So, what about you - what do you wonder about? Maybe you wonder about whether you’ll get married, and if so, when and to whom. Or maybe you wonder about your career path, where you’ll work or how long you’ll stay where you are now. If you’re a parent you probably wonder about your kids, who they'll grow up to be. If you’re like most parents, you wonder if you’re doing a good job.

Or maybe you’re in a different season of life. If you’re older you might wonder - How much time do I have left? Which leads to another set of questions we wonder about, ones that are more big picture- What happens when I die, what comes after that? Does anything? We wonder.

Perhaps you try not to think about THAT question, but in your day to day life you ask yourself “What’s the point of all of this, why am I here in the first place? What’s my purpose, and how do I know I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing? (Intro Music Ends)

I think we all wrestle with these questions, we look for any clues we can to help us figure them out. So between our experiences, the things we’re taught, and the people we meet and interact with, we take all of those influences and create a framework through which we process the big questions of life.

Sociologists call this your worldview, it’s the lens that you see the world through. Your worldview is your underlying beliefs, both conscious and subconscious, that shape your attitudes, values and expectations as you walk through life. It’s your window of understanding.

Well you might be thinking - this is a church service, not a philosophy class, so why are we taking the time to talk about worldviews? That’s a great question. The reason is that just because someone has put their faith in Jesus doesn’t mean that they’ve developed Christian worldview. If you’re crushing it and make it to church in person or online every week, our hope is that you’re going to get a consistent 30 minutes a week of teaching that will help you form a Christian worldview. And even if you spend another 15 or 30 minutes a day reading and studying scripture, my guess is that you’re going to engage with significantly more messaging from contrary worldviews than a Christian worldview over the course of your week.

So even for sincere, well-intentioned Christians, this can be really confusing. Putting together a complete Christian worldview is like trying to put together the pieces of a puzzle. I personally don’t have the patience for puzzles, but I know some people love them

And as if doing a complicated puzzle wasn’t hard enough, it’s like 5 people come along and dump pieces from different puzzles and mix them all in with your puzzle pieces. So you’re trying to fit together all the pieces that form the picture, but you aren’t sure which pieces really belong. Some of them clearly don’t fit - your puzzle is a cabin in the woods but this piece is a seashell, so you can throw that piece away. But others of them aren’t so obvious. This green one looks like it could be part of a tree, so maybe you should use it. But maybe not, it actually looks like part of an Eagles jersey. It’s hard to be sure.

This challenge of sorting through all of the things that we see and hear to know what is true, what is right, is nothing new. 2,000 years ago, the apostle Paul wrote a letter to Christians in ancient Rome explaining why carefully protecting our worldview is so important. He says: Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:2

When the Apostle Paul wrote this, there was no internet, social media, TV, billboards - none of that. And yet, even without the bombardment of messaging that we experience today, Paul had a warning - Don’t go with the flow of what everyone around you says, but invest the effort to protect and cultivate your mind. Feed your mind the thoughts of God. Because as you reinforce His perspective, a Christian worldview, it will help you navigate life and know the God-honoring response in every situation you face.

So one reason to make sure we have a consistent Christian worldview is that we know that our enemy, Satan, is the father of lies, a master of deception. You’ve probably heard the saying “the devil is in the details”. He’s happy to introduce counterfeit beliefs that have a grain of truth, that sound pretty good, but they actually lead us down errant paths.

And another reason a clear Christian worldview is important is that not every issue or situation that we come across is clearly addressed in the 10 Commandments or a specific passage of scripture. You’re not going to find a Bible story about how we should engage with social media, or one telling you who you’re supposed to marry, or who you should vote for, but if you have a worldview that is defined by the core beliefs of the Christian faith, it’ll equip you to think and make decisions in ways that are consistent with God’s will for you.

Well this whole idea of worldviews might still be a little fuzzy, so let’s take a quick look at the Worldview Questions we’re going to cover in this series because I think that’ll help clear things up a bit. Now if you Google Worldview Questions, you’ll find several different versions of this list, but they’re all pretty similar. Here’s the ones we’re going to cover:

What is real?

This is the question of reality and truth. Now we’re actually going to tackle this one today in week 1, and I just want to acknowledge up front that this one feels really abstract and might not seem very practical at first glance. But in a few minutes, when we dig into it, I think you’re going to see that this is actually the most important question because answering it forms the basis for our answers to all of the other questions. OK, so that’s the first one, here’s the second one:

What is real?

Who am I?

This is the question of identity. Who or what dictates who I am? What does it mean to be human? We’ll talk about that next week, along with the third question that is closely related:

What is real?

Who am I?

Where did I come from?

This is the questions of “Am I here by design?” and “Am I accountable to someone?” This is more than a scientific debate, because whether we’re the product of chance or we’re here by design has significant bearing on our answers to the final three questions. You can see that in this next one:

What is real?

