1178. Seeing Life From a Biblical Worldview

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Whether it's the general chapel service for the whole student body or services for those in the ministerial class or seminary, everyone at the school is blessed by the preaching of the word each day from the chapel platform. Today on The Daily Platform, we're continuing a study series entitled God's Word in Our Hands, which is a study of the divine revelation of scripture. Today's message will be preached by Dr. Brian Smith, Director of Biblical Integration at BJU Press. Well, we're continuing our series on God's Word in Our Hand. And when we began to work through the plans of who would come to speak, one of the individuals that I definitely wanted to come was Dr. Brian Smith. Dr. Smith is on staff at the Bob Jones University Press. He is the Senior Manager for Biblical Integration.

And it was a little over a year, year and a half ago, I was at the Creation Museum up in the Cincinnati area, Kentucky. And I was sitting in a seminar and a man stood up to speak and he started speaking about biblical integration. And I thought, who is this dude? Man, this guy is like, good. It sounds like he's from Bob Jones University.

Well, come to find out, he is. And I didn't even know it at the time because his arguments in his presentation was so convincing that he has become one of the leading communicators of the importance of biblical integration in your education, not just to the schools that use the Bob Jones University Press material, but literally throughout the United States. And so he's going to come this morning and speak on the theme of biblical integration and what this means. I do not want to assume that because you're a student here that it's very clear in your mind.

So Dr. Smith, you can come we're looking forward to your message. Well, my assignment this morning is to speak with you about the importance of biblical integration. And I want to focus our attention on a particular word, worldview. That is vital to understanding how the Bible is integrated into all of our lives. When we understand the term worldview and we understand the concept that stands behind it, we're able to see how it is that the Bible as a whole applies to our lives. It's not just a verse here or a verse there that applies to our lives.

It is the Bible as a whole in its entire message that applies to our lives. And some may question as to whether this term worldview really has that kind of power to convey that kind of understanding. After all, if you look up the word worldview in the dictionary, you will find a rather unimpressive definition. Typical dictionary definition of the term worldview goes something like this, a view of the world.

Well, if that's not life changing, nothing ever can be. No, that doesn't seem very insightful, does it? But if you go beyond the dictionary to careful treatments of the term and how it's been used over the last couple of centuries, you find that there's another layer of meaning to that term that often gets missed but is very significant. And that is the idea of story. A worldview is not just a view of the world. It's a view of the world that comes in a certain form. And that form is a grand overarching narrative, sometimes called a metanarrative by many different people. It's a grand metanarrative that conveys where this world has come from, how it's gotten into its current condition, where it's headed off in the future. And that is so very important for every one of us because all of us, we are all narrative creatures. We make sense of the issues that we face in life by taking those issues and plugging them in to the metanarrative that we are committed to, to the grand overarching story that we are committed to.

We're so regularly doing it, we do it almost instinctively. And that's very important to understand because the narrative you plug the issues of life into has everything to do with how you see those issues. A given issue can look vastly different depending on what narrative you plug it into. Take for example marriage. If you take marriage and plug it into the grand overarching narrative of ancient Greco-Roman polytheism, it looks like one thing.

But if you take marriage and plug it into the grand narrative of modern secularism, which is basically generated by the story of evolution, it looks like something quite different. I gave an illustration just now about marriage, but we could choose a whole bunch of different illustrations that could extend what we're talking about. We talk about government and how it's used to order society. We could talk about vocations, various vocations in the role that they play in helping to encourage human flourishing or how they inhibit human flourishing and encourage actually human depravity.

We could talk about your own major and the role that it's going to play in affecting your life and through your life affecting the lives of other people. Name any issue that you can think of, it can look vastly different depending on the metanarrative you plug it into. Now all of that brings us to consider the Word of God that you hold in your hands. What you hold in your hands is a metanarrative. From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible tells one continuous story, one continuous metanarrative of creation, fall, and redemption. God made the world and everything in it for his own glory, and he made it right. He has seen fit in his wisdom to allow this world to fall into a broken condition because of human sinfulness, but do not fret, he is at work now to redeem this world to himself.

