The Power of Biblical Worldview in Evangelism

Anyway, we're very happy to have Jay Wetker with us and our service. this morning, he is a graduate from the Masters Seminary. He is also an adjunct professor of theology, Christian worldview, and grace-driven sanctification at the Masters Seminary. I love those titles there.

he is also the founder of a ministry called Gospel for Life, which is a training ministry. which is committed to training believers to share their faith with the lost and so they focus on evangelism as well as apologetics, just defending the faith. But what I love about this ministry is it's not simply committed to training Christians and how to preach the gospel to the lost. But it is also committed to training believers in how to live a gospel-centered life themselves and to make it fully functional in their own lives.

In fact, on their ministry statement that I was reading this week, it says this We affirm that the gospel is not just for initial salvation. And that statement just makes my heart beat faster. I love that we all need the gospel every day, and their ministry is committed to training believers and becoming fully functional in the gospel every single day of their lives in their home and in the church. as well as in the community.

Now, he's preaching today. He, next Sunday morning in the Sunday school hour will be doing the seminar, all right? So he'll be back next week in the Sunday school hour. I'll be preaching next Sunday and the Sunday after, all right?

But brother Jay, we're very happy to have you with us this morning. Come and share the word with us and let's give our brother a very warm cornerstone welcome. I keep hearing from Dave Forsyth how this church is so grace driven, and I love to hear that because I teach that course at the college and the students are just thrilled to hear how the gospel shapes everything in their fellowship, their sanctification, their outreach, everything. We had a beautiful drive from Santa Clarita this morning just looking on our left at the snow covered mountains.

I didn't see a single molecule of ozone as I looked over there, which I know couldn't be rare for the inland empire, maybe not this time of year. Well, the message this morning is on the use of the use of worldview or biblical worldview in our evangelism. And it is just vital that We begin to adopt elements from Christian worldview if we're going to keep pace with what's happening. With postmodernism, is my speaker on?

OK. No, you're on. OK. Well, for the sake of the CD.

May I say that this morning's message is on the power of Christian worldview in evangelism. And we certainly need to make some adjustments, as our culture moves further off of a Judeo-Christian foundation into what's nothing less than a revival of paganism. We really need to make some changes, if we're going to share the faith effectively with today's postmodern people. it takes no small amount of courage to share the gospel.

In a society that is thinking up new reasons why the gospel is not true. Not only does our culture think up new reasons why the gospel is not true, it takes those reasons and makes them into movies. Like The Da Vinci Code and the Golden Compass and others. And we're finding that the agenda behind almost every television program now is to break apart that sacred canopy of biblical worldview that hangs over the human race.

They want to beat it and fragment it to pieces and replace it with a pagan worldview. And so many people now are receiving their worldview from the media. Fewer and fewer people are finding their worldview from reading. They're getting it through audiovisual media.

That's certainly true of our young people. Well, this really hit me about 6 years ago that something needed to be done in evangelism. And so I was trained in presuppositional apologetics at the Masters Seminary, and I also wrote a course on worldview for Foothill Bible Church. And so I put the two together, worldview and apologetics, and came up with worldview evangelism.

And I've been doing that for about 6 years, and praise the Lord. We've seen many college students come to Christ. But I have a confession to make. It's not through this method.

Every college student that's come to Christ in our ministry has been through friendship evangelism, so I'm not here this morning to promote a methodology. Our method is not it. It's just simply tearing down the strongholds behind which unbelievers hide. It's a form of pre-evangelism that you'll be hearing about this morning.

You're going to hear about some real high powered apologetics this morning. But that's not our confidence. Our confidence is the power of the gospel in the hands of the Holy Spirit. That's our confidence.

We sanctify the Lord Jesus in our hearts, as the Lord of all, and then we make a defense of the faith. That's our, that's our normal way of proceeding. Now it's you always get on dangerous ground when you're preaching on evangelism. And I do not put myself under any delusion this morning that hearing a message on evangelism will make you great evangelists.

That would be like thinking you can watch Tiger Woods on TV and become a great golfer by simply watching TV. You have to get out and do it. And I would say the advances in evangelism that I have learned in the last 10 years or so has begun because I've been out there in the trenches taking risks, my heart palpitating at times when I talk to strangers. That's how you learn to become a good evangelist, by getting out there and doing it, grab a friend and go out and talk to people.

