Beyond Sunday with Pastor Nic
Join me for a more personal look into the weekend sermons, as well as some thoughts on theology, marriage, parenting, and leadership. I will also explore some of your most asked questions throughout the year.
www.nic-williams.com
Beyond Sunday with Pastor Nic
Building Belief: Understanding the Role of Doctrine in Christianity
Hey, podcasters, welcome back to Beyond Sunday, so excited that you're here with me today. I've been getting a lot of questions about this email series that I'm doing, which is on doctrine and theology, and we're just talking to general questions of why do we believe the Bible? Where did the Bible come from? What evidence supports the Bible? Who is God? Who is Jesus? What is the Trinity? We're going through just some basics, foundations of the faith, and I keep getting the questions on why we're doing that and I want to address that today.
Speaker 1:Drop a podcast that'll talk a little bit about the foundations, and when I say foundations, I'm saying two things One, the foundations of our faith, but also a class I took years ago with Tom Holliday and Kay Warren out of Saddleback called Foundations, and a lot of what I'll share with you today comes from that class, some of it directly from that class. I'm not going to quote it if you will, but just know this is where it's coming from and through that series we really talked about some of the most important aspects of everyone's life. It's the center of how we live. It determines the decisions we make, how we treat people. We love the emotions that we experience, the internal impact that we have, and so today I want to talk a little bit about developing a Christian worldview, the set of beliefs that form the glasses, if you will, through which we see the world. One of the first series I ever preached here at South Shore was a series on how you view things, your worldview, and there are four classic worldview questions that, in order to have this conversation that you have to grapple with One, who am I? Two, where am I? Three, what's wrong? And four, what's the remedy? And so we're going to wrestle through those questions a little bit today to help you understand this idea of a worldview.
Speaker 1:Often, the result is a view of the world that is more ours than God's. That's how we create a worldview. We create one, and then, all of a sudden, we've created one that really is more about us than is about God. It's more about how we interpret the Bible, or our thoughts and beliefs, than what God actually says. The good news is, god doesn't want us to stay that way. He doesn't want to leave you in the dark. God wants to give you his knowledge, his insight, and so we can see this clearly in the fact that he sent his son and gave us his word. God wants you to know him. Look at Philippians 1, verse 9 and 10. It says and this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best. Our love and our ability to choose what is best are not ultimately a matter of feelings or even experiences. They grow out of the knowledge and insight we have about life.
Speaker 1:A great author by the name of Chuck Colson, or Charles Colson, said this that the term worldview may sound abstract or philosophical, a topic discussed by pipe-smoking, tweed-jacketed professors in academic settings but actually a person's worldview is intensely practical. It is simply the sum total of our beliefs about the world, the big picture that directs our daily decisions and actions. That's the quote by Chuck Colson. Now look at Jude out of the Bible verses, or chapter 1, verse 20,. But you, dear friends, must continue to build your lives on the foundation of your holy faith. This is the theme verse for what I'm talking about throughout this the foundations of your faith. Your view of this world is determined by the foundation that you choose to build your life on. You build your life on money and you'll have one view of the world. You build it on popularity and you'll have an entirely different view of the world and what's happening around you. But the foundation that God wants you to build your life on, the foundation that has the most steadiness, the foundation that's the greatest for you and I is when our lives are built on faith in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1:Another word for worldview, honestly, is doctrine. Now don't let your mind go down the wrong path. When you hear the word doctrine, many of us can't think of anything more dry or boring. I took a lot of doctrine classes in college. I went to college for way too long, have five college degrees and I hear this word doctrine. And even as a theologian, as a pastor, I begin this is going to be boring, right? We envision a pastor lecturing on and on in a monotone voice while most of the students just sleep. And if you wonder if that happens in seminary, it definitely happens in seminary. But the word theology is often intertwined with doctrine and the word theology literally means the study of God.
Speaker 1:Study is an important part of theology. You can have no theology without study, without seeking understanding. You can't just read something and all of a sudden you have a theology. You've got to actually study it. Christianity is a thinking faith. If you're not asking questions, if you're not growing in faith. In fact, it's my hope that this study will stir up some questions in you, and that's part of the idea of the email series that I have going on. People are emailing their questions in and some of them we're addressing, some of them we're saving for another day to hit a podcast with. But questions by themselves aren't enough, and I think that's part of the problem with Christianity.
Speaker 1:Today. A lot of people are deconstructing their faith because they have a lot of questions but they're not actually seeking the answers, and their questions are destroying their foundation without seeing the answers in the Word of God to the questions that they're wrestling with. This study that we're doing may often make you think, and it's not going to be easy. Someone once said that anyone who gives the illusion that they are thinking will be loved by them, whereas anyone who actually prompts them to think will be hated. Thinking about truth is like exercising we tend to resist it at first, but enjoy its benefits afterwards.