That is the metanarrative. That is the grand overarching narrative, and God expects us to learn how to live in this world by taking the issues of our lives and plugging them regularly into that narrative in order that we might gain wisdom, in order that we might know how to properly face the challenges that come up before us day after day in our lives. That's what we want to do in the chapel message. We want to walk our way very rapidly through the storyline of creation, fall, and redemption, and toward the end learn to plug our own lives into that story, that we might gain wisdom for how we are to live before God in a very challenging world. So let's begin where the Bible begins, in creation, which is going to take us to Genesis chapter 1. Genesis chapter 1, Genesis 1 and 2 actually are the key creation narratives that we find in Scripture. They're very important because they tell us how the story begins, but more than that, they're very important because they tell us how life is supposed to be. If we're going to have wisdom in facing our lives, we've got to know how life is supposed to be first before we can really evaluate the challenges that stand before us. For that reason, there are many different things in Genesis 1 and 2 that are very important for us to consider in order to develop a Christian worldview.

We, however, cannot consider all of those things. We can just consider a handful of things that come up toward the end of Genesis 1, in particular, what we find in Genesis 1 26 to 28. These three verses are key in developing a Christian worldview because these three verses tell us who we are as human beings. They also tell us why we are here. Genesis 1 26 and 27 tell us who we are. We are image bearers of God. And Genesis 1 28 tells us why we're here, called the creation mandate.

Let's focus on that. Let's read Genesis 1 28. And God blessed them and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. From these words called the creation mandate, we learned that God made us with a job to do. And that job is to fill the earth. That job is also to have dominion over all the parts and pieces of the earth. Those two basic halves in Genesis 1 28 express very generally the whole of human life. The first half expresses human life lived at home, if you will. The second half refers to life lived in the realm of work and labor. And the key word that's used there to describe what our work and labor is to be all about is this word dominion.

Don't be afraid of that word. A lot of times when people look at Genesis 1 and they look at this word dominion and subdue and the context of Genesis 1 and 2, they get a little nervous and they think that, well, what are you saying? That we're supposed to go out into the world and abusively mistreat other people and selfishly crush the things that God has put out here in the world for us.

No, absolutely not. Abuse is part of the fall and Genesis 1 and 2 is here to tell us what life looked like before the fall. It's here to tell us the way things are supposed to be. And abuse has no place in the way that things are supposed to be according to the original creation goodness of God's world.

That's not what dominion is all about. What is it all about? Let me give you two key definitions. This will show up on the test by the way, these two key definitions. You want to do well on the test.

If you don't do well on the test, you're not allowed to leave the FMA this afternoon. Two key definitions that in context express what's going on here with dominion. First would be this, maximizing the usefulness of. Maximizing the usefulness of God's world. God has filled his world with latent potential and he expects us to go out into that world and together with other people study that world uncover that latent potential and then work together with other people to use that potential to enrich the lives of other people and to declare the glory of God as he means for it to be declared in the world.

Here's another definition. Pressing God's world toward its ideal. When God calls us to exercise dominion, he's not calling us to break his world. He's calling us to engage his world with thoughtful work in order to press that world toward the ideal that he has meant for it.

God has an ideal for this world and its grown-up condition and I can say with great confidence that his desire for this world and its grown-up condition is not a garden with two people in it. That's how the story begins. That's what the world is like in its infancy but in its full maturity it looks something like something quite different. It looks like what we find at the end of the story. Revelation 21 and 22.

What do you find there? And those passages you find that the center of human existence for all eternity is not a garden but is a huge glorious city with millions of redeemed people living together, working together, worshiping God together. And what does that suggest? It suggests that civilization, culture, society, these are not dirty words in a Christian worldview.

