Parkland First Baptist Church
April 18, 2021

      • Hebrews 9:27CSB

      • Deuteronomy 21–23ESV

      • Deuteronomy 24–27ESV

      • Deuteronomy 28–29ESV

      • Deuteronomy 30–31ESV

      • Deuteronomy 32–34ESV

      • Psalm 91ESV

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    Where Did We Come From?

    We are in week two of a series on Developing a Biblical Worldview.
    We’re looking at God’s perspective on life.
    What life is really like.
    Seeing life from God’s point of view.
    And seeing the error in unbiblical worldviews because they have tremendous influence over your life.
    Just on Thursday, I saw from a survey was taken in February that nearly 9 in 10 Americans hold a mixture of worldview and that only 6% hold a biblical worldview.
    George Barna, a veteran researcher, said this is “a cut-and-paste approach to making sense of life. Rather than developing an internally consistent and philosophically coherent perspective, Americans embrace points of view or actions that feel comfortable or most convenient.”
    Hopefully, at the end of this series, you develop a Biblical worldview which can help you make the right decisions and live a Godly lifestyle.

    How Does God Relate to the World?

    Materialism - No relationship with the world since God doesn’t exist.
    Can be summed up with Carl Sagan, “The cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.”
    This is a kind of atheism.
    Materialists are forced to conclude that humans not only have no souls, but no desires, beliefs, or goals.
    And where’s the drama in finding out that you’re the product of an unbending line of cause and effect stretching back as far as scientists can see?
    In this view, choices are illusions.
    Right and wrong, freedom and equality—these are just labels we use because using them confers evolutionary advantages on our species. Behind it all is nothing but matter and chance.
    Pantheism - Says we are all made of god-stuff or star-stuff.
    We are all part of “god” including the animals, rocks, stars, and the whole universe.
    God is everything and everything is god.
    It purposefully downgrades God from a Person to a thing - the universe.
    And man from a ruler of creation to another speck or stardust.
    Dualism
    There are multiple kinds of dualism.
    One says that God and the universe have always existed, but on parallel tracks that may or may not ever meet.
    Dualist think God and matter make up the two major forces in existence.
    The goal of life is to escape the evil shackle of the material world and join the rational, eternal, harmonious, spiritual world in which God lives.
    Deism - Accepts that there is a God but maintains that He hasn’t spoken to us.
    We’re left to discern truth from nature.
    Though there is no formal organization of deist, one of America’s most prominent sociologists has said that deism is “the def facto dominant religion among contemporary U.S. teenagers.”
    Views are best summarized by the label moralistic therapeutic deism, or MTD and can be summarized
    A God exists who created and orders the world and watches over human life on earth.
    God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
    The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
    God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
    Good people go to heaven when they die.
    Deism is parasitic; it takes a faith like Christianity and strips out the stuff that’s offensive to human reason—or whatever passes for “human reason” at the time.
    It’s cousin is American civil religion.
    When US presidents say to disaster or accident victims, “Our thoughts and prayers are with you,” when they put their hands on Bibles and solemnly swear oaths, when they end speeches with “God bless America,” when they imply that Muslims and Christians worship the same deity—that’s American civil religion.
    “God” in this civil religion is never defined, and he’s mainly called in (as with MTD) to solve problems and benignly bless what we were all planning to do anyway.
    The god of American civil religion has been cut down to the size Americans like.
    All of these views are false and are undercut by the Bible’s opening words leading us to the true view of God’s relationship with us.
    Biblical Theism - The very first words of Genesis reveal a personal God who stands above His creation but is deeply involved in it.
    And the rest of the Bible reveals, as Paul put it, “one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all” (Eph. 4:6).
    If He’s in all and through all, there’s no room for materialism or deism. If He’s over all, there’s no pantheism.
    God is distinct from His creation; He’s not mixed up in it.
    He is what theologians call transcendent; He transcends the limitations of time and space that apply throughout the universe He created.
    God truly rules as King over His creation, even if there remains some yet-to-be-conquered territory (1 Cor. 15:25–26).
    And God has no rivals in that exalted position.
    “I am God, and there is no other,” He told Isaiah (46:9).
    God isn’t in a fight with the universe, and even His conflict with Satan is one He could win in an instant if it served His purposes.
    One day, it will (Rev. 20:1–4).
    But God isn’t just transcendent; He is also what theologians call immanent.
    He is deeply and lovingly interested in His creation, guiding its affairs from His sovereign throne.
    “In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind,” Job says (Job 12:10).
    Jesus told us that not a sparrow (or even a human hair) falls without God’s knowledge and consent (Matt. 10:29–30; Luke 12:6–7).
    When we speak of God as the Creator, we are once again speaking specifically of the triune God.
    Creation is not merely the work of the Father, but also of the Son and the Spirit.
    Everything in creation relates to Jesus Christ, and nothing in the entire universe can be completely or properly understood apart from him.
    This great truth makes Christianity a Christ-centered worldview from beginning to end.
    Jesus is the agent not merely of redemption, but also of creation.
    At the same time that it teaches us who God is, creation also teaches us who we are.
    This is one of the fundamental questions that any worldview has to answer:
    Who am I, and why am I here?
    So today we are going to attempt to answer, Who am I? And why am I here?
    We’re going to look at the three things that Jesus said about who you are and where you came from.