And so the goal of my message this morning is to give you some ammunition. That's all I really want to do is encourage you, give you some ammunition, and give you the confidence anew that biblical worldview totally matches reality in every single area. And unbelievers do not have a worldview that can explain reality at all. And so you can come into every witnessing situation with the confidence that what God's word says perfectly matches human experience.

It's a perfect fit. It's like a key that fits the lock of the universe and unlocks the mysteries of what it means to be a human in God's world. See, this is the foundation from which we operate. We're affirming that Christian worldview teaches that ultimate reality is not the physical universe made of molecules.

Ultimate reality is God Himself and his blueprint for His creatures. That's ultimate reality. It's God's plan for the universe. I talk to college students every, every day who are in a really great dilemma.

They want life to have meaning, and yet they believe the universe is meaningless. They want life to have significance. Yet they think the universe has no significance. They want, they want their life to exhibit rationality, yet they think they live in an irrational universe.

See, I immediately go for that ground. I'm not gonna go onto their turf and start arguing about the Da Vinci Code or something else. I take them onto the turf of Christian worldview. And all those different barricades they hide themselves behind, they start to crumble because every erroneous worldview is filled with inconsistencies from top to bottom.

It's absolutely Swiss cheese. It's full of holes, and I can go into a witnessing situation with that confidence. That my unbelieving friend has a worldview that can't explain God, the world, or himself. And so I begin with that confidence and I seek to instill that confidence in the people that I train.

So there's great value in using Christian worldview in our evangelism. And we really need to think about doing this. I don't know if any of you have met Jim Kircheval, who's from Foothill Bible Church. He heads up the Campus Crusade Ministries at Cal Poly Pomona.

And he asked me to speak there to the Campus Crusade group. It's a really large group. About the size of your church. And I spoke to their group last year.

And then Jim came up to me afterwards and not based on my sermon, but this is what he said about preaching, or sharing the gospel on the campus of Cal Poly Pomona. He said, we're finding in our evangelistic efforts that we tend to be talking past unsafe students. When we try to share the gospel on campus, we're discovering that the foundations for understanding reality are absent. Postmodernism has given students a view of reality, so steeped in relativism, God is inconsequential and pushed to the margins.

Now can you imagine trying to share the gospel in that particular environment? What a challenge that is. You've got to build a foundation or a context or a framework for the gospel like Paul did in Acts 17. When Paul preached to those philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens, he didn't begin with, you're a sinner.

Jesus came for sinners. He didn't begin there. He began with the nature of reality. My friends, reality is the Creator's relationship to the creation.

Because he made it. He owns it. He upholds it. He rules it, he defines it, he governs it, and he will judge it.

That is reality, my friends, we lay a foundation of reality as the Creator's relationship to what he's made. So when I, when I talk to these modern day pagans, I don't begin With the doctrine of sin, I begin with the doctrine of creation, as Paul did in Acts 17. I need a context for the gospel. Otherwise, if I'm telling people you need to repent, repentance makes no sense in a chance universe, does it?

No, in a chance universe, you make your own reality, you carry your own identity, you make things happen yourself, you overcome fate. You make your own world. See, so I have to bring them back to that beginning point. God, who made the world.

He made it out of nothing. He owns every molecule in the universe, and that has tremendous ramifications for your life. That means he owns the molecules that make up your body. And because he owns you and made you, He has the right to tell you what to believe and how to live.

And it's your, it's in your eternal interest to know what to believe and how to live. So this is how we began. I'm not going to drink out of Mike's tea here. Is there a water I could get up here perhaps?

the whole job of doing Christian apologetics today. is effective when it uncovers the unbelievers assumptions. Remember, unbelievers are getting their worldview from TV. And some of those assumptions That the unbeliever is being imbued with some of those assumptions would be this there can't be one true religion to the exclusion of all others.

Every person has the freedom to determine right and wrong for themselves. OK, that's being shoved into people through the TV set every day. So how, how do you reach a person? Who's been imbued with that.

One of the ways we do it is we, we raise ultimate questions. And then we answer ultimate questions. Let me tell you what an ultimate question is and you young people here this morning, we have a set of notes for you with the ultimate questions in there so you don't have to write down these questions, but let me give you some ultimate questions. What is a human being?

Why is there evil, death, and suffering? Why is there injustice? Why are some people so noble and others So cruel Is God knowable? What happens after death?

