Curry's Chapel Church
20260524 1 - The Invisible Lens
  • Week 1: What Is a Worldview? — “The Lens Through Which We See”
    SLIDE: Scripture Colossians 2:6
    Colossians 2:6 ESV
    6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him,
    SLIDE: Title

    Opening: The Same Room, Two Different Worlds

    Good morning, church. It is good to see your faces.
    I want to start this morning with a question: Have you ever noticed how two people can look at the exact same thing and see something completely different?
    Here’s what I mean. A husband and wife walk into their garage. She looks around and says, “This is a disaster. There are tools everywhere. There’s a box from 2019 we never unpacked. I can’t even get to the car.” He looks around the same garage — same garage, same moment — and says, “What are you talking about? This is a well-organized workshop. I know exactly where everything is.”
    [PAUSE for laughter]
    She sees chaos. He sees a system. Same space. Completely different realities. And if you’re married, you already know — neither one of them is going to change the other’s mind.
    Now, that’s a silly example. But here’s what I want you to sit with this morning: that pattern — two people looking at the same thing and seeing something completely different — that isn’t just about garages.
    It’s about everything. It’s about the news, about politics, about parenting, about suffering, about God. What we see depends on what we’re looking through.
    And that, church, is what we’re going to talk about for the next six weeks.
    Today we are launching a brand-new Sermon and Bible Study series called “Standing Firm: Building a Christian Worldview.”
    Over these six weeks, we’re going to build something together. Not a building. Not a program. We’re going to build a foundation — a framework for how we see everything. Because if we get the lens right, we’ll start seeing the world the way God designed us to see it. And that changes everything.

    Object Lesson: The Invisible Glasses

    [OBJECT LESSON] — Eyeglasses / Tinted Sunglasses
    Instructions: Hold up a pair of glasses—ideally sunglasses with colored or tinted lenses. Put them on. Look around the room. Describe what you see. Remove them. Describe the difference. Keep them in hand as a visual anchor throughout the sermon. Consider placing them on the pulpit or podium as a recurring reference point.
    I brought something with me this morning.
    [Hold up glasses.]
    Just a pair of sunglasses. Nothing special. But watch what happens when I put them on.
    [Put glasses on. Look around.]
    Now, everything in this room looks a little different to me. The colors shifted. The brightness changed. Some of you look, well... a little more mysterious than you did a second ago. [Laughter.]
    Here’s the thing — the room didn’t change. You didn’t change. The only thing that changed was the lens I’m looking through.
    [Remove glasses. Hold them up.]
    Now here’s what I really want you to hear: Every single one of you is wearing a pair of invisible glasses right now. You’ve been wearing them your whole life. You put them on so long ago that you forgot they were there. They’re called your worldview. And they shape everything you see — everything you believe, everything you value, every decision you make.
    [PAUSE]
    The question isn’t whether you have a worldview. You do. The question is: Do you know what your lenses are made of?
    SLIDE: Title

    Main Teaching

    We will look at this subject today in via 4 different points:
    Point 1: Everyone Has a Worldview
    Point 2: Your Worldview Shapes Everything
    Point 3: Scripture Calls Us to a Renewed Mind
    Point 4: Maturity Means Learning to Discern
    SLIDE: Point 1

    Point 1: Everyone Has a Worldview

    So what exactly is a worldview? Let me give you the simplest definition I can:
    A worldview is the set of assumptions, beliefs, and values that act as a lens through which you interpret everything — from the news to your neighbor to the meaning of your own life.
    It’s the operating system running [point to head] in the background of your mind. You don’t think about it most of the time. But it’s always running. It’s always shaping how you process the world.
    James Sire, who spent decades studying this subject, put it this way:
    “A worldview is a commitment, a fundamental orientation of the heart, that can be expressed as a story or in a set of presuppositions — assumptions which may be true, partially true, or entirely false — that we hold, consciously or subconsciously, consistently or inconsistently, about the basic constitution of reality.” — James W. Sire, The Universe Next Door
    Did you catch that? He didn’t say a worldview is something you think. He said it’s an orientation of the heart. It goes deeper than ideas. It’s the soil that your ideas grow in.
    Here’s an illustration I love. You’ve may have heard it before. Ask a fish, “How’s the water?” And the fish says, “What’s water?”
    [PAUSE]
    The fish doesn’t know it’s wet. It’s never thought about water because water is all it’s ever known.
    That’s how worldviews work for most people. We swim in our assumptions every single day and never stop to examine them. We just assume that the way we see things is the way things are.
    Your worldview answers the biggest questions a human being can ask:
    ● Where did we come from?
    ● What does it mean to be human?
    ● What’s wrong with the world?
    ● How do we fix it?
    ● What happens when we die?
    ● Or as Francis Schaffer would say: How should we then live?
    Everyone — and I mean everyone — has answers to those questions, whether they’ve thought about them carefully or not.
    The atheist has a worldview.
    The Buddhist has a worldview.
    The person who says “I’m spiritual but not religious” — that’s a worldview too.
    The teenager scrolling social media at midnight — that teenager is absorbing a worldview right now, one frame at a time.
    And so are we. The question is whether we’re aware of it.
    SLIDE: Point 2

