Creeds for Thee and Me

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church iconKongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Sunday school from April 26th, 2020

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Okay, let me pull up my Bible really quick.
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That's where we're gonna be. And let's see here. I probably should, one second here.
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Let's see, yep, that's what I thought. Put this here, put this here. And then switch over there.
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There we go. Just organizing a few things on my screen for our Bible study today.
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And let's see here. I'm gonna prepare this in hopes that we're in numbers.
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But you just never know, you never know. You gotta be willing to roll with the punches.
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Let's see here, and I'm gonna open up my chat here. Oh wow, there's conversation going on in the chat box.
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Hang on, I gotta check to see if I'm missing anything because I don't wanna miss a question. I've been known to do that too.
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We chalked it up now to senior moments, which seem to come more frequently in my life, which is kind of a bummer.
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And last but not least, let me put this down here just in case
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I need to get at it. Voila, okay. All right, so we talked about that.
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Everyone was giving everybody a good morning, very good. My husband
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Brady has a dozen questions about the creeds, why we say them and how they came to be.
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Ah, okay, I get the feeling we're gonna be doing some off -roading here. Which by the way is a great set of questions and a fantastic topic.
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So let me do this, give me a second here. And let's pray and we will get into our
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Bible study. Heavenly Father, almighty and everlasting God, we come before you in humble awe.
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You are the one true God and there is none other like you. Come, we pray and bless our hearts and our minds as we study your word.
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Send your Holy Spirit into our lives so that we may grow in love and grace and that we may go forth into all the world proclaiming your gospel so that others may learn of your saving grace, amen.
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Okay, so since we have a lot of guests here and we have a great question on the table as it relates to the creeds, we're going to go that direction first.
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So who knows how this is going to work. Bruce, I appreciate you trying to behave. It was all for naught, anyway.
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Okay, so let me pull this up and I'm going to go back to my hymnal.
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In fact, just to make this a little bit easier for me, I'm going to put this into the same window, voila. There we go.
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And we are going to go into divine service and we're going to take a look.
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Actually, I'm going to go into three and then go backwards. And we're going to take a look at two creeds that we confess on a regular basis.
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Usually the Nicene Creed goes with a communion Sunday and the Apostles' Creed, if you have only a word version of the divine service.
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The Apostles' Creed is more of a catechetical creed. Nicene Creed is a creed that has some teeth to it.
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But if you've been around any church that follows historic liturgies, this would be Lutheranism, Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, as well as the
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Anglican or Episcopal churches historically would have at least acknowledged the creeds and what they were.
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And the question is, what are they? Where'd they come from? Why do we do this? All right. And so we'll take a quick look at just kind of like the opening sentences.
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And so when we talk about creeds, there are three creeds that are known as the ecumenical creeds, all right.
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And these form the foundation of historic Christianity and the
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Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed were forged in theological controversy and in fighting heresy.
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And there's a reason for them. And then so then as Lutherans then, we confess all three ecumenical creeds, the
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Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed. And then we hold to the Augsburg Confession, which we also think is a correct summary of what scripture says.
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And we're gonna talk then about what they are and why they're right. Because there's a lot of confusion about them.
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People somehow accuse people who follow creeds or use creeds of having extra biblical authority.
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And that's just not the case. So this will be an interesting topic. So let's take a look at this.
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I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.
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And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds,
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God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the
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Father by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the
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Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.
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He suffered and was buried. Third day, He rose again according to the scriptures, ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God, the
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Father Almighty, and He will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead. His kingdom will have no end.
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I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the
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Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets. And I believe in one holy
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Christian and apostolic church. Actually, the earliest usage of this would be,
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I believe in one holy Catholic. And here's a problem. Roman Catholicism is so far off the rails.
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Every time we hear the word Catholic, we go, meh, you know, it's like, you can't say that word.
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You know, it's like when somebody says Mufasa, you go, ooh, you know. But the thing is, is that Catholic means universal.
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And that's how it was always understood. But unfortunately, every time we see the word Catholic, we think Rome. And no, it's a universal faith.
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It's for every tribe, nation, language of humanity. It doesn't, it's not a regional thing.
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In fact, the phrase Roman Catholicism is a complete oxymoron. That doesn't make any sense.
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Rome is a provincial city somewhere in Italy, and the Catholic faith is the universal faith.
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You don't smush the two together. That just is nuts. Anyway, so I believe one holy, you could say
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Catholic, and apostolic church. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins. I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.
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There it is. All right, so what is that? That is, and where did it come from?
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So let's do a little bit of history work. I need a browser. Hang on a second here. In fact,
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I'm gonna put this over here. All right, so put my browser there, and I'm going to, you know, okay.
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I'll just have to do it that way. All right, so what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a little bit of a search. We're going to look for the church father,
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Irenaeus, E -A -U -S, E -A -E -U -S, Irenaeus, there we go.
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Irenaeus, and we're going to also look for a phrase, and we're gonna put this in quotes so that we get it.
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The rule of faith. All right, Irenaeus, the rule of faith. In Irenaeus's works,
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Irenaeus, let me give you a little bit of an understanding of who this fellow was. Okay, so Irenaeus, he's famous as a
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Christian apologist, defender of the Christian faith, and he wrote a book called
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Against Heresies, Against Heresies, and it's a very long multi -volume work, and it was written against a group called the
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Valentinian Gnostics, and if you ever wanna read what ancient sci -fi sounded like, listen to how he describes what the
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Valentinian Gnostics believe. It's, I mean, seriously, like L. Ron Hubbard has like nothing on these guys, but in his
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Contra Heresies, there is something that he discusses, and I wanna talk a little bit more about who this guy is.