They are holy, sacred, precious terms in a Christian worldview and they have their roots ultimately not back in Revelation 21. They've got their roots all the way back in Genesis chapter 1. You see Genesis 1 28 in the end is about much more than fish and birds and insects. It is about culture. It is about humans engaging in the work of developing culture. The word culture doesn't appear in Genesis 128 but the key themes of culture are found in every line of Genesis 128. When humans attempt to live out the commands of the creation mandate of Genesis 128 day after day, week after week, year after year, culture is what results. Very quickly the artifacts of culture get invented and put to use.

Very quickly the social fabric of society begins to be woven together into a common civilization. This is the reason that when you look at the biblical narrative you see human society and culture forming up much earlier in that storyline than a secularist is willing to recognize from his storyline. According to the secularist worldview it takes millions of years for human culture to develop. But in a Christian worldview, in the Christian storyline, culture and civilization and society begins to develop in Genesis 4 in the first generations of people.

Why is that? It is because the creation mandate is not just written on the first page of Scripture. It is written on the mind and heart of every human being that has ever lived on the face of the earth.

We long to be engaged in the work of culture. Creation is what God has made. Culture is what we make out of what God has made. And when we make culture out of God's good creation we do not commit a crime against the glory of God. We instead declare the glory of God, if we mean to, by pressing his world toward its ideal. Now we would all love to stop the story right there, wouldn't we?

But we can't because that's not where the story ends. The story continues in chapter 3 of Genesis to tell us how things went wrong. All is not well in God's world. All is not well in God's world not because God has failed us but because we have failed God.

Genesis 3 tells the story and it tells it in this way. God had given us one prohibition. Do not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. God was testing us to see if we would exercise dominion underneath his greater dominion over us.

And you know the story. Satan, in the form of a serpent, tempted us to rebel against God, to attempt to exercise dominion independent of his greater dominion over us. We failed the test. We fell in temptation and this failure has led to all of our woe. Sorrow, suffering, disease, death, these are the things that fill our lives and yet these are not the worst things that we meet in life.

The very worst things are the things that are broken inside of us. We sin. We love to sin. We do not love God as we should.

We do not love our neighbors as we should. And all of life has become poison because of our fall into sin. All of the blessings of the creation mandate have become poison because of our fall into sin.

Life at home has become poison. Think of Adam's words, his words of response to God when God questions him about his deeds. In Genesis 3 verse 12, Adam says, the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the fruit of the tree and I did eat.

I've often wondered where Adam slept that night. You see right away in the middle of Genesis 3, life at home has become poison because of our fall into sin. If you read farther into Genesis 4, you find that life at work in the realm of culture and society likewise has been poison because of our fall into sin. Genesis 4 at the end tells how Cain went out from the presence of the Lord to build a city in the land of Nod.

There he fathers a line of descendants who together work together to produce a number of developments in agriculture, musical instruments, and a number of other things as well. On the surface, it appears that mankind is moving forward and exercising dominion as he was always meant to. You look a little more carefully and scratch the surface, you find that there's sin there, there is selfishness there, there is social injustice there, there is polygamy there. So it is all throughout human history. We live in selfishness at home, we live in corruption out in the world of work and society, and we naturally raise this question, who will deliver us from the mess that we have made of God's very good world?

Only God. And that is exactly what a biblical worldview goes on to tell. God steps into our tragic situation because God does not abandon the work of his hands.

He steps into our tragic situation and immediately begins to reveal a plan by which he will restore us to our original stature and our original calling. One of the most thrilling things about a biblical worldview is that the third and final component is not fall but is redemption. And another thing that's marvelous and all of that is that the Bible takes its time to tell the story of redemption. You get creation in Genesis 1 and 2, though certainly implications are found in every other page after that. You get fall in Genesis 3, though of course implications are found right through the biblical storyline. Where does redemption unfold?

