my introduction and I'll tell you about it at the end of the sermon. His words carry weight that would break a lesser interesting man's jaw. He is the life of parties he has never attended. People hang on his every word, even the prepositions. If he were to pat you on the back, you would list it on your resume. Sharks have a week dedicated to him. His beard alone has experienced more than lesser man's entire body. Sasquatch has taken a photo of him. He's been known to cure narcolepsy just by walking into a room. His legend precedes him the way lightning precedes thunder. His reputation is expanding faster than the universe. Who is the true most interesting man in the world? So there's been no one that has been more written or debated, loved or hated, orthodox or updated, historical or conflated, controversial or restated figure in the human history than Jesus of Nazareth. People who don't believe in him still find themselves fixated on him. People who know nothing about him still use his name as a curse word. Some people want him as simply a great teacher. Others say his lost years found him wandering around India, becoming an ascended master. Some say he didn't die in Jerusalem, that he went off with Mary Magdalene to France, where he sired an entire royal bloodline. Still others say he never even existed, and that he's just a myth in line with others of death and resurrection, like Balder, Osiris, or Quetzalcoatl. Now there's a famous trilemma, to which I have seen a fourth important point added, that good Christian apologists will explain that Jesus was either a liar, a lunatic, a legend, or the Lord. And these are mutually exclusive. Only one can be true, and importantly, one of them must be true. John Duncan, who was a Calvinist minister, And the Free Church of Scotland said a couple of hundred years ago, Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or he was himself deluded and self-deceived, or he was divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable. Now this statement rests on grounds that Jesus was real. that he made impossible claims about himself, and then he did impossible things to prove their validity. These claims are historical. They are public. They are open to investigation of all types, legal, moral, sociological, archaeological, historical. Because of how serious they are, they beg every single person to do their due diligence and come to a rational, fair conclusion that will have eternal consequences for their soul. In the second article of the creeds, we turn to these claims to see what it is that Christians believe about this person. In a famous lecture given at Battersea Town Hall in 1927, the famous atheist Bertrand Russell stated the importance of the creeds in defining a Christian. He said, in the days of Augustine and Aquinas, if a man said that he was a Christian, it was known what he meant. You accepted a whole collection of creeds, which were set out with great precision, and every single syllable of those creeds you believed with the whole strength of your convictions. Now, as we have and will see, these doctrines are not made up by the creeds, but are simply the collected teachings of the scriptures themselves. Now, before getting to that, let's return to the subject that we began to investigate last time, which is the idea of saving faith. Saving faith is at the start of the creeds. Remember the very first two words, I believe. That's the word credo, which means I believe. We saw that saving faith consists of three components. First one is notitia. Second is a census. The third is fiducia. Last time we looked at notitia. This is the basic knowledge that you have to have of God to be saved. Now our focus was on the Father, but such knowledge is equally true of the Son and the Spirit. Today, however, we're going to turn to a census as we think about God the Son. Now, we're also going to give knowledge, of course. We're going to focus on a census. What is that? This is intellectual assent to the truth of a proposition. First, you have to know the thing, then you move to a conviction and assurance that the thing is true. But just here, before we start looking specifically at the second article of the Creed about Jesus, we need to spend a moment thinking about assent to propositions regarding faith. Now, sometimes knowledge can simply be learning the facts of a thing. This is really what we focused on last time. But even last time, we saw that the word knowledge can have a deeper meaning. For example, in Psalm 4610, be still and know that I am God. This necessitates a deeper knowledge than just knowing facts. its intimate personal knowledge. Hence, philosophers speak of knowledge as more than just hearing facts. Knowledge is usually said, like faith, to have three components. They call it justified, true belief. So let's look at these backwards. Now, many do not think of belief as part of knowledge, but rather as faith. Of course, the end goal of knowledge is belief, but many people tear faith and belief right off the bone of knowledge, as if faith or belief should be an irrational leap in the dark. That is something that you do in spite of knowledge. This is not biblical