Is there a destiny for the human race? See, one of the things we do in worldview evangelism is to raise ultimate questions. Let the unbeliever try to answer them. And then you answer him from the word of God.

It's so powerful. It's a wonderful diagnostic tool to uncover the assumptions that these unbelievers have assimilated. It's incredibly effective because then they see in living color the contrast between their unexamined worldview and what God says in His word, and what a contrast it is. That's our starting point in worldview evangelism we raise and then we answer.

Ultimate questions. Now, why do we need to do this? Pastor Tim Keller of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan gives us one of the reasons why. We should uncover Assumptions.

Listen to this. This is fascinating. The Western world is a new mission field never faced before. It is ex-Christian, having been inoculated with some Christianity.

It now only has a distorted memory of Christianity as the age of prejudice and bigotry. So what are we seeing in movies that are coming out today like Golden Compass? You need to be delivered from Christianity. It's oppressive.

It's a power play. It holds down women, and on and on it goes. So we're addressing some of these assumptions. With questions about presuppositions and worldview.

We love to have foreign students in our home. And of the dozen or so foreign students we've had in the last 10 or 15 years, one of them was a sweet girl from southern Japan, and one night we're sharing the gospel with her. And this is what she said. My mom said, Don't talk to Christians because they think they have the truth.

In other words, the new heresy. Of the 21st century is to think that you have the truth and others do not. See, that's now equated with being closed minded. When it's nothing more than the Judeo-Christian view of life, which our founding fathers emphasized so clearly, and which is etched into the stone on Ivy League university halls.

This university exists to teach men and women about Christ. We just have no idea how much our country has changed. I often go up to CalArts University, which is an art school founded by Walt Disney, and CalArts University is only 400 yards from our home. And when I go up to Cal Arts University, I take my prayer walk and meditation time up there, and then I'll talk to students.

So I've made a collection of bumper stickers that I see on campus because they tend to take the philosophies and put them in a pop language. So here are some bumper stickers I've seen up there in the last year. don't postpone joy. Eve was framed.

God is too big to fit into any one religion. The earth doesn't belong to us, we belong to the earth. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. Now there's many more I've seen up there, but this really is a hotbed of liberalism.

They sometimes call it Babylon West because the parties are so Orgy-esque up there. In fact, I was talking to one of the administrators the other day and they said, this is so exciting. Our Halloween party was written up in Playboy magazine as the best university party in California. They lock 2000 students in the building all night and it's basically anything goes.

So when you go up there to witness, you are truly dealing with modern age pagans. I go up there with the understanding that these students have an ax to grind. They're trying to defend. A lifestyle that permits free expression of their lusts.

They want a worldview that frees up their lusts. See, they haven't chosen their worldview in a cognitive, carefully reasoned fashion. They've chosen a worldview that allows their lusts to be expressed. I know that, but they don't know I know that.

So when I go onto campus, I already know that's what's going on. So when I ask worldview questions, I realize they're slaves of sin. And they've chosen the devil's, they've chosen Satan's definition of freedom, haven't they? Well, open your Bibles for a moment and we'll go to 2 Corinthians chapter 10.

2 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 3. 2 Corinthians 10:3, for though we walk in the flesh, We do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we're taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, and we are ready to punish all disobedience whenever your obedience is complete. What a wonderful summary this is.

of our apologetic ministry of tearing down false worldviews. So what does Paul say about a false worldview? It's a fortress. It's a speculative fortress designed to lock out the knowledge of God.

See, this is what unbelievers do. They barricade themselves inside false worldviews to keep the gospel at bay. I have to keep reminding myself when I'm witnessing to a person, here's an individual who does not want the gospel to make sense. He wants confusion.

He wants obfuscation. He wants problems because he does not want the gospel in all its lucid clarity. He does not want the gospel to penetrate his heart. It's exactly what Jesus said in John 3:19 to 21.

This is the judgment. The life has come into the world, but men loved. Darkness rather than light. So the unbeliever has an ax to grind.

Though he postures himself as an unbiased truth seeker, he has an ax to grind. So when I go into a witnessing situation, I know that. And it is so powerful to let the individual see that firsthand, to hear from his own lips, what his worldview is, so he can see how innately hostile it is to the claims of his Creator. Oh, that's powerful.

