Heritage Presbyterian Church Adult Sunday School

1. P e t e r J o n e s
Director of truthXchange
A Worldview & Culture Teaching Series by Ligonier Ministries
Adult Sunday School
Summer 2019

2. Lesson Slide
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Unbiblical Responses
The Big Question
How can we make sense of the
breakneck spiritual and social changes
happening right now in our culture?
and
How should Christians respond?

3. Lesson Slide
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Unbiblical Responses
Lessons in the Series
1. Explaining Modern
Culture
2. The Rise & Fall of
Secular Humanism
3. Carl Jung’s Alternative
Spirituality
4. Paganism in the
Shadows
5. Paganism in the
Spotlight
6. Pagan Sexuality
7. From Personal
Spirituality to
Worldview
8. Where Is Society
Headed?
9. Unbiblical Responses
10.Articulating a Biblical
Worldview
11.Living in Holiness
12.Thinking with a
Discerning Mind

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Unbiblical Responses
Lesson Introduction
• In light of the cataclysmic cultural changes that have
occurred during the recent past, Christians have
responded in a number of ways
• While some have sought to separate themselves
completely from culture, others have attempted to
make the Christian faith and worldview less
objectionable by conforming it to the tastes of
modern culture
• In this lecture, we will see some ways that Christians
have failed to maintain the distinctively Christian
worldview, and why Christians cannot compromise on
Christian worldview distinctives
• Compromising the Christian worldview leads to
compromising the gospel itself

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Unbiblical Responses
Scripture Readings
• Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone
loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
1 John 2:15
• And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which
you once walked, following the course of this world,
following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that
is now at work in the sons of disobedience-- 3 among
whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,
carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and
were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of
mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the
great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were
dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ-
-by grace you have been saved--

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Unbiblical Responses
Scripture Readings
(cont’d)
• 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in
the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the
coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches
of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And
this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not
a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For
we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for
good works, which God prepared beforehand, that
we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:1-10

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Unbiblical Responses
Teaching Objectives
1. To make clear why Christians cannot
conform to the present culture
2. To show the ways in which Christians are
intimidated to conform to the culture
3. To explore the results of a Christianity that
has compromised with culture

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Unbiblical Responses
Watch Lecture 9

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Unbiblical Responses
An Old Problem
• Panic, then temptation to create closed communities
• Psalm 11:1-3 In the LORD I take refuge; how can you say to
my soul, "Flee like a bird to your mountain, 2 for behold,
the wicked bend the bow; they have fitted their arrow to
the string to shoot in the dark at the upright in heart; 3 if
the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?“
• However, we must not give up because we have hope
in the one foundation that lasts
• Psalm 11:4-5, 7 The LORD is in his holy temple; the LORD's
throne is in heaven; his eyes see, his eyelids test the
children of man. 5 The LORD tests the righteous, but his
soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence. 7 For
the LORD is righteous; he loves righteous deeds; the upright
shall behold his face.

10. Lesson Slide
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Unbiblical Responses
God is our Refuge
• Our hope with a sure foundation is not
• Christian America
• Western Christendom
• A coming utopian planet
• God, our refuge, made the mountains and will one
day remake his creation into a truly new and
renewed cosmos where righteousness dwells
• Knowing that our Father is refining and testing us and
that he loves “righteous deeds,” even when the
foundations are crumbling, we seek to display
righteousness to the watching world

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Unbiblical Responses
How Will the Church
Respond?
• This is a time unparalleled since the beginning of church
history, when religious paganism ruled the culture
• The response of believers is crucial for the survival of the
gospel in our day. Will the present church see the true
nature of this situation and react in a way that honors
Christ and his gospel—as the early church did?
• First century Christians lived under a regime that
continually tempted them to modify their beliefs and adapt
their behavior to a culture that didn’t share their essential
faith
• We can both resist the Lie and make a statement of the
Truth that understands and exposes the Lie and offers the
only true hope in the gospel. Ignorance of this will
produce faith-destroying conformity and compromise.