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So Irenaeus learned, he was catechized in the Christian faith by a fellow who was named
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Polycarp, all right? Now, if you're familiar with Polycarp, Polycarp was a fellow who was martyred for the
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Christian faith in his 80s. All right, this is his 80s.
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He was not permitted to die a peaceful death. He was martyred for his confession of Christ in his 80s, and Polycarp, he was for a time the
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Bishop of Ephesus, and he learned the Christian faith. He was catechized by the apostle
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John. So you can kind of, so it goes from Jesus to John to Polycarp to Irenaeus, and Irenaeus in his
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Contra Heresies, he claims that he was given this thing called the rule of faith, and so I need to find a good example of this in, let's see here, we'll open up a couple of these because sometimes when
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I go hunting for it, I end up pulling up kind of, see, yeah, this is small text, okay, and I don't always get what
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I'm looking for in these things, and sometimes you get these really, yeah, like this one's really good, but I have to make this bigger so we can actually read it.
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Oy, okay, all right, so this is from the Antonicean Fathers, Volume 1, and so Irenaeus writes this in the early part of the,
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I want to say early, mid to late second century, so we're talking a generation, generation and a half after the death of the apostles, so here's what he writes.
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The church, though dispersed through our whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith.
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So the best way to think of it is that this is a summary of what is the Christian faith, and so she, she believes in one
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God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of the sea and all things that are in them.
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Okay, so you're gonna note here, so here we are seeing what I would, myself and other people would point to is a rough cut copy of the
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Nicene Creed, and this was long before the Council of Nicaea, and so this was a little bit of a verbose addition of the creed itself, but this thing called the rule of faith, and the idea is if you're teaching a faith that is contrary to this, you're teaching something that is false, all right?
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So, and then we'll talk about, you know, quatenus and all this kind of stuff and how this relates.
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So, and she believes in one Christ, Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation, and in the
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Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents and the birth from a virgin, and the passion and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved
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Christ Jesus our Lord. And the Holy Spirit proclaimed his future manifestation from heaven in the glory of the
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Father to gather all things in one and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race in order that to Christ Jesus our
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Lord and God and Savior and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth, that every tongue should confess to him that he should execute just judgment towards all.
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So he may send spiritual wickedness and the angels who transgressed and became apostates together with the ungodly and unrighteous and wicked and profane among men into everlasting fire, but may in the exercise of this grace confer immortality on the righteous and the holy and those who have kept his commandments and have persevered in his love, some from the beginning of their
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Christian course, others from the date of their repentance, and may surround them with everlasting glory.
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So there it is. All right, so the idea here is that the church has always had creeds, if you would, and the
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Nicene Creed takes a rule of faith and really wordsmiths this thing and beats it down into the form that we have there.
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Now, the reason why the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed and the Athanasian Creed, the reason why they are true is because they say the same thing as Scripture.
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That's the reason. They are not Scripture, but every statement, line, every line there is backed up and it correctly confers what
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Scripture says. And so when we talk about this, we talk about Norma Normans and Norma Normata.
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And let me find another text here. I think it was R .C. Sproul who did a good...
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Norma Normata, hang on a second, Normata. And I think
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R .C. Sproul, he's a Reformed theologian now with Christ, R .C.
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Sproul. Let me see if I can find this. Norma Normata by R .C. Sproul.
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Now, I'm gonna put a link to this here, although you gotta know that every time I put a link or recommend a
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Reformed guy, I have to make it clear, we Lutherans have some disagreements with these guys, and rightly so.
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But there are some really good things that they have put forward that we should pay attention to.
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And this is a good article that kind of explains what Norma Normata is.
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And you're sitting there going, Norma Normata, who's Norman? And what are you talking about here?
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So the idea here, and in fact, let me make this bigger again, hang on a second here. Cannot read these small letters anymore.
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Okay, so the Latin word credo means simply I believe. So you'll note that the creeds begin with I believe.
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And it represents the first word of the Apostles' Creed. Throughout church history, it has been necessary for the church to adopt and embrace creedal statements in order to clarify the
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Christian faith and to distinguish true content from error and false representations of the faith.
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Such creeds are distinguished from scripture in that scripture is Norma Normans, and the scripture is the rule that rules, while the creeds or Norma Normata, that is a rule that is ruled, okay?
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So, and this is like sitting there going, Roseboro, you're putting me to sleep, man. My head is swimming,
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I know. Listen, part of learning the Christian faith and being a mature
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Christian does require you to apply yourself to learning some concepts and some lingo,
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I mean, for heaven's sakes. You cannot order coffee at Starbucks unless you learn another language, okay? I mean, you know this is true, and it's been a long time since you've been able to go and say,
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I would really like myself a pumpkin spice latte, you know, venti, please.
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And you know, it sounds like you're speaking some derivative of Italian, okay? Or, you know, or my wife's favorite, what is it?
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Mocha chocolate latte with seven pumps of chocolate and nonfat whipped cream and something else, venti.
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And you're sitting there going, seven pumps of chocolate and you want nonfat, you know, why, why bother?
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Anyway, so, but you kind of get the point. So the idea is, if you can't even order a coffee at Starbucks without learning a little bit of language, then it's important for us as Christians to know that there are certain things that we have inherited of faith that has come through millennia of controversies.
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And so the idea here is that, so the scriptures are the rule that rules or the norm that norms, and the creeds are true because they are a rule that has been ruled or a norm that has been normed.
