For His glory and for our good, let's hear the word of the Lord
this morning. Christ is the image of the
invisible God, the first born of all creation.
For by Him all things were created in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible, whether Thrones or dominions or rollers
or authorities, all things were created through Him and for Him.
And He is before all things, and He is in Him.
All things hold together and He is the bot, the head of the
body, the church. He is the beginning, the first
born from the dead, that in everything he might be
preeminent. And then from Matthew Jesus
said, seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and
all these things will be added to you.
Paul in Galatians chapter 2. I have been crucified with
Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me and the life I now live in the flesh.
I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave
himself for me. This is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. The grass Withers and the
flowers say, but our word of our Lord stands forever.
Amen. Please be seated.
There are few things as annoying as a truly full blown
self-centered person. Most of you know somebody like
this, somebody whose world revolves around them and they
think that the world revolves around them, that every
conversation they have is all about them, that every we
thought that they think tends to be about them.
They're just incredibly self-centered in all that they
tend to think about, and it shows in everything that they
do. And most of us are really
annoyed by that, with good reason, because where does that
leave us? If they have a world centered
around them, what does that mean for everybody else?
They truly full blown self-centered person can be
incredibly annoying. I should stop for a second and
make a note here that at 240 yesterday afternoon around 2:40,
a group of your leaders here, the elders and some of the staff
gathered together with the representatives from the
denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, and dotted
our last I and crossed our last T.
We are now formally part the EPC.
Now that's worth a whoop or two as part of that move.
As part of that move, what we want to do is try to go back a
little bit and reassert what it is that we believe.
Who are we as a church? We want to do that for two
reasons. One, we want to remind ourselves
this is who we are. And two, we want to also express
what we aspire to be. So as we talked about, hey, this
is who we are. We know that we're only
capturing a picture of the reality.
We we are these things to some extent by God's grace, but we
also know that by the Scriptures push we need to be these things
even more and more. And so I've come up with a quick
little description here about what Hebron is Hebron in what we
aspire to be. 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 my goal is to try to go over
each one of these characteristics over the next
couple of weeks together, pointing out where it is that I
think that Heaven Church's satisfactory presently fulfills
this, but also to put forward to us kind of a challenge that hey,
we don't ever want to lose sight of these goals.
We don't want to lose sight of these descriptors that kind of
describe who we are. And many of them are kind of
self-evident. For instance, last week we
looked at what it means that we are biblically based, and we
described how that is both in the present expression of Hebron
Church and what we want Hebron Church to be.
And in part, what I trust is most people's connection.
A lot of you are biblically based, and yet all of us want to
aspire to be biblically based. Today we're going to take a look
at that second descriptor. They're Christ centered.
What does it mean to be Christ centered?
And I need to do a here like I did last week as well.
And to acknowledge that it'd be really hard, I think, to find a
Christian Church that wouldn't somewhere along the lines
acknowledge Christ as the center of what they're doing.
Be to be Christ centered is not unique to Heber and it is
something that I think a lot of people identify with.
But I want to use the term kind of specifically and want to use
that illustration of a self-centered person kind of as
a corollary or kind of as a contrast to what we mean by
being Christ centered or a Christ centered church.
To be a self-centered person. Part of the reason why that's so
annoying is because it manifests itself.
It shows itself on the outside all the time.
The person's always talking about themselves.
They only think about themselves every.
The world revolves around them and they show it to the outside
because let's face it, the force of sin drives each and every
person in this room to be incredibly self-serving
self-centered. We all tend to be self-centered,
but hopefully, by God's grace, we're all not that annoyingly
self-centered because we tamp it down, we push it down, we hide
it a little bit. That's what we do with our self
centeredness. That is what I fear a lot of
churches might do with their Christ centeredness and by a lot
of churches. What I'm scared about is Hebron
Church. It's easy to say, hey, Hebron
Church is a Christ centered church, but it's a challenge to
make sure that we're not tamping that down, that that's not
drifting into the background, that that isn't just a vague
spirituality that kind of describes Heaven church.
Well, Heaven church is Christ centered.
Of course it is. No, I want it to be manifest.
I want it to show itself just like that self-centered
individual shows itself, manifests that characteristic in
a bad way. So I want this self Christ
centered. Sorry, I want this Christ
centered character of Hebron Church to show itself to
manifest, to be on the outside all the time.
Now what do I mean by Christ centered?
I mean that the controlling focus and the driving force of
everything we do is Jesus Christ.
