1: The Scriptures
Notes
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Bookmarks & Needs:
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B: Psalm 19:7-11
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Welcome
Welcome
Welcome
Happy New Year
Announcements
Announcements
Pastor’s Bible Study on Ephesians will begin next Sunday 1/9 at 5:30 pm in MH.
Men’s Breakfast will be held on Saturday 1/15 at 8 am in FLC.
LMCO Goal: $30K Given through last week: $37,602.
Series Opening
Series Opening
If you have joined Eastern Hills in formal membership during the last four years, there should have been a time before you joined that you had the opportunity to read and affirm your agreement with the Statement of Faith of Eastern Hills Baptist Church, which was authored before my time as senior pastor, but to which I completely agree. Our Statement of Faith was based on the Baptist Faith & Message 2000, which I believe to be a solid declaration of the core doctrines of the Christian faith. You can find it on our website by clicking the “What We Believe” panel on the homepage, or by going through our “Connect” menu. On that page is a summary version of the Statement of Faith, but you can download a copy of the full document there as well. It is my goal to go over that statement in person with everyone who joins the church (if needed… if they affirm that they read it, understood it, and agree with it, I don’t go over it again). This isn’t a hoop to jump through for membership. It’s important for who we are as a church.
Our Statement of Faith is a document that states what we as a church stand on and for. If someone is going to join the church formally as a member, they should know what the church they are joining believes about the core doctrines of faith. If they disagree with those core doctrines, then perhaps Eastern Hills isn’t the church for them. I’d rather they not join than join and then find out that they disagree with the church on a core issue. I’ve had people review our Statement of Faith with me and decide that Eastern Hills wasn’t the church for them. I’ve had people ask really good questions, and allow me the opportunity to explain the statement before prayerfully deciding to join. The point is that we as a church family should all be on the same page on these core issues as we do life together.
So this year, we will go over our Statement of Faith point by point in four parts. Rather than going 20 straight weeks on this, we are going to break it up throughout the year, one part in each season. Today, we begin Part 1: God and His Word, which will cover the first five declarations of our Statement of Faith.
Sermon Opening
Sermon Opening
The first point of our Statement of Faith is on The Scriptures. You might think that this is a strange place to start a Statement of Faith. Why start with the Scriptures instead of starting with the doctrines of God, or Jesus, or salvation? That’s what I hope to explain today. We don’t exactly have a “focal” passage that we’re studying this morning, but our opening Scripture reading speaks to all of the points we will cover in our message today. Let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read Psalm 19:7-11, and ask the Lord’s blessing and guidance this morning as we consider the Scriptures:
7 The instruction of the Lord is perfect, renewing one’s life; the testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, making the inexperienced wise. 8 The precepts of the Lord are right, making the heart glad; the command of the Lord is radiant, making the eyes light up. 9 The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are reliable and altogether righteous. 10 They are more desirable than gold— than an abundance of pure gold; and sweeter than honey dripping from a honeycomb. 11 In addition, your servant is warned by them, and in keeping them there is an abundant reward.
PRAYER
I have been asked, recently even, why Christians venerate the Bible. The specific question I was asked was “why does it seem like some Christians worship the Bible?” My response was that I don’t think that they worship the Bible as if it is itself deity... they just hold it in such high regard and importance, and treat it with such reverence, that it seems as though they do worship it. Since I was asked that question, I’ve had some more time to ponder it and perhaps come up with an illustration to express the importance of Scripture.
The illustration is from a TV show. Anyone here like the show Everybody Loves Raymond? It was a sitcom on CBS that ran for 9 seasons, from 1996 to 2005, starring comedian Ray Romano as Ray Barone, a sportswriter in suburban New York. In this clip from season 9, Ray and his brother Robert (played by Brad Garrett) are about to go golfing, and Robert gives Ray a gift. Watch.