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They are true because they say the same things as scripture. So all of that being said, then you kind of get the idea.
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And so in the time of Irenaeus, if you believe something that was contrary to the rule of faith, they would say, hang on a second, you smell that?
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Yeah, that smells like sulfur. Yeah, so, and they'd say, you have a whiff of sulfur to you.
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You know, that's some heresy that I'm detecting on you. And so you'll note then that what has happened as a result of the pietistic movement and Methodism that came out of it, the general feeling, there's a kind of a milieu within evangelicalism where somebody will piously say something like this.
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I have no creed but Christ. Okay, I have no creed but Christ, which is a creed.
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That's a creed. It's like, you're telling me what you believe. I have no creed but the
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Bible, that's a creed. And the question is, what does the Bible say?
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What does it teach? Okay, so I can come up with, you know, and so the idea here is that what the creeds are, they are taking the
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Bible. And you guys remember when those days when we had to dial into the internet with modems, you know, and man,
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I hated that. I'm gonna go get online right now, honey. And it'd be like. And then you have mail.
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Okay. All right, do you guys remember sending files?
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Okay, when you had dial up. Okay, you know, your boss has something he has you working on and the file is, it's huge.
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You know, it's ginormous. It's 10 megabytes. Okay, and there's no way you're gonna send that over the internet.
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So what did you do in order to send a 10 megabyte file to your boss? You had to compress it.
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Okay, you would use zip it or stuff it. I always liked using stuff it because I always felt like that in using stuff it,
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I was telling my boss something on a secondary level. But I wasn't very sanctified at that time.
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Anyway. So here you have this thing that you've been working on and you've had to compress it.
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So a good way to think about the creeds, especially the Nicene Creed, is it's all of the
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Bible in a compressed format. And then when you unpack it, like for instance, in my catechism classes, it takes me two years to work through the small catechism.
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And you sit in there going, what takes so long? Well, when you decompress the file, it just goes, you know, you've got a lot of stuff to work through.
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So what this is, is it's a compression of all of, it's the faith once delivered to the saints in a highly compressed format.
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And then you'll note then during the divine service, it'll show up in either one of two places, immediately after or immediately before the sermon.
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And there's a reason for that, okay? Not only does it remind us and bring and recall to mind what the
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Christian faith is, it also provides a fact -checking opportunity for you to test whether or not
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I'm preaching the truth or lying to you, okay? And so the idea here is that every pastor, including heresy -hunting pastors, especially them, everybody has to be fact -checked.
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And so if I were to get up on any given Sunday and I would proclaim to you,
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I have great news to you, brothers and sisters, that ever since Yahweh has caused man to be evolved from apes, and that going back to our grandma and grandpa fishies, and in this eternal universe that we live in, may
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God grant you new life in this time of spring and resurrection. Okay, you're sitting there going, that's bleh, okay?
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Now note, if immediately after I give you that sermon and we confess, I believe in God, the
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Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, immediately you're going, wait a second, the creed says something different than what my pastor says, okay?
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And so the way it works is that any pastor who says something contrary or different than what the creed says, because the creeds are a normed norm and they are normed by scripture, if the pastor's sermon says something different than the creed, you immediately go, uh -oh, my pastor just twisted
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God's word and he's not preaching the truth. So then the elders and the deacons of the church, they need to have a meeting immediately with the pastor and say, pastor, we've got a problem with what you just said, because what you just said is not scripture, it's not true.
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How do you know? Really, huh? Well, what you just said is contrary to what we just confessed.
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Well, ugh. And here's the thing, within Lutheran circles, you can generally tell the guys who do not want to have their theology normed by the
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Bible, because oftentimes one of the first things they get rid of in a church service is the creed.
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And so, yeah, keep that in mind. Now, a friend of mine who's a Missouri Synod pastor in the Chicago area, years ago, he told a story on issues, et cetera, and he was at a luncheon, and it was one of these kind of weird inner church kind of luncheon kind of things, and he was sitting at a table with a group of people from Willow Creek.
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Willow Creek. Now, I'll say this, and Bill Heibles has long since been drubbed out of the ministry for, let's just say, gross, egregious breakings of particular commandments as they relate to sex.
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But at the time, Bill Heibles, everybody was looking to Bill Heibles because he was giving us a new way to do church.
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When I was doing my undergraduate degree, I took a course on the sociology of religion, and one of my term papers was a research paper looking at how
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Willow Creek developed their methodology regarding church. And I had the opportunity to interview one of the campus pastors and administrative pastors at Willow Creek when
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I was doing my undergraduate work, and I asked him straight up in my interview with him, and this was part of my paper,
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I asked him, I said, do any of the Willow Creek services, when you guys have services, do you ever confess any of the creeds, the
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Apostles' Creed or the Nicene Creed, or do you use any of these creeds as you're teaching people Christianity in your small groups?
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Answer, no, my question, follow -up question, why not?
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We do not find any value in anything old or irrelevant like that. That was the answer, okay?
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And so my friend, years ago, he was at this luncheon, and he was at a table with a group of people from Willow Creek, and in the course of their conversation, he casually made a reference to the
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Apostles' Creed, and one of the ladies from Willow Creek who happened to work there said, the
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Apostles' Creed, what's that? And so he said, it's a
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Christian creed, it's been confessed by Christians for millennia, and he, from memory, goes ahead and recites the
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Apostles' Creed. After he finished, the woman said to him, well, that's very interesting.
