing what the world teaches and
choose instead to believe what God says is true.
Focus Truth: The world we grew up in influenced us to
look at life in a particular way and to see that way as “true”. However, if it
doesn’t stack up with what God says is true, we need to reject it and bring our
beliefs into line with what is really true.
Welcome
If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you
choose?
Do you think that the way you look at the world and what you
believe would be very different if you had been brought up in a different
culture?
John 14:6 (NKJV)
6 Jesus said to him, "I am the
way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
Ephesians
1:17-23 (NKJV)
17 that the God of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and
revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the
eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the
hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the
saints, 19 and what is the
exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the
working of His mighty power 20 which
He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at
His right hand in the heavenly places, 21
far above all principality and power and might and dominion,
and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to
come. 22 And He put all things
under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the
church, 23 which is His body, the
fullness of Him who fills all in all.
1
Corinthians 1:30 (NKJV) 30 But
of Him you are in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God--and
righteousness and sanctification and redemption—
Philippians
2:5-11 (NKJV)
5 Let this mind be in you which was
also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being
in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking
the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He
humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the
death of the cross. 9 Therefore God
also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should
bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
What is “The
World”?
We’ve looked at
some fundamental truths: who we are in Christ and the fact that faith is simply
a choice to believe what God tells us is already true. In the next three
sessions we’re going to turn our attention to the things that try to deflect us
from the truth. We have three distinct enemies: the world, the flesh, and
the devil.
First, in this
session, we’ll look at the world and how it tries to make us look at reality in
a way that is opposed to how God says it actually is.
The world is the
system or culture we grew up in and live in. That
will vary greatly according to where you are from and when you were born. I’m
going to talk about it almost as if it were a person with its own thoughts and
deeds. It isn’t. However, there is someone behind it, Satan, whom Jesus called
(John 12:31) “the ruler of this world.” To a significant extent, he is the one
who pulls the strings behind the world and works through it.
Let’s look at the
three main tactics the world uses to try to divert us from the truth.
Tactic 1: Promising To Meet Our Deepest Needs
Its first tactic is
promising to meet those deep needs we all have. We were created to have the
kind of life Adam had: 100% acceptance, the highest significance, perfect
security. But that wasn’t the life we were born into. From our first breath we
didn’t have the spiritual connection to God that we were meant to have. Yet
we were created with those in-built needs for acceptance, significance, and
security that our connection with God would have fulfilled.
When we were
growing up and instinctively started looking to fulfill those deep needs for
acceptance, significance, and security, up popped the world and said, “No problem! I’ll show you how to
get those.”
It feeds us false
formulas:
Performance +
accomplishments = significance
Status +
recognition = security
Appearance +
admiration = acceptance
Those are lies. But
in the absence of a spiritual connection to God, we naturally fell for them. Or
as Paul put it, we naturally “followed the ways of this world” (Eph 2:2).
1 John 2:15–17 is a
key passage in understanding how the world tries to suck us in:
1 John 2:15-17 (NKJV)
15 Do not love the world or the
things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not
in him. 16 For all that is
in the world--the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of
life--is not of the Father but is of the world. 17
And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does
the will of God abides forever.
According to the
passage, there are three channels through which the world works:
The Lust of The
Flesh
The more we buy
into the world’s lies and act on them, the more unhelpful patterns of thinking
become established in our minds, which then become default ways of behaving.
The Lust of The
Eyes
The world shows me
things that it claims will meet my needs for acceptance, significance, and
security that God created me to have.
The Pride of
Life
This is simply the
temptation the world throws at us to boast about our life, based on the lie
that it’s possessions or achievements or connections that make us significant.
Pause for Thought 1
Objective:
To help people
understand their vulnerability to the world’s promises to meet our God-given
needs for significance, security, and acceptance.
Questions:
In what ways has the world tried to make you feel
insignificant, insecure, and unloved?
In what ways has the world promised you significance,
security, and acceptance?
Do you recognize these “false formulas”?
Performance + accomplishments = significance
Status + recognition = security
Appearance + admiration = acceptance
How can you counteract “the lust of the flesh, the lust of
the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 John 2:15–17)?
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Tactic 2: Painting
A Complete But False Picture Of Reality
Essentially the second tactic of the world is to give you a
distorted view of reality but feed it to you as the real thing. How we see the world is called your
“worldview.”
Just as we pick up things like language from our
environment, we also pick up beliefs, values, and ways of behaving. We are influenced
by our family, our schooling, our friends, the media.
So without even realizing it we all develop a way of looking
at reality that we believe is true. But if your worldview is faulty, it will
lead to faulty judgments about what happens in your life.