    Point 2: Your Worldview Shapes Everything

    Now, you might be thinking, “Okay, Pastor, that’s interesting in a philosophy class kind of way. But what does it have to do with my Tuesday?”
    Everything. It has everything to do with your Tuesday.
    Let me show you. Two people watch the same news story. One person says, “That’s an outrage!” The other person says, “That’s progress!” Same story. Same facts. Completely different reactions. Why? Because they’re wearing different lenses.
    Your worldview shapes how you parent.
    It shapes how you handle conflict — whether you fight or forgive, whether you hold a grudge or extend grace.
    It shapes what you think about money — is it a tool, a reward, a curse, a right?
    It shapes what you think about suffering — is it meaningless, or does God have a purpose in it?
    Your worldview shapes how you vote. And no, I’m not going to tell you how to vote — but I am going to tell you this: If you’ve never thought about why you vote the way you do, you might be voting out of someone else’s worldview and not even know it.
    And don’t think that doesn’t happen: While I was still in high school I was canvasing for a presidential candidate. A few of us were going door-to-door asking folks how they planned to vote — and if not for our candidate, we would gave them literature about our candidate. I knocked at this one house and a lady came to the door. I introduced myself and asked; "Ma’am, who are you planning to vote for for president?” She replied, “I don’t know, my husband hasn’t told me yet.”
    [PAUSE]
    Here’s one that might hit a little closer to home. Some of you are sitting next to someone right now, who sees the world completely differently than you do. And you married them.
    [PAUSE for laughter]
    I’m not making that up. Half of the arguments in a marriage aren’t really about the dishes, or the thermostat, or whose turn it is to deal with the kids, or whose turn it is to take the trash out. They’re about two people who have different assumptions about how life is supposed to work — and they’ve never stopped to name those assumptions out loud.
    Here’s the key point, and I don’t want you to miss this: Your worldview isn’t just something you think. It’s something you live. It’s not up here [point to head]. It’s in here [point to chest]. And it comes out in everything you do — every reaction, every decision, every relationship.
    Which is why it matters so much that we get it right.
    SLIDE: Point 3

    Point 3: Scripture Calls Us to a Renewed Mind

    Now, let’s open our Bibles. Colossians 2, starting in verse 6.
    And I want you to hear this as if you’re hearing it for the first time, because Paul is saying something incredibly relevant to us right now.
    But first, a little context:
    Paul is writing to the church in Colossae — a small city in what is now modern-day Turkey. This was a young church, a church surrounded by competing ideas, competing philosophies, and competing religions.
    Sound familiar? They were being pulled in a dozen different directions, and Paul writes to say:
    Hold on. Don’t lose your footing.
    Colossians 2:6–8 ESV
    6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. 8 See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
    [PAUSE]
    Did you catch that phrase? “See to it that no one takes you captive.” That’s an active command. Paul doesn’t say, “I hope nobody tricks you.” He says, “You be on guard. You pay attention. You make sure nobody walks up and puts the wrong pair of glasses on your face without you noticing.”
    And notice what he warns them against: “philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition.” Now, let me be very clear. Paul is not anti-intellectual. He’s not saying, “Stop thinking.” Paul was one of the greatest thinkers in the history of the church.
    What he’s saying is this: Don’t let the world hand you its glasses without you even noticing.
    There are ideas out there — popular ideas, sophisticated ideas, ideas that feel true — that are not rooted in Christ. And if we absorb them uncritically, they will shape us. Slowly. Quietly. Until one day we look up and realize we’re seeing the world through lenses that have nothing to do with the gospel.
    Now flip over to Romans 12 with me. Paul says something else that connects directly to this idea:
    Romans 12:2 ESV
    2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
    Two words I want you to circle in your mind:
    conformed and
    transformed.
    Conformed is passive. It’s what happens to you when you’re not paying attention. It’s the culture slowly pressing you into its mold, like a hand pressing into clay. You don’t even feel it happening.
    Transformed is active. It’s intentional. It’s choosing to let God reshape the way you think — to take off the world’s lenses and put on His.
    Here’s an illustration that might help. Imagine someone handed you a pair of prescription glasses that weren’t yours. Everything would look slightly off — distorted, blurry, a little bit wrong. But if you wore them long enough, you know what would happen? You’d get used to it. You’d start to compensate. You’d start thinking, “Well, I guess that’s just how things look.”
    [PAUSE]
    That’s what happens when we absorb the world’s assumptions — without testing them against Scripture. We get used to a distorted view. And after a while, we can’t even tell the difference anymore.
    God is saying, “Take off the wrong glasses. Let Me give you the right prescription. Let Me renew the way you see.”
    SLIDE: Point 4