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I don't believe that, but that's a very interesting thing. It's like, oh, okay.
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So you get the idea, you get the idea. So where the creeds come from is the initial impetus towards the creeds comes from, of all places.
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So when you consider then, the Irenaeus makes it clear that the rule of faith, he got it from those who were taught the faith by the
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Apostles. So if we're to believe Irenaeus in this, then it was the
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Apostles who initially came up with this rule of faith and then taught it to their people. And so it becomes a way of organizing all of Christian theology and the faith.
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And then you'll note then that so many of these places, so many churches today, they've never heard of these creeds and they actually teach doctrines that are contrary to these creeds.
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And so these are a very, very helpful, useful thing. Again, they're forged, the
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Nicene Creed is forged in the Arian heresy controversy. And then the
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Athanasian Creed, which was not written by Athanasius, it's named for him because he was the great defender of the doctrine of the
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Trinity, is also very helpful. So let's take a look at the Nicene Creed, not
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Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed. Hate when I go into my brain and grab a word and it's the wrong one.
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I hate that, it's annoying. Okay, let's see here, Athanasian Creed. Now this one is a little bit ponderous, but again, it's true because it says the same thing as scripture, and you'll notice the unwaveringness regarding the requirement to believe in the doctrine of the
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Trinity, which again is also appropriate because if you do not believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, God has revealed that this is his nature.
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And if you don't believe in the Trinity, then you are an idolater, you believe in a God of your own making. So here's what the
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Athanasian Creed says. Whoever desires to be saved must above all hold the Catholic, that means universal, faith.
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Whoever does not keep it whole and undefiled will without doubt perish eternally. And the Catholic faith is this, we worship one
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God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance.
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For the Father is one person, the Son is another, the Holy Spirit is another. But the Godhead of the
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Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is one, the glory equal, the majesty co -eternal, such as the
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Father is, such as the Son, such as the Holy Spirit. The Father is uncreated, the
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Son is uncreated, the Holy Spirit is uncreated. The Father is infinite, the Son is infinite, the
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Holy Spirit is infinite. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet there are not three eternals, but one eternal.
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Just as there are not three uncreated or three infinites, but one uncreated and one infinite.
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In the same way, the Father is almighty, the Son is almighty, the Holy Spirit is almighty, yet there are not three almighties, but one almighty.
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So the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three gods, but one
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God. So the Father is Lord, the Son is Lord, the Holy Spirit is Lord, and yet there are not three Lords, there is only one
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Lord, one Lord. Just as we are compelled by the Christian truth to acknowledge each distinct person as God and Lord, so also are we prohibited by the
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Catholic religion to say that there are three gods or Lords. The Father is not made, nor created, nor begotten by anyone.
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The Son is neither made, nor created, but begotten of the Father alone. The Holy Spirit is of the
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Father and of the Son, neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.
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And thus there is one Father, not three Fathers, one Son, not three Sons, one
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Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits, and in this Trinity, none is before or after another, none is greater or less than another, but the whole three persons are co -eternal with each other and co -equal so that in all things, as has been stated above, the
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Trinity in unity and unity in Trinity is to be worshiped. Now, I'm gonna note here that this will then go on to also give us a right understanding of the incarnation of Christ, of how the
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Son of God is incarnate and how that takes place. But again, this is a highly precise, and I would even say at times, a necessarily overcooked statement regarding the doctrine of the
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Trinity because we know from history without a proper grounding in Scripture and a subscription to these creeds, which are saying the same thing as Scripture, then we are prone to wander into, to cobble together our own
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Frankenstein faith. And so that's not what we're supposed to do. And so I remember during the times when the emergent church movement was a thing, and I'm kind of glad it's not a thing anymore, but unfortunately, like all weeds, the seeds of that dandelion have spread, but man, those guys, they put together this
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Frankenstein monster of a Christianity, and it pulled from old things and new things and stuff that had never even been put together.
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But we believe in the faith once delivered to the saints, and a good way to think about what is the faith once delivered to the saints, it's defined by the
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Nicene Creed. That's a good way to look at it. And so the rule of faith would make that argument.
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Okay, so that was the answer to question number one.
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Wow. Bruce, I'm disappointed, man. You obviously have had a bad influence on all these people, and now you've made disciples who are just derailing the
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Bible studies all the time. Okay, all right.
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So, all right, let's see. Let's see, I'm gonna keep working through here. All right.
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Okay, for Narcissus. Okay, so good question. Is there any biblical basis given to Narcissus' preaching?
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Probably out of context, I'm sure. The answer is no. Okay, so let me explain what
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Narcissus is. All right, and it's a twisting of God's word. Nowhere in scripture are we taught to read the scriptures in this way.
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In fact, quite contrarily. And so I would point then, starting with our gospel text, today,
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Christ makes it clear the scriptures are about him. So let me give you a classic example.
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A classic example of how people engage in Narcissus.
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Goliath, hang on a second here. That's not a book, I'm looking for a word. Hang on a second here. All texts, there we go.
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Second Samuel, 1 Samuel 17. All right, just need to make sure I got my address correct.
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1 Samuel 17. All right, so let me explain to you, first of all, what is eisegesis?
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All right, eisegesis. It means, so it comes from two Greek words, eis,
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E -I -S, into Jesus to read into. So eisegesis is reading into the scriptures things that are not there, all right?
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And so this is a common, common mistake.
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Now, narcissism is the love of yourself. So when you take narcissism, combine it with eisegesis, now you have the very famous and well -used technique of Bible twisting called narcigesis, which is the reading in of yourself, the love of yourself into the scriptures, all right?