So I ask questions, where the unbeliever actually goes out on a limb and says, Well, this is what I believe. I was talking to a student at CalArts the other day. He's a playwright in his senior year, working on his thesis. And I finally said to him, as we're talking about God's moral law, my friend, is it rational?

For you to think that you can trample the law of God, And then have a heaven with a holy God. Will he welcome you into his eternity if you live trampling his laws now? Is that rational? And here was his response.

Who needs rationality? Well, What is a what is a conversation but a dialogue based upon logic. Determining what's true and what's false. Then he said this to me, he finally owned his worldview in living color, and he said, Here's the difference between you and me.

I'm living to express my lusts and cravings now. You want your ultimate happiness after you die. I said, well said. That's exactly it.

I'm happy following Christ now, but ultimate happiness is in His presence, made holy as He is. See, he owned his worldview. Now the conversation began to tail off, but if I could have shown him right then who God is from Scripture, I think it would have been very riveting for him to realize that to live by your lusts is to live as an enemy of God. Well, unbelievers do lock themselves inside erroneous worldviews.

They're like prisoners who check the locks at night, making sure they're still in manacles. That's the madness of sin. It hides the fact that you're a slave. hides the fact.

That you're in bondage. It hides the symptoms and the results of the disease. That's what sin does. I turn in your Bibles to Colossians 2.

Colossians 2, I believe this passage in Colossians 2. is the great continental divide between all people. It sits there as a watershed dividing every individual on Earth. It says in Colossians 2:8.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy, and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ. There's that continental divide. That means every single person on the face of the earth is either set free in Christ, or they're a captive. of false worldview and the philosophies of men.

There's really nothing in between. A born again person embraces the Word of God, completely embraces Christian worldview, throws out his erroneous worldview. You see, the gospel is not something you can add on to your life, like an appendage, like something that'll improve your life and raise your human potential. Now, the gospel is a radical overturning.

Of everything you believed previously and a reordering of everything under the lordship of Christ. You cannot add the gospel to an erroneous worldview. You can't plug it in or patch it on. There's a complete change needed.

So repentance is not only repenting of your Immorality And your lack of ethics, repentance is also intellectual. You must jettison and ash can your false worldview, replacing it completely with what Jesus says about reality. See, Christ is Lord of all knowledge. It says in Colossians 2:3 that all the treasures of God's wisdom and knowledge are resident in the Lord Jesus Christ.

To reject Jesus is not just to reject. His work of redemption, it's to reject Jesus as the authoritative mouthpiece of God, who declares to men and women what the proper interpretation of the universe is. When you reject Jesus, you're rejecting God's interpretation of reality, and accepting Satan's interpretation in its place. I was up at Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley area on President's Day, and they had all these people dressed in period dress giving speeches.

The guy dressed like Washington was very convincing. Children wanted their picture with him, and because I'm an artist, I decided to do a sketch of Washington. While I was sketching, news reporters from the various papers and The TV stations were circulating and one woman came up to me and she says, Oh, can I please talk to you? I see you're sketching Washington.

And I said, Well, sure. She says, Well, I have a question for you about free speech. Since this is President's Day. So I answered her questions and I said, Well, do you believe in free speech?

She goes, Oh, sure. I said, can I make a statement, a religious statement? She said, she said, OK, I'll I'll get the video going. And so I said, Well, here's my religious statement.

God has one great mouthpiece. through which he speaks authoritatively and infallibly, it is his word and the Lord Jesus Christ. And what God says through his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, tells us What is true, what is real, what is right, and what is wrong. And if you reject what God says through Jesus Christ, you sentence yourself to drift on a shoreless sea of relativism forever.

And she goes, Oh, can I have that? Can I please have that? Would you sign this release form? I've never heard anything like that.

I'm Jewish. No one's ever told me this before. Can I use it on the TV station? Sure.

So I signed the release form. I'm sure it never appeared on TV, but people have not heard that Christ is not only savior, he's Lord of the cosmos, and he's Lord of all knowledge. They've not heard that. And so this is revolutionary.

When they hear these things, it just turns their world upside down. Now, the other night I called up a friend of mine just to go over to Starbucks and have some fellowship and He agreed to come and Within the 1st 30 minutes, I saw two people that I'd witnessed to in the past. Still both unsaved. And so I said to my friend, How would you like to witness to these two guys?

They were sitting separately. Let's start with one and then go to the other. So in a period of 2 hours we shared the gospel, this was just Friday night, we shared the gospel with these two men. And it's quite amazing.