Everybody Loves Raymond Muhammad Ali Letter Clip
Did you notice how Ray responded to the letter from his first sports hero, Muhammad Ali? First he said that he was going to frame it… an obvious display of the regard that he has for the letter as well as the importance that it holds for him. Anyone in the room who owns sports or entertainment memorabilia can relate. But and then he added another layer to the image of the importance of the letter. He says that he is going to redesign the house around it. Why? What made that piece of paper with ink scribbles on it THAT important to Ray? It was the author. It was important to Ray, so important that he would even joke about rearranging the layout of his home, because of who wrote it to him.
Now, there are many more pieces of paper way more important than a letter written by a famous boxer. Think about some of them: The Magna Carta. The Mayflower Compact. The Declaration of Independence. The Constitution. The Bill of Rights. The Emancipation Proclamation. The originals of these documents are literally priceless, because of who wrote them, why they were written, and the subject matter they contain.
But all of those documents pale in comparison with the Bible. We hold the Bible in such high regard first because of who wrote it. Those important historical documents were all authored by men. The Bible’s ultimate author is God. Those speak just to particular people in particular times about particular things. The Bible’s message is timeless, stretching across peoples and locales and cultures. We don’t worship the Bible. We worship the God of the Bible, the One who gave it, and since we believe that the Bible is the Word of God, more than us redesigning our houses around it, we should be willing to redesign our lives around it.
This is why our Statement of Faith, and thus our series, begins with the Bible:
EHBC’s Statement of Faith Article 1:
The Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired and is God’s revelation of Himself to man. It is a perfect treasure of divine instruction. It has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth, without any mixture of error, for its matter. Therefore, all Scripture is totally true and trustworthy. It reveals the principles by which God judges us, and therefore it, and will remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried. All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.
You can see that we hold the Bible in very high regard here at Eastern Hills. While we won’t cover every affirmation that this declaration makes during this sermon, I would highly recommend you take the time to go over this statement this week and consider all that it says. For our purposes this morning, we are going to look at four things that this statement does as it pertains to the Bible.
The first thing is that the Bible informs us.
1) The Bible informs us.
1) The Bible informs us.
Now, I don’t mean that it gives us information. That’s the first definition of “inform.” I mean, yes… the Bible does that, and that’s something that I’ll bring out in a later point. But for this one, I mean the second definition on merriam-webster.com. “To give character or essence to.” That character or essence that the Bible informs is called our theology. The term “theology” is a compound word coming from the Greek theos, meaning “God” and logia, meaning “word, speech, or thought.” Students: We use that word ending all the time… just think about what “biology” and “psychology” and “criminology” might all refer to. All of them are what we think or say about different subjects (life, psyche, and crime, respectively). So simply put, “theology” is what we say or think about God.
Now before I lose everyone with the idea that we’re going to sit in here and talk about theology (which we are), I need to you catch one statement: Everyone is a theologian. Yes. Everyone. The Christian, the Muslim, the Jew, the Mormon, the agnostic, the Buddhist, the Hindu, and the atheist are ALL theologians. Everyone has some thought about God. Even if that thought is that God doesn’t exist, it’s still that person’s theology. And our theology—what we think and say about God—determines the direction of our lives.
But to be clear: Not all theologies are created equal. Yes, there are many theologies, but only theology that conforms with the truth of who God is is correct theology. We can think all kinds of things about God, and even write all sorts of things about Him, but the Bible alone is the only infallible source of information about Him. So for those who are Christians, we must understand that Christian theology must be informed by Christian Scripture—The Bible—in order to be truly Christian theology. This is to say that theology is not something that we add to the Bible or bring to the Bible, but instead our theology is to be drawn FROM the Bible as we seek to live out our faith.
A.W. Tozer said:
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”
And what comes into our minds when we think about God should be drawn from His Scriptures, the Bible.
What the Bible shows us that God’s ultimate purpose is to be glorified through being known as Lord by his creation, and that is where theology begins. Notice what God says about Himself in the pages of the Bible:
2 “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: I am the Lord your God.
11 I—I am the Lord. Besides me, there is no Savior.
27 “Look, I am the Lord, the God over every creature. Is anything too difficult for me?