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So here's classic example, all right? We all know this story. We could, in fact, we can probably, those of us who have had flannel boards from Sunday school can remember being taught this with a flannel board.
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There's David, the young boy, and Goliath is out there, and we all know how the story goes, but we'll look at the details and see how this works, and then what is a proper way to understand these things?
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Because Christ has made it clear that the Old Testament is about him, all right?
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So it says, now the Philistines gathered their armies for battle. By the way, we should look at the context here.
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Context, context, context. In chapter 16, we have the anointing of, well, let's see.
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Is it, yeah, let's see. Yeah, okay, so in 16, let's see here.
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I wanna back up just a little bit farther than that. Let's see here. All right, so in chapter 16, we have the anointing of David as the king of Israel, while the current king is still king.
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So you're gonna note, so David now, he's ruddy and handsome, and it's
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Samuel the prophet who was sent by God, and he is anointed the king of Israel, which is gonna create all kinds of problems, but you're gonna note here that in the types and shadows, if this text is really pointing to something about Christ, and it is, then this is kind of an important bit, because Christ was, in his earthly reign, the son of David, and he was the anointed but not yet coronated king of the universe.
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You see, there's certain themes going on here that have to play out, and so he's been anointed the king, but he has not yet coronated the king, and then we get this account.
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So the Philistines gathered their armies for battle. They were gathered at Sukkah, which belongs to Judah, and encamped between Sukkah and Azekah in Ephes Damim, and Saul and the men of Israel were gathered and encamped in the
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Valley of Elah, and drew up in line of battle against the Philistines, and the Philistines stood on the mountain on the one side, and Israel stood on the mountain on the other side with a valley between them, and there came out from the camp of the
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Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span, and he had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was 5 ,000 shekels of bronze.
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So this guy is like a super soldier. I mean, in the ancient world, this guy's like a secret weapon, all right?
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He had a bronze armor on his legs, a javelin for bronze slung around his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver's beam.
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His spear's head weighed 600 shekels of iron. His shield bearer went before him, stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, why have you come out to draw up for battle?
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Am I not a Philistine? Are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves. Let him come down to me.
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If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants, but if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us, and the
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Philistines said, I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man that we may fight together.
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When Saul and all of Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid. Now I'm gonna come back to this verse in a minute.
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If you must read yourself into this passage, we're gonna put you right here, okay, in verse 11.
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If you want to read yourself in, go ahead there. I'll explain why. So now
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David was the son of an Ephrathite of Bethlehem in Judah. Hmm, Bethlehem, Ephrathia, Judah.
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Are all of your messianic bells ringing yet? Right, yeah, because I seem to recall a fellow who was born here from the tribe of Judah.
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Anyway, and all of this should start, your messianic bells should be going off because this story in type and shadow prophesies something about Christ, all right?
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So in Judah, named Jesse, who had eight sons, in the days of Saul, the man was already old and advanced in years.
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The three eldest sons of Jesse had followed Saul to the battle. The name of his three sons who went to the battle were
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Eliab, the firstborn, the next to him Abinadab, and the third Shammah.
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And David was the youngest. The three eldest followed Saul, but David went back and forth from Saul to feed his father's sheep at Bethlehem.
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For 40 days, the Philistine, so note here, we got a shepherd of Bethlehem too. Again, you can just kind of see, ah, you seem to recall some kind of a
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Christmas story about shepherds in Bethlehem. Anyway, you can see there's connection points pulling this all the way forward to the time of Christ.
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So Jesse said to David, his son, take for your brothers an ephah of this parched grain, these 10 loaves, carry them quickly to the camp, to your brothers.
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Also take these 10 cheeses to the commander of their thousands, see if your brothers are well, and bring some token from them.
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So now Saul and they, and all the men of Israel were in the Valley of Elah fighting with the
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Philistines. Not really, they were all sitting on camping chairs. Anyways, and David rose early in the morning and left the sheep with a keeper and took the provisions and went to them as Jesse had commanded him.
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And he came to the encampment. As the host was going out to the battle line, shouting the war cry, and Israel and the
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Philistines drew up for battle, army against army. And David left the things in charge of the keeper of the baggage and ran to the ranks and went and greeted his brothers.
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As he talked with them, behold, the champion of the Philistine of Gath, Goliath by name, came out of the ranks of the
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Philistines and spoke the same words as before. And David heard him and all the men of Israel.
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Now, real quick question. This is gonna seem kind of weird. Where's Jesus in this story right now?
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Jesus is in the loins. He's the unconceived, unborn, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson of David.
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So Christ is presently there. Because as you read the story, as you look at the Old Testament, we're following the bloodline of the
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Messiah. And so it's come up to David and no further. It's come up to David and stopped right there.
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David hasn't had any children yet. Solomon has not yet been born. And so you can say by virtue of that fact that the
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Messiah is about ready to take the battlefield here. Okay, and certain things going on that you gotta pay close attention to because this is messianic beyond all belief.
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So all the men of Israel, they saw the man and they fled from him and were much afraid. If you're gonna read yourself into the biblical text, verse 24, again, is a great place to do so.
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You know, if you want to be part of the men of Israel who are wetting themselves in the presence of Goliath, that's a good place to put yourself because you're gonna know all of Israel is completely powerless to defeat this fellow, okay?
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He's, in fact, a good way to think of Goliath. He's a stand -in in the types and shadows for the devil.
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Okay, he's defying the living God. So the men of Israel said, have you seen this man who has come up?