belief. According to Hebrews, faith or belief is the assurance of what you hope for and the conviction of what you do not see and conviction is is a scent. It's not a leap in the dark. It's a sure and certain thing of what? Well, if something that is true now people can hold to extremely sure and certain convictions about things that are simply not true. My grandfather spent his entire life believing that he would be raptured before he died. I remember seeing him in the hospital three days before the Lord took him. He told me that he had been wrong, and it was eating him up inside. Jesus did not rapture him, and now he was coming face to face with the consequences of his wrong belief. He was, in fact, going to have to die. Grandpa had belief, but it was not true belief. And therefore, he did not actually know about the rapture at all. See, believing something to be true when it is false is not knowledge but it can have very unwanted consequences. For example, if you believe that you can climb the north face of Longs Peak without ropes, and you go up there and try, and you get up there 50 feet, only to find out you were wrong, that might very well be a deadly belief. Hence the third component for knowledge, it must be justified. Now typically what this means is that you have substantiated, supported evidence to back up your belief. In fact, just like people can have belief in false things and not have real knowledge, believe it or not, you can believe true things and still not have knowledge of the thing. For example, you could pick six numbers in a lottery because they felt very meaningful to you and end up winning the jackpot. but most people would call that luck because you didn't actually have any advance warning, especially if you did this every single week and kept losing. You could believe that the longest tenured president in the most excellent decade of the 80s had his initials as R.R. and that he was an actor, but you thought his name was Roy Rogers. As far as it goes, your belief is true, but your reasoning is totally unjustified. That's called a coincidence or an accident. And no one would say that you actually knew who the president or what the right numbers were, even though they were true. So knowledge is justified. True belief. We're talking about Jesus today with a scent in mind because of all three of the persons of the Trinity, he is the one that it's the easiest to think about as it regards a scent. and justified true belief because Jesus was an historical, verifiable, falsifiable person. Jesus is not Paul Bunyan. His story is not a tall tale. Rather, what we confess about him is totally the opposite of this. So let's move into the creed here. Beginning of your sermon in the PDF, I have them all side by side. You can look at that if you want. You can follow along here if you want. I don't really care. As we move into what the creeds say about Jesus, let's notice the first word that introduces us to Him. The word is and. As the old Roman symbol put it, and in Christ Jesus, or as the Apostle Creed says backwards, and in Jesus Christ. What does the and mean here? Well, what it means is I believe. See, most of the creeds only say, I believe, at the very beginning. But when they say, and, well, they're connecting back to, I believe. So it's, I believe in God the Father Almighty, and I believe in Jesus Christ. And thus, we still have faith at the headwaters of the second article. You must believe in Him, which requires knowledge and assent. So let's learn more about Him. He's introduced to us with either His name first or his title. So his name is Jesus, Jesus in the Greek. Jesus is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Joshua. The name means God saves, Yahshua. This name originates in the message of the angel Gabriel who told Mary to call him Jesus because he would save his people from their sins. But it also has roots in the typology of Joshua, who was the deliverer that brought God's people into the promised land after Moses. Now, Christ is not Jesus' last name. This is his title. He is the Christ. Hence, it sometimes comes before Jesus in the creeds. This is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word anointed. which we sometimes say Messiah, the word Mashiach. Hence, he is Jesus the Anointed One. He's Jesus the Messiah. This is a title that's often attributed to David, but also to his son, for example, in Psalm 2-2, as prophecy. The Anointed or the Messiah is what the coming Savior of God's people would be. He would be anointed. he would be the Messiah. Now at this point, son, the word son, is precisely what all four creeds say about Jesus. But not David's son, rather God's son. The Roman symbol in the Apostles Creed say that Jesus is His only son, our Lord, that is the father's. Now, last time, remember, we saw that if God is father, he has to have sons. Now we focused our attention on the created heavenly and earthly sons, that is humans and especially God's chosen people. But now we have Jesus. Look at this as God's only son. So the question is, I think, obvious. How can the father have many sons if Jesus is the only son? I think that one needs to be answered. So the language is