In our politically correct climate, we imagine that anything that is confrontational, debate oriented, or antithetical is somehow going to offend people. And this could not be further from the truth. As I tag teamed with my friend witnessing to these two men, I pointed out where their worldview disagreed with scripture, and I pointed it out graphically. And then my friend.

Who's a little bit more relational than I am, he got away with being able to say, I'm really concerned for your soul. If you stay in the present situation you're in, I'm really concerned for you. I'm going to be praying for you. I urge you to get in the book and get into a congregation of believers where you can bring your questions.

Now both these men individually came up to us afterwards and said, Thank you, thank you, thank you for sharing with me. I'm looking forward to our next conversation. See, one of the things Satan uses in our minds is to try to convince us that if we are pressing the antithesis and confronting error, that people will be insulted by that. No.

Why won't they be insulted? Because God has written on their hearts His law, and because God has put the knowledge of Himself in their minds, and because God has written His attributes in the creation. So what you're saying they already know is true. Though verbally they may pretend that Christianity is just one option among all others Zen Buddhism, Shinto, Christianity is just one option.

No, they know, they know the truth. According to Romans chapter 1, God has made it evident in them, it says, and evident to them. Romans 1:19-20. Therefore they are out there without excuse, so I come into a witnessing situation absolutely confident.

Absolutely convinced that God has already written on that person's conscience and intellect, his laws and his existence, though that person's an unbeliever. You talk about boldness. This will embolden you in your evangelism. OK.

Now the way I began my message this morning was that worldview is very important in an age where postmodernism is claiming minds and hearts. And what we really need today in our evangelism is something called a world, a worldview clash. Where the individual is able to see. The infinite difference between what he believes and what God says here we call that a worldview clash.

It's like a train wreck between two worldviews. I want to create a train wreck when I witness. I want to show that person just how radically different his view is from what the Bible says. And that's really the art of worldview evangelism.

You see, there's only 2 possible starting points for knowledge. It's either God or self. And every unbeliever I talk to always starts with self. And so I want to point that out.

I want to show that individual because he's starting with self, he will not arrive at the right answer. The only possible way to arrive at the right answer is to start with God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. If you don't fear God, As the infallible author of this book, then you put yourself in a position to never know the truth.

You must begin with the fear of God and the New Testament version of that is in John 7:17. Here is how you will know if Jesus is from God and is divine and is authoritative. Are you willing to do God's will? Do you have any fear of God whatsoever?

That's the criterion. You can't even know the truth, unless you fear God. So sometimes I'll remind the unbeliever of that, do what God's criterion is for finding truth? What?

You must fear him, as he's revealed here. You must fear him as he is revealed in his word. That's the criterion for ever apprehending the truth at all. So what does the unbeliever have?

The unbeliever has a faulty frame of reference, a faulty reference point. It is his own opinions. And the unbeliever pretends like he's Objective But he's not objective. He wants to live at arm's length from his Creator.

He wants to live independently of his Creator. He wants to live with his back to God. And so when I take that unbeliever to scripture, I will show him. Sometimes I use phrases like this, the Bible tells us why people won't read it.

And they'll go, What? And there's a verse in here which says why you people won't read the Bible. It's not because it's hard to understand. It's because they don't like that bright of a light.

And I take them to John 3:19 to 21. So it gets exciting. Well, what I want to give you this morning is also some questions you can employ. To bring the unbelievers' assumptions to the surface so they can be discussed.

See if we can bring their hostility to the surface, I don't mean their anger, but their, their assumptions which are against God, if you can bring those assumptions to the surface and discuss them, You're going to get somewhere as far as getting past. The castle walls. See all these stone castle walls. It says on the outside of those castle walls, all Christians are hypocrites.

Religion has caused more war than anything else. There can't be just one way to God. These are what's written on those castle walls. To get past those walls, sometimes we need to do a little bit of pre-evangelism.

And so we ask A series of questions. I go onto campuses. Already knowing that by their freshman year, the vast majority of college students are already thoroughly relativized by postmodernism. Truth is relative.

Culture, everything is relative. These college students are spelling truth with a very lowercase t. Truth is nothing more than the particular tradition of some cultural group or some particular region of the world. There is no capital T truth, which is true for everyone that's been drilled into them, so I already know that they're thoroughly postmodern.