Who am I?

Where did I come from?

Why am I here?

This is the question of purpose. If we’re the result of a spontaneous accident, how do we determine our purpose? Is our purpose found within ourselves, or within a community, or is there an objective purpose for which we were created that can fulfill us in a way that nothing else can? The Christian worldview provides a very clear answer that gives your life incredible purpose. Which leads to the next question:

What is real?

Who am I?

Where did I come from?

Why am I here?

What is the basis for my values?

This is the question of priorities and morality. Is there an objective basis for values, or are they subjective and completely dependent upon our culture and environment? And if we are ready to say there are things that are absolutely right and things that are absolutely wrong, how do we know what those things are? Is it OK for everyone to decide right and wrong for themselves? Can that even work? We’ll explore that. And finally:

What is real?

Who am I?

Where did I come from?

Why am I here?

What is the basis for my values?

What does the future hold?

This is the question of what’s next. What happens when we die? Is it dependent upon what we do while we’re alive? Is the world as we know it going to end? Is rogue AI going to destroy humanity? It can be easy to try to avoid thinking about these questions, but when someone close to us passes away we can’t help but wonder about an afterlife.

So there you have it, that’s the journey we’re embarking on over these next 5 weeks. Now some of these questions you might be able to answer pretty easily, others of them you might be unclear about, but here’s what I’m going to ask you to do as we go through this series: Really think about them. Even if you could rattle off an answer, ask yourself if you really believe it and if it really affects how you live your life. Because sometimes there’s a disconnect between what we say and what our lives reveal we actually believe.

If you’re a follower of Jesus, you might discover you’ve unintentionally incorporated some things into your worldview that actually contradict what Jesus and scriptures teach. And if you wouldn’t say you’re a follower of Jesus, I think this series is going to be incredibly helpful for you too. First, as we go week by week, you’ll see these questions build on each other and you’ll be able to test if the worldview you’ve created makes sense. We may not all share the same worldview, but we owe it to ourselves and to each other to at least be consistent. And sometimes forcing ourselves to be consistent in our worldview reveals that we don’t actually believe what we would have said we believe, or that the worldview we’ve constructed isn’t as defensible as we thought it was.

So this series will help all of us ensure our worldview is consistent, and it will also clarify what a Christian worldview is. My guess is that many of us have been exposed to our share of misinformation, so we’ll do our best to present you with the historical Christian worldview in a way that is clear and concise.

Alright, so let’s look at that first, foundational Worldview Question, which is:

What is real?

Like I said earlier, this question sounds super abstract, but here’s why this is such an important starting point. If we’re going to be looking for answers to these worldview questions, we need to decide - what are the rules for what we can use as evidence?

Now there are a bunch of different answers to this worldview question, but philosophers have grouped them into about 6 major worldviews.

The first major worldview is Monotheism.

Monotheism

Christianity

Judaism

Islam

Monotheists believe there is one God. There are three major monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Now, let me be clear, I’m not saying these are the same religions, they’re not, but all three fall into the same major category of religions in that they teach that there is a single God who is a sovereign Creator who is involved with His world.

They each assume the existence of God, an eternal Spirit being, who has created both a material and a spiritual reality. The physical world can be studied, so discovery and learning can take place through scientific observation. However, God’s special revelation is required to know about spiritual realities -things like heaven, angels, the devil, and the afterlife. So Monotheists regard as real what they observe in nature and understand from their religious writings. For Christians, that’s both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, for Jews, that’s essentially the Old Testament of the Bible, and for Muslims that’s the Qu’ran.

Again, although there is much overlap between Judaism and Christianity, and even some common key figures shared between those two and Islam, these are each distinct religions. But they all fall under the category of monotheism.

We’ll come back and dig into the Christian answer to What is Real in a moment, but first let me give you a quick overview of the other major worldviews - try and think of times when you’ve seen their influence. The next is deism.

Deists believe there is a first cause deity that is not involved in what happens in the world. So Deists believe that a God force initiated everything, but he’s not involved now, it was set it and forget it. So for Deists, there are no sacred texts because the God force doesn’t personally communicate with us.

Next is Naturalism. Naturalists believe that matter is all that exists, so there is no God force in the picture and no spiritual world. Charles Darwin, who proposed the theory of evolution, is probably the most famous naturalist.

The next category is Nihilism and Existentialism, I put them together because they’re closely related to each other. Nihilists and Existentialists say that truth claims can’t be made (which seems dangerously close to a truth claim from my perspective) and that there is no meaning to our existence. So for these guys, you can’t really answer the other Worldview questions because you can’t actually know anything. Famous people who hold this worldview that you may have heard of include Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche.

