this morning by telling you about one of the most influential early writers in my own personal life. This was many, many years ago. One of the very first Bible studies that I ever had was from a book that this fellow wrote. He was an American Baptist pastor and a Bible teacher. His name was Clarence Larkin, and he lived around the turn of the 19th, 20th century, writing into the early 20th century. He was converted at the age of 19, He took a job at a bank, and then he left the bank just two years later to attend a college where he became a mechanical engineer and a professional draftsman, which means that he was a technician who learned to make detailed technical drawings, like blueprints. After this, he decided to become a teacher of the blind, and this cultivated in him a lot of descriptive abilities that went along with his artistic style. Then at the age of 32, Larkin was converted into the Episcopal Church, and he began to see his view of infant baptism challenged fairly quickly. He spent two years studying the subject of baptism, and that led to him becoming a Baptist. He saw that he had grown to love theology during this time, and so he was soon ordained as a Baptist minister. He would serve in two churches in Pennsylvania. Now, near the end of his life, he wrote his most famous book. This is a book that we've had in our family for a long time. It's published in the very unusual format of 10 by 10 inches. It's like a square, and it's giant. And this was to accommodate all these incredible, astounding charts that he and his movement would become known for. And the title of his book says it all, the greatest book on dispensational truth in all the world. Now, Larkin was a conservative Bible-believing, God-fearing man, but he was untrained and he was self-taught. He was especially influenced by John Darby and by C.I. Schofield, a couple of the most towering pillars of the first hundred years of the dispensational movement. Now, of all things, dispensationalism is popularly known for, which includes, obviously, its dispensational reading of history, as seven distinct stages, its supposed literal reading of Revelation, and probably the most famous of all is its pre-tribulational rapture theory. It's actually something that has deeply influenced modern Protestantism in ways that are almost totally unfamiliar to most people that really lies at the core of its theology. Charles Ryrie, who was a former dean in doctrinal studies, professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, wrote one of the most influential books on this topic about 1950. He asks a question, what marks off a person as a dispensationalist? He says, what is the absolutely indispensable part of the system? And his answer is this, a dispensationalist keeps Israel and the church distinct. Now, it's into this that I want to give a quote from Larkin, who was so influential in my own early theological development. Here's what he says. The church is the body of Christ. In Ephesians 1, we read, he has put all things under his feet and gave Jesus to be the head over all things of the church, which is his body. Then he says, the context shows that this headship was not possible until Jesus had been raised from the dead and seated at the right hand of the Father The church then could not have been in existence before there was a head, for God does not make headless things. The church then is the body of which Christ is the head. In 1 Corinthians, we're told how this body is formed, for as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of that one body being many are one body, so also is Christ. For by one spirit, the Holy Spirit, we're all baptized into one body, whether Jew or Gentile, whether bond or free. Then he says, from this we see that it is the baptism of the Spirit that incorporates us into the body of Christ. That is, there could be no church until the day of Pentecost. Now this idea that the church was utterly new was truly a novel innovation of dispensationalism in church history. Although it did clearly key on certain differences between Israel and the church, that people have been discussing for centuries. Nevertheless, this kind of thinking has had a profound influence on movements such as the Christian Zionism, ideas that the modern state of Israel is God's chosen people and can do no wrong, and for our purposes, the doctrine of ecclesiology or the doctrine of the church. Now in Larkin, at least, I do not believe that this ever came from anything other than theological and historical ignorance. He had no evil purpose to undermine the Trinity or to instill some kind of a mean God of the Old Testament versus that nice God of the New Testament theology that this kind of thinking has in some circles produced. I learned a lot about the Bible from Larkin, but I've come to believe that this kind of radical separation of the church and the Old Testament is novel. It is unbiblical. And it's even dangerous in what it implies about God and his plans for his people throughout the ages. Now, we're entering the final article of the creeds, at least the way that I'm breaking them up. And our thoughts are now transitioning from the Holy Trinity to Christ's Church, or as Larkin put it, from the head to the body. Now, this is a natural transition, although it's not found in the first Nicene Creed or in several of the Father's early creeds, which essentially end at the Holy Spirit. The creeds