clearly taken from John's gospel, where popularly, Jesus is called the only begotten son of God, as the King James puts it. Now, the King James translates a Greek word. The word is monogynous. which is in fact the word used in the Greek versions of all the creeds. The idea of the son being begotten again comes from Psalm 2. You are my son, today I have begotten you. We actually see that in Psalm 110 that we saw beginning of our worship service in the Septuagint as well. Now when we hear begotten in English, we cannot help but think of birth and therefore creation, right? So to say that Jesus is begotten, well, does that mean that he was created? Are Arians and Jehovah's Witnesses correct? Well, maybe it's into this very thought that the Nicene Creeds add some very important specialized and technical language. The first Nicene Creed says Jesus is the only begotten that is of the essence of the Father, God of God. Now clearly this defines what is meant by only begotten. This is defined as the essence of the Father. Now that makes good sense, right? Because if Jesus is begotten of the Father, then he must be of the essence of his Father. The same way that each of us is of the same essence as our fathers. That is, we are humans. Because our fathers are humans. So God the Father is God, therefore to be of the same essence as the Father is to be God of God. The God of God, that's begotten language. He's God of God. This language continues in both versions of Nicaea by using different figures of speech. So the second Nicaean Creed adds that Jesus was before all worlds, or aeons, meaning that his begottenness never had a beginning. since he was before all other things. And thus it along with the first Nicaean ad, by whom all things were made, and the first Nicaean even goes farther, both in heaven and on earth, recalling the language of the father. Now recall that this is the very same language of the father in article one. And so the same language is used of the son as of the father. And we find this exactly found in Colossians chapter one, 15 through 18 that we looked at last time. The first night scene continues that using some other ideas that Jesus is light of light. So God is light, meaning that God, the father is light. And Jesus is the light that came into the world. Jesus is very God of very God, it says. That is, he's not a copy of God. He's as fully and truly God as it's possible to be. And finally, he is begotten, not made, and then he uses a big word, consubstantial with the Father. So what does consubstantial mean? I find this really interesting. I hope you will too. The Greek word used here is the word homoousios. You may have heard this if you studied church history. Word comes from the word hom and ousia, which means the same substance. So, consubstantial means of the same substance or essence. Now, a few years after the first Nicene Creed, a group of conservative, and in fact, not Arian bishops, wanted to say that Jesus was homoiousias. From homoious, meaning similar, rather than same. Now all this was was one letter difference. Listen, homoousios, homoousios. One letter. The letter is the letter iota in Greek. I. And this historical moment gave rise to the saying that's still used to this day when we say it doesn't make one iota of difference. In this case, that one iota was the difference between saying Jesus was God or not God, creator or creature, or creature, one letter. Now, eventually, those many bishops who argued for this word were actually reconciled to the Nicene Fathers and the language of Homo Ussias. They changed their mind, thanks to the mending efforts of the Cappadocian Fathers, who really staved off a gigantic church split as they did it. Now, one more reflection on these words is appropriate here. While the creeds themselves answer the question of whether or not Jesus is born, as in created, or born as in of the same substance as the Father, the scripture actually teaches the same thing. And we can get at this through that word monogenes. Now, for many years, it was thought that this Greek word was derived from the word genao, which means begotten, and hence only begotten. However, this has since been challenged, and today the most popular suggestion is that it derives from a similar word, but not the same word. The word is genos, meaning unique or of a kind. So some translations, instead of saying he's the only begotten son, they'll say he is the only and unique son. And this is actually reflected in the Latin of the Old Roman Creed and the Apostles' Creed, which use the word unicus, from which we get the word unique. In other words, Jesus is the unique Son of God, or to put it another way, of all the sons, there are none of the same kind as Jesus. And this is precisely what the creeds teach. So that's what the word Monogenes is teaching, and we can see this actually in the New Testament, because Isaac is called Abraham's monogenes son. Now, if we say that that means he's the only begotten son, then what do you do with Ishmael, who was older than Isaac and is also Abraham's son? But if we say that Isaac was the unique son, that is the son of a miracle birth, the son of the promise alone, then