This is everything.
God made flesh, dying, rising, and gathering us to him.
There are infinite infinities of wonder woven in this story.
This is what we believe.
This is who we are.
And the creed calls us to confess it over and over and over again.
The following message was recorded at Kingstree Church.
May the Spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
We looked last week at the way that in the Psalms, God calls his people to confess together who he is and what he's done.
The Psalms are written for us to read together, written for us to sing together, and at a number of points, the Psalms.
Call us to confess together who God is.
So it is apparently a good thing in God's mind that God's people should speak together truth about him.
It's not just enough to think truth about him by myself over here.
God wants us, and I say that on the authority of the Psalms, God wants us to speak together who he is and what he's done.
So
That moves us into this week as we're going to press further into this idea of the public confession of our faith and how that forms us as a people, unites us as a people, and
keeps us as a people.
And we're going to specifically this morning begin looking at the Nicene Creed.
The Nicene Creed, this is a creed that was put together by the church back in the year 325.
So it's
1700 years old, 1701 years old.
Now, we'll get into that in a moment, but let me just clear the ground a little bit here at the beginning, because you might think, well, wait a second, wait a second.
If we have the Bible, if we have God's words, why do we need a creed that people put together?
You know, maybe you've heard the phrase, no creed but the Bible for me, no creed but Christ for me.
And those sayings are right to emphasize the weightiness of God's word, right?
God's word is inspired, it's important, it's real, it's heavy.
They're those kind of sayings, there's no creed but Christ.
Well, that's right.
I mean, Christ is everything to us, He's all that we believe.
But if we just go around and say that, I don't need a creed, I just believe the Bible.
What I mean, what I end up mean meaning, is I just believe.
My interpretation of the Bible.
I just believe what makes sense to me about the Bible.
I just believe what makes sense to me about Jesus.
And that gets us into a dangerous situation.
Because Mormons read the Bible and believe in Jesus to some degree, their own interpretation.
Muslims read the Bible.
And believe in Jesus.
You talk to Muslim, yeah, they'll I, you know, uh the New Testament, the specific books, the gospels, Jesus.
Yeah, I believe those things.
Some Christian churches or churches that would claim to be Christian that deny the Trinity.
Well, they read the Bible and they believe in Jesus.
There's many, many interpretations.
Are we just gonna say, well, anyone who claims, I believe this, are just gonna give them a pass?
well, then you know, you're good.
No.
There's a way to interpret this.
Whose is it?
Mine?
Your pastor's?
Yours?
Where how do we interpret the inspired words of God?
That's where creeds come in.
That's what creeds are.
They give the true, time-tested interpretation, the apostolic interpretation of God's word.
They supply the correct lenses through which we're to read scripture.
You can you can come to this book and pull out all kinds of crazy things if you have different kinds of lenses on.
If you've got the eschatological lenses on, if you've got the demonic warfare lenses on, if you've got the spiritual divine counsel lenses on, you can come on all kinds of things.
But there's a lens that the church has always used as she comes to scripture, and that lens
Is codified in the creeds, but specifically here, the Nicene Creed.
That's the one we're going to look at this morning.
Now you can think of this as like a fence.
You've got a yard, you paid, you know, you got there is there is your property out there, but if there's no fence around it, it's like, well, where does my property end and the
neighbors begin?
a little fuzzy, and the kids are out there playing.
And it's like, are they in the yard?
I mean, I think they're in the what if they're right here?
Are they still in the yard?
I don't know.
I guess.
A fence says, This is the yard.
The yard is in here.
Outside of this, it's not the yard anymore.
It's somebody else's yard.
In here, it's our yard.
And in the fence, you can do all kinds of things.
You can play kickball, you can play four square, you can bounce on a trampoline.
There's lots of things to do in the yard, but they're all in the yard.
Similarly, what a creed does, what the Nicene Creed does, is to create a theological yard and to say,
This is the yard of our faith.
And you can do all kinds of things in here.
There's different interpretations in here.