make the transition with the Holy Spirit. We saw last time that this made good sense, given the context of the place where the Holy Spirit dwells in the two Testaments. See, in the Old Testament, His dwelling was in the midst of His people, in the middle of the tabernacle and temple. But in the New Testament, His dwelling is now in is people. This was predicted throughout the Old Testament. The creeds teach us this, and by the Holy Spirit through the prophets. They pointed forward to a new thing that God would do in sending his spirit to all flesh, not just Jews, but also Gentiles. As the Spirit is our transition to the Church, I want us to notice that He does not merely indwell the individual believer, but the Church as well. In fact, it really isn't even possible to think of Church as just one person. The Word itself has, as its intrinsic meaning, an assembly of called-out ones, as we're going to see here shortly. You cannot have an assembly of one. We've spent the last three weeks thinking about saving faith, and because salvation is first and foremost an individual activity, it made a lot of sense to speak about that kind of saving faith that a Christian has to have in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And when I did this, I keyed off of the very first words of the creeds. Remember what they are? I believe. However, it's important now to notice that there's a difference in the way that the old Roman symbol and the Apostles' Creed and the liturgical forms of the Nicene Creeds read versus the original Greek of the two Nicene Creeds. The liturgical and the original art, they change a word with the Nicene Creeds. They don't begin with, I believe, they begin with, we believe. This is the first person plural, not singular. And this we runs throughout the second Nicene Creed, as it says, we acknowledge and we look for. Now, what is we? We is a group, is it not? The creeds are really all about groups. They're fashioned by groups. The first apparently being the apostles themselves in Jerusalem, with subsequent churches and councils drafting similar creeds later. They're meant to be confessed, not just as individuals, but together with the group. What is that group? The group is called the church. See, Christianity is not just me and Jesus. It's about us together confessing a common faith at the most essential level. It's not just that I bear the name Christian, but that together we bear the name Christians. Together, we take the name of Christ upon us. Together, we confess this God. Together, we move out into the world to make disciples. God gathers his elect together from the four corners of the earth. Together, we have fellowship and communion. Together, we're eager to maintain the spirit and bond of peace. Together, we're adopted as brothers and sisters into the royal household in a holy priesthood. Together we're going to dwell in eternity as the family of God. Are you getting the point? Now we saw in the introductory sermon that many think that creeds create division. But this is only true when heretics and schismatics and cultists are concerned. On essential things, the opposite is true because we allow for differences of opinion on secondary matters. It's our collective confession that demonstrates a common faith, unity of thought, and a singularity of purpose. Right? So how is that creating division? It's the opposite. And so this plural pronoun in the Nicene Creeds is vitally important, not just for our faith in Christ, but for perpetuating and propagating the faith once for all delivered to the saints in each subsequent generation. The creeds are the foundational doctrines that bind all Christians together in time and space. So with that, let's turn to the final article of the creeds and what they say about us together. Now, the three creeds that continue past confessing the Holy Spirit each begin with a short statement about the church. The old Roman symbol simply says the Holy Church. The noun is church. Now, because of the confusion that exists around the meaning and origin of this term, and because of how foundational it is to this last section of the creed, we're going to spend some time on this. So I'm going to work our way backwards. The English word church has a fascinating etymology, I discovered. It comes from the Old English circ, which is a place of assemblage set aside for Christian worship. I want you to notice the word assembly there. Now this, in turn, comes from a Proto-Germanic word, kyrka. This, in turn, seems to have been borrowed from an unrecorded Gothic word that comes from the Greek word kyriake, which itself comes from the word kyrios, which means Lord. So you want to know what you're saying when you say church, literally? When you say, we're going to the Lord's house, what you're saying is, we're going to church. And that's why that old saying was, that way we're going to the Lord's house today. All they're saying is we're going to church. It's the assembly of God's people locally. Now this word church translates the Greek word ecclesia. The word is a compound of ek that means out and kaleo which means to call or to summon. So literally the word church is a calling forth or a summoning. Now, curiously, this hints at two different ideas behind the word. In scripture, God effectually calls his chosen people. Think about Romans 8. Those whom he's predestined, he also called. This calling goes to individuals, and when