suddenly the word makes a lot of sense. And this is what we're affirming when we confess that Jesus is the only son of the Father. This is also made clearer, I think, in the next word for him, which is Lord. He is Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord. Now, Lord is the word Kyrios. Luther has a wonderful proof text here. It's Thomas's confession of faith. Very short, Thomas says, my Lord and my God. Now for Thomas, Lord was the equivalent to God. And so this helps us again see Jesus is God. Even though the word Lord is often applied in the New Testament to humans, since we've not yet come into his Humanity in the creed, and I think this is important, he hasn't been born yet, right? In the creed, just look at it. Then Lord has to be a reference to, I think, his infinite authority as a ruler, God. There might be another kind of proof text you could use here for this, something like Psalm 110.1, one of the most quoted Old Testament verses in the New Testament. It says, the Lord says to my Lord, This is David talking. So the Lord says to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. And the Hebrew word for the first Lord is Yahweh. The second Hebrew word for the second word, which is Adonai. So he's saying, Yahweh said to Adonai, And curiously in Greek, it's the same word. And what Jesus does is he comes along and he takes this very verse and he asks the Pharisees, he says, how is it possible that David calls him Lord when the same person is also David's son? And they have no answer. Somehow this Lord is the greatest King of Israel's Lord. And this is because he's always existed and is in fact God. This is Jesus Christ, our Lord, whom David knew. And yet he's also David's son. And so that moves us to the next part of the creeds. Now, so far, the creed has put it in the realm of heaven, as it concerns Jesus and his deity. But their next move is to show his descent from heaven to earth in the form of a man. The old Roman symbol says, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. The Apostles Creed's a little clearer because it says he was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. So we are not confessing what Mormons confess, that somehow Elohim God had sexual relations with a woman. Rather, it is the angel Gabriel who announced to Mary this. He said, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, The child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. Now, people want to know, well, how did that happen? And my answer is, the only thing I can say is that this is a miracle. Because Gabriel is very specific in who he came to. It says, a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. Now virgins are people who have never had sexual relations, not even a single time. But of course, that's the only way children are conceived. But all this would happen to her before she came together with Joseph. And she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit, that is from the power of God, not man. That's an incredible thing. Now amazingly, that the Messiah would be born of a virgin actually came from a prophecy 700 years before it happened. And it's very specific and pointed and unambiguous. Isaiah said, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. You need to take this very seriously because Who can prophesy something like this? Now, Immanuel means God with us. And in fact, if he had a human father, he would not be God. So to state the obvious, this incredible prophecy took place in real human history. It took place long before the event occurred. So how is it possible that this prophecy could have happened and then it's fulfilled unless God was behind the prediction and the fulfillment. That leads to a similar point about Mary. Mary was a real historical figure, a human woman. She lived in a real place at a specific time. She was betrothed to a man named Joseph, who was descended from the tribe of Judah. We know her cousin's name, which was Elizabeth. Some have even argued that we have her genealogy in Luke's gospel, although I think that that's Joseph's genealogy. Nevertheless, church history has saved for us her genealogies outside of the Bible. We know her parents' name. Now, I want to say one more thing about Mary. Both very much and very little have been made of Mary over the centuries. These days, In my opinion, Rome virtually worships her as a goddess, as a mediatrix, as a woman born of Adam who was without sin. Now, maybe a knee-jerk reaction, I'm not sure. Many Protestants can barely get up the nerve to even say her name. It's never right to worship the creation, even if she is the mother of Jesus. But what we must all do is recognize that God chose this backwoods, no name, young girl living up in Galilee to bear God in her womb. This is an unprecedented privilege among all humans. And blessed was Mary for it. This really happened and many people back then knew her and they knew her story and they've written it down for you so that you might believe it. Now it's just here that the Nicene Creed makes the theology a little more pointed. It says, who for us men and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man. The other one adds came down from