There's different emphases in here.
There's di there's room for different visions of the end times.
There's room for different understandings of the working of the Spirit.
There's room for understandings of, you know, how do you baptize?
You know, like you know, submi submersion or sprinkling or pouring or like there's room for different interpretations, but they're all in the yard.
And then
The creed is very clear, but that's outside of the yard.
A Mormon view, we won't get into it now.
It's outside of the yard.
Other views, they're outside of the yard.
So a creed helps you say, do your interpretation, come to scripture, think, understand, study, yes, but study in the yard.
Check your interpretation, check your understanding, check what you think.
yeah, this must be what that means.
Are you still in the yard?
So that's what the creed does, is it kind of sets up this yard that the church has always acknowledged as this is this is our place.
This is where we do our thinking, this is where we do our living and our believing.
So that's why creeds are important, generally speaking.
I just, you know, that's a whirlwind tour.
Why the Nicene Creed?
Well, it is the earliest universal creed that the church has.
Early, early on in the church's history, like the 40s and the 50s AD.
There were creeds, but they were based on particular, you know, local churches.
They had developed these creeds mainly when someone is going to be baptized.
You gave them a creed, something to say, to show, I believe this stuff.
So they were, they were localized ones, and they were all generally the same, but they were all in different little places.
But as heretical teaching, heretical interpretation of scripture increased, specifically people saying Jesus is a creature, Jesus was made.
Jesus is not fully God.
As these kind of teachings were increasing, the church realized we have to clarify what we've always said.
It's not that the Nicene Creed invented the Trinity.
You'll get people saying that sometimes.
No, it's that at Nicaea, 325 AD, the leaders of the churches came together and they clarified what they had always taught, what the apostles had taught them.
So the Nicene Creed is this early crystallization, clarification of the teaching that the church has always had, of the teaching that was given by Christ to the apostles, by the
apostles to the church, clarified at 325 in Nicaea.
And it has served.
It's not inspired.
It's not inspired the same way John 3 16 is inspired.
It's not.
But it has stood the test of time to be a uh
Unifying and keeping and preserving force in the history of the church from the beginning.
Think about this.
Every teacher, thinker, preacher, pastor, missionary, layperson who claims to be a Christian, who is a Christian that you've ever known, has agreed with this creed.
Every true Christian, from 325 on, and we don't know a whole lot before 325, they've agreed with this.
St.
Augustine
Um Martin Luther, John Calvin, ah Charles Spurgeon, C.S.
Lewis.
I'm skipping a lot, just pull pull someone out.
These people from all these all different places, they agreed with this.
They believed this.
They said, Yeah, that's what we believe.
That's what we teach.
That's what we that's what we confess to be the case.
So it's worth our attention.
That's my point.
It's worth our attention to look at this together.
And that's what we're going to do today.
And tomorrow or and next Sunday.
Now let me read for you a text that serves kind of as the core of what we are going to be looking at this morning.
This text comes from First Corinthians chapter eight, starting in ver just verse six.
Paul writes this For us, Christian, for us, there is one God, the Father, from whom
Are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we exist.
So there's kind of a seed creed, and you'll see in a moment when I read the creed that it's developing on this idea right here that comes from the apostles.
Let me pray for us, then we'll look at this together and we'll begin breaking it down piece by piece as we go through it this morning.
Yeah.
So again, Father, the only reason we can have creeds is because you are unchanging.
You are yourself.
You are who you have revealed yourself to be in Scripture.
You are who you have revealed yourself to be in Christ.
You are a speaking, revealing God.
And so, Father, help our words to speak of and rightfully reveal you, rightfully bear witness to you.
And and we trust that is the case, that by your grace, this creed that we're going to consider has done that.
But we pray, Lord, that this morning your spirit would be at work to cause the reality, the truth, the the the absolute truth of Jesus Christ to shine forth this morning and be
received this morning by King Street Church, that we would be sharpened and clarified and strengthened and built up in these things.