The next worldview is Pantheism. Pantheists believe that the world itself is either identical to God, or an expression of God's nature. So according to pantheism, “God is everything and everything is God.”

And finally, there’s New Consciousness. New Consciousness holds that self is the prime reality. So we experience reality in two ways - the visible through the senses and the invisible through altered states of consciousness. So there’s not really a guidebook for New Consciousness, you find your truth in yourself. Also referred to as New Age, this worldview started becoming popular in the 1970’s.

So I wanted to run through all of those worldviews because hearing them described will help you identify their influence when you come across it. But our main purpose here is to understand the Christian worldview, and specifically today, it’s to answer the question “what is real?”

Christians believe that what we observe in nature is real and knowable, that God created an orderly, amazing universe and it is our privilege to explore and learn about all that He has created. In fact, many of the prominent scientists throughout history were Christians. It is said that Sir Isaac Newton, who gave us his laws of motion and invented calculus, and my apologies to those for whom the mention of calculus brings up painful memories, including my son, it is said that Newton spent more time studying the Bible than math and physics. So when people tell you that you need to choose between faith and science, you can tell them to take it up with Isaac Newton or Robert Boyle, the guy who first defined the elements in chemistry, again apologies to those who are triggered by mention of the periodic table. Boyle was known for his deep love of scripture.

So Christians believe we are continually learning from what we observe, but we also believe that there is a spiritual realm that can only be known by God’s special revelation, namely, the Bible. And this is why this first question, “what is real?”, is so, so important for Christians. Although there are some general things we can learn about God through observing His creation and through our consciences, there are specific things we can only know through what God has revealed through His Word, the Bible.

This belief is so important and so central to a Christian worldview. As we answer the other 5 worldview questions, our answers will all rest upon the reality that we believe God has revealed through the Bible. So it’s critical that we understand what the Bible is, how we got it, and why it can be trusted.

For starters, the Bible is a collection of 66 letters and narratives and poems and other types of writings that have been compiled together. We believe that each of these writings was inspired and directed by God, but actually penned by humans. None of the Bible was originally written in English. The Old Testament (the part written before Jesus was born), was written in Hebrew, with the exception of a few chapters that were written in Aramaic, and the New Testament, written after Jesus was born, was written in Greek. Now the fact that the Bible is an ancient document and that it was written in languages we probably don’t speak can be a hurdle for people when it comes to trusting it. My guess is that if you aren’t questioning how much you can trust the Bible right now, you’ve either questioned it in the past or the time is coming. Which makes sense, given how much weight Christians give to it. So let’s look at some of the questions people usually wonder about the Bible:

First, Was the whole Bible made up? Was Jesus even a real person? This is a valid question since none of us met Jesus in person, and so let’s go ahead and address it real quick. I mean, wouldn’t it be strange if the single most influential person in the history of the world never existed? That would be odd, but nonetheless, let’s go ahead and see what actual evidence we have.

Obviously, the Bible is full of evidence for Jesus, but if we’re trying to validate the Bible, it can’t be its own reference. So we’ll look elsewhere. Josephus, the famous first century Jewish historian, was not a Christian and clearly would have no reason to feed into a Jesus fallacy. And yet, listen to what he recorded. It’s a bit lengthy, but it’s helpful to see how much this non-Christian’s account corroborates the Biblical narrative:

Now there was, about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was (the) Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him, for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day. -Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 18.3.3

Now that’s not from the Bible, that’s a 1st century Jewish historian giving his objective account of what he saw and heard. It seems highly unlikely that he would have had a reason to perpetuate a lie of Jesus’ existence. And he’s not alone, four Roman historians, including Tacitus, perhaps the greatest of the Roman historians, discuss Jesus’ life. Tacitus wrote that the name “Christian” comes from “Christ”, a person who had been executed as a criminal by Pontius Pilate, as well as other things about Jesus.

So if we’re going to believe that anyone who is said to have lived a long time ago actually lived, it seems that Jesus has to be on that list.

Well another question is: How do we know that our Bible today actually reflects what the original authors wrote? How do we know that the message wasn’t intentionally or accidentally altered?

I’ve heard people discount the Bible’s reliability because they say if you copy by hand any book, you’re probably going to get variations, and if you copy it over and over and over again, you’re probably going to get a lot of variations. And Biblical scholars don’t disagree with that, it’s just a practical reality, but the more important question to address is “are those differences important - could they change our understanding of what was written?”

The first thing we should know is that we have approximately 5,600 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament of the Bible. You’re probably thinking, 5,600, is that good? Well, for comparison, universities across the world regularly cite ancient Greek and Roman documents that we only have about a dozen copies of. So from a number of copies standpoint, the Bible is far and away the most reliable ancient document we have. Obviously people have considered it incredibly valuable for 2,000 years.