Everywhere else. The Bible is not a negative pessimistic book, it is filled with hope. Now it's true that the Bible takes its time to tell the story of redemption. I however, rest assured, will not take my time to tell the story of redemption.

I will cover it very, very rapidly. And I will attempt to do that by telling it all with reference to just one verse. Genesis 3.15. Genesis 3.15 is a good verse for that because it tells the whole story of redemption in one single, packed, seminal statement.

Here's what it says. God speaks a statement of curse on the serpent who is Satan, but in that is a whisper of hope to the human race. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed, it shall bruise thy head.

Thou shalt bruise his heel. It's remarkable in that it can tell the whole story of redemption in just a handful of lines. It's also remarkable because it comes from a previous statement we've already considered. It is an echo, basically, of Genesis 1.28.

At the core of both statements is the same basic idea. In Genesis 1.28 God says, I call on you, the human race, to rule over my world underneath my greater rule over you. And in Genesis 3.15 God says, I am sending someone to you who will rule for you, though you have failed.

What does it mean to crush the enemy on the head but to subdue him? And what does that suggest but that ever after a good and righteous and wise dominion will follow forever? Genesis 3.15 does not destroy Genesis 1.28.

It restores Genesis 1.28. You could, from that perspective, summarize the whole storyline of Scripture in these words. Jesus, the second Adam, comes to fulfill the dominion that the first Adam failed to fulfill. And when you understand that, you can see how it is that the whole story of Scripture fits together in a tight unity. This is the reason that from Genesis 3 on you're never far from the promise of a coming king.

This is the reason also that when Jesus first comes onto the stage of Scripture, he comes onto the stage of Scripture and history saying what he says. The time has been fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the gospel. The kingdom of God is the order that God has meant for the universe from the very beginning. That man should rule over this world underneath God's greater rule over man. And now at last in Mark chapter 1, that kingdom has arrived.

Why? Because the king has arrived. And he comes to set up a kingdom, but there is a condition. You must repent and believe in the gospel. You must turn away from your sin and give yourself holy and without reservation to the king that God has appointed for you. And if you do that, you enter the kingdom. If you do that, Jesus promises you eternal life. And what does that eternal life look like? That is again where Revelation 21 and 22 become so very significant. Particularly Revelation 22 5 where we see one of the final statements in the storyline of redemption.

These words. There shall be no night there. They need no candle, neither light of the sun for the Lord God giveth them light. And they shall reign forever and ever. So the story of scripture ends much as it began. It began with God calling us to exercise dominion. It continues with us failing God miserably. But it continues with God promising to send his own son to be our own son. And when that son triumphs, we all triumph with him if we repent and believe the gospel. And in the end, Genesis 1 28 is not lost but is restored for all eternity. Our home forever and ever is not to sit on cloud strumming harps. Our home forever and ever is to live with our feet firmly planted on the ground of the new earth, living out the implications of Genesis 1 28 forever.

Now that's the story. Now it's time for us to find our place in that story. Our place is not found in Revelation 22. We live in a world where the kingdom of God has come but it has not yet fully come. Our place in the story therefore is found in passages like the Sermon on the Mount, books like the book of Colossians, the book of Philippians, or certainly one of my favorites, the book of Ephesians. Let's turn to Ephesians 5 now as our final passage. Ephesians 5 verse 15, we'll look at that in just a moment. It is here in Ephesians 5 and 6 that Paul gives a number of admonitions to these Christians at Ephesus regarding what it means to walk worthy of the Lord in the present evil age in a world where the kingdom has come but it has not yet fully come. And he says to them in verse 15, see then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. He exhorts them to redeem the time.

What does that mean? Paul is calling them to think about life from the entire biblical metanarrative. We live in an evil age, he says, so work hard to rescue from the clutches of this present evil age the portion of the age that is put in your charge, the time that is given to you. What does it mean to live in this present evil age? It means to live every day seeking to live redemptively in our wicked fallen cultures. What is that supposed to look like? Well that's what the rest of Ephesians is about.