So our theology is to be informed and driven by the truths of the Bible, because what we think or say about God should have a firm foundation upon which to stand as we think it or say it. Without that firm foundation, we can go astray of what is true and right, because we aren’t holding to the things that are true and right. And the Bible should be a delight and a joy for us, not a chore or drudgery, because in its pages we find the love of God poured out in so many ways. Look at what David said about how he felt about God’s Word:
8 The precepts of the Lord are right, making the heart glad; the command of the Lord is radiant, making the eyes light up.
David said that the Word of God made his heart glad, his eyes light up. This isn’t because of the words, but because David kept in mind who was behind the words.
Our Statement of Faith begins with the Bible because God has chosen in the pages of the Bible to disclose Himself to us. And while He has revealed Himself in some ways through what He has made, so that we are without excuse before Him in the judgment (Romans 1), it is in the pages of the Bible that we find God’s declaration of who He is, who we are, and who the world is. In short, the Bible reveals the truth to us.
2) The Bible reveals the truth to us.
2) The Bible reveals the truth to us.
Since the Bible is the Word of God, and since God is always true, then the Bible is true in everything that it teaches. The Bible is an over-arching narrative based in real history, a narrative that doesn’t shy away from the dark and ugly parts of humanity. And so in that true narrative, we find the truth about who God is and about who we are.
7 The instruction of the Lord is perfect, renewing one’s life; the testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, making the inexperienced wise.
The instruction of the Lord refers to us. The testimony of the Lord refers to Him.
A) The truth about God.
A) The truth about God.
“The testimony of the Lord is trustworthy, making the inexperienced wise,” said the psalmist. This is vital for us to understand. When God speaks about Himself in Scripture—when He gives testimony about Himself—it is altogether true, and because it is true, it makes the ignorant wise. In other words, God informs us about who He is so that we will know Him and how to live for Him.
This aspect of the narrative goes all the way back to the beginning. In the Garden of Eden, God had declared that everything was good: the light, the land, the plants, the sun, the stars, the moon, all the animals, and people. All of it was good. And that was the truth, and it was God’s testimony about Himself and all that He had made. All of it was good because God is good. And especially mankind, because God had taken special care to make humanity in His own image:
27 So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.
31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good indeed. Evening came and then morning: the sixth day.
Everything in creation was “very good indeed.” Just like our God. His work of creation was a testimony to His goodness and grace, as He had provided humanity with exactly what they needed to live life to the fullest potential as God had intended for them to live. Unfortunately, while the Bible speaks the truth about God, it also speaks the truth about us:
B) The truth about us (and the world).
B) The truth about us (and the world).
It turns out that God giving humanity everything that we needed to survive and thrive wasn’t enough for us once we discovered there might be an alternative—a way to be in charge of ourselves instead of having to listen to God. The serpent came and contradicted the testimony that God had given of Himself and His goodness. He told the woman that God was keeping something from her, that humanity could be like God Himself, knowing the difference between good and evil.
4 “No! You will certainly not die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “In fact, God knows that when you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.
But the only thing Adam and Eve learned that day was what evil was, for they already had completely experienced good in their fellowship with God. And the evil they discovered was, in fact, within themselves. And ever since, we’ve seen the results. The truth about us each individually is that, left to our own devices, we want to go our own way. We want to run from God. We want to hide from Him and try to solve our own problems. But the truth is that we’re broken apart from Him.
The truth about the world then, the collective of broken people living on this planet, is that we are collectively broken as well. Look at things like the world before the flood in Genesis 6, the self-glorifying tower of Babel in Genesis 11, the cycle of sin and repentance in Judges, the cry for a king in 1 Samuel. Or just look around us today. We collectively don’t want what God wants.
But God knows this and still He offers His instruction to us, so that we might be renewed. “The instruction of the Lord is perfect, renewing one’s life.” (Ps. 19:7a).
This is why the Scriptures must inform our theology. The beauty of the Scriptures is that in them, we see God for who He really is, and we see ourselves for who we really are. We see the truth. And that truth is part of a grand image of redemption that God is painting—one that has meaning for all people, in all places, in all times, and to which God is inviting us to participate.
