My friends, in light of that promise that that wish that we
just made that prayer, why don't you stand for the hearing of the
word of the Lord? Peter writes.
We do not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known
to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we
were eyewitnesses of His Majesty.
For when we received honor and glory from God the Father, and
the voice was born to Him by the majestic glory, this is my
beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.
We ourselves heard this very voice born from heaven, for we
were with Him on the holy mountain, and we have the
prophetic word more fully confirmed, to which you do well
to pay attention as to a lamp shining in the dark place until
the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.
Knowing this. First of all, that no prophecy
of scripture comes from someone's own interpretation.
For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but
men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy
Spirit. And this is the word of the
Lord. Thanks be to God.
Lord, great grant to us now to not just hear your word, but to
be changed and transformed by it that it's possible for Lord.
For as your Scripture has been inspired by You and written,
given to us by the Holy Spirit, so we trust that Your Holy
Spirit, now indwelling us, would inform us and instruct us in the
ways in which we should go through.
Christ our Lord, we pray. Amen.
Please be seated 1st. I want to give a quick thank you
to the congregation for allowing Kelly and I to be gone last
week. We took a quick trip and enjoyed
ourselves very much so did some hiking out in some of the
national parks. So thank you again for the
graciousness of the congregation in terms of giving us the time
away to do that. Over the past week or so I was
involved in a four part meeting. There was it was a long meeting
and there were four different sections.
I had to move from 4 different rooms and in each room I had to
introduce myself. And the first time I introduced
myself, it was just kind of automatic.
I just kind of, I wasn't thinking about it and I just
kind of introduced myself kind of the way you would do so.
But by the time I had to do it the fourth time, I thought
through a little bit, hey, what do I actually want to say about
myself? What, what, not just the knee
jerk reaction, this is who I am, but how do I actually want to
express who I am? So I gave some thought to it and
it came across a lot more clearly.
It had some more force behind it.
Just my matter of introducing myself because I had to do it
four different times. Well, over the past two or three
years, Hebron Church has spent a lot of time thinking through how
we want to introduce ourselves. Who are we as a people?
Who are we as a congregation, as a particular expression of God's
Kingdom here in this place? How do we think of ourselves?
And So what I want to do over the next 810 weeks together is I
want to look at a description that I have written about who
the church is. Well, this is what Hebron is.
This is how I want to think of myself, how I want us to think
of ourselves as we introduce ourselves to people.
Hey, this is what Hebron is. And be able to give a quick
little definition, a quick little description.
Now that's kind of what I, we're going to do over the next couple
weeks is take one part of that description each week and kind
of say, look, This is why I think this is an important way
of thinking about us. Now we're doing that for a
couple of reasons, 2 primary ones, 1 is that I hope to remind
us of who we are. Many of you have been involved
in Heaven Church for a long period of time.
And a lot of these things, I hope are going to think be
statements or distinctions about who we are as a church that
you're going to be able to say, yeah, I recognize that in us.
That's who we are there. I want to remind us about who we
are at this point. But additionally, I also want to
remind us of who we aspire to be because they're going to be some
of these things that we talked about that you're going to be
able to say, yeah, I kind of see that.
But boy, we could do a whole lot better.
I believe that in so many ways we could do a whole lot better.
And so this description that I have is both descriptive of who
we are, but I think it's also descriptive of who we want to
be. So here's the definition or
here's a a description of Hebron Church that I think that we're
going to look at over the next couple of weeks together.
Hebron Church is a biblically based, Christ centered community
of disciples, A reformed classically evangelical church
in the Presbyterian tradition, worshipping, growing and serving
Christ in the East Hills of Pittsburgh.
Hebron Church is a biblically based, Christ centered community
of disciples, A reformed classically evangelical church
in the Presbyterian tradition, worshipping, growing and serving
Christ in the East Hills of Pittsburgh.
Now let me be clear that that is not all that we are.
That definition is not comprehensive.
It is highlighting particular ideas that I think that we can't
let go of. But I don't say anything there
about our youth ministry. I don't say anything in that
definition about our global connections, in the global focus
that we have, an intention that we have.
I don't say anything there about our fellowship, our love and our
grace for one another. I don't say anything about our
Donuts that follow after worship each week.
There are many things that are not spoken of in this tech in in
this little description. And I realize that.
But what I have highlighted, I think are some key components,
key ideas that will help us in this new stage as we are moving
into a new stage of life together as a body.
We're moving into a new denomination.
We're moving into a new school year.
We're moving into a new beginning with a lot of
ministries. I want you to move into a new
stage of commitment, both to the congregation here, to the
church, but ultimately to our Lord, and a new faithful
decision about what to do with your life.