1.
A Non-Western Worldview
If you were brought up in Africa or Eastern cultures you may
well have absorbed the belief that the universe is controlled by a kind of
universal power that runs through everything and by spirits of many types.
If something bad happened to you, you would probably begin to suspect that
someone might be manipulating this universal power or the spirits against you
by cursing you or doing some kind of magic.
You would probably turn to a shaman or witch doctor to sort
out the problems with this universal power.
If this is how you see reality, chances are that you will be
living in constant fear that someone else might have a better control of the
powers or that you might somehow unwittingly upset a spirit that would then
turn against you.
2.
The Western Worldview
Most people brought up in the West don’t turn to a witch
doctor if things start to go wrong. Instead we tend to look for logical reasons
and try to fix the problem.
The Western worldview tells us that what is real can only be
known through scientific methods. If we’re ill we’ll turn to a doctor who will
use scientific methods to try to make us better.
3.
The Postmodern Worldview
The “Postmodern” worldview — has been emerging in the West
in recent decades, which is something of a reaction against past generations’
reliance on scientists and experts.
The younger you are, the more likely you are to be
suspicious of experts in general but particularly suspicious of those who make
strong claims to certainty. In fact you may well have come to see anyone who
has strong convictions as being on a dangerous line that ends with extreme,
fanatical terrorists.
Whereas previous generations saw truth as something
revealed by God or discovered by science, increasingly we test whether an idea
is valid or not purely on the basis of our own personal experience. If it
feels good to me, it’s OK. Each person is free to make up their own version of
truth based on their own experience.
So politicians can say what people want to hear even if it
flies in the face of facts and get a strong following. Groups on social media
promote even the most outlandish views and members reinforce each other’s
beliefs.
That is why Christians are under pressure to agree that all
religions are equally true. Saying that we respect the right of other people to
different beliefs and that we are happy to dialogue with them is no longer
enough. There is a pressure to agree that their beliefs are just as “true” as
our own.
Younger Christians are happy to say that Jesus is their
truth but hesitate to go further and talk about Him as the truth.
This has led to what you might call “extreme tolerance”
where practically any behavior is acceptable. People in previous
generations used pornography, indulged in binge drinking, used drugs, or had
multiple sexual partners, but would usually have acknowledged that those things
were wrong. Increasingly, people don’t see these things as inherently wrong
as long as they make them feel good. In fact the only thing that is seen as
wrong is saying that what someone else is doing is wrong!
The bottom line is that people are increasingly absorbing
into their worldview a belief that there is no real, solid, undergirding truth.
The Biblical Worldview: Truth Does Exist
So, what is true? That there is a spiritual power flowing
through the universe that we can manipulate? Something that only science can
uncover? Whatever feels good to you?
Which worldview is right?
None of them!
If we were to take that virtual reality headset off, get rid
of the values and beliefs that our own particular culture instilled in us, what
would the world actually look like?
The Bible claims to be God’s revelation of reality to the
people He created. If that is right, then taking off that headset would mean
that what we would see would correspond exactly to what the Bible tells us.
That what the Bible says is “how it really is.”
Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one
comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6).
What! Are we saying that only one view of reality can be
right? Isn’t that a bit, well, intolerant?
Consider the most important question facing everybody in the
world: What happens when you die?
Hinduism teaches that when a soul dies it is reincarnated in
another form.
Christianity teaches that souls spend eternity in either
heaven or hell.
Spiritists think we float around as ghosts.
Atheists believe that we have no soul and that when we die
our existence simply ends.
Can all those things be true at the same time? To put it
another way, does what you believe will happen to you when you die make any
difference to what will actually happen? Or will the same thing happen to
everyone when they die regardless of what they believed before the event?
Surely, if Hindus are right, we will all be reincarnated. If
Christians are right, we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. If
atheists are right, all of our existences will come to an end. If spiritists
are right we’ll all float around as ghosts. But they simply can’t all be true
at the same time.
So it’s clear that there is such a thing as real truth that
exists whatever individuals may choose to believe.
We are not proposing a version of truth that we have made
up ourselves. The Bible has been tested and found reliable by millions
of people over thousands of years.
In fact many of those ordinary people have found that, by
choosing to believe it, they have been able to accomplish, or be a catalyst
for, extraordinary things.
We may find it difficult to advance an unfashionable
argument. But are we really being helpful if we encourage people in their view
that there is no truth when Jesus has said very clearly that He is the truth?
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Pause for Thought 2
Objective: To reinforce the concept that we have all been
heavily influenced by a non-biblical way of looking at reality.