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Unbiblical Responses
Fearing our Culture
• Christians today often conform or compromise due to
fear of
• Verbal attacks
• Accusations of hate speech
• Loss of friends, jobs, or respect
• Threats of physical violence
• For example, many campus Christian groups opt for a
low profile and doing acts of community service, shying
away from sponsoring public debates and campus-wide
lectures, effectively silencing God’s Word
• We must remember to pray for, encourage, and support
each other lest we succumb to fearful retreat (Eph 6:19-
20)

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Unbiblical Responses
Seeking Approval from our
Culture
• Some modern Christians believe that the church’s difficulties
getting along with the culture are largely self-imposed and
avoidable
• The culture dislikes us because Christians are socially obnoxious and
go about Christian witness all wrong
• Cultural opposition will disappear if the church tweaks its
witnessing techniques, updates its message, and participates more
heartily in compassionate care for the earth and its inhabitants
• The goal for the church almost becomes the promotion of this-
worldly “human flourishing”—as defined by the surrounding culture
• So we ought to promote as the heart of the gospel: environmental
care, social justice, forms of mysticism, tolerance of differing views
of truth
• But it is not obvious that Christianity needs to change just
because the current generation does not find it immediately
palatable

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Unbiblical Responses
The Lovingly Faithful
Alternative
• In a situation like ours, Christians must not first and
foremost seek to be liked but to be lovingly faithful
to the gospel. Otherwise, compromise can seem like
a virtue rather than a serious danger.
• Some evangelicals attempt to propose a cool,
intelligent, sophisticated, open-minded evangelical
pluralism by opening the “gospel tent” to non-
Christians and Christians with highly controversial
views on the Bible, gender, and sexuality
• The question is: can this particular path remain
evangelical?

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Unbiblical Responses
The Issue of “Gay
Marriage”
• Be aware that language and definitions inexorably steer public
opinion and the church’s theology. Remember same-sex
“marriage” is not actually marriage, but a radical redefining
and repurposing of the age-old, universally-recognized
institution of marriage. Doug Wilson aptly calls it “same-sex
mirage.”
• Many churches and Christians, including self-described
evangelicals, have already adopted an affirming stance on
same-sex “marriage”. No doubt many more will change—
motivated by fear or enticed by societal approval.
• In the name of walking more closely with Jesus and seeking to
love those around them, are evangelicals running unwittingly
into the embrace of a rising Oneist worldview and its integral
views on spirituality and sexuality?
• We need a full-orbed understanding of where our world is
headed and how the gospel speaks to all human concerns

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Unbiblical Responses
Progressive Evangelicalism
• The problem: young Christians are leaving the church
• The perceived reason: Christianity has become too
political, too exclusive, old-fashioned, unconcerned
with social justice, and hostile to LGBT people
• The proposed solution: the church must become less
concerned with sex (abortion and contraception) and
more consumed with eradicating poverty and
embracing same-sex “marriage”
• The goal: a new way of being Christian
• Major proponents: Brian McLaren, Rachel Held Evans
(deceased), Diana Butler Bass, Shane Claiborne

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Unbiblical Responses
The Progressive Awakening
• Progressive evangelicals work and hope for a Fourth
Awakening, which has little to do with historic Christianity
and even less to do with historic evangelicalism
• Such a “religionless Christianity” is short on:
• Creeds
• Dogmas
• Authority structures
• Unchanging moral codes
• An authoritatively revealed Bible
• Since modernist Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and
Buddhists have been undergoing similar restructurings, the
next great awakening must be a spiritual interfaith
awakening, emphasizing the foundation Oneist truth of the
“interspiritual age” and the pagan cosmology behind it

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Unbiblical Responses
The Progressive Utopia
• An organic connection between the three pillars of
the new Oneism
1. Jungian pagan spirituality
2. Sixties East/West enlightenment
3. Present interfaith mysticism
• God defined in less dualistic terms (less Twoist)
• Ditch the idea of submitting to a transcendent—and
often distant—God in favor of finding one’s self in
God and finding God in one’s self
• Praying to God, not as “our Father” but as “our Mother”
• Seeing God less in terms of an absolutist, sin-hating, death-
dealing almighty Father in Heaven and more in terms of the
nourishing spirit of mother earth

