TEXT: 2 Peter 3:11–13 TEACHER: Mark Driscoll RELEASE DATE: July 26, 2009 Lifestyle (how you live) is dictated by worldview (how you see history and your place in it).   Options for seeing history and living your life:   Evolution (upward) – believe in inevitable progress by science and education

• Leads to pride, then confusion – e.g., Scientific Revolution ended with World War II and the holocaust

Cyclical (circular) – ancient Greeks and reincarnation religions; history repeats itself

• Yantra circle used for Hindu worship, the mandala circle of dharma and Dharmacakra used for Buddhist and Taoist worship, the sun cross used by Wiccans (who also gather in a circle), Native American medicine wheels, dream catchers, and drum circles. In popular culture, a well-known expression of one-ism is found in the popular song from The Lion King that speaks of "the circle of life."
• Leads to fatalism (live your life as if nothing you do matters)

Chaos – patternless and purposeless

• Leads to despair – no sense of eternal judgment or place in the story of God

Scripture – Jesus in the center

• Creator — Creation — Fall — Incarnation — Salvation — Damnation — New Creation w/Creator
• Leads to perseverance – God is with us through history, so we persevere with God through history

Persevere through worship to worship (2 Peter 3:11–13)

WORSHIP

Holiness – who Jesus is; for us, living like him through the Holy Spirit

• Big difference between religious holiness and Jesus’ holiness; just being moral does not save you.
• God does want holiness in conduct, but out of love and not duty
• To learn about holiness, read about Jesus in the Bible

Godliness – to worship well

• Godliness is the cause, holiness is the effect
• Holiness is impossible without godliness

WHO WORSHIPS

Everyone everywhere always worships something (Imago Dei – we were created to worship)

WHY DO WE WORSHIP?

• Identity, security, joy, purpose, value
• Through idolatry, we get our identity in something else
• Elevating a good thing into a god thing (e.g., kids, spouse, church)
• Our identity should be in the fact that God can’t love us anymore and won’t love us any less.
• Commenting on Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s 1849 book The Sickness Unto Death, Dr. Tim Keller says in The Reason for God (emphasis added):

  Sin is the despairing refusal to find your deepest identity in your relationship and service to God. Sin is seeking to become oneself, to get an identity apart from him. . . . Most people think of sin primarily as "breaking divine rules," but Kierkegaard knows that the very first of the Ten Commandments is to "have no other gods before me." So, according to the Bible, the primary way to define sin is not just the doing of bad things, but the making of good things into ultimate things. It is seeking to establish a sense of self by making something else more central to your significance, purpose, and happiness than your relationship to God.

HOW WE WORSHIP

• With time, talent, treasure
• Work our lives around our idols; life adjustments are acts of worship

WHAT WE WORSHIP

Romans 1:25 — Creator or creation

IDOLS WILL BURN

• Idols will turn into kindling
• If Jesus was with you and burned all of your things, what would be your reaction?
• If sad about any of it burning, that thing is an idol
• Jesus should be enough for us

HAPPINESS AND JOY

• God is the happiest person there is; He is working on all happiness and joy forever
• We should be pursuing happiness and joy by repenting of sin and pursuing godliness
• This causes perseverance when rich/poor, sick/healthy, etc.; God perseveres with you
• Not something we have to do; something we get to do
• Idolatry robs joy (e.g., glutton does not enjoy food, alcoholic does not enjoy drink)