    Point 4: Maturity Means Learning to Discern

    There’s one more passage I want us to look at before we land our plane today. Hebrews 5:14:
    SLIDE: Scripture Hebrews 5:14
    Hebrews 5:14 ESV
    14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
    I want you to notice something about this verse.
    It doesn’t say maturity means knowing more Bible trivia.
    It doesn’t say maturity means being in church the longest.
    It says maturity means having your discernment trained — trained by constant practice — to tell the difference between what is good and what is evil.
    That’s a skill. And like any skill, you have to develop it. You have to practice it. Nobody wakes up one morning with perfect spiritual discernment. It’s built, over time, through the hard work of engaging your mind with God’s Word and learning to see the world through His eyes.
    Church, the goal of this series isn’t to make you smarter. It’s to make you wiser. And there’s a difference.
    Smart people can quote facts.
    Wise people know how to live.
    Smart people can win an argument.
    Wise people know when an argument isn’t worth having.
    [PAUSE]
    Here’s a challenge, and I say this with love:
    Most Christians can tell you what they believe. Ask them:
    Do you believe in God? Yes.
    Do you believe the Bible? Yes.
    Do you believe Jesus rose from the dead? Absolutely.
    Good.
    But fewer Christians can tell you why they believe those things. And even fewer have thought about how their faith connects to Tuesday afternoon— to their job, their marriage, their social media habits, their money, the movie they watched last night, the conversation they had with their coworker.
    A worldview that only works on Sunday morning is NOT a worldview. It’s a hobby.
    [PAUSE]
    And God is not interested in being our hobby. He wants to be our lens — the lens through which we see everything.
    So this Sermon and Bible Study series is an invitation. For six weeks: I’m asking you to do something that might feel a little uncomfortable. I’m asking you to examine your glasses. To hold them up. To look at them honestly. And to ask, “Are these the right lenses? Or have I been wearing someone else’s prescription without even knowing it?”
    SLIDE: Closing

    Closing & Application: Examine Your Lenses

    [Pick up the glasses from the pulpit.]
    We started this morning with a pair of glasses. And I want to end here, too.
    We all have them. We all wear them. The question is whether we’ve ever examined them.
    So here’s what I want you to do this week. It’s simple, but it won’t be easy. Pay attention to your reactions.
    When something makes you angry — stop.
    Ask yourself: “What lens am I looking through right now?”
    When something makes you anxious — stop.
    Ask: “Where did this lens come from?”
    When something makes you feel certain that you’re right and everyone else is wrong — stop.
    Ask: “Does this line up with what God says? Or is this coming from somewhere else?”
    [PAUSE]
    That’s the homework. Just one week of paying attention. You might be surprised by what you discover.
    Now coming Next Week
    Next Sunday, we start at the very beginning — literally. Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning, God.” That’s where a Christian worldview starts. Not with us. Not with our opinions. Not with our culture. With Him.
    If we’re going to build a worldview that can hold the weight of real life, to hold up on a Tuesday, we have to start with the right foundation. I hope you’ll be here.
    Our series Capstone Verse is this:
    SLIDE: Scripture 1 Corinthians 15:58
    1 Corinthians 15:58 ESV
    58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
    Stand firm, church.
    SLIDE: Prayer

    Closing Prayer

    Father, thank You for this morning.
    Thank You for Your Word, which is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path. We confess that we have not always examined the lenses through which we see the world. We have absorbed things we never tested. We have adopted assumptions we never questioned. And some of those lenses have been distorting our vision for a long time.
    Lord, begin a work in us over these next six weeks.
    Renew our minds.
    Give us the courage to hold up our glasses and look honestly at what we’ve been seeing through.
    And where our vision is distorted, give us the humility to let You correct it.
    We love You. We trust You. Help us to see the way You see.
    In Jesus’ name,
    Amen.

      • Colossians 2:6NKJV

      • Colossians 2:6–8NKJV

      • Romans 12:2NKJV

      • Hebrews 5:14NKJV

      • 1 Corinthians 15:58NKJV

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