Begin Here – Foundations of a Worldview

Begin Here
Foundations of a Worldview

John 5:46, 47

“For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

We are about to begin a study of the Biblical worldview. Everybody has a worldview. I have a worldview; you have a worldview; all our neighbors and contemporaries have a worldview.

A worldview is just that—a way of viewing the world and life, expressed in the way we think, desire, and live. Everyone has a worldview.

So this would seem like an important subject for us to understand.

All worldviews share similar characteristics and features. We’ll be considering some of those as we work through this study. Yet the Biblical worldview is unique in that it alone reflects God’s understanding and management of the world. We should expect the Biblical worldview, therefore, to provide the best explanation of the world and how it is supposed to work, as well as the clearest guidance for how we may know full and abundant life—the Good Life—within God’s world.

We’re going to take as our touchstone for this study the revelation of God through Moses, contained in the first five books of the Bible, the Law of God.

We don’t often think of the Law of God as a starting-point for discussing Biblical worldview. Or, these days, for much of anything else, either.

But there are good reasons for beginning here, and in our run-up to this study of Biblical worldview, I want to examine some of those reasons—beginning with the most important reason of all.

Anyone who knows anything about Biblical worldview—or about Christianity, which is just another name for Biblical worldview—knows that Jesus factors large in the subject. He is the Fount of all wisdom and knowledge (Col. 2:2, 3). In Him the entire cosmos coheres and holds together (Heb. 1:3). He is the very Word of God, the Explanation or Reason back of everything that is, was, or ever will be (John 1:1-5). Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 146). He insisted that all Scripture is about Him (John 5:39).

So any worldview claiming to be a Biblical worldview has to have Jesus front, center, and throughout.

But where do we find the information and insights we need concerning Jesus?

Obviously, by turning to the Scriptures, which are the Word of God written, and which have Jesus as their primary focus and theme (2 Tim. 3:15-17; 2 Pet. 1:19-21).

And if we’re going to search the Scriptures in order to discover what they have to say about Jesus and the worldview that attaches to, orbits around, and unfolds from and toward Him, we should probably start with the writings of Moses.

For, as even the Lord Jesus Himself explained: “Moses… wrote about Me.”

Act: Take five minutes and jot down, as fast as you can, everything you know at present about Jesus from the first five books of the Bible—the Law of God. Share this exercise with a Christian friend, then compare notes with one another.

Jesus came proclaiming the Kingdom of God—another primary theme of Scripture. Order a copy of The Gospel of the Kingdom from our online store, and learn how you can become more effective at proclaiming this wonderful Good News.
Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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In the Gates is a devotional series on the Law of God by Rev. T. M. Moore, editor of the Worldview Church. He serves as dean of the Centurions Program of the Wilberforce Forum and principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He is the author or editor of twenty books, and has contributed chapters to four others. His essays, reviews, articles, papers, and poetry have appeared in dozens of national and international journals, and on a wide range of websites. His most recent books are The Ailbe Psalter and The Ground for Christian Ethics (Waxed Tablet).