The controlling focus and the driving force of everything we
do is Jesus Christ. Picture this a little bit for
you. So let's take it on an
individual level. Let's put it on an individual
level for a second. Imagine your life, your life is
a big bubble. OK, imagine a big bubble that's
that's representative of your life as a whole.
So imagine a big bubble around me right now.
And inside that bubble are a bunch of balls.
And the individual balls are all represent something very crucial
in your life, something very important.
And maybe the size of the ball represents how important that
thing is to you. And so you've got a ball in
there for your job, your that's a big ball and your family and
that's a huge ball. You enjoy reading certain
things, that's a smaller ball. Your finances, that's a ball
that's in the church, your friendships, that's a smaller
ball. Your church is a larger ball.
You've got all these different balls inside this big bubble
that represents your life. What you put at the center of
the of the bubble controls everything else, handles all the
rest of those balls and most of us try to stick ourselves in the
center of that bubble. We're in the center of that
bubble and we're juggling all these different balls.
I have a real small talented juggling.
It's a small talents, but I can't keep 3 balls up in the air
a little bit. At least I used to.
So I was planning on using this as an illustration.
I thought, oh, I could get up there and have juggle the balls
and stuff like that. So I asked Kelly yesterday, get
me three things that I could juggle and she get me three
things and Wham, they all went on the floor right away.
So hence I'm not going to juggle.
But the idea is that in the in this sphere, this bubble, the
thing in the center is holding everything up, keeping
everything else juggled in your life.
And So what we do is we recognize early on in our lives,
if we have any sense of self-awareness, that sticking
ourselves in the center of that bubble is a bad choice, is a
failure. Now, the drive of sin, the push
of our own selfishness is to place ourselves in the center.
I know it true. I feel it every day.
I feel it every minute to make myself the center of my life,
the center of my world. But I wasn't created to be in
the center of my life. The center of my life is not set
apart for me, nor is it set apart for my family.
Well, my family is incredibly important to me.
My wife is glorious in my life. All these things.
I love my kids most of the time. I have this great appreciation
for my family. But to stick my family in the
center of that bubble is to collapse.
The bubble is to have that bubble shatter and break.
I love my church. I love my job, but to put either
of those in the center is to invite the bubble to shatter and
to break because they weren't created to carry that weight.
They weren't created to be in the center.
What goes in the center of my life, the core thing, the
driving focus and the driving force is Jesus Christ.
The controlling focus, the driving force is Jesus Christ.
He's in the center and by doing so he keeps.
Now translate that out then to our church.
What does it mean that we are a church that is a Christ centered
church? We have a growing youth ministry
and it's wonderful to see it growing and, and, and developing
and the excitement that there is with that kind of thing.
But if we're a youth ministry centered church, that bubble is
bound to collapse. We have a fabulous worship team.
Don't we have a fabulous worship team?
We have a fabulous worship team, but if is it crucial as our
worship, is it crucial as they are in guiding us and leading us
every day into God's presence? That can't be the center focus
of our bubble. If it is, our bubble will surely
collapse. We do great global missions.
Jerry was talking about that earlier.
We have wonderful local missions all over the place.
We do wonderful things with our 70s and over 70s group.
We have a good fellowship time. We have growth groups and Bible
studies that help lead us into the church, into God's presence.
All of these things are fabulous and wonderful.
But if any of those things become the center focus of the
bubble, the bubble is bound to collapse.
It is bound to shatter. Now, why do you mention this?
The concern is that there are so many wonderful things out there,
there are so many wonderful opportunities out there, and
that the church is tempted to consistently slide into doing
this. OK, we don't want to be
self-centered. We want to be other centered.
We want, you know, that's a mantra that is recognizable in
this world. We don't want to be
self-centered. We want to be other centered.
We want to focus our lives out towards the other people,
etcetera, etcetera. And how easy it would be to
become a church that is other centered.
Goodness me. Don't we want to be focused on
other people? Of course we do.
Don't we want to pour our hearts and lives in the ministry, the
love of God that He is blessed with us into other people's
lives and into the relationships we have with other people?
Of course we do. Any sense that that is not a
mark of heaven, church is to our shame and detriment.
But we can't be other centered. That's not what the church is
built to be. The church is built to be Christ
centered and Christ centered alone.
Now you can pick this up a little bit in the text in which
we read the text that point to the source of all that we have
is Jesus Christ. The motivation that all we have
is Jesus Christ and the hope that we have is Jesus Christ.