heaven. That is, this is very important, this person, Jesus, did not begin to exist in the womb of Mary, but rather he came down from heaven and entered her womb, becoming a man. The word here is incarnate, from where we get the word carnal. The word means made flesh, or more precisely, human flesh. Now I need to say a word here about angels, and even the angel of the Lord. While angels in both testaments come here in the form of men, and the Hebrew word is ish, never Adam, which is what humans are, they still have angelic bodies, even if they look similar to ours. They are not carnal bodies. They are not fleshly bodies from the word sars in the Greek. They are not our bodies. And so even the angel of the Lord, who is Christ pre-incarnate, was not a human in the Old Testament. He was an angel. See, the incarnation only happened one time in all of history to anyone, and this is Jesus, the son of Mary. It says, and he was made man, that is, anthropos, that is, a son of Adam. And in this, while he is of the same substance as his father as it regards his deity, he is therefore of the same substance as his mother as regards his humanity. See, Jesus is not a half-breed, nor is he a demigod. He's not 50% divine and 50% human. He is not a Nephilim, okay? He is fully God and fully man. Philippians explains it this way. Though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form. The Athanasian Creed puts it this way. We believe and confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, God's son, is both God and human equally. He is God from the essence of the father, begotten before time. He is human from the essence of his mother, born in time, completely God, completely human. Now, if you can't wrap your mind around this, am I gonna scold you? No, because you're not alone. It's totally unique. And yet this is what we confess. I'm glad I got a name in for that because it deserves it, doesn't it? Now Philippians continues, being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. So Philippians takes us from the birth to his suffering and death. That takes us right to the next statements about Jesus and the creeds. They regard his suffering. The Roman symbol says, who under Pontius Pilate was crucified and buried. The Apostles' Creed fleshes it out a little more. It says he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. Interestingly, the first Nicene only says he suffered. That's all it says. You might want to know why. I think it's because this creed was actually using Eusebius of Caesarea's church's creed as a starter, and that's all it says. But the second Nicene Creed adds back in all that was before. He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried. Now to me, the most interesting thing of all of this is that they all go out of their way to tell us about Pontius Pilate, that he was part of Christ's suffering. Why would they do that? Well, it's because we're still dealing with real human history. The creeds will not allow us to move out into myth, legend, or fable. they necessitate that we deal with recorded history. Pontius Pilate was the fifth governor of the Roman province of Judea, serving under Emperor Tiberius from 27 to 37 AD. He's the best attested governor in all of Judean history. We have many coins that he minted while in office. You could go buy one if you want. There's a fragmentary short inscription of him called the Pilate Stone, which is the only inscription about a Roman governor from Judea predating the Roman-Jewish wars. You can go see that in a museum. Josephus talks about him. So does Philo. He appears in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, and 1st Timothy, as well as in three letters of Ignatius, the martyr at the end of the first century. And he's also found even in the Roman historian Tacitus, who mentions him, and this is what he says, he goes, from whom the name Christian has its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate. So to put it bluntly, it would have been impossible to fabricate a tale that Pilate put Jesus to death if it didn't happen. You understand that? This is what the suffering in the creeds then leads us to consider. He was crucified, died, and was buried. Now, long accounts of these are found in all four of the Gospels. I won't go through those today. Crucifixion, I want to talk about that for a minute. If you don't know what crucifixion is, it's worth knowing something about it. This was probably the ultimate form of torture in the Roman world, probably the cruelest method of the death penalty that had yet been devised in all world history. The crucified person spends hours on a splintery wooden plank, rubbing up and down on it. Often tied, sometimes nailed to it, the method of death is suffocation. But rather than choke quickly, they would provide a little tiny seat that was angled downward rather than horizontal, just enough so that you could pull yourself back up, catch your breath a little before you fell right back down and started to asphyxiate again. The process usually took many hours and in fact, even days as you were burned and dehydrated in the hot sun for good measure. Now again, citing Psalm 2, the disciples, led by