Speaker 1:Let me just make the case today on why to learn doctrine, and if you kind of land in a good place with me. I hope you go to nick-williamscom and join my newsletter. Come on this journey with me. But there's several reasons why we should learn doctrine. One is because knowing the truth about God helps me know God better. Let me say that again Knowing the truth about God helps me know God better.
Speaker 1:Ji Packer said we are cruel to ourselves if we try to live in this world without knowing that God. Without knowing the God whose world it is and who runs it. The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place for those who do not know about God. Living in this world without knowing God is like driving a car with the windows blacked out. It doesn't matter how hard you step on the accelerator or what direction you steer, you keep running into things and you never really get anywhere. We all have a deep desire to know God. We're born with that. You even hear it in phrases like oh God or my God right, that people utter when they're shocked. The good news is God wants us to get to know him. That's why he sent his son Jesus and gave us his word.
Speaker 1:Let's put this in perspective Knowing truths about God is not enough to give you a relationship with him. We all know people who know truths about the Bible and about God, but don't really know him in a personal way. Phil, to get to know him better, you and I must learn more and more of the truth about him. I have a friend that has been in church for a long time, is currently not going to church, has come a little disillusioned with the church and she is basically mad that the church believes the Bible over what she believes. Now she wouldn't say it like that, because she tries to defend her beliefs out of the Bible, but there's just not solid ground to what she believes. She has taken her worldview over God's worldview and he even made statements to the contrary that I can't support a God who believes this, and then you can't support God, right, and she's struggling with her faith. And I think through these things the doctrine and theology, and how to communicate them in the view and lens of people like her that I deeply care about and deeply want them to find a relationship with God.
Speaker 1:The desire to read God's word, to learn about him, is a sign of your love for God. Imagine a college student saying to his girlfriend back home I received the 23 love letters you wrote to me this semester and intended to read them as soon as things settle down a bit, but I really do love you. If you're going to get to know God, you have to know the truth about him. You cannot develop a relationship with God based on your guesses or your wishes about what he is like. Healthy relationships are built on the truth. You can't know someone if you believe a lie about them.
Speaker 1:Proverbs 2, 2-5 says listen carefully to wisdom, set your mind on understanding, cry out for wisdom and beg for understanding, search for it like silver and hunt for it like hidden treasure. Then you will understand respect for the Lord and you will find that God. I love that verse because if you and I knew that there was silver on the property you're standing on right now, or there was a hidden treasure in the backyard of your house, you would take some days off work. You would grab a shovel, you would grab some friends. Maybe not some friends, maybe you just want to do it on your own, but you would find some way to find that. And the word of God is that for our lives, it is those nuggets of treasure and silver that can change your life. God has a purpose for all of us, yet sometimes we miss the most important purpose for which we were made.
Speaker 1:You weren't made primarily to have a successful career. You weren't made primarily to produce wonderful children. You weren't made primarily to write great books or stop the injustice in the world and that may be one of the passions of yours but that's not why you're primarily made. You weren't primarily made to make a lot of money. That doesn't mean you can't make a lot of money, but that is not your primary goal. You were made primarily to know God. K Warren once said knowing God will make you wise. Knowing God will open your eyes. Knowing God will give you hope. Knowing God will help you cope. Now there's a second reason why it's worth your time to learn God's truth, and that's simply because knowledge is an essential foundation. Look at Hebrews 6, verses 1 and 2. Therefore, leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and faith toward God, of instruction meaning doctrine about washings, meaning baptism and laying on of hands and the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.
Speaker 1:We all build our lives on a foundation that guides the decisions we make and the direction we take. Sometimes we try to build our foundation on the opinion of others, but we get a lot of differing opinions, right? Sometimes we attempt to make our feelings our foundation. I think this happens way more often than not. How I feel becomes truth and all of a sudden, my feelings which aren't always true, they are true to me that I feel that way, but they aren't true about the situation they become my foundation. It makes things very dangerous. Sometimes we build our foundation on traditions. Sometimes our foundation is only strong enough to build us up if we really have knowledge of God.
Speaker 1:Just as you have to know your ABCs before you can read and write, you have to know the truth about God before you can live. Right? You know the old phrase ignorance is bliss. It's not true. If I drive through a town going 65 miles per hour and I get pulled over by a police officer who tells me didn't you see the sign that said it was 35 miles per hour? My ignorance is not bliss. In that situation, right, ignorance can put you at risk and ignorance of God's truth is incredibly dangerous. Your joy is at stake, your families are at risk. Your place in eternity is at risk if you're just living off ignorance and feelings about God.
