What We Teach

The Bible

The Bible is God’s Word. All sixty-six books were written by real people in their own words and styles, and the Holy Spirit carried them along so that what they wrote is what God meant to say (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21). So it’s true in everything it teaches. It’s the final word on what we believe and how we live, and no pastor or tradition gets to overrule it. That includes this page.

You don’t need special training to understand it. What a person needs to know to be saved is written plainly enough for anyone who reads it honestly (Psalm 119:105, 130). Some parts are harder. We read those in light of the clearer ones, which is one reason we preach through whole books instead of picking favorite verses.

God

There is one God (Deuteronomy 6:4). He exists as three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and each is fully God (Matthew 28:19). He is eternal and holy and good. He doesn’t need anything from us. He made the world because he chose to, not because he was lonely.

He’s also near. Jesus said that not one sparrow falls to the ground apart from the Father, and that the hairs of your head are all counted (Matthew 10:29-30). God rules over everything that happens, the good days and the bad ones, and he works it all together for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28). That doesn’t make a hard season easy. It does mean nothing reaches you by accident.

Creation

God made everything out of nothing, by his word, and it was good (Genesis 1:1, 31). The world didn’t happen by chance, and it is not divine. It belongs to him and still answers to him (Psalm 24:1).

So the physical world is not something to escape. Food, work, marriage, music, rice fields and rivers are his gifts. People are made in God’s image, and made for a reason. The Shorter Catechism says it in one line we teach our children: our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

People and sin

Every human being carries God’s image and has dignity from conception on, rich or poor, healthy or sick (Genesis 1:27; Psalm 139:13-16). Every human being is also a sinner (Romans 3:23). When Adam turned away from God, all of us went with him. Sin is in what we want, too, and not only in what we do.

That doesn’t mean people are as bad as they could be, or that unbelievers never do anything good. They do, all the time. It means sin has reached every part of us and none of us can find our own way back to God (Ephesians 2:1-3). Help has to come from outside. It’s hard to hear. There is some relief in it, though, because if you added nothing to your rescue then you can’t undo it by failing later.

Jesus Christ

Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, who became a man without ceasing to be God (John 1:14). He was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived the life we should have lived and never sinned (Hebrews 4:15). He is the only mediator between God and us (1 Timothy 2:5).

He is fully God and fully man in one person. He got hungry and tired, and he wept at his friend’s grave. Whatever you’re dealing with this week, he knows what it is to be human. He is our prophet, who tells us the truth about God.

He is our priest, who offered himself as the sacrifice and still prays for us, and our king, who rules and protects his people.

The cross and the empty tomb

Jesus died in the place of sinners and took the punishment we deserved (1 Peter 3:18). On the third day he rose bodily from the grave (1 Corinthians 15:3-4). His death didn’t just make forgiveness possible. It paid for the sins of his people. He went up to the Father and reigns now over everything.

The resurrection matters as much as the cross. It’s God’s public proof that the debt was paid (Romans 4:25). It’s also why a Christian funeral is different. Jesus rose in a real body, the first of many, and what happened to him will happen to everyone who belongs to him (1 Corinthians 15:20-23).

Saved by grace

We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone (Ephesians 2:8-9). Our family name, our giving and our church attendance add nothing to it. God declares guilty people righteous because of what Christ did, and he adopts them as his children (Romans 8:15-16). Good works come after salvation as its fruit. They never pay for it (Titus 3:5).

Faith doesn’t earn anything either. It receives what God gives, and even faith is his gift. If you’re afraid you haven’t done enough, you’re right, and that was never what it depended on. If you’re afraid you’ve gone too far, the answer is the same. God accepts you on Christ’s record, not yours.

One more thing. Being saved and feeling sure of it are two different things. A real believer can go through a long stretch of doubt because of grief or illness or a troubled conscience (Mark 9:24). Scripture treats that as a struggle to be helped, not as proof the faith was never real (1 John 5:13). If that’s where you are, please talk to one of the pastors.

The Holy Spirit

The Holy Spirit gives new life to people who were spiritually dead (John 3:5-8). He shows them Christ, lives in every believer and slowly makes them more like Jesus. He gives gifts to the church for the good of everyone, not for show (1 Corinthians 12:7).

Most of his work is quiet. He points to Christ and not to himself. He uses ordinary means: the Bible read and preached, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, prayer, and other believers. So turning up every Sunday counts for more than people think. Growing in holiness is real, and it’s slow (Galatians 5:22-23). Expect it to take years and to keep going for the rest of your life.

The church

The church is the people God has called to himself, gathered in local congregations (Acts 2:42). As members we commit to each other. We meet on the Lord’s Day, sit under the preaching of the Word, help each other in practical ways and accept correction when we need it (Hebrews 10:24-25). Membership is a real promise, and we make it out loud.