Peter and John, then pray to God this prayer. Truly, this is the city where they gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place. So what are they talking about predestined to take place? Well, they're surely citing the many Old Testament scriptures that speak directly to this event. You can think of Isaiah 53, probably the best known. And to this day, it's the passage that gives the Jews no end of grief as they deny their Messiah, because it's so specific. Here, the suffering servant, quote, took up our pain and bore our suffering, which the disciples over and over again say refers to crucifixion. Psalm 22 predicts it in many ways. The law of Moses predicted it, saying, cursed is anyone who's hung on a tree. Predicting the event himself, Jesus said that the Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent on the pole in the wilderness. In fact, he predicted the whole thing many times before it ever happened. Now, the creeds say that he died. There have been many attempts through the centuries to say, oh, Jesus didn't really die at all. No, didn't die. The popular and yet completely absurd swoon theory of the 19th century said that Jesus was like the man in black in The Princess Bride, only mostly dead after this ordeal. But this is not the claim. John could not be clearer. One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once out came blood and water." Now, what this means is that the spear pierced Jesus' heart, meaning that he was dead. Luke is even simpler, simply saying he breathed his last, as even Isaiah had predicted, that he would die. Now, because he died like any Jew of the day, he would have been buried. and buried he was. Again, Isaiah, they made his grave with the wicked. The Gospels tell us that Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, asked Pilate if he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. Nicodemus, who was very skeptical of Jesus in John 3, comes here and mixes myrrh and aloes to anoint the dead body of Jesus. And it says, And they took the body of Jesus, and they bound it with linen cloths and with spices, and they laid him in a garden tomb. And then a great stone was rolled over the entrance. And for good measure, the Roman centurions guarded it with their life. Now, at this point, the Apostles Creed adds probably the most discussed and disagreed upon line in all the creeds, at least among Orthodox Christians. It says he descended into hell. Now, what does this mean? So heretics teach that it means Jesus went to hell to be further punished as if his punishment on the cross and being forsaken by the father was not enough. Perhaps in response to this, many reformed who, by the way, follow Calvin, even though Calvin's view on this was, quote, virtually unattested prior to him and entirely novel in church history. and I don't usually say that about Calvin, but in this case it was true. They will say that, well, what this really refers to is Jesus suffering the full range of suffering in this life on the cross. So when he descended into hell, he's still alive on the cross. Now, I do want to say it's true that what Jesus suffered on the cross was hellish, but that isn't what it means. Better, some have said that it just means that, well, he went to the place of the dead, which was Sheol in the Old Testament, Hades in the Greek. And certainly that is at least what it means. But, I want you to notice something. The Creed does not say that Jesus was crucified, descended into hell, died, and was buried. Okay? It doesn't say that. Nor does it say that he was crucified, descended into hell, and was buried. As if it's the same thing as dying. Rather, it says he was crucified, died, and was buried, he descended into hell. There is an order to this. Following the universal view of the early church, this refers to Jesus' descent to the realm of the dead where he did something. He proclaimed his victory over the powers of hell and death. Psalm 24 puts it this way, lift up your heads, oh gates, lift them up, oh ancient doors, so that the king of glory may come in. Now what gates is that talking about? It's talking about the gates of hell. Jesus had come there to set the prisoners free. And this is precisely the way Luther takes it in his proof text, where he cites Ephesians 4 and 1 Peter 3, one of which says, being put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison. What did he proclaim? He proclaimed his victory over them. Now, if Jesus descended, then it also means that he ascended. Now, technically, we don't usually speak about the ascent until after the resurrection, but the resurrection was in fact an ascent, wasn't it? From the dead, from the underworld, and from the grave. And so the creeds continue, on the third day he rose again from the dead. The second Nicene Creed adds, according to the scripture, This is exactly what Paul says in 1 Corinthians. Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scripture. He was buried and he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scripture. In fact, everything in these creeds is in accordance with the scripture, both New Testament and Old Testament. They make nothing up. Even Paul, whose words are scripture, gets it from the Gospels and their long retelling of that most amazing of days. Now, the resurrection of Jesus, I don't think I need to tell you this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. This is the focal point of all history. It's like a magnifying glass came and zoomed this incredible light right on that event of all the things that have ever happened. It's the singular event, unduplicated and unparalleled in all the world. Now, not that no one had ever risen from the dead before, because that's not what's going on. See, we have resurrections in both the Old Testament and the New Testament. Remember Lazarus, the daughter of the young man who died in Mark's gospel? Remember when Elisha raised the boy from the dead? See, what was unique here is that it was one predicted in the Old Testament many, many, many times. Two, predicted by Jesus himself, very specifically on the third day, several times. And three, I think most important, Jesus said that he would raise himself from the dead. Now, only a handful of men have ever been raised from the dead. No man raises himself from the dead, but Jesus did. This is such an omni-important event that Paul says, look, if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and so is your faith. Nothing is more central to our confession. Nothing is more important in all this world, for in this resurrection, Jesus conquered death itself, and because of it, he may give others life. Now, the last section deals with the ascension into heaven. It says he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty in the Apostles' Creed. I believe that the ascension is actually the least understood and the least discussed of all these events of Jesus' life. On one level, it's easy to at least visualize, as it says in Acts, for example, when he had said these things and they were looking on, he was lifted up and a cloud took him out of their sight. But what in the world does that mean, and why did he do it? Well, next week I'm gonna answer why he did it. Today I wanna answer, what does it mean? It means that Jesus is seated at the right hand of God the Father as a living being. This is a designation for power, rule, and authority. Jesus puts it this way, right before his ascension in Matthew 28, he says, in heaven and on earth has been given to me." When? Well, after the resurrection. All authority where? Only in the kingdom? Only on earth? No, in heaven and on earth. Peter puts it this way. He has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him. Hebrews puts it this way. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs." See, the ascension of Christ into heaven at the right hand of God the Father is his new authority as the God-man, where he is now in the process of fully reconciling heaven and earth, doing all his Father's will, and bringing his people to heaven and preparing a place for them. Nothing Satan or his minions try to do can thwart Jesus' authority. As God, he's always had this authority, but as man, he's now retaken the authority that was given to Adam in Eden, who lost it in his sin. The right hand of the king takes us to the last statement. The right hand, you see, is the military commander. He's the one who executes the orders and the judgments, carries out the war, dispenses justice. After all, he is the Lord, we confessed. And thus, from there he shall come to judge the living and the dead. The second Nicene adds, he shall come again with glory. And it adds, his kingdom shall have no end. Now, in one way, I think this refers to the judgments and justice that Jesus Christ brings upon this world this very day. See, every time a king or a nation or an individual is judged, it's at the command of Jesus Christ. Anytime someone dies, they're judged by him. This is all part of how he brings his kingdom to earth, showing that his kingdom is omnipotent and it will continue forever, long past the kingdoms of men. But one day he will come again. This refers to the second coming. It shall be a coming in great glory and power and pomp such as the world has never known before. When he comes, he will judge all flesh, and Luther gives us three texts. He is the one appointed by God to be judge of the living and the dead, Acts 10. He must We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Second Corinthians 5. See, this is as Jesus told the people at the end of the great discourse. On the Mount of Olives, when he was talking about these end of things, the Son of Man is coming to judge the living and the dead. Now the material on Jesus in the creeds is by far the longest of all the sections, and for good reason. Because Jesus is the mediator between God and man. If you get him wrong, you get everything wrong. Now we've seen two equally important truths regarding him today. He is God, he is man. Now as God, he is simply God of God. You must dissent to this truth. This is not merely knowing what it teaches, but intellectually and morally agreeing with it. And so I have to ask you, do you do that? But I need to add, Who really, in fact, knows and assents to things like this? Do you know and assent to the fact that Trump was the 45th president? Or that ice