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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.
The Creeds Part 3: I Believe in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, our Lord
Series A Short Series on the Creeds
| Sermon ID | 11622155744943 |
| Duration | 53:16 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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