The Trinity Part 2

All right, let's get started and I will open with a quick word of prayer.

Let's pray Lord keep us steadfast in your word and curb those who by deceit or sword would wrest the kingdom from your son and bring to Knot all that you have done

We ask in Jesus name. Amen We are back in Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 and last week.

We talked about the first sentence of the Bible There's something lost in Translation and the thing that gets lost in translation is is that there is this unique sentence that challenges us and reveals that there's something different going on regarding God and we talked about how this hinted at the doctrine of the

Trinity and The the sentence again in Hebrew better sheet better Elohim eth ha shemaim

Va eth ha eretz which means in the beginning was God created the heavens and the earth and I've noted here

This is the word right there. That's Elohim and that's plural for gods, but the verb

Here bara which means created and this is an important thing is we do not confess and the

Bible does not teach that God just Rearranged stuff if you talk to an evolutionist some evolutionists actually believe that the that the universe is eternal

Okay, and the way they kind of play this out is they'll talk about the Big Bang and they'll say well

What happens is is that there's a there's eternal cycle where the universe expands? contracts and then blows up again and that the universe has always been and There are

Christians who being influenced by this materialistic worldview will deny that God Created instead, you know

God is kind of like well like we are we don't create matter All we end up doing is moving stuff around and rearranging it

So that God becomes the rearranger of things But this actually says God created and that verb only applies to God in the

Hebrew Old Testament He created out of nothing ex nihilo But the problem is is that that's third -person singular and the noun that goes with it is plural

So again, let me if you were to just translate it straight. It says in the beginning God's he created the heavens and the earth.

It doesn't make any grammatical sense at all So we're deep we're confronted with this idea that God is unique and we talked about how this begins to already sentence number one

In the Bible begins to hint at the doctrine of the hint of the Trinity You kind of are left with just a couple of options here.

You're either left with Mormonism or Trinitarianism so like those are your kind of two options, you know Mormonism teaches polytheism and Yet scripture says that there's only one

God now last week. We took a look at Specifically the passages that talk about Jesus being

God and before we move forward I wanted to give you a couple of more passages that talk about the deity of Christ and then also

Specifically, I want you guys to be able to answer the question. How do you know the Holy Spirit is

God? Is there is is there a biblical passage that explicitly states that God the Holy Spirit is God?

the reason I asked the questions because if you talk to somebody like a Jehovah's Witness a Jehovah's Witness will say oh the

Holy Spirit is like electricity. The Holy Spirit is an impersonal force

Okay, you don't pray to the Holy Spirit, you know that this is the way they talk Okay, but can you guys what you know start thinking offhand?

Can you think of a single passage that says that God is that the Holy Spirit is

God? Think about it. We'll come back to it. So what we're gonna do

I want to give you a couple more passages and One passage in particular and talking about the deity of Christ as we look at the doctrine of the

Trinity We'll fill it out and then we'll move on to this some other things John chapter 20 an explicit statement regarding the deity of Christ if you remember in the gospel of John we have a post -resurrection appearance of Christ and In the post -resurrection appearance effect.

Let me I'm gonna have to switch translations here. So I pull up my Greek here that Thomas missed one remember on the day that Jesus rose from the grave

Jesus appears to the The disciples up in the upper room and Thomas missed the meeting

Right, and remember we call him doubting Thomas And the reason why we call him doubting Thomas is because he refused to actually believe what was going on So we're in John chapter 20

I'll start at verse 19 and What says on the evening of that first day of the week when the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the

Jews J Jesus came and stood among them and said peace be with you after he said this he showed them his hands and side and the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the

Lord and Jesus said peace be with you as the father has sent me I am sending you and with that he breathed on them and said receive the

Holy Spirit if you forgive anyone his sins This is where it's fun. The Greek is they will have been forgiven anyone

If you do not forgive them, they will not have been forgiven It's an the the

NIV is a little bit weird here because the the tense in the verbs doesn't quite work in English very well

So there's the office of the keys, but here we get to verse 24 now Thomas called Dynamos One of the twelve was not with the disciples when

Jesus came So the other disciples told him we have seen the Lord but he said unless I see the nail marks in his hands and Put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side.

I will not believe In other words, he's from Missouri The show me state right, isn't that how that works?