they hear, they must respond. So it speaks to what we call the invisible church, those elect who've been or who will be brought to faith in Christ. But the summoning idea hints more at the corporate meaning. God summons many, many are called, Jesus says, and that speaks to what we call the visible church, those professing believers who gather to worship God locally. Now, the word first appears in the New Testament in Matthew 16, 18. We read for the gospel. I tell you, Peter, you are Peter on this rock. I will build my church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. It's going to be important to notice for later on a word play between Peter and a rock in the story. Peter is an apostle of Jesus. His name used to be Cephas, but Jesus changed it to Peter, and guess what Peter means? It means rock. So there's a word play. Rock, on this rock I will start my church. However, what this rock upon which Jesus builds has been the subject of debate for a long time. I believe it's deliberately vague triple entendre. That is, Jesus is going to build his church upon Peter, the Apostle, and upon Peter's confession or creed, which just two verses earlier was, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And also upon the literal rock that they're standing on, their accessory of Philippi, which is Mount Hermon. We're not meant to choose between these, and when you read theologians saying it has to be one or the other, I think they're making something mutually exclusive that isn't. Now the language that Jesus will bind or build has also been the source of confusion, especially to Mr. Larkin, who along with many others seem to believe that what this means is that there was no such thing as church prior to this. Now in a sense that's true, and in another sense it's not true. The sense in which it's true is that Jesus has now come in human flesh and done everything necessary to bring the Holy Spirit to indwell his church and his people, and that had never happened before. However, you have to understand that this word ekklesia does not arise in a vacuum. The Greeks had a long history of ecclesia that dated back to ancient times when they would call an assembly of male citizens in the city-states, especially in Athens. In 594, Solon, Plato's ancestor, allowed all Athenian citizens to participate in the ecclesia, regardless of their class. This assembly could do things like declare war, elect city officials, and have a final say on legislation. More important, ekklesia is the Greek word that the Septuagint translates from the Hebrew word. Now the Hebrew word is the word kahal and it means an assembly. So ekklesia is a great choice of word to use if you have to put it into your own language. Now here's the thing, this word is found throughout the Old Testament. It first appears in Deuteronomy 4. when it says, the day when you stood before the Lord our God at Horeb on the day of assembly, when the Lord said to me, gather the people to me and let them hear my words that they may learn to fear me all the days that they live in the land and you shall teach their sons. Now I find something really interesting The older, about 100-year-old English translation of the Septuagint only translates this word Ekklesia one time out of its 100 appearances as the word church. The rest of the time it just says an assembly. Interesting, Lexham just has a new English translation. It has zero times that it translates it church. The one time that you find it in this translation as church is in Psalm 22. Verse 22, what's the reason? Well, I think it has to be because Hebrews quotes this church or this verse, and it says this, I will declare your name to my brothers in the midst of the church, I will sing praise to you. And but even here, many English translations do not render ecclesia as church in Hebrews, but as congregation or assembly. So I hope you can see in this, Why there's so much confusion about the origin of the idea? There's a great inconsistency in how it's translated into English. And I find this unfortunate. But if Hebrews is citing the psalm as prophecy, and if it's using ecclesia, which itself comes from a translation two centuries before Jesus, then it stands to reason that the people before the time of Christ understood something of Christ's church even back then. And in fact, it is Jesus himself who assembled Israel around Mount Sinai in the first church in the Septuagint. So in this sense, the fact that Jesus assembled his people to learn the law and learn to fear God, and that he also does so in the New Testament with the very same word, it shows people are always saved by faith alone in him, and Jesus's church is not new at all. And the way I like to give this as a description of an illustration is that the New Testament is like the oak tree, and the Old Testament is the acorn. It's the same substance, the same essence, but one has grown up, okay? Now, theologically, what do we mean by church? Well, we've already seen that it's got an invisible and a visible distinction. Burkhoff says this. The Reformed conception is that Christ, by the operation of the Spirit, unites men with himself, endows them with true faith, and thus constitutes the church as his body. the communion of the faithful or saints." And then he goes on to say this, in Roman Catholic theology, the discussion of the Church takes precedence over everything else, preceding even the discussion of the doctrine