The source of a Christ centered church is going to be Jesus
Christ. The motivation of a Christ
centered church is going to be Jesus Christ, and the hope of a
Christ centered church is going to be Jesus Christ.
You can see this if you have your text available in
Colossians chapter one. This is when I read it.
I hope you captured some of the majesty.
I stumbled through the reading a little bit, but in in light of
that, I hope that you still captured the majesty.
This is one of those great passages about Jesus.
This is one that really highlights who He is.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the first born of
all creation. For by Him all things were
created in heaven and on earth, invisible and invisible.
Whether Thrones or dominions, rollers and authorities, all
things were created through Him and for Him.
He is before all things and in all things hold together.
He is the head of the body, the church, the beginning, the first
born of the dead, that in everything he might be
preeminent. Do you hear that?
That's the passage that should ring that that should capture
every thought in our every sense of our imagination, every goal,
every pursuit in which heaven church is made-up of.
That should capture your heart and your desire as an
individual. What do we want?
We want Jesus Christ to be preeminent.
We want him to be lifted high. We want His Majesty and His
sovereignty and His supremacy held up before the whole world
and in front of our whole lives. We want everything in our lives
to be shaped this way. How so?
This text highlights that He's before all things.
He's in all things. He.
All things exist through him. All things exist by Him.
He's a source of every aspect of what it means for us to have a
Christ centered life. Now it'd be easy for us to sit
there and say this, OK, why do we have such a good worship
team? Well, because we have a great
bass player. That's why we have a great
worship team. Why do we have why are we so
fabulous at the Bible studies and youth ministry work?
Because we've got great volunteers that lead things.
Why is it that our, our local ministry work is so good?
What Look at our facilities. Think about what God has given
to us in the facilities in which we operate in.
You have no idea the money and the manpower that the trustees
pour into in order to maintain this.
It'd be easy for us to identify all those things and every one
of those steps would be wrong because we'd be tempted to put
in the center the work of the trustees or our budget that it
enables us to financially do this most of the time.
If you haven't, by the way, kept track of our finances in the E
newsletter, you should do that. You you should know where we're
at. And so and, and since the Lord's
prodding to assist us in the ministries in which we do it,
it'd be easy to get distracted from the center core of who we
are and to be to place anything else in the center of of the
church's work in Jesus Christ and to identify the power and
the effectiveness. You know what if Jerry wasn't
all that Jerry was, so many things wouldn't happen around
the church if Dan didn't do what Dan did, if we didn't have the
staff of all. That's true.
But all of that risks missing the source of what makes Hebron,
Hebron, which is Jesus Christ and him alone the source of a
Christ centered church. Is Jesus Christ the motivation
of a Christ centered church, Matthew and Jesus.
Jesus says these things. Seek first the Kingdom of God
and his righteousness and all these things will be added to
you. What about all those other balls
in the center of my bubble that are so important to me, that are
so crucial to me? I don't want a single one of
them to drop. What about all the balls in our
church? We don't want a single one of
them to drop. We don't want the elderly in our
church to feel uncared for. We don't want the babies in our
church not to have an effective nursery.
We don't want the youth ministry or the adults, or we don't.
We want everything that we want all those balls to stay in the
air. How do they happen?
Only by keeping our motivation correct.
Do you get some of you who are older might remember the comic
strip Calvin and Hobbes? If you don't remember the comic,
Sir Calvin and Hawes find it. It's fabulous.
But Calvin is a little boy and he has a vivid imagination, and
he imagines that this cardboard box is a transmorgifier, and a
transmorgifier is a machine that turns them into whatever he
wants, and it turns them into an alien or it turns them into a
dinosaur or robot or whatever like that.
I wish that we had a transmorgifier and the trans
morgifire would be every time anything happens in this church
where we ask the question, well, what should we do about this or
how do we feel about this or how do we think about this?
We push it through the trans morgifire and we come out with,
what do Christ do about this? What does Christ think about
this? What does Christ feel about
this? Now the crazy thing is that we
do have a trans morgifire and he's the Holy Spirit because
he's working that way in every individual Christian's life.
By God's grace, he's working that way in our church as well,
so that we have that motivation, the motivation that focuses on
Christ as a center. Christ is the center by
recognizing he's the source of all things.
He's the motivation of all things, and He's the hope of all
things. Listen to how Paul writes in
Galatians chapter 2. I have been crucified with
Christ. It is no longer I who live, but
Christ who lives in me. All right, now let's be in awe
of that passage in such a way that we don't take it silly.