It gives us picture after picture regarding what that is supposed to look like. I think in particular that extended passage found in Ephesians 5, 21 through chapter 6 and verse 9 where Paul gives exhortation after exhortation in three different categories of relationships. The husband-wife relationship, the parent-child relationship, the master-slave relationship. It's interesting it unfolds in the two halves of Genesis 1.28, life lived at home, life lived in labor, life lived in work. There are many lessons to be derived from that passage.

We'll just here focus on one. When you look very carefully at what Paul has to say here, you are struck with this. The power that we exert in culture should be a powerless kind of power. I'm referring primarily to what Paul says to the masters in 6.9. He is exhorting them regarding their life lived in work, their life lived in labor, something that is a part of the original creational goodness of God's world. But they are currently operating in a social structure that is twisted, that has no place in God's original creationally good world. They're at work in the realm of slavery. And yet Paul does not tell them to immediately emancipate all of their slaves.

Why not? I think it has something to do with Paul's very high regard for law and order. Law and order too is something that has its foundations deep in the creational goodness of God's world. God loves law and order, therefore so does Paul. And therefore he's unwilling to give any exhortations that would call into question the goodness and the appropriateness of law and order in that society.

But that doesn't mean that Paul leaves them off the hook. He then gives them a number of very challenging exhortations, especially what he says in just two words, forbearing, threatening. As a Christian master, Paul is saying, certainly you must not beat your slaves, but something even more than that.

You cannot even speak to them in a threatening sort of manner. And what Paul essentially does at that point is he severs the cord that held together slavery as an institution in that world. It is not lost on history the impact of Paul's exhortation here in this passage and in other passages that are parallel to it. Over the course of several centuries, this aspect of society was significantly changed as the behavior of Christians in this part of the world was challenged and thus developed a conscience in that society regarding the treatment of slaves. It didn't produce a heaven on earth, but it made things better for a lot of people. And it worked together with a bunch of other changes that the Christian church was able to show through the light of its testimony to create a broad cultural platform from which the Christian church was able to proclaim the glories of the gospel in a broad and penetrating way greater than it was able to do prior. In other words, they learned the lesson of giving up their power in order to exert a far better power in their world.

There's a very instructive parallel here for all of us. You are going out into vocations, you're going out into social structures that are in some ways similar to the slavery that's referred to here in Ephesians 6 and verse 5. You're going out into vocations that on some level are what they are because of the creational goodness of God's world, but they also are what they are because they have been twisted by human fallenness, they have been twisted by sin, and for that reason these vocations are not houses for human flourishing.

They tend to be houses for developing and committing more and more people to bondage in a very fallen world. That is the world that you're going out into, that is the vocation that you're going out into in some form or another. And what are you going to do when you get there? What would Paul tell you to do? He would likely exhort you to consider that there is a forbearing, threatening exhortation that you need to consider and live by all the way through that vocation that you're going into. And in so doing, you will exert a powerless sort of power in your place of service, in your place of work. I can tell you it will take wisdom to uncover that application. Wisdom derived from the biblical world view, wisdom derived from your education here, wisdom derived from meeting regularly with God, but it will require more. It will require love.

Love for your neighbor, which is just as great as the love that you have for yourself, for regularly you will have to decide not to make full use of the rights and the privileges that your culture is willing to give to you, all in order so that someone else might flourish. But in the end, God will give you the grace for every decision and every challenge. Because ultimate reality is not the survival of the fittest. Ultimate reality is God in Christ reconciling the world to himself.

That's the story. Your privilege is that you get to play a part. Let's pray. Dear Father in Heaven, we thank you for what you have given us in your word. Teach us wisdom by that word. Give us the grace of love that you show us in your son. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Brian Smith, Director of Biblical Integration at BJU Press. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the series about the divine revelation of Scripture here on The Daily Platform.