of God and the divine revelation. The Church, it is said, has been instrumental in producing the Bible, and therefore takes precedence over it. It is moreover the dispenser of all supernatural graces. It is not Christ that leads us to the church, but the church that leads us to Christ. All the emphasis falls not on the invisible church as the community of the faithful, but on the visible church as the mother of the faithful. The Reformation broke with this Roman Catholic view of the church and centered attention once more on the church as a spiritual organism. It emphasized the fact that there is no church apart from the redemptive work of Christ and from the renewing operations of the spirit. Now, in using the words apostle and Rome and other ideas here, this is foreshadowing more confusion that people find as they go further into this that we'll talk about here soon enough. It's enough right now to say that yes, the plan of the Father and the work of the Son and Spirit are the ground upon which the church exists. When we confess that we believe in the church, we're confessing that she is the work and object of affection of the triune God. Now the Roman symbol also has an adjective attached to church. It's the same adjective that you find attached to the Spirit. The adjective is holy. So that word binds the spirit and the church together. Both are holy. It's the work of Christ through the spirit that does this. Ephesians 5 says, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor without spot or wrinkle or any such thing that she might be holy and without blemish. Now, this is the ongoing work of the Lord. It's rooted in the once for all work of Jesus on the cross. Colossians says, he is now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him. And what's the condition that you are made holy, that the church is made holy? Paul says, if indeed you can continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel, that you heard. So it's faith alone in Christ that does it. Now this means that just because something has the label church slapped onto it, it does not necessarily mean anything. This was Jesus' own warning to the church at Ephesus, remember? Remember therefore from where you have fallen, repent and do the work you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place unless you repent. And so there's a lot of churches out there that aren't really churches at all. Now it's into this that we need to think of the second adjective. This one comes from the Apostles and the second Nicene creeds and it's caused many Protestants great consternation. The word is Catholic. Now it's important here to distinguish between small c Catholic and capital C Catholic. The latter refers to a very specific church, that is the Church at Rome. This church has obviously planted a lot of churches over the world in the last 2,000 years. But when the creeds were all written, this is hardly referring to the Roman Catholic Church. Now, why not? Because all the churches from all over the place were represented, that's why. It's ludicrous to think that the churches at Jerusalem and Ephesus, Antioch, Lyons in France, Alexandria in Africa, and so on, would confess that they believe in the Roman Church. This is why it's good to compare the creeds. This is why it's interesting that the old Roman symbol simply says, I believe in the Holy Church. And Catholic is added by other to show this. What does Catholic mean? Catholic simply means universal. It comes from the Latin catholicus. That means universal or general. And that also comes from a Greek word, which is almost exactly the same thing. That comes from two words. It means about the whole. We find something very close to this in Acts 9.31. This is what it says. So the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up and walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit it multiplied. Church throughout is ecclesia catholos. Can you hear it? Essentially, it means the church all over or the church universal, the church Catholic, which is easily seen by all the locations that Luke talks about, which is everywhere, right? Now, William Perkins explains that the largeness of the church is noted in the word Catholic. That is general or universal. The church is Catholic in respect to time, place, and persons, and as such, it ministers endless comfort to us For no order, degree, or state of men are excluded from grace in Christ unless they will exclude themselves. Therefore, when you confess that you believe in the Holy Catholic Church, you are confessing that you believe that Jesus has one church, not thousands. One is the first of two adjectives that's unique to the second Nicene Creed. I believe in one Holy Catholic Church. And of course, this also carries the caveat that said earlier that you continue in the faith. Now we might also talk about the Catholic Church as the ancient church. And this takes us to the second adjective that's added in Nicaea, which is the word apostolic. We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. Now this is a terribly important word because it sets the universal church temporarily at ground zero. The word apostle simply means a messenger, and so it's really kind of a synonym with the word angel. We can use the word generically or in a special sense. Used in a special sense, it refers to those disciples chosen by Christ himself who knew him personally in the flesh. That means