They're thoroughly, thoroughly relativistic. So here are some of the worldview questions that I asked them to begin a witnessing encounter. May I ask you 4 questions. That will reveal your worldview.

That doesn't sound very threatening, does it? Or can I get your opinion on 4 questions about worldviews so far everybody has said, Sure, I'll answer those questions. Well, here's the first one. Where did you come from?

Who made you? I was asking that question at CalArts the other day. And a little group of Korean students, this one girl piped up and she says, Oh, I can answer that right away. I came from a, people came from primates.

I said, be careful how you answer that first question. Because it might prevent the way you answer the next question if you think we're only animals. Because let me give you question 2. What is the value of a human being?

Why is your life sacred? You don't really believe you're just an animal, do you, or a biological machine? So I'm slowly taking them into creation doctrine using everyday language. First question, who are we?

Where do we come from? Question number 2, why is your life sacred? So funny, I was on the campus of Western Michigan University in I was asking students this question Why is life sacred? And every student I talked to gave a functional.

Utilitarian Instrumental answer to the question. In other words, life is valuable because what people can do. And contribute. I said, what about a person who's a quadriplegic?

Why is their life valuable? Well, their life is valuable because people love them. What about a quadriplegic who's offended everybody and has no friends? Well, somebody on earth must think he's OK.

So all they could get to was a functional definition of human value. See, so I let the unbeliever put himself way out on a limb as I ask these questions. Where do we come from? Why is life sacred?

The third question I ask is, what has gone wrong with the world? I asked that question of a doctoral candidate from Ohio. She had studied, she had a degree in Russian literature and philosophy. And her answer to that question, what has gone wrong with the world is nothing.

There's nothing wrong with the world. Everything's proceeding right on schedule. Kick out. Am I still coming over here?

Test, test. Am I still on? OK. So all her studies had not really put her in more touch with reality, had put her more in the direction of an absurd, absurd worldview.

So I asked her if we've made so much progress, why was the 20th century the bloodiest in human history. And she said conversation over. sometimes that's just what happens. Anyway, the 4th and final question I ask the individual is this.

What can we do to fix it? In other words, things have gone wrong in the world. What can we do to fix it? And just as a show of hands, how many college students do we have today in our congregation?

OK, 1510 or 15? Every college student I've ever asked this question of Every college student I've ever asked this question of what can we do to fix it. has always given me A social engineering answer. What we need to do to fix the world is re-educate people.

I said, Well, let me tell you about some of the re-education programs in the 20th century. One was put upon us by Stalin. Another by Pol Pot. these were great purges to re-educate masses of people.

I said if your only solution is social engineering, You've got a big problem. Can I show you how different the solution was from the words of Jesus? Jesus said, the source of envying, covetings, murdering, and idolatry is the human heart. If change will take place, A person must have a new heart.

And then you have tree with good fruit. Jesus said that's where the change must take place, not in social engineering, not in changing the environment. You must have the human heart changed by the redeemer. So once I let the unbeliever go out on a limb and declare his crazy answers to these four worldview questions, then I ask this question Has anyone ever shared with you the Christian worldview.

Has anyone ever shared with you the biblical answer to these four questions? No. May I? Sure.

What did I just do? I just got permission to preach the gospel. I'll tell you, of the many people I've talked to with these 4 questions, I would say 99 out of 100 have said, sure, please share the Christian worldview with me. I've never heard it.

And then I give the Christian answer to each of these four questions. Where we come from, the Almighty Creator made the universe out of nothing. He upholds it. He has a perfect plan and purpose for it.

which he's executing with power and faithfulness, wisdom and goodness. Who are we? We're made in God's image to know Him. He made us in His likeness that we might have fellowship with Him and enjoy him and experience fulfillment through obedience.

Our worth and dignity and purpose are bound up in the fact we're made in His image and likeness. He has a perfect blueprint for his creatures. In the third question, what's gone wrong with the world? When our first parents broke faith with God, sin entered as a destructive principle.

It caused idolatry, death, suffering, and ignorance and fear. It separated us from God. Transgression is war upon the glory of God. It's the cause of injustice, oppression, and greed.