Together, that we'd all be able to say, Together, we believe this.
Lord, help this to be so as we look this morning and do whatever good work you see fit to do.
In all of us now, we open ourselves to you and are ready for you to glorify your name.
We pray it in Jesus' name.
Amen.
Well, we're going to have the creed up here.
If you can put up the first part, Avery, I'm going to read this.
You don't have to read it, you just listen.
I'll read for you this creed, and then we will break it down and look at specific parts of it.
And the version that we have here is the old version, as we'll talk about next week.
There's been a few tweaks.
I'll get into that.
This is what it would have looked like when it was formulated.
So let me read it for you, and then I'll break down parts of it this morning.
I believe in one God, Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages, light of light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with
the Father, through whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became man.
He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried, and he rose on the third day according to the scriptures.
He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and he will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead.
His kingdom shall have no end.
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the creator of life, who proceeds from the Father.
Who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets.
And in one holy Catholic, just pause.
That means universal.
One holy Catholic and apostolic church.
I confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.
Amen.
So these words, originally written, of course, in
Um in Greek, these words were composed in 325 and then edited a little bit later in 381 A.D.
But these are ancient words that the church has held fast to from her beginning.
And so we're going to consider them a little bit together this morning.
Specifically, we're going to look at the Father and the Son.
The Father and the Son this morning.
We're going to save looking at the Spirit and the Church for next week.
So this morning.
Let's dive in and consider what this creed calls us to confess about the Father and the Son and why that matters.
Why that matters.
Before we do that though, how does this whole thing begin?
Remember how the whole creed begins.
You can jump back to the very first one, maybe, Avery, while I'm preaching, if you can go back to the first slide there.
It begins with, I believe.
I believe.
Before it says anything else, I believe.
Now that matters.
Creed means belief.
You hear credibility.
Somebody is credible, that means they're believable.
If something's incredible, it's unbelievable.
Creed, creed, that means belief.
So this is saying, I believe this, I hold it by faith.
And that's important because there is a difference between saying, I believe this or I have proven this.
I have determined this.
I know this by my own power.
That's not what we say.
We say, I believe this.
I believe that.
That's a fundamentally different way of understanding: mastering and knowing versus receiving and believing.
Those are two completely different ways of living.
And since the scientific revolution, humanity has tried to live.
Mastering, believing, really, even before that, that's what going for the fruit was.
Mastering, I know, I know, but believe says, I receive, I receive.
So this is a fundamentally different way of living.
What it means when we say, I believe, we're saying my understanding of myself and of this world and of God and of all things that matter, that is not grounded in something that I
have mastered.
And proven and put in my back pocket and can pull out anytime I want.
That is grounded in something that I believe, something that has been revealed, and I trust it.
I trust it.
I trust this person.
So remember what Hebrews tells us about faith.
It says, faith is the conviction of things hoped for, or the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen.
Now,
Seeing, some people say seeing is believing, but really the truth is seeing is controlling.
If I can see something, I can get an angle on it.
I can say, okay, I get it.
I see what this is.
I can control this.
I can handle it.
I just want to see what's coming.
I just want to see what's going to happen.
I want to see the situation.
Seeing, having it in front of me, means I'm in control.
I know where this is going.
I know where the numbers are leading.
I've got this.
That's what seeing is.
But
And and and when we see, not only does it give us power, it puts us in the driver's seat, as it were.
We say, okay, I see where we're going.
And that's what we want.
That's what our hearts want by nature.
But faith refuses to allow us to do that.
Faith refuses to allow us to finally control the situation.
Faith says, no, you have to trust.
You have to receive.
You have to be open-handed.
So I want, we want to know.
As long as we are saying, I need to know, I need to prove, I need to have it here and control it.
Faith says, I'm never going to give that to you.
You're never going to get that.
Because then you're God, then you're the master.
Then you're in control.
Faith says, open your hands.
Now knowing, controlling says, I need to know.
But faith says, I trust you.