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Surely he has come up to defy Israel. The king will enrich the man who kills him with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father's house free in Israel.
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Oh, wait a second here. So the person who defeats Goliath, the king is going to give a bride as a prize.
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I seem to think, didn't Jesus defeat the devil and the father has given him the church as his bride?
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You see, you start making these connection points, it makes sense, all right? It makes sense when you're reading this as Christ has told us to read it, according to his road to Emmaus catechism class, the scriptures are about Jesus.
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So David said to the men who stood by him, what shall be done for the man who kills this
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Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised
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Philistine that he should defy the armies of the living God? Now, David's a great man of faith here.
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So the people answered him in the same way. So shall it be done to the man who kills him. He gets the hot chick, he gets to marry the princess.
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So Eliab, his eldest brother, heard when he had spoke to the men and Eliab's anchor was kindled against David and he said, why have you come down?
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And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil of your heart for you've come down to see the battle.
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And David said, what have I done now? Was it not but a word? See, you could see a little bit of the human tension here.
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Brothers don't always get along so well. Anyway, so he turned away from him toward another and spoke in the same way and the people answered him as before.
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So when the words that David spoke were heard, they repeated them before Saul and he sent for him.
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And David said to Saul, let no man's heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this
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Philistine. And Saul said to David, you're not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him for you are but a youth and he has been a man of war from his youth.
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But David said to Saul, and then listen to this, your servant used to keep sheep for his father.
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And when there came a lion or a bear and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth.
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Now this is miraculous stuff here, all right? So you're gonna note here that David has noticed that there is a protection upon his life that God has given him.
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And that is to be expected because the line of the Messiah has come to him and no farther. And so he recognizes then that because God has been faithful in protecting him miraculously in these ways, he totally trusts that the
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Lord will deliver him even from Goliath, all right? So and if he arose against me,
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I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. This sounds a lot like Samson, by the way.
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Similar kind of strength here, a miraculous strength that was given to David in protecting his flocks, his sheep.
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And you'll note that Jesus is our great shepherd. You know, just keep coming back to that. When you pull
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Christ and features of Christ back into the story, it enriches it, it doesn't take away from it.
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But when you read yourself into it, the whole thing just falls flat. Anyway, so we keep going. So your servant has struck down both lions and bears, plural, okay?
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I mean, the worst thing I've killed is a mouse, okay? All right, so he's killed lions, plural, and bears, plural.
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And so he says, this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living
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God. So David said, the Yahweh who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, he will deliver me from the hand of this
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Philistine. So what does Saul have to say to logic like this? This is logic like he's never heard before.
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So Saul said, go, Yahweh be with you. And you could just see
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Saul turning around telling the guy who's in charge of the coffins, you better make a small one right now, okay?
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No, I've added that to the text, but you get the idea. So the whole coffin bit, that's called eisegesis.
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I just added to the text. But it kind of gets the sense of what's going on here. So Saul clothed
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David with his armor. He put a helmet of bronze on his head, clothed them with a coat of mail, and David strapped his sword over his armor.
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And he tried in vain to go for he had not tested them. And David said to Saul, I cannot go with these.
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I've not tested them. So David put them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, and he chose five smooth stones from the brook and put them in a shepherd's pouch.
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And I'm gonna come back to this in a minute here, because I'll tell you how the ancient church read this text regarding the five smooth stones.
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But we're gonna engage in some narcissus in just a minute. But I'll come back to the five smooth stones.
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So his sling was in his hand, and he approached the Philistine. The Philistine moved forward and came near to David with his shield bearer in front of him.
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And when the Philistine looked and saw David, he disdained him for he was but a youth, ruddy and handsome in appearance.
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And the Philistine said to David, am I a dog that you come to me with sticks? Love the trash talk here.
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And the Philistine cursed David by his gods. And the Philistine said to David, come to me and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field.
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And then David said to the Philistine, you come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of Yahweh Sabaoth, the
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God of army. By the way, host, Saba is army. I come to you in the name of Yahweh of armies, the
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God of the armies of Israel whom you have defied. This day, Yahweh will deliver you into my hand and I will strike you down and cut off your head.
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And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a
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God in Israel and that all this assembly may know that Yahweh saves, not with sword and spear.
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So note the theme here. Who's doing the saving? Yahweh. So David is taking no credit for this victory that's about to happen.
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It's the Lord who's going to deliver. It is the Lord who's going to save. Yahweh saves not with sword and spear for the battle is
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Yahweh's and he will give you into our hand. Dude, okay.
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All right, so when the Philistine arose and came and drew near to meet David, David ran quickly toward the battle line to meet the
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Philistine. And by the way, this is the most underwhelming battle of all times. David put his hand in his bag, took out a stone, slung it, struck the
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Philistine in his forehead. Stone sank in his forehead and he fell on his face to the ground. I mean, come on.
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Usually heavyweight battles, man. They go the whole 15 rounds, okay?
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Like we're two seconds into this and the Philistine's dead. The end.
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So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and with a stone and struck the Philistine and killed him. There was no sword in the hand of David.
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So then David ran, stood over the Philistine, took his sword, drew it out of his sheath, killed him and cut off his head with it.
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When the Philistine saw that their champion was dead, they fled. And then the men of Israel and Judah, with a shout, it pursued the
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Philistines as far as Gath and the gates of Ekron so that the wounded Philistines fell on the way from Shaarim as far as Gath and Ekron.
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Now here's how the Narcissus works. So Narcissus is the reading of yourself into this biblical text.