All right, so Hang on a second here. I'll pull up my Greek New Testament So I will not believe it a week later

His disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them though The doors were locked Jesus came and stood among them and said peace be with you

Then he said to Thomas put your finger here see my hands reach out your hand put it into my side stop doubting and believe

Thomas's response Thomas said to him my Lord and my

God Now What's funny is this if you talk to a

Jehovah's Witness and you point this passage out they can't bring themselves to believe that Thomas is actually saying that Jesus is his

Lord and his God and So what they're based that what they are accusing Thomas of doing here is basically doing an

OMG OMG, you know, right in other words blaspheming

But that's not what he did at all and how do we know this well Jesus said to him because you have seen me you have believed

Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed question is believed what? Uh -huh

So yeah, let me point this out to you in the Greek. I'll highlight it. I've highlighted it right here the

Greek says Ha kurio smoo. Kai. Ha. They are smoo

My Lord and my God and it has the definite articles in the Greek in other words

Strictly translated the Lord of me and the God of me is what he said he's confessing Jesus as his

Lord and his God and Jesus then says to him because you have seen me you have believed believed what that he is

Jesus is Lord and God right Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed so there's a blessing here

How many of you have actually had coffee with Jesus at Starbucks? No, no one me either

Just saying but so we haven't actually seen Jesus yet We all believe that he is

Lord and God right and Jesus here says that we're blessed So this is another clear passage that tells us that Jesus is

God and Thomas affirms Christ as Lord and God Jesus says he's blessed because he believes this and pronounces us blessed for believing the same.

Let me give you Yes That that closely

Yeah that explicitly I would say yes Okay. Yeah right Jesus while before the resurrection before he was crucified and raised from the dead he

The best way I can put it is is that he was he would always say things that implied

But he never came out and said it in so many words and notice here. Jesus is not the one saying I'm God Thomas is confessing him and Jesus is affirming him.

Does that make sense? so This is super clear. Yeah Yeah Now Matthew and his gospel kind of does the same thing in the sense that he's always pointing to things that allude to Christ's deity

But it doesn't come right out and say it now post -resurrection things get a little bit interesting, especially in the epistles

But I want to point something out to you in the book of Acts this is another passage that I think is worth having kind of Top of the mind on these things as we ponder who

Jesus is in Acts chapter 20 I think is where we're at. Hang on a second here.

Take you this raised from the dead. Ah, yes. Here we are Verse 13 chapter 20 verse 13.

I want to read to you Paul's farewell address to the Ephesian elders There's something that Paul says in there that is rather fascinating as it pertains to who

Christ is Here's what it says John Acts 20 verse 13 We went on ahead to the ship and sailed to a sauce where we were going to take

Paul aboard he had made this arrangement because he was going there on foot and when he met us at a sauce we took him aboard and went on to Midoline the next day we set sail from there and arrived at kiosk the day after that We crossed over to Samos and on the following day arrived at Miletus Paul had decided to sail past Ephesus to avoid spending time in the province of Asia for he was in a hurry to reach

Jerusalem if possible by the day of Pentecost from Miletus Paul sent to Ephesus for the elders of the church

When they arrived he said to them now knows who is he talking to the elders in the church? So these would be the these would be the pastors of the churches in Ephesus He's here's what he says, you know how

I live the whole time I was with you from the first day. I came into the province of Asia I served the Lord with great humility and with tears, although I was severely tested by the plots of the

Jews You know that I had not hesitated to preach anything that would be helpful to you But have taught you publicly and from house to house

I have declared to both Jews and Greeks that they must turn to God in repentance and have faith in our

Lord Jesus and now compelled by the Spirit. I'm going to Jerusalem not knowing what will happen to me there

I only know that in every city the Holy Spirit warns me that prison and hardships are facing me However, I consider my life worth nothing to me

If only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord has given me the task of testifying to the gospel of God's Grace now,

I know that none of you among whom I have gone about preaching. The kingdom will ever see me again

Therefore I declare to you today that I am innocent of the blood of all men For I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God So keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the

Holy Spirit has made you overseers Pause right there for a second Pastors who has made the pastors what they are

The text is God is God is the one who's made pastors pastors The Holy Spirit is the one who calls pastors

So God has made them overseers be shepherds of the Church of God, which he bought with his own blood

There's the verse Verse 28 be shepherds of the Church of God, which he bought with his own blood

So here's my question for you When did God bleed when he was on the cross?

exactly He bled when he was on the cross God is spirit yet.