And what can we do to fix it? God has a perfect plan in His mercy, love, and compassion to restore man back to our created purpose of knowing and loving Him, obeying and serving Him by His only begotten Son, who came to Earth 2000 years ago. He laid his life down in a cruel death on the cross, cross as a perfect substitute. And by his death, those who believe and repent, have their sin put away and are reconciled to God are forgiven.

and restored to their created purpose. Now when I share that with these individuals after they've given their false answer, do you think it looks like the Grand Canyon? With a mile deep chasm between what they believe and what God says, you bet. But I let them talk first.

I let them share their worldview first. And then I say, this is what God says. This is God's answer to these four questions. I was walking on this hillside.

There's a lot of, there's a little wilderness area right before CalArts. I was walking on a hillside the other day meditating and praying, and I saw a guy with one of those electronic drum sets just sitting on the hill, just drumming his head off. He has his headphones on. I couldn't hear anything, but he's just, really rocking and, and he took his headphones off when I came by, and I asked where he was from.

He said he was from. Louisiana. He was here to do a drum gig with some of the CalArts guys. And I said, Well, I've got a question for you.

Would you say that your view of life leans more toward the Bible or more toward Eastern mysticism? It goes totally eastern mysticism. I have my own guru. So I said, Well, let me ask you 4 worldview questions.

I asked him the four worldview questions. He stumbled with some answers that were incoherent, and I said, May I share with you The biblical worldview. Can I ask you to just step into Christian worldview and walk with me just a little bit through these four questions? He goes, Sure.

So I basically gave him the gospel, which is the answer to these four questions. This is a total stranger. At the end, he goes, I'm so glad I met you. Can I give you a hug?

See, we forget, That though people have raised up barricades to the truth of God, they are grateful when someone takes a risk to share with them, they have gratitude. They are grateful when someone does that. And I have to keep remembering that behind every false worldview. Is the assumption that a person can operate independently of God.

I know how dependent upon God they are. I know that he gives every breath, every heartbeat, the hairs of their head are numbered. I know how dependent upon God they are. They don't.

I want to bring them in touch with that. And so my point of contact with the unbeliever, first of all, I open up the doctrine of creation. That they're a creature made in the image of God, made to know God, then I open up their predicament. That's the point of contact with the unbeliever.

According to God's word. This is the predicament that you're in. God has revealed Himself clearly in your mind, in creation, and in your conscience, and you don't really want anything to do with him. And you desperately need Him because your sin is sinking, sinking you into a Christless eternity.

See, that's my point of contact with the unbeliever. I don't think he lacks information. I don't think he lacks data. He is swimming in a sea of light, for God has put his sermons in all of nature.

God is preaching sermons, it says in Psalm 19, to all of creation. That person doesn't need more light. He needs to face his rebellion. That's the issue.

The point of contact is that person's rebellion. Against the light that he does have. And next week, Lord willing, during the seminar time and the Sunday school hour, we'll open up Romans 1 and look into that subject of how the natural man suppresses all that light God has given him. And It should be a good time.

Well, the Lord is saving people. By means of a clash between worldviews. This is how Jesus preached. This is how Paul preached.

We open up the Gospel of John, and what do we see? Jesus is contrasting truth with error in John 3:45, 6789, and 10 and 12. It's Jesus contrasting truth with error, putting it into bold relief so that his hearers see where they stand and where they need to be. And that's what worldview evangelism is all about.

We'll close this morning if you'd open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 2. Let's look just for a second at what God says about the wisdom of the world. 1 Corinthians 2:18. For the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness.

But to us who are being saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and the cleverness of the clever, I will set aside. And then jump all the way down. To verse 22.

For indeed, Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom. But we preach Christ crucified to Jews a stumbling block, and to Gentiles foolishness. But to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Here it is, because the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

And the weakness of God is stronger than men. I want to leave you with this challenge this morning. That you become convinced in your heart, soul, mind, and conscience that biblical worldview is a perfect match for what you see out there in reality. That you become utterly convinced of that, that the word of God is utterly sufficient.

To reach below the surface of the unbeliever's defenses and bring him to Christ, should he be called by God. May the Lord give us more boldness in our compassion for the lost. Amen. Amen.

Let's bow together in prayer. Lord, we just praise you this morning for your constant goodness, Lord, your word is so powerful, and the Spirit is so mighty. He can conquer the most thoroughly dug in rebel. Lord, give us more boldness.

Let our love and compassion for the lost be shown in our willingness to share our faith as a habit of life, as a lifestyle. In Jesus' name. Amen.