nobody in this room is an apostle. Every book in the New Testament had at least this criterion. Was the writer an apostle or of such close acquaintance to an apostle that the apostle had the final say over the material? See, Matthew and John, they were apostles. Luke was not an apostle, but guess what? He spent decades with Paul, the apostle, on his missionary journeys. Mark was not an apostle, but guess what? It appears that he actually took Peter's own other writings on the gospels when he wrote his own gospel, and Peter had oversight of it. Paul tells the church at Ephesus that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus being the cornerstone. So Jesus, of course, is the stone upon which the whole structure is built. Adding the prophets here shows the connection of the church to the Old Testament, and the apostles, they're the ones whom Jesus specifically sends out on the missionary journeys to make disciples of all nations at the end of Matthew 28. The earliest church was built by the apostles, and then the job of everyone after them was very simple. Carry on the teachings and the traditions of the apostles until Jesus returns. That's it. Paul tells the Corinthians, maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you. He tells the Thessalonians, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by the letter. See, the apostles were entrusted, Paul says, with the faith once for all as stewards. One of the greatest gifts the apostles gave us was the creeds, which we've seen tradition tells us came directly from them at the Council of Jerusalem. And as such, when we confess the apostolic church, we're confessing that we stand in a line of local churches that goes back 2,000 years to the very beginning, without gaps of centuries, because Christ has always had his church. There is no greater authority than the apostles. That includes councils and synods, or diets, or elders, or church boards, or charismatic pastors, or cult leaders. Jesus founded his church on these apostles, and our job is to know as best we can what he and his apostles taught, rooting our faith in scripture alone, using history and tradition and reason and wisdom to understand where the church has strayed and where it's stayed firm. over the years so that we can perpetuate the Church until He returns. Now, the Apostles' Creed also has a line that's found in none of the other three, and it's the line, The Communion of Saints. This line exists as a kind of synonymous parallelism to the Holy Universal Church, and it describes what the Church is. The Church is a communion of saints. How can you do that by yourself? How can you do that on the internet? How can you do that in a chat room? You do that in fellowship with one another. And it also tells us what we are to do. We are to have communion and fellowship with one another and with God together. And that's the whole point of why we gather. This isn't just a lecture that you come to hear on a Sunday. It's you coming together as God's people in communion with one another as we perpetuate this until Jesus returns. You understand that? Now, we spent an inordinate amount of time on this first line of this article, but I thought it was necessary to lay a foundation, including the history and the meaning and the basic doctrine of the church. Because now we have this foundation, now we can move on to the second statement. Here's what the old Roman symbol says, simply this, the remission of sins. And the Apostle Creed says the forgiveness of sins. The second Nicene adds something important, we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. Now there's two different English words, remission and forgiveness, but in the original it's just one word. So in other words, to remit is to forgive. This line gets at the heart of the gospel. Paul says, in Christ we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Now, yes, this comes right after the church, and so the church is kind of a vehicle through which it happens, but this is not that in the church we have the forgiveness of sins, but in Christ we have it. John says, I'm writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name's sake. And then Luther gives Ephesians 1.7 as his proof text. In him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of his grace. Now these each point out a vital thing. Our sins are forgiven by grace alone for the sake of Christ alone. You do not have forgiveness of your sins because somehow you only did 49% bad things in this life. or even .00001 bad things in this life. Forgiveness comes through faith in Christ Jesus alone, recognizing that what he underwent for you satisfied God's wrath no matter what sins you have or will commit. This does not mean that our lives as Christians are spent sinning so the grace will increase. Jesus teaches us to pray, Father, forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. This is not God forgiving you only if you first forgive someone else, but rather we forgive out of thankfulness for His forgiveness. If we refuse to forgive others, it can only be because we have forgotten or never personally or even corporately knew the forgiveness of God for our massive debt against Him. Peter thought that he was pretty special. Go into his Lord and he goes, hey, how often will my brother sin against me and I forgive him? As many as seven times? I mean, right, most people, they might forgive once, but hey, Jesus, I'm