Jesus is God and man, you know all mixed together You know, it's a Spanish friend of mine likes to say

Jesus is Dios con carne You know God with meat Yeah Yeah, all right

Spanish not so good with the Norwegians. I'll keep that Yeah in California people get they get that you know, it's

Wow, yeah, yeah deals can carne. Yeah Uh -huh

Okay Yeah, the work of the Spirit, yeah, I think we've all felt it Jesus says when he was sends the

Spirit the Spirit would convict this the world of sin and unbelief So anytime you hear

God's Word either you read it or it's being preached and you feel like you know

How did you put it to me a while back? You know, God's got the red dot on your forehead and you're feeling convicted of your sin.

That's the work of the Holy Spirit Yeah, we've all felt the Holy Spirit working Always fascinates me that there was a whole movement, you know starting with the time of the

Enlightenment and it kind of had its Apex in the 20th century and then started to die out this whole idea of modernism

You know that somehow that all that exists, you know Now is it all that exists is matter and material things and and the modernists were became radical materialists

Denying the spirit. Have y 'all ever seen you know, see I'm I don't know if it's gonna work with you guys, but I'm still learning

Okay, my wife likes horror movies. Okay, I'm you know, it's it's it's strange

Okay, you know like like every other year during our anniversary I get to pick a movie and it's fun and then the following year.

It's it's a horror movie, you know So it's like what are you guys doing for your anniversary?

We're gonna go see a movie about demon possession No, I'm speaking the truth, yeah

Yeah, she's really into these movies but have y 'all seen the classic the exorcist

Okay. Okay. And you know what? You know the Reagan is the girl who's possessed and stuff like that but if you remember the story in the exorcist the tension is

Between the priest who's actually experienced the demon possession knows that the girl is possessed and he can't perform the exorcism

Without permission from the church and his higher -up is one of these guys who's a materialist

You know, he thinks that the girls just psychologically loony or whatever, but it can't possibly be a demon, right?

and so you always have this tension between the people who don't believe in the Supernatural and those who just like know that it exists, right?

And this is kind of the tension same same tension exists in the movie the exorcism of Emily Rose You know, which is supposedly based upon a true story.

Okay, and the guy who made that film by the way He's a Christian filmmaker and he's good friends with a friend of mine

I don't know him but a friend of mine is really good friends with him and he pert and he's a Christian He really wanted to put that out there in a way that kind of challenged our thinking on this

You know and kind of challenged this whole idea that that all that exists is the material Are you sure really and what's fascinating is in our lifetime?

We've seen materialism kind of start to give way to postmodern thinking to where it when you turn on the sci -fi channel

They got these people going around with devices trying to talk to ghosts and stuff like that You know you catch

EVPs or you know, you know some kind of evidence that the paranormal exists so we kind of swung the other way and more people are open to the idea in our society now of Supernatural and spiritual and things like that.

But the thing is is that General spiritual ism is not Christianity and we got to remember this scripture reveals

That there are fallen angels demons who also We can't see who are very active and so personally based upon what scripture says when somebody's out there doing

You know ghost hunting and you know, and they're trying, you know, it's like knock if you're my grandma You know that what the guy can't see is that it's not his it's not his grandma.

It's a demon one You know If only you could see what was going on, right?

So, you know, that's we got to be careful with these things But anyway, I'm off on a tangent

So let me come back to that though. They'll the Holy Spirit will talk specifically now about the

Holy Spirit Let me give you one passage that clearly states that the Holy Spirit is God now.

This is not a church discipline passage So I just want to make it clear that I'm not advocating this passage as a model for church discipline

But if you go to Acts chapter 5 Let's read a story here and I'll show you something and when we start to read it

You'll understand why I said I don't think this is a good church discipline passage Acts chapter 5 verse 1 now a man named

Ananias together with his wife Sapphira also sold a piece of property With his wife's full knowledge

He kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the Apostles feet Then Peter said to Ananias Ananias how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the

Holy Spirit and You have kept for yourself some of the money that you received for the land Didn't it belong to you before it was sold and after it was sold wasn't the money at your disposal

What made you think of doing such a thing you have not lied to men But to God and when

Ananias heard this he fell down and died Again, this is not a good church discipline passage.