I trust you.
And that what the creed is saying is your whole life is that.
Your whole life is I trust you, not I need to know.
Because it's not I know by my own power, it's I believe.
I believe.
I receive.
I receive something.
So right out of the gate, the creed tells us we confess together we're not in control.
We don't rule.
We don't know in the sense of our hands are on the levers.
Of our own life, and we can do this ourselves.
Rather, we believe.
We believe.
We receive all of reality, not as a knowledge that we attain, but from a person that we trust.
That's what this creed begins with.
It says, hey, that's where it starts.
You don't start where everybody else starts.
You start by believing a person.
I believe.
What do we believe?
What do we believe from this posture of humility, not control?
What do we believe?
I believe in one God.
Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
So look at the I believe in one God.
One God.
You might say, well, that is very basic.
Yeah, that is very basic, but it's also radical in its implications if we take it seriously.
I believe in one God.
Perhaps the most simple way to feel the way this changes things for us is.
is if there's one God, what this means is that ultimately the peace of unity is true, and the chaos of opposition is not true.
That's the passing thing.
That's the surface thing.
If there's only one God, then y peace is the deepest thing.
And the all the against each other and fighting and back and forth, this is the is the surface thing.
Stuff that sp you know is just going to melt away as the mist.
But the reality is stability if there's one God.
There's not a pantheon, there's not warring gods.
We are not dualists.
This is important to get.
We're not duelists, which means a duelist says there's a supreme good and a supreme bad, and they're just going at it.
Yin yang, balance, you know, karma, balance.
There's a good and bad, and they're against each other.
And in kind of a popular way of thinking, even Christians can think, you know, it's kind of like God and Satan are in this like wrestling match over the world.
God and Satan going back and forth.
And there is no going back and forth between God and Satan.
God says, you don't exist anymore, and Satan doesn't exist anymore.
There's no back and forth, big fight.
Yeah, no, there's no such thing as that.
Now, on a created level,
There is this dualism.
There is evil and good.
There is back and forth.
There is light and dark in our own souls.
So on a created level, yes.
But ultimately, there's one God, one God, and his will is what is determinative, one sovereign.
Let me read for you quickly a passage from Psalm 115 that says this.
The nations are scoffing at Israel because they don't have an idol, they don't have a visible God.
Why should the nation say, Where is their God?
Our God is in the heavens.
He does all that he pleases.
Our God is in the heavens and he does all that he pleases.
There is one will that finally determines where everything is going in the end, which means it peace, harmony, peace.
unity is the final is the final reality, which gives comfort to us, stability to us, because we're changeable.
We're changeable.
But the the the creed says ultimately there is a person who rules over all.
I believe in the humility of faith in one God over all things.
Who is that one God?
Father Almighty.
So this gets
More, it's not just one God, one Almighty distant power out there on some mountain somewhere.
This one God is fundamentally and essentially Father.
One God, Father Almighty, which is amazing.
We're confessing together that the one God who rules over my life and my family and your family.
And all things, all nations, this one God is not finally and ultimately king, though of course he's a king, emperor, ruler, warrior, all those things are absolutely true.
But he fundamentally says he is father.
He's father.
Now that word can be distorted because we all have human fathers who do a better or worse job at being a father.
You can think of the
A mountain with this clear, fresh spring at the top.
Water, f clean water pouring out.
And then as it runs down the side of the mountain, it collects dirt and grime and stones.
And some streams are here and they're fairly clear.
Some streams come down this side and they're all muddy and they've got even poison dirt in them.
But they're all flowing from that central stream.
That's what fatherhood is like here on earth.
Some fathers are a fairly clear picture of the reality.
Some fathers are a polluted picture of the reality.
But the reality ought not be colored by these streams.
The reality is the wellspring, the clean, clear reality of fatherhood, the warmth, the strength, the care, the wisdom, the covering that comes to mind when fatherhood is
mentioned.
This is not just these are not just.
Human feelings projected on God.