Questions:
How different would your worldview be if you had grown up in
another part of the world or at a different time?
In what ways do you
identify with one of the three worldviews discussed here?
When we talk to people about Jesus’ claim to be the only way
to God, how can we not come across as arrogant?
______________________________________________________________________
Tactic 3: Not
Replacing Core Beliefs
The third tactic of the world is to get us to add our
Christian beliefs to our existing worldview rather than replace it, so
that our core beliefs remain the same.
For example, in an African country, the leadership of a
missionary organization was ready to hand the church they planted over to
African leadership. Two men were candidates for the position. Now what I’m
about to say might sound silly to you, if you were not brought up with an
African worldview, but one of them went to a witch doctor to get a charm to
enhance his chances of being chosen as the church leader. Why did he do that?
He was simply reverting back to his core beliefs, because they were deeper than
his newer Christian beliefs.
How are those brought up in the West affected by the Western
worldview which in effect denies the reality of the spiritual world? Some parts
of the Church have tried to get rid of what they consider to be unnecessary
supernatural “baggage.” They deny the miraculous and the existence of angels
and demons.
Most of us recognize the reality of the spiritual world, at
least intellectually. However, the Western worldview encourages us to live our
lives and exercise our ministries as if the spiritual world didn’t exist.
When something goes horribly wrong in our lives, many
Christians blame God. Why? Influenced by the Western worldview, they leave
Satan out of the equation who, the Bible says, is a thief who “comes only to
steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10).
What about when someone has a mental or psychological
problem? The medical profession, influenced by the Western worldview, tends to
ignore the reality of the spiritual world.
We say we believe the Bible, but isn’t it true that many of
our decisions are made on the basis of what we think rather than on what God is
saying? We say we believe in the power of prayer but do we spend time praying,
or do our actions really demonstrate that we believe that we can sort out our
lives on our own and use prayer only as a last resort?
Holding on to our core beliefs leads to a shaky foundation
for our faith.
Os Guinness says: “The Christian faith is not true because
it works; it works because it is true. . . It is not simply “true
for us”; it is true for any who seek in order to find, because truth is true
even if nobody believes it and falsehood is false even if everybody believes
it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or
sincerity — it is simply true and that is the end of it.” Time For Truth, Os
Guinness (Baker Books 2000), pp. 79–80
Each of us needs to come to a point where we realize that
what the world has caused us to believe is so contrary to what is really true
that we make a conscious decision to throw it away. We need to make a conscious
choice to believe what the Bible says, to make the Word of God our core belief
system.
If we don’t, it will lead us to compromise and we’ll be
“double-minded” and “unstable in all our ways” (James 1:8).
I’m going to say a prayer that you can pray with me if you
want to make a firm decision to base the rest of your life on what God says is
true.
Lord Jesus,
No matter what the world throws at me, I am making a
decision today to believe only what You say is true in Your Word, the Bible. I
choose not to be double-minded any longer but to trust You and make the Bible
the core of what I believe. I renounce and turn away from my previous worldview
and make a new commitment today to base my life on the truth in Your Word. I
trust that You will be faithful to me. In Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Reflection
Objective: To give people an
opportunity to reject aspects of their original worldview and embrace the truth
in god’s word.
The concept of “renouncing” and “announcing” is fundamental
to the freedom in Christ course and participants will become well used to it. To
renounce something is to reject it or turn away from it.
Spend some time in prayer throwing out your old worldview
and choosing to see the world as God says it actually is.
You might find it helpful to say “I renounce the lie that
[my old false belief], and I announce the truth that [truth from God’s Word].”
For example: “I renounce the lie that the unseen spiritual world is not real,
and I announce the truth that it is just as real as the physical world we can
see.”
“I renounce the lie that financial success brings real
security, and I announce the truth that I am already perfectly secure because
no one can snatch me out of God’s hand.”
“I renounce the lie that I
should be worried that someone may have cursed me, and I announce the truth
that I am seated with Christ in the heavenly realms far above all other
spiritual powers.”
How will understanding
that we all grow up with a particular way of looking at the world help you as
you talk to people who are not yet Christians?
IN THE COMING WEEK:
At the end of each day take five minutes to review how your
old worldview has reared its head during the day to try to persuade you to
compromise the truth of the Bible. When you identify it happening, take time to
renounce the false belief from your previous worldview and make a commitment to
base your life on the truth of the Bible.
Anderson, Neil T.; Goss, Steve.
Freedom in Christ Leader's Guide: A 10-Week Life-Changing Discipleship Course, Baker
Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