Speaker 1:Building a good foundation for life takes a great deal of time and, to be honest with you, it's tough work. To build a foundation, you have to get down and dig, you have to want to, you have to desire, you have to be willing to do the tough work, and so I hope that is a place that you are at in your walk with God. Now, life without a foundation. Let me give you a verse. Ephesians 4, 13 through 14 says this Until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ, then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men and their deceitful scheming. I love that verse and I also hate that verse. I love it because it reminds us that we are, when we're being tossed back and forth, when our fate is struggling, we're not living on the foundations of God.
Speaker 1:This passage in Ephesians presents two clear pictures of what life is like without the foundation of God's truth. The first picture was tossed back and forth by the waves. Without truth. I am vulnerable to circumstances. I love to fish and my wife and I have found ourselves on the water before when the sea is raging and we're thinking why are we out here? How do we get back soon? That's what it's like in this world without the anchor of God's truth. The second imagery it gives us in here is blown here and there by every wind of teaching Without truth. I am victimized by false teachings. Think of what it would be like to be caught in a hurricane. That's you and me without God's truth. Now to live life with a foundation.
Speaker 1:Let's look at Matthew, chapter 7. It says, therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, the winds blew and beat against that house, yet it did not fall because its foundation was on the rock. Did you notice the two things Jesus said our foundation is built on? It's built on hearing these words of mine, but it's also built on putting those words into practice. It takes both. It's easy to have the three little pigs faith right. We build our lives with the straw or the sticks of our own ideas and emotions. It's easier, it's quicker to do it that way, but then the troubles of life inevitably come along, huff and puff, and blow your faith down and all of a sudden you find yourself in a place that you're wondering God, where are you, god? Why would you let this happen? And although we're all going to sit in seasons of asking those questions, you'll never find the answers, because your faith wasn't built on a true foundation of who Jesus is.
Speaker 1:Another reason we need doctrine is because doctrine literally feeds our soul. 1 Timothy 4, 6 says in pointing out these things to the brethren, you will be a good servant of Jesus Christ, constantly listen, constantly nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine for which you have been following. The nourishment of our soul is not automatic. We have to choose to eat this solid food. I don't know if you have kids we have two and they don't like to eat things that are good for you. They love sugar and carbs and all the things, and so we have to force them to eat some food that actually brings nourishment into their body and they push back. Just last night we're sitting at dinner and one of my kids eats all the carbs off their plate, ignores the protein, ignores the vegetables, and then said they're full and they know the rules. That was not a moment to announce you're full, and we had to have a come to Jesus moment and just know it wasn't easy to remind them. No, you're going to sit there and eat the food that's actually good for you. You can't just eat the bad stuff. The nourishment of your soul is not automatic. You have to have it, you have to choose it. You have to chew for a while on some of the truths in the Bible to understand them. Some things you're going to read and you don't understand right away.
Speaker 1:In Hebrews, we're warned very clearly that if we don't decide to dig into God's word, we'll remain baby Christians. Look at this Hebrews, chapter 5, verses 12 through 14. For, though, by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food for everyone. Who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe, but solid food is, for the mature Shears, a challenge for you right now. How long have you been a Christian. How long have you been studying the word of God? The Bible, in this verse here, says for some of you you should already be a teacher, but you still need the elementary principles of the oracles of God. Does that define you? And if it does, that should challenge you to say man, I've been doing this too long to still be a baby Christian. How do I get to a place that I dig in more? And the truth is, it's through continued feeding on God's word that we are built up. Acts 20, verse 32,.
Speaker 1:Another reason we need doctrine is because knowing the truth enables me to serve others. Paul tells us that knowing God's truth shows us how to live a godly life of serving God's people. The Bible is a how-to manual for God's servants. 1 Timothy 4.6,. If you give these instructions to the believers, you will be a good servant of Christ Jesus. As you feed yourself spiritually on the words of faith and of the true teaching which you have followed.
Speaker 1:First you feed yourself, then you serve others by sharing with them what you've learned. It's the old adage you get on the airplane and they tell you hey, if there's an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on, then help the next person, because if you don't, you won't be able to help many people. If you do, you'll be strong enough to do. The same is true in the Word of God First feed yourself. Then you serve others by sharing with them what you've learned. Look at Titus 1.9.
Speaker 1:He must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose him. One of the keys to real encouragement is actually knowing the truth of God. Without God's truth, your encouragement is just words and, to be honest, that's pretty weak encouragement. Another reason we should know doctrine is because knowing the truth protects against error. Colossians 2, 6-8,. So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live in Him, rooted and built up in Him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy which demands on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ. Once you get rooted in God's word, it'll be difficult for anyone to throw you off with a false doctrine.