These are truths about God that are expressed to varying degrees in human fathers.
God says, I am Father.
Fatherhood, therefore, true, clean, pure, fresh from the mountain spring, fatherhood is at the center of reality.
It's at the center of reality, which is to say, when we confess this, love.
Covering strength, personal care, stability is at the center of reality.
Relational stability is at the center of reality.
God is father.
But if he's a father, then he must have offspring.
He must have a child.
You're a father because of a child.
Whose father is he?
Well, our father, yes, absolutely.
We call him father.
But we only call him Father because we're united to Christ.
And Christ is his son.
Jesus Christ is his son.
If God is eternally Father, then he must eternally have a Son who is Jesus.
And we get folded into that.
So that leads us to this next thing.
We confess we believe in one God, the Father Almighty, and then in the Son.
And I'll read it from here because it's longer.
And
In one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, I've got it here,
so just listen to me reading it.
Begotten, not made, of one essence with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
Now, that sounds like, okay, the deep waters of theology, that's that's the theological depths there, but let's just
Take it a piece at a time and see what's going on here, what's being confessed.
It's the longest section in the creed because Jesus is the center of our faith.
Everything we know about God comes through this man, comes through the God man, Jesus Christ.
And the creed calls us to confess about him.
We have we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ.
That's straight from that passage I read in 1 Corinthians.
For us, there's one God, Father, and one Lord.
Jesus Christ.
What does it mean when we say there's one Lord?
Well, Lord means master.
Now, this is radical.
We are, we're, we're, we are uh people who live in a democracy, right?
We are free.
We just celebrated the 4th of July.
Freedom, we're free.
In a sense, yes.
But we, if you're a Christian, you have a master.
And a master doesn't just mean a uh
A psychiatrist who helps me out sometimes, or a nice old grandpa who gives me advice that I can take or leave.
A master means a master.
There is someone who commands our wills.
There is someone who tells us what to think.
There is someone who can give our life or take our life and be completely just in doing so.
I am a man under a master.
And you, Christian, if you are a Christian, you have a master.
And we we don't have many of these.
We have one.
We have one Lord, Jesus Christ.
It is a culturally radical thing to be a Christian.
You're saying, I have a master.
There is someone who can command me.
There is someone whose word is law to me.
And if I am obeying anyone else, like the speed limit.
Or a teacher or my parents, we are obeying them because our master says to obey them.
And if we're obeying someone or trusting someone or depending on someone that our master has not said trust them, then we're coming out from under the covering of our master.
We're in rebellion against him.
If I'm if I'm believing and bowing down to fear, if I'm trusting in what my friend says against what Scripture says, if I'm trusting in
The numbers, the financial numbers, and they're making me scared when the Lord is saying, Trust me, I'm beginning to have another master.
And the creed says, there's one Lord, there's one master.
Listen to Him.
And that's how comforting.
Because everyone says, I'm your master.
You know, the uh the health, the gurus, the health gurus, the financial gurus, the boss at work, the everybody who says, you need to do this, you need to do this.
What a grace to say, I have one master.
What does he tell me to do?
What does obedience to him look like here?
One master.
The creed calls us to confess that.
And this one master is the Christ.
Remember what that means?
The anointed king who's bringing to pass the rule of God in the world.
And so, Christian, as you wake up in the morning to watch your kids or to go to work.
Or to mow the lawn or to clean the house or do the dishes or go to an appointment or figure out that health situation, figure out that relational situation, or or just deal
with the monotony of another day.
Christian, you are waking up into a world where there is a Lord, a master who has a purpose for you that day.
He hasn't just said, nothing on the agenda for Christopher today, just do whatever.
He has a purpose.
You have a master with a purpose.
And a will for you.
And our great joyful labor is to say, Lord, here's my will.
Conform it to yours.
You're my Lord, command me.
There's a wonderful, uh I hope this doesn't make the sermon go too long, but I gotta share it.
There's a wonderful part in the Lord of the Rings books.