Paul's alive. Paul is alive, but what he's
saying is that his hope, his expectations, his desires,
everything about him, the center of his world, the center of his
bubble is so clearly the crucified Jesus Christ in his
grace, in his love, in his sacrifice, in His Holiness, in
his righteousness, that the center of Paul's life is so
completely and totally Jesus Christ that when you look at hit
the bubble, the ball that is Paul himself is small and
disappearing so that the Lord Jesus Christ can reign in the
center of his bubble more and more completely.
That's what we need for heaven church.
Heaven church desires not just to be all of these things, but
to fulfill all these things. We need the finances to be able
to be faithful to the ministry God's called us to, but our hope
is not. My hope is not in that you will
open your wallets, but go ahead and do so.
My hope is not that you will volunteer for the for the
ministries, but please go and do so.
My hope is not that you will catch a global vision of the
Jesus Christ and that every single day you'll be driven to
your knees to pray for the church that is suffering
throughout the world, but please do so.
My hope and prayer is for Jesus Christ to be the center of
Hebron Church and everything that happens here so that you
will automatically and always be driven exactly to that kind of a
state place where all the balls within the sphere of Hebron
Church are in order and functional as the center of the
church balances and juggles them all.
So what does it mean for us to be a Christ centered church?
Well, one thing it means is that don't ever take Jesus Christ for
granted. Now, I say that to you guys, but
I'm saying that as a challenge for you, for the leadership of
this church, if you ever hear us.
If you ever hear me talking about things where it's not
clear that it arises from the centrality of Jesus Christ,
you've got to call me on it. I guarantee you it's not because
I've forgotten Jesus or I no longer love him.
But what happens is that I'll take him for granted.
This church could take him for granted because he's been such,
so good to us. He has blessed us in so many
ways. It would be easy to take him for
granted. Please don't let us do that.
Please don't ever let ever let Jesus Christ become a means to
an end. Well, we need a great strong
youth ministry. Therefore, we're going to hang
on to Jesus Christ. No, we hang on to Jesus Christ
because he's the center. Now, out of that, we trust that
he will bring us as the source, as a motivation, as a hope.
He will bring us a strong youth ministry of vibrant 70s ministry
and effective local outreach and wonderful facilities that we
have going on. The good effective staff.
We trust all those things because we trust in the
centrality of Jesus Christ. But if heaven is going to be a
Christ centered church, I need you to be a Christ centered
follower. You need me to be a Christ
centered follower, which means not in just some vague, distant
behind the scenes implicit way, but incredibly explicitly in
your life. Why do you know that a
self-centered person is self-centered?
Because they show it all the time.
What do I need from you? What do you need from me?
You need me to be showing you all the time that Jesus Christ
is the center of my life. I need to see from you all the
time that Jesus Christ is the center of your life.
How does that happen? By our embracing Jesus Christ as
the source of all we have and all we do.
By making sure that Jesus Christ is the motivation for all we
have and for all we do, and that Jesus Christ is the hope that we
hold onto for all we have and then for all we do.
And if there's anybody here that tries to live that way and
consistently bumps up against their own inability because of
our sinfulness, because of our self centeredness, because of
our struggles, let me encourage you that we have an advocate on
our side who is wanting to work that very life in your heart,
placing Jesus Christ on the throne, and that's Christ
himself, our Lord. Let's go to him in prayer.
Jesus, we are thankful for the blessings that you pour out into
our hearts. We are thankful that you are
indeed the center of everything that happens here at Hebron.
We know that to be true, Lord. We want to manifest that more
clearly. We want to make that evident to
everybody who sees that recognizes that we know that you
are the source of all things, that you are the motivation for
all things, that you are the hope of all things.
Lord, we want that for every aspect of Hebron Church, and we
want that for every individual associated with Heaven Church.
And Lord, we are unable to do that on our own.
And so, as always, going all the way back to our salvation
itself, we place ourselves in your hands, trusting in the work
that only you can do. Make it so through our lives, We
pray in Jesus Christ. We ask, Amen.
My friends, if you would stand together with me and affirm that
which we believe. Let me ask you, why is the Son
of God called Jesus, meaning Savior?
Because he saves us from our sins.
Because salvation is not to be sought or found in anyone else.
Christ alone is sufficient for salvation.
Why do we call him our Lord? Because not with gold or silver,
but with His precious blood, He has delivered and purchased our
body and soul from sin, and from the tyranny of the devil to be
his very own.