    God Created Everything

    In the first book of the Bible, in the first chapter of that book, in the first verse of the first chapter of the first book of the Bible it says this in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning…”
    That’s a good thing to start with in the beginning.
    If you can’t get past these four words then really life has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no significance.
    But the Bible says “In the beginning, God.”
    God existed long before the universe, long before this planet, certainly long before the human race.
    “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1
    It all begins with God, a loving, self-sufficient, joyful, triune God.
    The Bible tells us that God spoke the universe into existence.
    How long did that take? I don’t know.
    It could have taken a second.
    It could have taken ten billion years to speak it. I don’t know.
    And really it doesn’t matter to me.
    The bottom line is God could take as little or as much time as He wanted to speak it.
    He just spoke it!
    In fact, when you are an eternal being, time is irrelevant to you because you are not controlled by time.
    2 Peter 3:8, “Do not forget this one thing, dear friends. With the Lord a day is like a thousand years. And a thousand years is like a day.”
    God is not constrained by time.
    You may ask, do you believe God use the theory of evolution? No. I don’t.
    It’s a theory but I don’t happen to believe it.
    But we do know that species change.
    We do know that, for instance, you can change the color of an orchid.
    We call them hybrids.
    You can take a plant or an animal and change their features.
    But nobody’s ever changed a species.
    Nobody’s ever changed an orchid into an elephant.
    Nobody’s ever changed a mouse into a monkey.
    There is absolutely zero evidence of species change in the fossils.
    So it’s just a theory.
    It’s interesting that the Bible doesn’t spend a whole lot of time talking about how God created the universe.
    Instead it spends a lot of time talking about why.
    Why did He do it?
    Why did God create the universe?
    Why did God create the earth?
    Why did God create human beings?
    Why did God create the earth?
    “He did not create the earth to be empty. But formed it to be inhabited.” Isaiah 45:18
    God made the earth to be inhabited.
    He made it so it could sustain life.
    He didn’t want it to be a dead planet.
    He put it just the right distance from the sun and put it on just the right axis so that when it spun it didn’t get too hot or too cold.
    The Message paraphrase puts that Isaiah verse like this.
    “God didn’t go to all the trouble just to leave it empty. He made it to be lived in.”
    The Bible tells us in Hebrews 2:10
    “God is the one who made all things. And all things are for His glory. He wanted to have many children share His glory.” Hebrews 2:10
    It says God created it all to bring glory to Himself, to enjoy it Himself.
    He did it because He wanted to do it.
    And He said He wanted to have many children share His glory.
    That’s you and me.
    If I had time to take you through scripture I could show you that the Bible very clearly teaches that God wanted a family.
    God wasn’t lonely. He didn’t need us. But He wanted us.
    The Bible says that God is love and that we were created as objects of God’s love.
    We were made simply so that God could love us.
    If you want to know why you’re sitting there right now, why you’re taking the next breath, why your heart is beating the next beat, you were made to be loved by God.
    If God hadn’t wanted to love you, you would not be taking the breath you’re taking right now.
    In fact, the Bible says that God created the entire universe just so that He could create this galaxy just so He could create the earth, just so He could create the human race, just so He could create you so He could love you.
    If you want a mind blowing idea that is a mind blowing experience.
    The Bible says that God created everything but He did it because we are the crown of creation.
    He wanted children.
    He wanted to create some individuals in His image that could be a part of His forever family.
    God created everything.

    God Thought Of Us First But He Created Us Last.