I don't think it's in the movies, where this king who's been gone for so long, he's restored.
And he returns, and his people are so glad to see him back.
He was in this despairing season of life.
And they see him stand up again with his strength.
And they take their swords and put them to their chest and they say, Command us, Lord, because they're so glad to have their king back.
We have a king, and we wake up every morning, we take the sword, and we say, Command me, Lord, today.
I'm ready.
We have a Lord.
But then the creed presses further than that because this Christ, who is our Lord, is not just Master and Christ, as much as that is.
What's it going on to say?
The only begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of the same essence as the Father,
through whom
All things were made.
All this is way of carefully guarding the statement.
This one is true man and true God.
That's what's being confessed.
True man and true God.
There is nothing like this in all of human history that this would be confessed.
The man, Jesus Christ, simultaneously and indivisibly, is man born from woman, an uncreated God.
Eternally begotten of uncreated God, not part of creation, but the one through whom all creation comes.
Now, when I say these awesome things, and they are awesome things, but when I say them, the danger is that we will begin to feel like dogs in a divine dog show, and our eternal
life depends on jumping through the right theological hoops.
I've got to jump through the fully God hoop, the fully man hoop.
The one God, three persons hoop.
And it's like, why am I saying why does any of this matter?
I don't know.
I just have to say it, right?
Because that's like, that's the hoops we have to jump through.
That's how it can feel.
But these things are crucial to our existence, to our living as human beings.
It's not just, a theological hoop.
No, no, no.
If if there is not, if Jesus Christ is not God and man, the whole universe disintegrates to nothing.
The created universe.
cannot continue in existence unless it is meaningfully united to the uncreated God who is existence itself.
And so only the God man, who has creation and God bound together perfectly, can hold reality together.
He Christ is literally holding the universe together by existing.
As it says in Hebrews chapter one, he upholds the universe by the word of his power.
If he's not fully God and fully man, that dissolves.
But that gets it, that gets into other philosophical questions.
Two points I want to point out to you today.
If Jesus Christ is not truly God and truly man, he cannot be our savior.
He cannot be our savior because only by union to God, only when humans are united to God are we saved.
So if there is no God man, humanity cannot be united to God, and there is no salvation.
So salvation depends upon him.
And more than this, if he's not truly man and truly God, then he cannot make known to men, to humans, who God is.
So if we're going to be saved and united to God, if we're going to know who God is, Jesus Christ must be fully God and fully man.
Let me just dig into that slightly for you.
Our salvation is not just being forgiven, it's not just being made moral.
It's not just
going to heaven.
What you're made for and what we're aiming at is nothing less than union with God, to be united to his life, my life woven into his life, my life part of him, the body of Christ,
to be united to God, brought into his life.
That is our hope.
And unless Jesus is man who is God, he cannot descend to humans
And unite us to God.
Our salvation is dependent upon Him being this one.
So it's not just a theological hoop.
Because He's the God man, this man, we humans, can be confident my life is woven into the life of God, and I am being gathered up into the life of God.
A human can be a hero and save you so temporally.
Only God can unite you to God.
Secondarily, our joy is to know God, to know him, to be brought into his life and enjoy him for who he is.
And if Jesus is only a man or a creature, the best he can do is teach us about who God is.
But only because he is truly God is he able in the human flesh, hanging on the cross, to open up God's heart and say, this is who I am.
And bring us in to himself.
Only as the God man is he able to save us, only as the God man is he able to show us who our God is.
And so it's not just, yeah, you gotta say it right, or else some theological geek will jump on you and say you didn't say it right.
No, my ability to hope, my ability to have joy, your ability to be confident in our eternal reward.
Is because there is a God man.
There is a man born truly from a woman with our nature just like us, who is fully and truly and un indivisibly God Himself.
And this man walks on this earth and loves us and suffers with us.
This man who is God dies on the cross for our sins, for our condemnation.
This man is buried in our grave and raised up again and raises our nature up with him.
And because he's risen as the God man, human beings have hope.