3) The Bible invites us.
3) The Bible invites us.
Just as the Bible reveals the truth to us, it’s not as if the Scriptures just drop the truth like a bomb and leave us alone to pick up the pieces and make sense of things. No, we find within the Bible the challenge to not simply know the truth about God and about ourselves, but to know God, to know ourselves, and to know how God has planned for reconciliation between us and Him.
Psalm 19 speaks to this concept as well:
9 The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever; the ordinances of the Lord are reliable and altogether righteous. 10 They are more desirable than gold— than an abundance of pure gold; and sweeter than honey dripping from a honeycomb.
The fear of the Lord comes from knowing Him. The value of His Word comes through the revelation of us knowing who we are in contrast to Him, and how He has moved to reconcile us to Himself.
A) to know God.
A) to know God.
God is a relational God, even from the beginning when He walked in the Garden in the cool of the day, seeking fellowship with His fallen creatures. He gave Himself His name in Exodus 6 and told it to Moses, so that the people could know Him. And part of knowing who God is is to know that He is unlike anyone or anything else. He is absolutely unique, and should be held in the highest of awe. Two passages about who God is:
6 Lord, there is no one like you. You are great; your name is great in power. 7 Who should not fear you, King of the nations? It is what you deserve. For among all the wise people of the nations and among all their kingdoms, there is no one like you.
6 For who in the skies can compare with the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord? 7 God is greatly feared in the council of the holy ones, more awe-inspiring than all who surround him. 8 Lord God of Armies, who is strong like you, Lord? Your faithfulness surrounds you.
So the Bible invites us to know and to fear this incredible, mighty, completely other-than-us God who intentionally created us to know Him. Not just to know about Him, like His stats or ratings, but to know Him personally.
Bruce Ashford and Keith Whitfield, in their essay on Theological Method: An Introduction to the Task of Theology, said:
“Scripture is not an end in itself, a collection of facts to be observed for its own sake. Rather, it is a revelation, a guide to true and personal knowledge of God.”
Throughout the pages of Scripture we find ourselves invited into relationship with God, who desires for us to know Him. He even took on flesh and came as a man so that we could know Him even more deeply.
8 “Lord,” said Philip, “show us the Father, and that’s enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been among you all this time and you do not know me, Philip? The one who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?
So again, the Bible invites us to know God, but also to know ourselves.
B) to know ourselves.
B) to know ourselves.
Scripture invites us to know ourselves as we really are in our sin, to see our need and our hopeless state, to the understanding that no matter how good we think we might be, on our own we are never as good as we must be to deserve the grace and mercy of the Lord. Instead, we find that when we examine ourselves, we see our weakness and frailty as Paul wrote in Romans 7:
18 For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. 19 For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do.
On our own, we do not have the strength to resist the pull of the flesh forever. Left to our own devices, we’re not even sure that we should resist, why not giving in to the flesh is not best for us. So we, like Adam and Eve before us, search for our identities in things apart from God, when God has designed us for something deeper, something greater… a calling to be the person that He has created you and I to be, in an intimate relationship with God, listening to Him tell us and show us who we really are.
So rather than us seeing ourselves as the central figures of our stories, the Bible points out that we’re a part of the grand, sweeping narrative of redemptive history: there is something much, much bigger than each of our own individual stories. There is what God has done for the world in Christ: He invites us to be reconciled.
C) to the reconciliation of God and us in Christ.
C) to the reconciliation of God and us in Christ.
Throughout the Bible, we see the goodness and love of God on display. His provision for His people. His faithfulness to them when they were adulterous against Him. His calling them back again and again. His incredible promises of hope and redemption. And at the close of the Old Testament, He plunges the world into 400 years of silence as He prepares the way for the ultimate revelation of Himself.
The narrative of God’s redemptive plan for the world reaches its climax in the arrival, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
4 When the time came to completion, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5 to redeem those under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. 6 And because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba, Father!” 7 So you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son, then God has made you an heir.