I'm just want to make this The authorities might have something to say about this, you know now it is

But the important verse here is in verse 4 so actually verse 3 How is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you've lied to the

Holy Spirit who did you lie to The Holy Spirit okay, and Peter then explains at the end of verse 4 you have not lied to men

But to God so there you go. There's a passage that Explicitly equates the

Holy Spirit with God and we don't need a lot of them You just need a few now There's other passages where the work of the

Holy Spirit is found in Creation the attributes of the Sovereign God are actually attributed also to the

Holy Spirit So what scripture reveals in the beginnings in the beginning gods? He created the heavens and the earth.

That's the Hebrew You know, that's the rough literal translation of the Hebrew That there's one

God and three persons one God three persons now This is an important thing remember when

I was reading in just a few minutes ago from Acts chapter 20. Let me go back and Continue with the passage and I want to point something out to you

Paul says keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you Overseers be shepherds of the

Church of God which he bought with his own blood I know that after I leave Savage wolves will come in among you and will not spare the flock and even from your own number men will arise and distort the

Truth in order to draw away disciples after them. So be on your guard. Remember that for three years

I never stopped warning each of you night and day with tears So in that same passage in Acts chapter 20, there's a warning a warning about Wolves who come in among the sheep twist teaching twisted things.

Now, this is important Christianity from the beginning has always emphasized and this is apostolic because it's a

New Testament the importance of teaching sound doctrine and right belief regarding God and Because we have this warning from Paul that savage wolves come in among the flock

When we look at Christian history over and again, we see huge theological battles that were fought because somebody clever came along and came up with a way of twisting

God's Word in a way that it would impact somebody's Salvation and here's what I mean The scriptures make it clear if you believe falsely regarding who

God is who Jesus is and what the gospel is You're not a Christian This is strong.

I understand that it's politically incorrect to talk this way today, but I'm not interested in being politically correct

I'm going to tell you what the scriptures say So somebody who says I don't believe that that I don't believe in the

Trinity I believe that the one God Manifests himself in three persons now

If that's if you know your church history what I just said should clue you off that I'm talking about a particular heresy

There are different heresies that have been rejected through the history of the church. One of them is modalism modalism teaches that God is only one person one

God one person, but God Manifests himself in different ways

So during the time of the Old Testament God manifested himself as the father then and when

Jesus was on earth He manifested himself as the son and now that this now that you know Jesus has returned to heaven

God manifests himself by the Holy Spirit kind of thing. So it's kind of like God wears different hats

Okay, but it's one God one person So the problem is is that when Jesus is baptized remember?

Jesus is baptized in the River Jordan The spirit descends like a dove and the voice from heaven says this is my son in whom

I am well pleased Well, how does the modalist explain this? Well, it was kind of theatrics if you would, you know give ventriloquism

So while Jesus is, you know being baptized he's going this was my son in whom

I am well pleased, you know Yeah Yeah, right now who believes in modalism the you've heard of Bishop TD Jake's Okay, he's a modalist

He's a modalist now In fact, if you were to do a search for Chris Roseboro TD Jake's elephant room, too

You will find that you know in my history I was actually threatened with arrest when I tried to attend elephant room to specifically because I knew what was going to be happening at that event and that was they were going to try to make

TD Jake's Look like he's a mainstream Christian and he's not the title bishop, by the way that was given to TD Jake's That's from a group called the

United Pentecostal Church United Pentecostal Church is a group that formally Officially rejects the doctrine of the

Trinity. It's important Jehovah's Witnesses They teach the

Aryan heresy the Aryan heresy denies the eternal sonship of Jesus or that he's the eternal

God and Instead what they say is that Jesus is Michael the Archangel the first and greatest creation of God and That that that's who died for us on the cross.

I didn't knew Yeah, see this is where it gets hard. I I Did okay in college when

I took the one psychology class that I took so But to say that I would somehow be able to psychologically tell you why

Somebody would want to do that. I would say this theologically each of us born dead and trespasses and sins has a

Propensity for suppressing the truth the doctrine of the Trinity kind of rails against our reason

It's one of these things that you know, I can't I don't understand how it works now back in church history

There was a huge fight over the Aryan heresy what's fascinating is is that for a time the majority of Christian congregations in the

Mediterranean were Affirmers of the Aryan heresy and During that time there was a young man

Who's well known for not being good -looking but being very tenacious. His name was Athanasius of Alexandria He was this guy who basically said no

The scriptures do not teach that Jesus is a created being but that he is

God and he was a staunch Defender of the doctrine of the Trinity and at one time he was actually confronted and told

Athanasius give it up. The whole world is against you and his response back is very famous His response back was he said no