melts at 32 degrees Fahrenheit? Or that the sky is blue? Do you assent to know those things and yet not actually believe them? See, in this sense, to say that you do not believe in Jesus is to say that you don't really assent to these truths at all. But how can you not? On what basis? Your eternal destiny hangs in the balance on this question. You'd better have a good answer. Is there any question more important to ask yourself than this? And to reinforce this, we've seen that Jesus Christ is fully man. These things have taken place in history. They are historical claims made by eyewitnesses who ended up each man dying a terrible, brutal martyr's death to bring you this news. That's how seriously they took it. And they did it gladly. These events really and truly happened in this very world, not in some fantasy novel that you read, not in a fiction drama TV miniseries, not in a video game. And as such, the whole idea of ascent takes on a powerful import. These things are true because they happened. That's why you assent to them. To believe them is to be deeply justified in that belief because they're not make-believe story time. All that's left is whether you will believe them. And we began by talking about the most interesting man in the world. Now, I was trying to remember. I don't even know why this came into my mind to look this up. I have no idea. Those silly anecdotes I started with, well, they're from a series of beer commercials. I thought some of them actually fit pretty well with Jesus, especially the beard. But to compare Jesus to a fictional beer commercial guy, well, that seems almost blasphemous. In fact, I'm not comparing them at all. I asked, who is the real most interesting man in the world? The reality is Jesus is infinitely more than a man, though he is in fact fully and truly man, just as we are. Jesus is also God. He's the only person in the universe who possesses these two natures fully. Think about this. Not even the Father or the Holy Spirit can say that. Jesus is truly unique. Now, I don't tell you to merely find him interesting. I certainly don't tell you these things to pique your intellectual curiosity so that you can play games with it all, like Bertrand Russell did. I tell you them so that you will fall down at his feet and worship him." What else can you do with someone who has no peers, is utterly unique, and who makes our heads spin trying to figure him out? Believe what you have heard, and it will be counted to you as righteousness. But in case you still wonder what you should believe, here's Dr. Luther to tell you in his catechism. He says, what is meant by this article? Answer. I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, is also true man born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, secured and delivered me from all sins and from death, and from the powers of the devil, not with silver and gold, but with his holy and precious blood, and with his innocent sufferings and death, in order that I might be his live under him in his kingdom and serve him in everlasting righteousness, innocence and blessedness, even as he is risen from the dead and lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true. Will you pray with me? Lord, high, glorious, lofty things we have spoken of your son today. We thank you for sending him to us. Oh, Jesus, we thank you for coming to us. You are the Word of God, eternal, always existing, creating all things, maker of heaven and earth. From you, for you, these things exist. And you condescended into the womb of one of us to become one of us, to suffer what you did not deserve, to die the way that you did, to be forsaken by your father so that We can have life because you loved us? That is incomprehensible. Holy Spirit, we thank you for how you reveal the truth of your son to us. And I would pray to you that you would reveal the truth of Jesus that we've spoken of to every single person that's here today. Please, Lord, confront them with who Jesus is. Force them to come to a decision in the end of themselves. where they recognize that he is in fact God. Make this faith in their life, because we can't do it of ourself. Only if you grant it to us as we have seen, can we believe. And I would pray that you would be powerful to do that in your mercy and your love for everyone who's here. Lord, for those of us who've been Christians for a very long time, we need to hear these things over and over as well. We tend to error. and we tend even to heresy in our thoughts about God. And these creeds are there for us, as we saw last time, so that we can make them part of who we are. Even as Augustine tells us, go over these day by day so that they don't cause some kind of bad things to rise in our mind of who Jesus is. I pray, Lord, that you would reinforce these things even now as we come to the table where our Savior gave us this reminder and this token, this memorial, this means of grace for us to consider who he truly is and what he did for us on the cross. I would ask that you would bless these words and use them for these ends of mercy and grace and softening rather than hardening and ask that you would do this for your sake in Christ's name, amen.