In Jesus, we see the ultimate plan of God in His redemptive thread that runs throughout His Word. His sending His Son as the sacrifice for the sins of the world. His pouring out His Holy Spirit on those who believe. His adopting those who were His enemies and making them sons and heirs of His glorious Kingdom!
The first article of our Statement of Faith ends with “All Scripture is a testimony to Christ, who is Himself the focus of divine revelation.” The Bible points to Jesus, and in that pointing invites us to be reconciled with the God who loves us so much that He would send His Son, God in the flesh, to live in our place and die in our place and rise in our place so that if we will but surrender to His completed work in faith, turning from our own ways and trusting in Him alone, we will be saved and have eternal life. We will have fellowship with the Lord as a child does with his or her father, and forever to look forward to in which to experience all the beauty of knowing God in such an intimate way! This is what our Statement of Faith means when it says that the Bible has “salvation for its end.”
And that fellowship with the Lord by His Spirit being in our hearts means that we walk with Him day by day, and the Bible is a part of that purpose as well, which brings us to our last point.
4) The Bible instructs us.
4) The Bible instructs us.
The Bible isn’t just a book of rules and regs, and it’s not just a list of do’s and don’ts. However, it does have those kinds of things. God, like any good father, gives us instructions and commands, and He expects to those instructions and commands to be followed. These are instructions are clear and specific. But the Bible doesn’t speak just to the specific situations that it tells of in its pages. Because when we read it, we sit down with the author Himself, we find that the Scriptures then apply to every area of our lives, if we will just read, study, pay attention, and apply it. Just as everyone is a theologian, everything is theological. In Psalm 19, David said it this way:
11 In addition, your servant is warned by them, and in keeping them there is an abundant reward.
Just a quick example:
While we might not think of a book like the Bible as a place where we can go to learn about a topic like like friendship, the Bible actually has a lot to say on the subject. Jesus defined what the highest form of friendship looks like when He said, “No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends,” in John 15:13. We find that it is dangerous to throw in our lot with friends who are not trustworthy when the psalmist writes in Psalm 1:1: “How happy is the one who does not walk in the advice of the wicked or stand in the pathway with sinners or sit in the company of mockers.” We discover that having a lot of friends isn’t a bad thing, but that having a dear friend like the Lord is the best, when Solomon tells us “One with many friends may be harmed, but there is a friend who stays closer than a brother,” in Proverbs 18:24, and that the counsel of a trusted friend is like healing oil and calming incense in our lives in Proverbs 27:9.
We could go on and on with examples of how the Bible instructs us, but we don’t have the time this morning. You might have some topical things in the back of your Bible to help you search through this kind of thing. If you’re a YouVersion user, I know that there are devotionals for just about every topic you can think of in YouVersion.
The Bible instructs us how to live, and speaks to our hearts by His Spirit in every situation of life. We grow wise as we heed its warnings, and we discover the reward of living a life that honors God as we keep to the path it sets before us.
Closing
Closing
The Bible is a gift given to us and written by God Almighty so that we would come to understand who He is and who we are, that we would know Him and know ourselves, and so that we would be reconciled to Him through the revelation of Jesus Christ. Through the Bible, God teaches us His perspective on life and tells us what is right and good. The Bible is “a perfect treasure of divine instruction…the supreme standard by which our conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tried.” In short, we should redesign our lives around the truth of the Bible, not to worship it, but to worship the One who gave it. Or maybe it would be better said that we should submit to the work of the Spirit in redesigning our lives through the Word that He has given us.
Have you had your life redesigned by the Spirit of God through the Word of God? Have you surrendered to the salvation that is offered to you in Christ: that He died in your place to buy your adoption as a child of God? This is the only way to be saved. Give up on doing things your way and trust Jesus for your salvation this morning. Let us know.
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Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
Bible reading: 2 Sam 4 today. Reading through 2 Sam, then Hosea this month.
Instructions for guests
Benediction
Benediction
14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed. You know those who taught you, 15 and you know that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness, 17 so that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.