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And I'm gonna just ask you, so what was it like on that day? Were you there? Were you there?
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No, you weren't. I wasn't. What did Goliath smell like? How many teeth did he have?
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How long was his shadow on that day? And you're sitting there going, well, I wasn't there. Okay, but here's this annoying thing is that we wanna make everything about ourselves.
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And so when we do that, here's how it goes. The narcissistic preacher will say, and so you need to have audacious faith.
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Are you facing the Goliath of death right now? Are you facing the Goliath of losing your job in the pandemic?
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Well, you need to just rise up in audacious faith and you need to grab your five smooth stones and you need to, in faith, sling that stone and kill your
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Goliath. And everyone goes, yeah, they're gonna go kill my
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Goliath. And then they get home and they look at their notes from the sermon, they go, what does this even mean? How do I, what's my stones?
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Okay, you know, what if I miss? You know, and so they're gonna go slay the
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Goliath of losing their job because of the pandemic. And you know what, come Monday, Tuesday, they're still unemployed, all right?
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They've accomplished nothing. And you know why? Because the story's not about you, okay?
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You're not the hero. I'm not the hero. Jesus is the hero. And all along the way, we've been pointing out all the different ways in which you can connect this to Christ.
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So if you guys remember all the way back to the Garden of Eden, all the way back to the
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Garden of Eden, there's the snake and it deceives our first parents and God curses the snake, all right?
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And curses the serpent. And let's see here. Let me go back to Genesis and let's just make sure that we got this all worked out.
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Genesis chapter three. And in the cursing of the serpent, we hear what's called the Proto -Ewangelion.
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That's the very first gospel. So the Lord said to the serpent, because you've done this, curse are you above all the livestock and above all the beasts of the field.
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On your belly you shall go. Dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman between your offspring and her offspring.
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He shall bruise your head. You shall bruise his heel. So note here, Goliath has his head cut off, all right?
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Head cut off by the fellow who is in the direct line of the Messiah. He's sitting there going, and how did
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Goliath fall? Face down. Okay, he went on his belly and then had his head cut off.
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I'm just saying, that sounds a lot like what God promised the serpent regarding the Messiah who would be the seed of the woman.
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So you got some of that imagery there. And then regarding the five smooth stones, when you read the sermons of the church fathers regarding the five smooth stones, here's how they related it back to Christ.
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Okay, one of the things that as Christians of the ancient world would meditate on the passion of Christ, they would always refer to the wounds of Christ as five wounds, both hands, both feet, and then his side, his side that was pierced by the
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Roman centurion. So when they talk about what is it that saved us from the devil, it was accomplished through the five wounds of Christ.
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And so what the ancient church did is they connected the five smooth stones back to the wounds of Christ.
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And this is a good way to read it. So coming back to what I said, if you want to read yourself into the text, you make a good on the sidelines person who's too afraid to enjoin the battle and are unable to defeat
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Goliath. You're there when Goliath is taunting and you're wetting yourself. That's you, okay?
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Jesus is the one who takes the field and he's the one who conquers for you because Yahweh saves.
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This is a picture of salvation and deliverance from the tyranny of the devil. And the blasphemer and apostate
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Satan. That's the type and shadow picture that's here. So when you read it with an eye towards Christ and the fulfillment always being in Christ, and by the way, the
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New Testament explicitly teaches you, not only in our gospel text today, but in other portions of the
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Bible itself in the New Testament, teaches you to look at the Old Testament as type and shadow whose fulfillment is in Christ.
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And so when you're reading it that way, now all of a sudden, your faith in Jesus is bolstered.
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But if you read yourself into it, what's gonna end up happening is you're gonna look as ridiculously stupid like, for instance,
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Kenneth Copeland. COVID -19, I cast you down from your high place and you come down on your belly,
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COVID -19. And all of his words just amount to a hill of beans. He looks like a lunatic because he doesn't have that authority.
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There's only one, one person who has the authority to relieve us from the pandemic.
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And it's not Kenneth Copeland decreeing and declaring, it's Jesus Christ. So we need to be praying to him.
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And so the idea is, is that when you read yourself in as the hero of the story, it's all about you and you conquering and your audacious faith and all that kind of nonsense, well, then what you end up doing is fulfilling one of the prophecies of the
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Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul prophesied, and he says this, and in fact,
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I'm in the wrong Timothy, in 2 Timothy 3, understand this, that in the last days, there will come times of difficulty.
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People will be lovers of self, narcissists, okay? And this is in the church, not in the world at large.
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Lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive. So it is absolute delusional satanic pride to read yourself into these stories.
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You've got to go and slay your Goliaths. No, I don't. I believe in the one who slayed my Goliath for me, and his name is
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Jesus. He's the victor. I am the one who was held in bondage and unable to save myself, and he has saved me.
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The battle belongs to the Lord. That's what David said, and it's true. And so Yahweh, Saba, oh, that's
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Jesus Christ. He has defeated, he has, and you'll note here that also think of it this way, is that when we talk about what
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Christ accomplished on the cross, Jesus alone was on the battlefield on that Good Friday.
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He put himself forward that day. There was no armies.
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In fact, the scriptures make it very clear that at Christ's disposal were how many legions of angels ready to fight for him, and all he had to do was say the word.
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But he is the one who all by himself went on the battlefield that day, and he laid down his life so that you and I can be freed from the dominion of darkness.
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He won that battle against the devil by himself without an army, same as David.
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So when you start making the connection, it bolsters your faith in Christ. When you start reading yourself into it, you're gonna end up despairing because you have no authority, you have no power.