Speaker 1:For example, in order to drive a car, you don't have to know anything about an internal combustion engine, right. You just push the gas pedal and the car goes. Likewise, you don't have to know all the truths we're going to study to become a Christian. All you have to know and believe is that Jesus loves you, that he died for your sins and that he's resurrected to give you new life. But let's get back in the car. Let's say you're driving down the street and the car starts to make this horrible sound. You think the sound is coming from the engine, but you're not sure. Boughting an auto repair shop, you pull in and ask a mechanic what might be wrong. The mechanic tells you you need to fill your gas tank with water. That'll fix everything. At that point, even a little bit of knowledge about cars would be extremely helpful to you. Right?
Speaker 1:The best way to protect yourself against errors of any kind is to know the truth. Book of Hebrews, 5.14, again says but solid food is for mature who, by constant use, have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Think about that term used there. They've trained themselves by constant use. By constant use of the Word of God, they've trained themselves to understand truth from non-truth. Another reason we should study doctrine is because how I think determines how I act. Proverbs 4.23,. Be careful what you think, because your thoughts run your life. Beliefs determine behavior. Thoughts result in actions. Determine behavior. Thoughts result in actions. Another reason we study doctrine is because I'm commanded to, simply put study the truth. 2 Timothy 2.15,. Be diligent to present yourselves approved to God, as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth. Knowing the truth enables you to better use the truth.
Speaker 1:We're to study the truth, but we're also to live in the truth. The prayer in Psalm 25 is a prayer you could pray every day of your life. Lord, teach me to live according to your truth, for you are God who saves me. I always trust in you. Or listen to what Titus 1.1 says I've been sent to bring faith to those God has chosen and to teach them to know the truth that shows them how to live godly lives. So we're called to study the truth.
Speaker 1:We're called to live the truth, but we're also commanded to defend the truth. The Bible demands that every one of us be ready and able to defend the truth of God's word. I said this on Sunday that we aren't just to defend, but we're also to be prepared to declare the truth. But in declaring we're also defending. 1 Peter 3.15 says sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you. Yet with gentleness and reverence, notice the Bible even tells us what attitude to have as we defend the truth. A lot of people defend the truth in very loud, obnoxious and hurtful ways, just being with an angry attitude, thinking I'm defending the truth so I can say it however we want. But God gives us this warning as we value truth.
Speaker 1:Knowledge all by itself can be very dangerous. Knowledge is the foundation, but it's just the beginning. Many believers fall into a subtle trap. Satan, knowing the magnificent things that God can build in our lives on the foundation of knowledge, sets a snare for us. He tempts us to think you really know a lot. In fact, you know much more than the guy sitting next to you in church. You may even know more than the pastor. You ought to be proud of how much Dayton is trying to get you stuck on your knowledge. But what's the use of a foundation if you never build anything on it?
Speaker 1:I tell people all the time the longer I'm a Christian, the more I learn about God, the more I realize I don't know anything about God, and that's a little bit of a far stretch. I know some things about God, but I realize more and more as I fall in love with God, more and more, that God is so much bigger, so much deeper, so much more complex, so much gentler, so much grace-filled than I've ever imagined. So knowledge must be balanced with discernment. Philippians 1, 9 through 10 says and this is my prayer that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best. Discernment is simply the ability to see how the knowledge you've gained is to be used for living, not your neighbor's living right, your living. Warning signs of knowledge.
Speaker 1:Without discernment, knowledge remains theoretical. One person or group becomes a person's exclusive source of knowledge. Knowledge must be balanced with grace 2 Peter 3.18,. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Knowledge must be balanced with love. Read 1 Corinthians 13.2. If I can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge but have not love, I am nothing. 1 Corinthians 8.1 tells us why knowledge without love is so dangerous. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Knowledge is not the problem. The problem is the lack of love, and I see this constantly. When people are trying to defend the Bible and tell people about Christ, they drop the love side and they just chase out knowledge, hoping to get people and fall in love with Jesus without showing them the love of Jesus. And how absurd is that.
Speaker 1:I'm going to wrap up today. I hope that you have a desire, like I do, to know more about God, to dive deeper in love with Him. Over the course of this year, my podcasts are going to be fairly random. Some will be leadership lessons, some will be theology, some will drop back into doctrine, some will be on Romans. We're preaching Romans through this year and this coming up weekend. One of the passages we're preaching is one of the harder passages in Romans. I'll record a podcast in the next two weeks that kind of covers that. But until next time, study the word of God, fall in love with Christ more every day. If you're here at South Shore, join us on this journey through the book of Romans, getting prepared for the next couple of weeks. You can read Romans 1 and chapters 1 and chapters 2 to be on par with where we're at. Anyway, I hope you have an incredible week. I hope the word of God fills up your life and you chase God in all moments. God bless, thanks for listening today.