Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Psalm 19:7-11

N:

Welcome

Welcome

Happy New Year

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

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

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:

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.

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.