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You can't slay your Goliaths. That's not what this text is saying. So, and there's so many other ways in which people do that.
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Now, I've gone like way long. Hopefully you guys have nothing to do. It's still pandemic time, but you get the idea.
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So let me, oh man, I'm not gonna be able to get to everybody's questions, but anyway, so there is no biblical basis for Narseh Jesus.
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No, none whatsoever. It's a complete misreading of the Bible and a denial that the scriptures are about Jesus and an absolute insistence.
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Well, well, there's something, there's some kind of application that I'm supposed to apply to myself. Yeah, believe, that's the application.
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Believe what Christ has done for you. All right, so we had somebody from San Jose. Glad you were able to join us from the left coast.
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Okay, I used to live there myself. Okay, so why did the word of faith say he descended into hell?
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Isn't that what the word, why do we say that he descended into hell? The idea here is, is that Christ did descend into Sheol.
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And so, but he didn't, the word of faith says that he descended into hell for the purpose of suffering in hell.
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But the epistles make it clear that Christ's descent into Sheol to the dead was for the proclamation of his victory.
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And so that's a whole other lesson, but if you would like to attend my catechism classes,
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I go through this when we get to that part in the creed. So, what does it mean that we say, when we confess he descended into hell?
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The older versions of the creeds say he descended to the dead or to Sheol.
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That's really the idea. He didn't go there to suffer. He went there to proclaim to them his victory. So, and that's borne out in a couple of passages in the epistles.
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Somebody asked a poignant question regarding the descent into hell. Got it, okay. So how should we view others who may just like the disciples on the road, lack complete understanding?
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Should we view them as saved or just lacking of maturity and understanding? And my personal experience has been gradual gaining of truth.
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So that's a great question. I think we want to put the best construction on everything where possible.
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So where a Christian is demonstrating that they do not have a good handling and understanding of who the
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Bible's about or what it's about, or maybe they're being taught falsely, or worse, they're just interpreting it intuitively rather than being instructed properly.
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What you do is it is best to assume that they are lacking maturity and treat them in love and kindness and invite them into a deeper and more accurate understanding of scripture.
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Here's the thing. Okay, I'm almost a 52 year old man and my growth in the scriptures has not stopped.
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And where I am now is not where I was when I was in my early 20s.
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And in my early 20s, I was in a cult, all right? And God graciously delivered us out of that.
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It took a long time to kind of work all of that out. So be kind and loving and find a way to engage them in a way where they can get to know the scriptures better and have the
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Bible burn off some of their false understandings. That's kind of a better way of doing it, okay?
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All right, so, by the way, did I end up, I probably end up, let me do this.
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I see that I did that. I'm going to make that, I'm gonna put this in here right now, the article from R .C.
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Sproul regarding Norman Omata. I accidentally sent it privately to somebody. Okay, all right, so, so Don says, given a generally illiterate population and lack of printed word until after the printing press, were not the creeds a most helpful explanation of the complete word that could easily be memorized?
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Yes, indeed, that's true. That's true, I mean, here's the weird thing is that in the days before the printing press, people had to have certain things memorized, and the creed was a great way of getting an overarching idea of what the faith was in a memorizable format.
01:00:08
And now that, and a lot of people lack biblical literacy, in part because the
01:00:13
Bible was really put down, or worse, was locked up in Latin. And now we're awash in Bibles, and still nobody knows what it says.
01:00:22
It's the weirdest thing. So you kind of get the idea. So in reference to the
01:00:29
Athanasian Creed, would Gnostics debate the incarnation with Christians? Yes, they would. Fundamental belief of the
01:00:35
Gnostics is that Jesus only appeared in the form of a man that he was not incarnate.
01:00:41
In Gnostic theology, matter and flesh, these are evil, and therefore it is inappropriate for anything divine to have taken on human flesh.
01:00:52
For them, that's just anathema. And so that's completely contrary. Spirit, good, evil, bad.
01:00:58
And in their overarching meta -narrative, they claim that the material world was created by the demi -urges, or one particular demi -urge as an accident.
01:01:10
And so for them, salvation is the removal of all things physical and tangible, and the undoing of the mistake by this demi -urge that inadvertently created matter.
01:01:22
And if you're thinking, what did he just say? Remember, I said Gnostics are like the ancient world's version of sci -fi. Okay, what they believed in is really goofy.
01:01:31
Okay. All right, let's see here. All right, so do you do the catechism class online?
01:01:39
Yes, I do it online. So Liddy, what you do, email the secretary of Kongsvinger.
01:01:46
If you go to kongsvingerchurch .org, send an email to the secretary, and we'll put you on the email list so that you can get access to the
01:01:53
Zoom meeting information and times. We do it two times on Thursday, and we're in two different places.
01:01:59
So one's at noon central, and the other's at 7 p .m. Come to whichever one is most appropriate time.
01:02:06
And since when I get to the end of the catechism, I just start at the beginning again for each class. Hop on wherever you want, and you'll eventually get through all of the catechism, but it takes about two years.
01:02:18
So the Christian faith takes really that long to teach. So I believe in quality of teaching, not quantity.
01:02:27
So working through all of that. All right, so peace to you, brothers and sisters.
01:02:32
Thank you for your patience in letting me go long. I always like to point out, you have nowhere to go anyway, you're all stuck. So me too, but I'm gonna go binge watch
01:02:42
Netflix or something right now. Enjoy half an afternoon off. All right, peace to you. We will see you all next time.