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Unbiblical Responses
New Gnosticism
• Union with nature in the lap of the mother goddess
• No need for the divine savior Jesus Christ
• Jesus’ question, “Who do you say I am?” should lead us to ask,
“And who am I?”
• The gnostic answer, according to the “gnostic Gospels” and other
ancient gnostic texts, is that Jesus and humans are of equal status
• Self-knowledge is true salvation
• “Finding one’s self in God is also to find God in oneself”
• Attained through prayer, yoga, or meditation
• A new reformation: Sola scriptura (according to Scripture
alone) replaced by solo spiritu (according to the spirit alone)
• The real incarnation moment is the Big Bang, when God
actually decided to materialize and to self-expose as the
cosmic Christ. The world is the body of God, visualized
through third-eye, non-dual thinking.

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Unbiblical Responses
Evangelical Acceptance
• For a long time, liberal theologians have found a
home in the integral spirituality and sexuality of
neopaganism (progressive/evolutionary spirituality)
• Well-meaning Christians have often made the mistake
of thinking that their surrounding culture is, at
worst, neutral and, at best, a redemptive work of the
Spirit that shares authority with the Scriptures
• Evangelical conformity to culture will seem natural
and faithful if we believe the lies that
• We must admit our dependence on our host culture
• We must open ourselves to and adapt to our host culture,
recognizing its essential goodness

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Unbiblical Responses
Evangelical Resistance
• The basis of the church and that of the culture are not
the same
• The Bible urges the church and Christians to have a
healthy mistrust of the culture and a love for sinners
• The culture has a mind of its own (a worldview, i.e., the
“wisdom of the world”)
• That worldview is the cosmology of the Lie that causes people
to worship the creation rather than the Creator
• The world does not need more Christian conformity; it
needs Christian transformity.
• The world needs to hear the Word from God, from
outside itself. It needs to see and hear the Truth of the
gospel proclaimed and lived out by faithful,
countercultural Christians.

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Unbiblical Responses
The Biblical Response
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what
partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what
fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has
Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share
with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of
God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as
God said, "I will make my dwelling among them and walk
among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my
people. 17 Therefore go out from their midst, and be
separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean
thing; then I will welcome you, 18 and I will be a father to
you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the
Lord Almighty.“
2 Corinthians 6:14-18

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Unbiblical Responses
Study Question Answers
1. Carl Jung argued that the Christ symbol lacked
wholeness, and that this wholeness is to be found in the
reconciliation of the opposites of good and evil. True
2. Studying the culture and modifying the Christian
message to make it more acceptable is an example of
sociology rather than theology.
3. Fear has not been a major factor for Christians to
conform their message to the surrounding culture. False
4. Carl Jung thought that sexual freedom would create an
irresistible mass movement that would undermine two
thousand years of Christianity.
5. Those who advocate a religionless Christianity, devoid of
any creed or dogma, tend to deemphasize the use of the
mind in their spirituality. True

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Unbiblical Responses
Discussion Questions
1. Fear is a major reason for Christians to modify their
message in order to make it more acceptable to the
culture. Read 2 Timothy 1:3–7 and give some examples of
why Christians can be bold in standing for the truth.
2. Have you ever been tempted to articulate an aspect of
the Christian faith and worldview in a more culturally
acceptable way? What motivated this?
3. Disagreeing with modern culture’s spirituality can lead to
hostility and rejection. How can Christians show genuine
love in their presentation of the gospel while at the same
time refusing to compromise their beliefs?
4. The impulse to eliminate gender distinctions has even
crept into some evangelical churches. Explain how this is
part of a wider pagan worldview, and why it is wrong.

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Unbiblical Responses
Next Lesson
Do not be fooled. “Since we have these promises, beloved,
let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and
spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God” (2
Cor 7:1). Here is the church’s way forward: a healthy
mistrust of culture and a love for sinners.

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Unbiblical Responses
Resources by Peter Jones
• Only Two Religions (study guide)
• Only Two Religions (evangelism tool)
• truthxchange.com (website)
• heritage-pca.org (website)
• The Other Worldview (book)
• The Pagan Heart of Today’s Culture
(booklet)