And I think that part of that is going to be helpful if we know
exactly who we are, if we have a good idea of what you're going
to experience as you're part of this community.
I want you to experience the fellowship.
I want you to experience the love.
I want you to experience the doughnuts.
I want you to experience all the joys of being part of Heaven
Church. But these characteristics, the
ones that I just ran through, I believe are essential to our
understanding. And So what we're going to do
over the next couple of weeks is that we're going to take one
each week and we're going to talk about it and basically say,
why is it? What is it and why is it
important for Heaven Church to think of itself very consciously
that we are a biblically based, Christ centered community of
disciples, Reformed, classically evangelical church in the
Presbyterian tradition? I want us to thank each piece of
those things. Why is it important for us as we
think about who we are and specifically, of course, above
all else, how does this arise? How does our identity arise out
of our commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ?
How is it reflected in the Scriptures itself that that's
what we are doing? So we are starting today with
that very first one. Hebron is a biblically based
community of disciples. We're a biblically based church.
I need to make a quick caveat here for a second so that you
don't get thrown off every church to some extent, no matter
what what its theological leanings across the board.
Every church to some extent is biblically based.
The Bible is our source of understanding of who Jesus
Christ is a revelation of God. And any church that has any
connection to history throughout the time recognizes that
throughout history, the church has always been, has always
evolved. His has grown in its connection
and understanding of the Scriptures.
Now there are different understandings of the Scriptures
and what the Bible means to the church, but every church to some
extent is connected to the Scriptures.
When we say here at Hebron that we are biblically based church,
we're identifying particular characteristics or highlighting
particular characteristics, and I want to hit on just three of
them today, the nature of the Bible, the purpose and the
function of the Bible. And then thirdly, the authority
of the Bible, the nature of the Bible, the purpose of the Bible
and the authority of the Bible. I think that the way in which we
talk here at Hebron Church about being a biblically based church,
what we are talking about is some characteristics that hit on
those three ideas. Now the first one is this the
nature of the Bible again, rarely do you run across
somebody that has a very dismissive view of the Bible.
You do run across, you know, Karl Marx or somebody a lie on
those lines that understands the Bible is, you know, pack of
lies, etcetera, or an expression of the oppressor upon the
oppressed. And there are folks that
understand it is a book of myths or something along those lines.
I'm, I'm not diminishing those, but within the church community,
within the Christian community as a whole, by and large, most
people have some sort of an appreciation for the Scriptures.
They recognize, for instance, that the Scriptures do a great
job of telling us about the historical development of the
religious belief of the Israelite people.
The Israelite people is documented their religious
traditions for about 2000 years. It's a wonderful book that kind
of details and shows that other people are very caught up by the
fact that it's a very moving and inspiring witness to what God
does. And so they are captured by, for
instance, Paul's, sorry, David's descriptions in the Psalms that
talks about his inner experiences with God.
And it's kind of like reading a biography of someone's
interactions with their Lord. And the Bible kind of
articulates that there are various views of the nature of
the Scripture that it's a witness.
It's it's a witness to what God does.
What we understand here at Heaven Church and what we are
going to consistently operate under is the notion that this is
a belief is the teachings that the Scripture is the word of
God. It doesn't simply contain the
word of God. It doesn't point to the word of
God. It doesn't tell us a little bit
about the word of God. Rather, the Scripture is the
word of God. It's not that the Scripture
somehow comes from from from ourselves or from humanity or
from our understanding. And it tells us a little bit
about our interactions with God. You can read Marvelous.
I read a couple of interviews with from Mother Teresa over the
past couple of weeks and you're inspired, you're motivated,
you're moved. You can, you can hear the Lord
speaking and you can, you can feel the grip of the Lord in my
in my heart as I was reading these these interviews with
Mother Teresa. But that's not the word of God.
The Word of God is that this scripture, when we talk about
the Scriptures, when we hold up the Bible, we are not saying
that this is that this is a word about God.
We are saying that this is the word of God.
This is the word from God. Now I don't have time and that's
the point of our gathering together is not to give you an
apologetics lecture. An apologetics lecture would
simply be 1 where I would try to demonstrate from the Scriptures
and from our reason that it is reasonable, it makes sense for
us to understand this indeed as a word of God.
I am simply stating today that that is the understanding and
the belief of Heaven Church. If we are going to be a body
together, we collectively are going to experience the
scriptures as God's word. Doesn't mean everybody in the
room here believes. That doesn't mean that everybody
has the same view of the Bible that I do.
But the leadership of the church and what you're going to hear
through our ministries, what you're going to hear through
everything that we take do together as a body is hey,
scriptures are God's word. And as such, this is secondly,
it has a certain purpose. The scripture is the ultimate
source of true knowledge, the ultimate source of all true
knowledge. Now how do you learn something?