willing to do it seven times. Jesus said, I say to you, not seven times, but 70 times seven. Now somebody will come along and say, well, then after the 70 times seven, then can I stop? Jesus is not saying keep a record of wrongs so that if you reach that number, then you don't need to forgive. Rather, his point is that you have no idea how many millions of times God has forgiven you, so then you can forgive others their many less offenses. It's knowing that you're totally forgiven, freed, and pardoned, released, and liberated from all your sins that allows you to move forward in this life to be progressively sanctified and made holy. If you don't have that, you are stuck. It's just here that it's good to talk about the baptism edition of the Second Nicene Creed. Now, if there's another misunderstood comment in the creeds, it has to be this one. When we confess that there is one baptism for the remission of sins, are we confessing baptismal regeneration, like Rome says? Does this put salvation into the direct hands of priests? Is it teaching something other than salvation by faith alone? So to answer this question, it's helpful to understand the history of the creed, and that it seems to come from Cyril of Jerusalem's catechetical lectures. Of all the church fathers that come prior to Nicaea, in all their creeds, his is the one that says this almost verbatim. His creed at Jerusalem said, and in one baptism of repentance for the remission of sins. Fortunately, we actually have Cyril's lectures on this very subject to tell us what he meant. He begins by talking about baptism, and he bids you this, may the souls of all of you be found not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. Now, lest anyone think that this baptism will save you, is what he's talking about, he corrects you and he says, I do not mean before you have received the grace, for how could that be true of you who are called for the remission of sins, but that the grace given your conscience being found blameless may be suitable, suitable for grace. Cyril very clearly has sanctification in mind throughout this lecture of baptism. He says, after the grace of the spirit, scripture says that Peter then ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. that after the soul had been regenerated by faith, the body also, by means of the water, might share the grace." Again, he says, if a man does not receive baptism, and he's talking about water baptism, he does not attain salvation excepting only the martyrs who, even without water, receive the kingdom. Now, he can't be talking about baptismal regeneration because he says the martyrs are not baptized into water and yet they're saved. In fact, he continues by explaining that this whole line of thinking is directed at those who scorn baptism and pretend to piety. One should not shun Jesus' command to be baptized. What Cyril is teaching about baptism for the remission of sins is that we are, quote, sprinkled with hyssop and cleansed by the spiritual hyssop and by the power of him who in his passion was offered drink on the stock of hyssop. That sprinkling of hyssop is our baptism into salvation. And it alone is the work of God by his spirit. Therefore, because we have been saved, he says, let the heavenly powers rejoice and let the souls who are united with their spiritual spouse prepare themselves. And he then views baptism as the preparation for eternity for somebody who's already Christ's bride. He cites Jesus. himself who was baptized. He says not that he was baptized to receive the remission of sins, for he was without sin, being sinless and nevertheless baptized, that he might impart grace and dignity to those who received the sacrament. Jesus was baptized that we in turn herein may be made partakers with him, that we might receive not only salvation, but also dignity. And dignity differs from salvation. The dignity of what? Of a powerful, sanctified life. Water baptism is the beginning of this. It's our first act of obedience as Christ's bride. He says that Jesus crushed the heads of the dragon. And because of his work, our baptism gives us the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions. He's talking about water baptism being the physical setting apart of our bodies that already happened to our hearts when the Spirit baptized us. So when we confess one baptism for the remission of sins, we confess that Jesus, by his own work and through the Holy Spirit, regenerates us through the spiritual baptism. And through water performed through that bride, the church shows that he does not leave the body to itself, but rather in washing the body, he begins to make preparations to receive his bride, the church, by empowering her with supernatural power so that she can be reunited to him in eternal marital bliss. Quite a beautiful addition and it's not teaching that water baptism saves you. Third line of this article ties us back to Jesus. The Roman symbol says the resurrection of the flesh and the Apostles Creed says the resurrection of the body. Second Nicene says we look for the resurrection of the dead. Now flesh and body are the same word in the original. What we're affirming is that these bodies that we're in right now are going to be resurrected. The Nicene is adding that because we die, we need to look forward to the resurrection of the dead. It isn't just Jesus' resurrection that's at the center of our faith. Because we're united