Now between those 5,600 Greek New Testament manuscripts, there are about 400,000 variants. But before you get concerned about that, let me explain what that means. A variant includes any number of things - a misspelling, a word out of order, things like that. Basically, the more hand copies of a big document you have, the more variants you get. But when we categorize the variations, over 99% of them are negligible and make virtually no difference in the text. For example, there may have been two ways to spell someone’s name, or a letter was omitted from a word. Just the fact that we document and count all of those variants shows how closely these texts are analyzed.

As for the less than 1% of incidences that could potentially be notable, the vast number of copies we have generally makes it easy for scholars to figure out what the original copy said. And what’s more, none of the variants that exist call into question any fundamental biblical teaching. It’s not like you read different copies and one says Jesus rose from the dead and another says He didn’t. So when all of this is taken into consideration, you can be confident that the Bible you read is a reliable representation of what the original authors recorded.

People who discount the Bible because they say it’s a really old document and so it must be corrupted aren't operating from an informed position, they don’t understand the level of textual criticism the Bible has undergone. Even secular scholars generally agree that the message of the Bible has been well preserved.

This is just a surface level discussion of this topic, but if this stuff interests you and you want to dig deeper, I’d refer you to a book called Why I Trust the Bible by Dr. William Mounce, it was really helpful for me. Dr. Mounce wrote the best selling Biblical Greek textbook out there and he serves on the Committee for Bible Translation, so he’s a highly respected expert.

A final point on this that you should know is that the major translations we read today, like the NIV and NLT versions, are all translated from the original language. So it’s not like some guy is reading an existing translation of the Bible and decides he’s gonna put a new spin on it and that’s how we get a new translation. There’s a team of highly trained scholars who meticulously interpret the original Greek manuscripts and use the latest scholarship to best reflect the original meaning in english.

OK, so we know that Jesus really lived and that we can trust that what we read in the Bible today accurately reflects what the original authors intended, which leads to a final question we need to answer before we can accept the Bible as a source of truth for us: Is what the authors of the Bible wrote about Jesus actually true? And that’s really the crux of the issue, because Christianity is fundamentally based on specific beliefs about Jesus.

If you’ve come to faith in Jesus, you did that because of what you learned of Him in the scriptures. God’s Spirit works in our hearts through what is presented in the Bible to enable us to believe. So the power of the message of the Bible is the greatest evidence that it’s true. Scripture says this about itself:

For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Hebrews 4:12

The Bible stands up to all of the scholarly analysis, so at the end of the day, we’re forced to wrestle with the things recorded about Jesus. Like this verse says, the words of the Bible are alive and active. They cut to our deepest parts, they judge our thoughts and attitudes. God uses them to show us our need for Him, and to reveal His incredible love for us. What God does in our hearts through His Word is supernatural, and that, I believe, is the greatest evidence that it’s true.

It’s each of our responsibility to decide whether or not Jesus is who the Bible says he is. And if you’re in the middle of that process, let me encourage you with this - Jesus said that those who sincerely seek truth and look to Him will find that truth in Him.

So What is real? What is true? For the Christian, when it comes to spiritual things, we understand reality in the person of Jesus and in the Bible that tells us all about Him. If you would say that you’re a follower of Jesus, it necessarily follows that you trust and follow the Bible.

And this is a point that I’m aware challenges some people. I’ve heard people say, “I follow the teachings of Jesus but I don’t really believe the Bible”. If that’s the case, if you think highly of Jesus but don’t have regard for the Bible, I think it’s more honest to say “I think highly of a person I’ve created in my mind that I like to call Jesus”, because the Bible is the only comprehensive source of insight we have on who Jesus was and is. We all have the right to create our own worldview, but if we’re going to discuss our worldviews with integrity, we need to make sure we’re being consistent. As Pastor Kent said recently - We all get to decide whether or not we’ll follow Jesus, but we don’t get to decide what following Jesus looks like. And that, unfortunately, is what many people try to do.

Alright, well let’s summarize our takeaway for this first question of “What is Real” - For the Christian, it’s both what we can observe with our senses, and what we understand through revelation in the Bible. And that answer will serve the basis for all of the other worldview questions we're going to cover in the weeks to follow, questions like “Who am I?” and “What’s my purpose?” And in case you were wondering, our future weeks will utilize a lot more scripture than we used today. That’s because, before we start building our worldview on what we read in the Bible, I wanted to make sure you knew that isn’t a check your brain at the door approach. Following Jesus and having a biblical, Christian worldview takes faith, but it’s not a blind faith. It can stand up to scrutiny, and as we walk through this series, I think you’re going to see that it offers the best answers to all of the important questions that we wonder about.

Let me pray for us and for the journey we’re embarking on together.