You learn things by your experience.
Most of us learn things by experience.
You know why? Why do you know not to shut the
your fingers in the car door? Because you've had it done once
or twice, you know, you learn not to do that again.
You learn from our parents. We learn from our teachers.
We learn from the books that we read.
We learn from our society and friends that are around us.
We learn from our reason, our own understanding.
All of these things are sources of information.
They're sources of knowledge for us is how we get to know the
world around us is how we get to know the things that are
important to us. It's how we get to know our God,
in part through the teachings that we get.
A lot of you, fortunately, are unfortunately end up hearing and
learning about your faith from me and from the rest of the
leadership here at Heaven Church or from a Bible study leader.
What do all of those things have in common?
Usually by time somebody's four or five years old, they realize
that their parents make mistakes.
By the time they're teenagers, they realize that their teachers
can be wrong. And by the time they get to
college, hopefully they've learned that their friends can
be wrong. And if they get to a certain
level of maturity, people realize that their own heads and
their own hearts can be wrong. All these things can be wrong,
can lead you in the wrong direction.
And this is the beauty of the Scriptures being the Word of
God. For we have a ultimate,
faithful, infallible, true source of knowledge.
What the Bible tells us we know to be true.
I've said this, I've told this story in the past, and it was
clearly an informative decision. You guys are in trouble because
the clock's not up somewhere. So I'm just going to keep going
and going and going, OK. This experience was impactful in
my life. And so it, it shows itself.
When I was in campus ministry, I was sharing the gospel with a
young woman and she said, well, I believe God is a big cat.
And I said, you believe God is like a big cat?
No, he is a big cat. You mean God has cat like
qualities? No, he's a big cat.
Big whiskers, nose, ears. And of course I said, where did
you get such an idea? She says, well, that's just what
I believe from in here. And she taps her heart.
And that's where so many of us find our ideas of what we're
going to follow, what we're going to believe is true one way
or the other. And Hebron Church stands here
and says that's not what we understand.
We understand the Scriptures as a source of our knowledge.
Now, you might think it's funny that there would be a young
woman, 20, some year old woman that would actually believe
God's a cat based on, you know, big whiskers and everything
based on her own heart. But that's so often what we do,
the influence that we gather, the people that shape our
thinking and our understanding. Podcasters, influential
political figures, the government, our friends, our
family members. Every one of those things can be
a good influence and they can provide good insight.
I'm not denying any of those things, but every one of them
can be wrong. What we have when we proclaim
that Hebron Church is a biblically based community of
disciples is that we are articulating that we hold
passionately to something that we know to be true.
And So what the Scriptures do is that they provide a framework,
They provide a picture. They provide, in philosophical
terms, a worldview. This is the way God sees.
This is the way God sees the world, not through a podcast,
not through a wonderful speaker that you trust explicitly, not
through your pastor, not through, but through the
Scriptures is where God says, here is my understanding of the
world, God, this is the way I created the world.
This is way I redeem the world so that you can see it like
this. Our job as believers is to learn
what the Lord is teaching us so that we are shaped, so that we
are taking the inputs from the world.
We're taking this political description description.
We're taking this political position.
There you go. And we're trying to say we're
not shaping and molding our world to it.
We are shaping and molding that view so that it fits
appropriately under God's position, under his worldview,
under his understanding. And we only do this by holding
passionately and maintaining the Scriptures as the authority of
God's Word. And that's the third
understanding. The 1st is good, it is God's
Word. That's the nature of Scripture.
The second is that this purpose is to communicate truth to us.
And then thirdly, it comes so with authority.
Now, what is authority? I, I was told as a kid that I
was, that I was in authority, that I pushed the boundaries,
that I struggled against authority and that kind of
stuff. And I kind of remember one of
those ideas that my mom would say, OK, here's the line, don't
cross it. And in no time I was right up to
it. Then I had my toes over it and I
had half my foot over there. Then I put my one leg over the
line. I was such an annoying kid.
I had to have been so terrible. But So what is authority?
Authority is something that has the right and standing to direct
the way you live your life. It has the right and authority
to direct your life. What has authority over your
life? Parents do, and legitimately so,
the government does. And legitimately so our society
does. And legit the government does.
That's why I pay taxes. My parents do.
That's why I kind of live the way that I live.
Society has authority over me. That's why I wear clothes.
You know, all these things kind of direct and have authority.
But what do we know? What happens when those
authorities clash? What happens when the government
says to do one thing and my parents say to do another?
Or my heart tells me to do one thing and the church tells me to
do another? What happens when legitimate
authorities clash? In my mind, This is why we have
the Scriptures. The Scriptures function as the
ultimate authority in our lives. It's not the only authority.