    God thought of us, the human race, first before He thought of anything else.
    But He created us, He made us last.
    The Bible tells us in Genesis the exact order of creation.
    It says God started first by creating light.
    He made light.
    He created water.
    Then He created the sky or the atmosphere.
    Then next He created the ocean and the land.
    He split the ocean into dry land and wet land.
    Then He created vegetation on that land.
    After that He created the sun, the moon, and the stars.
    Then it says He created water animals – fish and water animals.
    Then after that He created birds.
    Then it says He created land animals.
    And then finally, last of all, He created man and woman.
    He created human beings.
    He created everything else first.
    But we were the reason for all the stuff that came before.
    Ephesians 1:4 says, “Long before He laid down the earth’s foundation God had us in mind, and He settled on us as the focus of His love.”
    He said I'm going to create the universe so I can create these people so I can love them.
    He created us last, but He thought of us first.
    We are the crown of creation.
    James 1:18, “God brought us into being through the word of truth, so that we should have first place among all His creatures.”
    You, as a human being, are unlike anything else God has made.
    We’re going to talk about that a little more in a minute.
    We’re different.

    God Custom Designed Each Of Us.

    When you stop and actually think about what I’m going to share with you from the Bible it really is indescribable. It’s unbelievable. It’s amazing what God did.
    David says in
    Psalm 139: “You, God, made all the delicate inner parts of my body and you knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous and how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion You watched me as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born.”
    God custom designed you because He had a place and a purpose and a plan for your life.
    And He oversaw that creation.
    You would not have been created without it.
    Don’t ever let anyone tell you, you are an accident.
    You’re not an accident.
    There are accidental parents.
    But there are no accidental babies.
    God planned you. Your parents may not have planned but God did.
    Really it has nothing to do with whether they were good parents or bad parents or indifferent parents.
    He had just the right DNA in your parents to create you.
    He wanted you and He had you in mind.
    Whether they were good or bad people or whatever, He wanted you created and they had the DNA to create you.
    There are illegitimate parents but there are no illegitimate children.
    If you’re here it’s because He wanted you here. That’s amazing.
    The Bible says this in Romans 11:34-35: “Have you ever come across anything quite like this extravagant generosity of God? This deep, deep wisdom? It’s way over our heads. We’ll never figure it out. Is there any one around who can explain God?”
    And the answer is no.
    No one can explain God.
    If you could explain God, you’d be God.
    But you can’t.
    We don’t have the brain capacity to explain God.
    So what He has done is unbelievable, indescribable, unattainable. It’s an amazing thing.
    So what should be our response?
    Just thank Him.
    Thank Him for His wonderful grace, for His wonderful love.
    In fact the Bible says this in 2 Corinthians 9:15: “Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift.”

    What Are The Implications?

    Because God is God of your life, your life has
    Sanctity,
    Dignity,
    Days have destiny,
    Problems have intentionality
    And lastly future is eternity.
    Your life is not going to end here on earth.
    Because there is a God and you were made in His image means there is far more to life than just here and now.
    He personally wants you to know Him.
    The Bible says God made you to last forever.
    One day you are going to die.
    You were made in God’s image. You have a spirit.
    God wants you to be a part of His forever family.
    That’s why you were created.
    That’s why He created the universe so that He could have forever family.
    The Bible says this in Ephesians 1: “This is God’s purpose: When the time is right, He will gather us all together from wherever we are in heaven or on earth to be with Him in Christ forever.”
    God wants to draw His family together.
    He’s not going to force you to be a part of His family.
    You have to choose to be a part of it.
    He’s not going to force you to love Him, to know Him, to trust Him, to do His purpose and to be a part of His family.
    He wants you to choose to relate to Him and receive all the benefits of being a follower of Christ.
    Prayer: Dear God, thank You for creating the universe. Thank You for creating this world. Thank You for thinking of me before You created it all. I'm amazed that You would love me that much. Thank You for wanting me to be a part of Your family forever. Jesus Christ, I thank You for dying for me. I don’t understand it all but I want to trust in You. I invite You to fill my life with Your life and Your Spirit. I ask You to make me a part of Your family. Thank You for making me for a purpose. Please forgive all the things I’ve done wrong. Please restore my dignity lost due to my sin. Give me a new identity in Christ. Secure my destiny for eternity. Help me to treat everybody with dignity and to share this good news with those who don’t know it yet. I pray this in Your name. Amen
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Parkland First Baptist Church
office@parklandfirst.com
253-531-0121
http://www.parklandfirst.com
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