Athanasius contra mundo. It's Athanasius against the world Okay, this is a guy who nearly lost his life on several occasions defending the doctrine of the

Trinity and his Influence was very well noted at the

Council of Nicaea The Council of Nicaea and 325 they they hammered out kind of like the final version of what was called the rule of faith now become the

Nicaean Creed and the big fight between the Aryans and The and the

Trinitarians was over one letter one letter in one word the

Aryans said that Jesus is of like Substance with the father home boy

Ouseas The Trinitarian said no Jesus is of the same

Substance as the father homo Ouseas The difference one iota

So if you've ever heard the phrase not one iota And many people trace this historically back to this the difference between heresy and true biblical orthodoxy came down to one letter

One iota if you said that Jesus is of like substance with the father you're an

Aryan if you said he's the of the same substance with the father you're a Trinitarian and The difference was is that eventually the church?

recognized had this battle and recognized the Aryan heresy was truly a heresy and they

Anathematized those who believe in held to it and for the most part that heresy disappeared until the 19th century when the

Watchtower Bible and tract society kind of resuscitated it So the more the

Jehovah's Witnesses when they come to your door, they hold to the Aryan heresy And the reason why this is not

Christian is because they reject God as he's revealed himself in Scripture and they've come up with a

God that is reasonable to their own mind Now another thing that puts people outside of the Christian faith is a different gospel

And let me show you this so that you don't think that I'm just being ornery Galatians chapter 1

Galatians chapter 1 and I'll even bring in another passage to help all of this

Now you familiar with why the book of Galatians was written No, okay

The long and the short of it is this is that the Apostle Paul he planted a you know

He was a church planter extraordinaire, and he was responsible for planting churches in the region of Galatia But here's the thing is that Paul after he would leave after he planted these churches there was a group of guys who would come in who they were called

Judaizers and The Judaizers basically said listen that Apostle Paul. He didn't tell you everything.

He should have told you and in fact Yeah, he's he failed to mention that you gentlemen here in the congregation there's this little procedure that we're going to need to perform is called circumcision and You're not really a

Christian unless you're circumcised and you observe the Mosaic feast days and you put yourself under the

Mosaic Covenant and Well, this is what these Judaizers did they added works to salvation by grace so rather than the gospel you had the

Gospel all right mixing miss mixing works and the gospel together and Paul This is why he wrote the book of Galatians was specifically to address the

Galatian heresy Which basically boiled down to a different gospel altogether and here's what he says starting at verse 6

I am astonished that you are so quickly Deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel, which is really no gospel at all

Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ But even if we are an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than the one we preached let him be eternally

Condemned now the Greek word there for eternally condemned is anathema and it means damned

Let him be eternally damned and Paul by the by the way when Paul wrote this This is the day before they had typewriters before they had word processors and computers

So if you wanted to make a point you couldn't just bold it or you make it put it in all caps Because everything was already written in all caps at this point

So if you wanted to make a point you kind of had to repeat yourself So watch what he does so as we have already said so now

I say again if anyone is preaching to a gospel other than the one you Accepted let him be eternally damned straight up so Christianity has always understood that Satan works in the church to change doctrine to teach false things specifically

Satan goes after God who the God we believe in or the gospel we believe in or the

Jesus we believe in does that make sense and So if you believe in a false God a false gospel or a false

Jesus You're not considered within orthodoxy. You're considered to be outside of orthodoxy and outside of the faith

And so what do you do with somebody who believes falsely you say repent? This is not what scripture says repent change your mind and believe what

God has revealed about himself this is what scripture says so Paul then in the book of Galatians goes on and explains why

Mixing the Mosaic Covenant and the New Covenant don't work and why Christians are not

Obligated to be circumcised and I know all of the you know those Greek believing young men and the churches in Galatia were going

All right Yeah let me show you another passage 2nd

Corinthians chapter 11 2nd Corinthians chapter 11 and In the same vein

Paul right in this section of the book of 2nd Corinthians Paul is writing against another version of the

Judaizers and these he calls the super apostles Which is not a positive term.