So it's not just a thing we can dismiss.
It's not just a thing we can dismiss.
Then finally, our last point: this God man is our hope in our life because of what he does.
Look what it says that he does.
For us men, for us humans, men and women, for us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered death, and was buried, and rose again on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures.
He ascended into heaven, he's seated at the right hand of the Father, he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.
So here we are, the final eight minutes of the sermon, and we go over that.
I mean, you think, what are we, what do we do about that?
Well, hopefully these things are being touched upon continually here from this pulpit.
You're hearing the death and resurrection of Christ continually.
But let me just reiterate for you what this creed calls us to confess together.
Three things very briefly.
First, what we just spoke is the wisdom of God.
The wisdom of God.
Remember that the wisdom of humans wants to go up and grab and make it my own, figure it out myself.
The wisdom of God says, you cannot come to me that way.
The wisdom of God says, I descend to you.
God becomes man.
The word becomes flesh.
Life hangs on the cross in death.
This is the wisdom of God.
And I
Defy any philosophy or worldview or teacher or hero or God to be like this.
There is no other.
In all of human history, there is no other wisdom like the wisdom of the cross.
Paul says this is the wisdom that destroys the wisdom of man.
That desire to make it my own and attain it is destroyed by the cross that says, you can't know God, he comes down.
And reveals himself to you in the flesh demands our humbling.
It demands our receiving of what he has revealed.
In Jesus Christ, in the wisdom of God, God kneels down and reaches through the thorn bushes that we've entangled ourselves in, the thorns of addiction, the thorns of our sin,
the thorns of our anxious thoughts, the thorns of our decisions.
horrible decisions we've made.
Why did I do that?
And we're tangled up in these thorns in Christ.
God reaches down, because we can't get out of that.
He reaches down through the thorns, tearing his flesh, reaching in to take us like a shepherd, and bring us up to himself.
That's the wisdom of God.
And the wisdom of man cannot compare.
So that's what we confess when we can when the creed calls us to confess
What Christ has done.
Secondly, it calls us to confess the love of God, the love of God.
This whole thing, coming down, taking flesh, being born, being crucified, suffering, dying, buried, raised, ascended, reigning, returned, all of that, those aren't just
historical events, though, praise God, they are.
That is the love of God for you working itself out.
In time and space.
That account there that we're so used to that the creed calls us to say, that is God's love for you.
Remember what Paul says in Galatians 2:20?
He says, The life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
These things, these high and awesome things, it is God your Father loving you.
So
Right, theology confessed together is just speaking of love.
It's just what love looks like.
It's just what love does.
You have been loved.
You have been loved in this way by this God doing this awesome work.
Now we know that, right?
It's in our heads if you're a Christian.
But doesn't it drift away?
Doesn't it get covered over by familiarity and by other things?
And it's just out there.
And what a creed does is says, recite it.
Say again what he did.
Say again.
You recite a creed.
If you recite a creed every week, sometimes you're on the top of the world.
Sometimes you're down in the valleys and you're saying, for us and for our salvation, God has done this.
For us and for our salvation, God has done this.
This is who he is in the highs and in the lows, when your heart is rejoicing and when your heart is broken.
A creed calls you to remember, remember his love, confess his love, confess his love, press it into the fibers of your mind so that you don't wake up singing that random song
or remembering those words from that reel on YouTube, but you wake up with the love of God in your mind because you're confessing it.
Confessing it, confessing it.
Confess it.
Have it in your mind so that if your mind goes in the last years, the thing you still have is the love of God, the creed, the gospel, the truth reciting in your mind.
That's what I want.
That's how deep I want this in my brain and in our brains.
May this we know this love.
And then finally, very briefly, what we confess here is what we
believe.
This is the very center of our belief.
This coming down of the God man, this this old, old story, this is everything, Christian.
You don't get beyond it.
Don't think you've gotten beyond it.
Don't think you're you're familiar with it.
You've heard me say this before.