The whole church is much bigger than us. It includes every believer in every age, and we gladly call Christians who disagree with us on parts of this page our brothers and sisters. But you only ever meet that church in one room, with people you didn’t pick, and God meant it that way. Our pastors preach and care for the congregation, a board of trustees looks after the church’s affairs, and each ministry has a head. All of them are members here and answer to the church (Ephesians 4:11-16).

Baptism and the Lord's Supper

Christ gave the church two signs, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. They aren’t empty rituals and they aren’t magic. God uses them to strengthen faith. The water, the bread and the wine do nothing by themselves; the Holy Spirit works through them.

Baptism marks the start of the Christian life and belonging to God’s people (Matthew 28:19). We baptize people who come to faith in Christ, and we also baptize the children of believing parents. Many churches here don’t, so you should know that before your child is involved. Our reason is the covenant. God has always dealt with believers and their households together. Under the old covenant the children of believers received its sign (Genesis 17:7), and on the day of Pentecost Peter said the promise is “for you and for your children” (Acts 2:39). Baptism doesn’t save a child and it guarantees nothing. It’s a sign of what God promises. A baptized child is raised as one of us, taught and prayed for, and comes to the Lord’s Table when they can confess the faith for themselves.

The Lord’s Supper is the ongoing meal of God’s people (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). The bread and wine don’t turn into Christ’s body and blood, and Christ isn’t sacrificed again. He died once, and once was enough (Hebrews 10:10). But it’s more than remembering. By faith we really receive Christ and are joined to one another (1 Corinthians 10:16-17). We welcome baptized Christians who are trusting Christ and belong to a church that preaches the gospel. If you aren’t sure that includes you, ask one of the pastors before the service.

The Christian life

Following Jesus touches all of life. Work, money, marriage, raising children, how we talk, how we vote, how we treat the poor and the stranger (Micah 6:8). God’s law isn’t a ladder up to him. It’s what a thankful life looks like (Romans 12:1-2). We expect to grow slowly and fail often, and to be forgiven every time we come back.

Repentance is a normal part of this, something you’ll do every week. You also can’t do it alone. God mostly changes us through other people, by being known and by hearing the truth from someone who loves us.

Where the Bible speaks, it settles the matter. That includes things many people around us now disagree with, like marriage as a lifelong union of one man and one woman, sexual ethics, and Jesus as the only way to the Father (John 14:6). We’d rather say so plainly now. Where Scripture leaves something to Christian freedom, we leave it free and don’t add rules of our own (Galatians 5:1).

The victory of the gospel

We believe the gospel will win.

Jesus is reigning now. After he rose he told his disciples that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him, and he sent them to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20). Paul says he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet (1 Corinthians 15:25; Psalm 110:1). So we don’t expect the church to shrink and hide until the end. We expect the gospel to spread through the world over time, until the nations turn to the Lord and the earth is filled with the knowledge of his glory as the waters cover the sea (Psalm 22:27; Habakkuk 2:14).

This view is called postmillennialism. The name comes from the belief that Christ returns after the long age of gospel growth that Revelation 20 calls the thousand years. Greg Bahnsen explained it simply: the kingdom Christ began at his first coming will keep growing until it fills the earth, and then he comes back. Jesus described it the same way. It’s a mustard seed that becomes a tree, and yeast that works through the whole batch of dough (Matthew 13:31-33). Daniel saw a stone that became a mountain and filled the whole earth (Daniel 2:35).

This doesn’t happen by force or by politics. R. J. Rushdoony said real change starts with regeneration, not revolution, and Douglas Wilson makes the same point: the kingdom grows the way it always has. It grows through preaching and prayer, through baptizing and teaching, through faithful families, and through the Holy Spirit changing people from the inside. The weapons are not those of the world (2 Corinthians 10:4).

That can feel a long way off when the news is bad. But our hope is in Christ, not in the headlines. He has already won at the cross and the empty tomb, and he will have the nations he died for. So we work with hope. We plant churches, raise our children in the faith, do honest work and love our neighbors, knowing our labor in the Lord is not in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).

Christians we respect hold other views of how the last days unfold, and we don’t make this a test of membership. But this is what we teach, because we think it’s what the Bible teaches.

Christ's return

Jesus will come back in person, and everyone will see him (Acts 1:11). He will raise the dead and judge everyone who has ever lived. Those who belong to him will live with him forever in a new creation. Those who refuse him will be justly and finally separated from him (Matthew 25:31-46).

Our hope isn’t that souls float away from this world. God will make this world new and raise our bodies to live in it (Revelation 21:1-5). He will put everything right and live with his people. Until then the church waits and works. We pray for him to come, and we keep planting fields and raising children while we wait.

If you want to read further

Start with your Bible. After that, ask one of the pastors for a copy of the Westminster Shorter Catechism. It has 107 short questions and answers, it was written for children, and most adults can read it in an afternoon. On the victory of the gospel, Greg Bahnsen’s Victory in Jesus and Douglas Wilson’s Heaven Misplaced are both short and easy to read.

Have a question about any of this? Ask us, or talk to one of the pastors after the service.