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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.
The Creeds Part 5: In One Holy Catholic Church
Series A Short Series on the Creeds
| Sermon ID | 112022326102207 |
| Duration | 50:34 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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