Don't think you're familiar with this.
Don't say, I'm bored with that.
Let's get onto the deep stuff.
This is everything.
God made flesh dying
Rising and gathering us to him.
There are infinite infinities of wonder woven in this story.
This is what we believe.
This is who we are.
And the creed calls us to confess it over and over and over again.
And I would just ask as we conclude: do we believe it?
Do we believe what these words say?
Next week we'll say them all together at the end.
Do we believe what is here?
And I don't just mean, do I affirm it?
I'm a Christian, of course I believe.
I'm here, aren't I?
No.
Do we believe?
Is my life so built on these things that if they were not true, all my hopes, all my plans, all my goals would fall to pieces and my life would be worth nothing?
Because that's how deeply we're to believe this.
There's no escape plan.
There's no, well, if it's not true, you know, it'll be okay.
No.
We we lean on this so heavily that if this were not true, we are on our faces without hope.
That's what it means to believe this.
I believe this.
May it be so.
May it be so with all that we are and all that we have, because in the end, this is all that we are and all that we have.
I don't mean the specific creed like we need these words of men, but I mean the truth.
Clearly articulated here is all we are and all we have as Christians, as humans.
Jesus Christ, born of woman, God from God, come down for us and for our salvation, crucified, raised, and returning.
So let's believe this together.
Next week, we're going to look at the second half.
The original creed was everything we read, and then at the very end it said, and in the Holy Spirit, period, the end.
And then a few years later, in 381, they thought we should fill out the Holy Spirit a little bit and say a little bit more about that, about Him.
And so next week we will look at the Holy Spirit and the Church, what we confess about the Holy Spirit and the Church.
But of course, the Spirit, may it be, has been part of this whole thing, because there is no seeing God in Christ apart from the working of the Holy Spirit.
And there is no doing what we do now truly.
Apart from the Spirit, because what we do now is to come to this table together.
And as we're coming, I mentioned this last week, but as we're coming to this table, the whole creed is right here.
The whole confession is right here.
Here, witnessed in the broken bread and in the cup, is our one Lord Jesus Christ.
The bread declares the incarnation, the birth from
Mary, the bread and the wine declare, He is bl flesh and blood.
He's truly man.
The table is his cross upon which he died, and the throne upon which he reigns, and from which he will come again.
And if this is bearing witness to the Son who was sent, it is also bearing witness to the Father who sends, the Father who sends the feast of the Son to save us.
And if we see the Father and the Son in glory,
Witnessed in these elements, it's only because the Holy Spirit is doing that work.
And if we receive spiritually the presence of Christ as we come to this table, it's only because the Holy Spirit is doing that work.
And as we partake together, we are confessing that we are one church, united to one Christ in baptism and the forgiveness of our sins and awaiting his return.
So everything the creed says is right here at this table.
And we're about to confess it together.
So let's do that.
As we come to this table to receive from Christ his own self as our food and our drink and our life, may we also be saying, I believe, I believe, I believe.
Let me pray for us.
Father, we thank you for these things.
We thank you that we're able to speak.
And Lord, we thank you that humans, fallen as we are, have crafted right statements about you according to your word.
And we thank you that there is such a thing as the Nicene Creed that would keep your people in line with your word, because that's what we want.
We want to know you.
All we care about, Father.
is to know you in Christ by the Spirit, together with your people, that as the apostle prays, we might grow up into the fullness of Christ and be filled in knowing his love,
filled with everything you are.
And Father, to the extent that this creed has helped your people do that and would help us do it, may we benefit from it.
May we be built up by it and may we be reminded by it of who you are
And what you've done, because there is no God like you.
We praise you, Father.
Meet us now by the Holy Spirit as we come to this table and confess again what you've done and who you are in Jesus Christ.
We pray these things, Father, in his name.
Amen.
Thank you for listening to this message from Kingstree Church in Sabina, Ohio.
To see more of the beauty of God and the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10 a.m.
Or visit our website at Kingstreech.org.