It's not the only authority that guides and directs the way in
which we function as a church, the way you function as a
Christian disciple. But it is the ultimate.
It is the final authority. It is the arbiter between all
things. So if the church tells me one
thing and my heart tells me another thing, how do I decide
which one to do? You turn to the Scriptures.
The scriptures is the guide in the direction.
My friends tell me to do one thing, my parents tell me to do
another. How do I decide?
The scriptures is the ultimate authority.
The scriptures are the one that dictate and direct me and guide
me in the ways. And how do we know these things?
Of course, the only way to know these things is to study the
scriptures is to spend time with them.
This is exactly what our text leads us to understand.
If you have your Bible open in Second Peter chapter 1, Peter
says we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known
to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
You can hear the the Peter is saying, look, I know you want to
know why we think the way we think.
It's not because it came out of our minds.
It's not because I'm such a wise person.
It's not because I'm studied. It's not because I'm brilliant.
Why we follow these things? Because God Himself has revealed
them to us. God has spoken these things into
our hearts. And then he cites the poignant
mount amount of transfiguration where God himself spoke to the
disciples. This is my Son, listen to him,
follow him. And then later it goes on.
Peter goes on in verse 21 and says this, For no prophecy has
ever been produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God
as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit and spoke from
God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
In other words, once again, the nature of the Scripture, it's
not our thinking, it's not Paul's thinking, it's not
David's thinking, it's not Peter's thinking.
They are being carried along by the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is the one who is providing us the Scripture.
Because the Holy Spirit provides us the Scripture, we know that
it's source of knowledge is true and we know that it's authority
is absolute. So what does this mean for us as
a church? Hebron Church is a community of
disciples that is biblically based.
It means that everything that is being taught here must be in
accordance with the Scriptures, absolutely everything.
It means that you as a congregation has an automatic
check that you must exert in everything that we do.
You come to a program here at the church.
You come to a worship service and you hear a sermon.
You come in involved in a Bible study here at this church.
Everything that we talked about has to come forth from the
Scriptures. That's the point of what we are
doing here together, as this community of body functions
together, we function under the authority of the Scripture
itself. And therefore, as part of this
body, you are submitting not to my authority, not even to the
authority of the session, not to the authority of some
denomination. We are submitting ourselves to
the authority of Scripture, each and every one of us.
What does it mean that we are biblically based?
It means that there is a, a, a document in a Bible.
It means that God's word is that which guides and directs and
leads us into all things. And therefore, what does it mean
for you to be a biblically based Christian?
Because if you're going to be a part of this community, sooner
or later, we're going to encourage you to be a biblically
based follower of the Lord Jesus Christ, which means that you
have to immerse yourself in the Scriptures.
Somebody shared with me a little bit earlier.
Imagine if we treated the Bible like we treat our phones
constantly near me, always know where it is.
Any downtime, I'm grabbing it and I'm leafing through it.
I'm scrolling through it because it's so important to me that I
can't let go of it. I'm telling you that's I see
people with their phones and me, I know myself with my phone and
all of these kind of things. Oh, that we would have a passion
to hold on to the Scriptures like we're passionate to hold on
to our phones. What does it mean for you to be
a biblically based Christian? It means immersing yourself in
the world view of the Scriptures so that you can be assessing all
of the information that you get from society, from your friends,
from your own heart, that you assess that according to the
Scriptures and discern that which is true and what is right
and what has authority in your life.
That's what it means to be an authority.
Biblically based congregation, A biblically based Christian.
If you wanted. Forget it here.
This is a better question on a more obvious question if you
have not yet read the Gospel of John this year.
We're now in September. If you have not yet read the
Gospel of John, no matter what reading plan you're involved in,
no matter how engaged you are in the Scriptures, I beg you, read
the Gospel of John. Do it in one setting.
If you've got 3 hours of time, do it across 30 days.
If you've only got a 20 minutes at a time, spend time reading
the Gospel of John. If you want to know how to start
as a biblically based Christian, as part of a biblically based
community, start right there. Let's pray, Lord Jesus Christ,
we ask through your blessing and guidance and direction upon us
as we want to be faithful to what you lead us to now and
forevermore. Lord, open our hearts always to
Your word that we would be faithful to its teachings,
understand its authorities, and be obedient to You and all that
we do. We pray through Christ our Lord,
we ask, Amen. I'd encourage you at this time
to stand and let's affirm our faith together.
What is it that we believe? What authority from God directs
us how to glorify and enjoy Him? The only authority for
glorifying, enjoying Him is the Bible, which is the Word of God.
What is the Word of God? The Holy Scriptures of the Old
and New Testaments are the Word of God the only role of faith
and obedience.