to Christ as the husband to a bride, we must live again as he does. Jesus's body was raised from the dead, and therefore his bride will be raised from the dead. Jesus is not a necromancer. He is life itself, and he's able to give life to our mortal bodies through the spirit who dwells in us. So the creed is telling us to look forward to our own resurrections. Luther's proof text is another good one. Jesus said, Do not marvel at this for an hour is coming when all who are in tombs will hear his voice and come out those who have done good to the resurrection of life, those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. And that nicely leads to something that we find in one of the creeds of Epaphanius. It says, after one baptism of repentance, this is what his church taught, and we also believe in a righteous judgment of the souls and bodies. This is what Jesus is talking about. And it's good to think of this here even though we basically saw it at the end of the second article on Christ. This is a complement to the resurrection of the dead. We are not raised to nothing. We're raised to face the judge of the living and the dead. All people will have to face God for what they did in the body, whether good or bad. This judgment is going to be a righteous judgment. It will not be partial. There will be no bribes taken by the judge. The judge won't care if you're rich or poor, or Jew or Gentile, or black or white, or male or female. He will judge solely on what is right and wrong. It will be a judgment that, again, integrates the whole human. Bodies and souls will be judged. Together they will go off to their eternal reward or eternal punishment. Tertullian's Creed said, he will come again with glory to take the saints into the enjoyment of eternal life and the celestial promises and to judge the wicked with eternal fire after the resurrection of both with the restitution of the flesh. See, the resurrection is as inevitable as your next breath or tomorrow's sunrise. Injustice will not go on forever. All people must think through both the coming judgment and the resurrection more than they do. And sadly, many are not thinking about either one, including many Christians. But our great hope is that we have the forgiveness of sins now, that we've already been judged in Christ's death now, and that when we're raised from the dead, Jesus will tell every Christian, well done, my good and faithful servant. This is the grace of God and the work of God from the beginning to the end. Now a second thought found in some of the earlier creeds at this point confesses the kingdom of heaven. We find it in Epaphanias, the Apostolic Constitutions and others. I wanted to mention this here because it's a nice compliment to the forgiveness of sins. The kingdom of heaven is the eternal realm that all believers will be citizens of for eternity in the resurrected state. Even Abraham waited for this. Jesus ushered it in and it was here through his ministry. though you couldn't observe it with human eyes because he says the kingdom of heaven is within you. How is it within you? It's within you by faith in Christ. It's king. And what must happen to you to get into this kingdom? You have to be transferred from one kingdom to another and be forgiven. And so Paul says this. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred into us into the kingdom of his beloved son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. And that takes us to the final statement of the creeds. It's either, and the life everlasting, amen, or and the life of the world to come, amen. Now, world to come reminds us very much of the kingdom of heaven language that we just discussed. Life teaches us about not only the resurrection, but about its purpose. Jesus has given us life. Not death. Everlasting teaches us about its time frame. Now, I always think about weird things, and I think about a revenant. You know what a revenant is? They come back to life for a moment, but they don't come back forever. A ghost has an appearance of life, but it doesn't have a body. What is promised here in this last phrase is eternal life in the world to come. It is not possible to conceive of greater gift or blessing, a greater promise or a hope. than everlasting life. All Christians should remember and keep this hope before them on a daily basis. And as a concluding note, I found it interesting that Cyprian in his creed says this, I believe in the forgiveness of sins and eternal life through the Holy Church. Now, of course, it was Cyprian who made famous the phrase, he can no longer have God as his father who has not had the church for his mother. This is a great way to encapsulate everything we've seen today, which has focused on the church. But Cyprian, who died in about 258, a hundred years before Nicaea, was not talking about Rome. He was talking about the universal church, the bride of Christ, the one for whom he especially died so that he might save her and wash her and purify her and take her to be his eternal wife. The point of this last section of the creeds is that you fall in love with Christ's church. Not merely as an individual or as a family, but as God's family together. She's fallen on very hard times in these last days. Most of the West wants nothing to do with corporate religion. They do not want and indeed cannot perpetuate and propagate the faith once for all delivered to the saints because they're too busy running away from the saints. because they're too busy running away and thinking about all the sinfulness and the hurt that other people will give to them. They're gonna let each other down. And you wanna know what I think? I think in this, they think far too highly of themselves. Because you can't run away from yourself. Neither should you run away from the church. Only together in unity can we reform things that have broken down. Only together can we shine the light to the world that is in increasing darkness. But together is precisely the point of the church. The New Testament knows nothing, nothing of purely individual Christianity. Indeed, the Old Testament knows nothing of it either. Only corporately do we truly represent Christ's bride as one body with many parts and many gifts. Jesus promises that he will preserve and care for her until he returns to take her home to heaven with him. He promises to preserve our unity if we will just but go in a local expression of the universal aspect of the church and do it by faith in him. Each of these last sections of the creeds are nothing without the church. And in fact, they have their meaning collectively in her. But this means we gotta have better theology than what we saw at the beginning, where some think the church is a brand new organism that had no form or existence at all prior to Jesus. This just isn't true, since it was Jesus who assembled his people in the first place at Mount Sinai. While it's more like the acorn than the oak in the Old Testament, it was still there. And it behooves us to think better about the church. in these difficult days. I have this belief that as the church goes, so goes the world. Christians blame the world far too much and far too easily. The world is what it has always been. You think it's any different now than it ever has been? That will never change. But the church, you see, she's the light of Christ. She is the city on the hill, the salt of the world, not America, Much as I love Ronald Reagan, not America, the church. And if the world has gone to hell, we should look no farther than our own doorstep for that. Judgment begins with the house of God. This is true on a micro and macro level. If a local church is healthy and well, her people will be healthy and well. If the church is making a strong impact on the world through its proclamation, the long gospel, taking care of its own, caring for poor and downtrodden, fighting for unity and truth, passing down the faith once for all, entrusted no matter the cost, then she is a light shining in the darkness. Luther can help us think better here, as he has with the rest of the creeds. He says, what is meant by this article? His answer is, as the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me by his gifts, and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith, in like manner as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the true faith, in which Christian church he daily forgives abundantly all my sins, and the sins of all believers, and he will raise me up and all the dead at the last day and will grant everlasting life to me and all who believe in Christ. This most certainly is true. Now, of course, that necessitates that the church herself has no meaning apart from the triune God who has worked so diligently and perfectly for her redemption. So we can see how it's the totality of the creeds coming together that form the most essential doctrines of the Christian faith. So my last word on this little series to you is look to the totality of the creeds, confessing these essentials of what it means to be a Christian, confessing them by faith together and as individuals, that God would have mercy and shower his grace upon us for Christ's sake. That's why we have them. May God bless you as you endeavor to put into practice these words of Augustine that we looked at about five weeks ago, and I'll finish with them. Receive, my sons, the rule of faith, which is called the creed. When you have received it, write it on your hearts, recite it daily to yourselves. Before you go to sleep, before you go forth, fortify yourselves with your creed. Let your memory be your codex, that you may be able to review it, if it should happen that forgetfulness effaces what diligence has given you. You will believe what you hear yourself saying, and your lips will repeat what you believe. The apostle says truly, For with the heart, a man believes to justice and with the mouth, profession of faith is made to salvation. This is the creed that you will be going over in your thoughts and repeating from memory. These words that you have heard are scattered throughout the divine scriptures. They have been assembled and unified to facilitate the memory of dull mankind in order that everyone will be able to say the creed and adhere to what he believes. Let's pray together. Or do we do ask you bless this series that we've looked at and thinking about the most basics of our faith. These things come from your holy word and they've simply been collected in the short sayings of what is so essential for us to know about who you are and what you have done for us individually and corporately through your church. ask that you would impress these things on our minds, encourage our hearts, especially as a local body here in this church together, that our communion of saints would be sweeter and richer for having gone through this. We ask this in Jesus name.