These are guys who really they're not only they skilled in false doctrine But they're good orators and and you know kind of go along, you know

They can really hold a crowd because of their rhetoric and stuff like that. But here's what Paul says verse 1

I hope I will put up. I hope you will put up with a little bit of my foolishness But you are already doing that I'm jealous for you with a godly jealousy and I promised you

To one husband to Christ so that I might present you as a pure virgin to him But I'm afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpents cunning your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ for if someone comes to you and preaches of Jesus other than the

Jesus we preached or if you received a different spirit from the One you received or a different gospel from the one you accepted you put up with it easily enough

But I but I do not think I am in the least inferior to those so -called super apostles

I may not be trained a trained speaker But I do have knowledge and we have made this perfectly clear to you in every way so Paul's warning here about the super apostles is that they're teaching a different Jesus a different gospel and a different spirit and this is

Not a good thing and he's chastising the church in Corinth for even listening to these yahoos

So as Christians then It matters it matters what we believe

Teach and confess as far as who God is who Christ is who the

Spirit is and what the gospel is These are the things that are worth fighting for if you would they're worth

Having a fight why because what's at stake the people who are believing falsely is what's at stake is their soul

Their eternal salvation because if you're believing in a false God that false God can't save you

If you're believing in a false gospel You have a false good news that false good news isn't giving you any true hope because you're believing falsely by the way

If I were to ask you show me from Scripture Concise to the point the clearest definition of what the gospel is, where would you go?

John 3 16, that's a good place to go Okay, that's a good passage God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten

Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life That is good news. Yes But Paul specifically referred in the book of Galatians if somebody preaches a gospel other than the one already preached

The one I preached the one you received where will we go to find the gospel that Paul preached?

There's actually a passage where Paul says let me remind you of the gospel that I preached to you the one you received the one you

Believed the one you are standing on does this sound familiar to anybody? Okay, 1st

Corinthians chapter 15. This is the gospel in a nutshell passage Here's what

Paul says now brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you.

Ah -ha Right. He says it right there Here's the gospel. I preached to you this gospel

Which you received on which you have taken your stand by this gospel this good news

You are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you Otherwise you have believed in vain for what

I received I passed on to you as a first importance pause right there Notice he says what

I received Paul in the book of Galatians makes it clear that this gospel that he preached He did not receive it from a man.

He received it from Jesus Christ himself For what I received so this gospel

Paul received and he says I've passed it on to you as a first importance Here it is the gospel in a nutshell

Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures that he was buried and raised on the third day according to the scriptures

Does that sound familiar to you guys It sounds like the

Apostles Creed, doesn't it? It's a creed. It's a creed it's right there in the scriptures and Biblical scholars recognize that what we have here is probably one of the very very very very very very first Christian creeds and the gospel in a nutshell

Christ died for our sins and was raised again on the third day and you go that's it

Yeah For our sins That's the important part for our sins now years ago not that many years ago there was a heresy that worked its way through evangelicalism called the emergent church and One of the major proponents of the emergent church was a guy by the name of Brian McLaren He still technically is you know, one of these, you know, he's involved in the emergent church, but they don't call themselves emergent anymore

That's kind of a long story But back in the day when I was doing research to try to figure out what these guys were about and what they taught you know,

I actually read many of McLaren's books and he Absolutely cannot stand and I mean it this is the right way to put it this idea that Jesus Was punished for our sins.

Okay. This is known as the doctrine of penal substitution Okay, Isaiah 53. He was pierced for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities The chastisement or the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, right?

This is what Isaiah says and by his stripes were healed Well McLaren can't stand this so he came up with his own kind of theory as to what was going on While Jesus was on the cross

Okay so what's he doing on there right and according to his theory the reason why Jesus was on the cross was to He basically laid down his life in order to once and for all help his disciples

See the true nature of the Roman Empire and that they were a death machine But he did

Okay, so he did this in order to expose the evils of Empire. That's why he did it

So having read his book I actually was at a conference and I was taking copious notes of this emergent conference and I went and spoke with Brian McLaren I went up to him and I said

Brian, you know, I got a question for you. I said, you know, I read your book Everything must change and I read what you said about why

Jesus was on the cross He was somehow laying down his life in order to so his disciples can see the true hideousness of Empire, right?

And I said, what do you do with Isaiah 53 where it says he was pierced for our transgressions bruised for our iniquities

No joke without blinking. He said well, it all depends on what you mean by the word for Yeah, yeah

Yeah, yeah, it all depends on what is is, right Yeah, so he would basically he would try to find a way to change the definitions of words

So that the words don't mean that Christ was actually punished for our sins

It's offensive to him But Paul what he received from Christ as the gospel in a nutshell is that Christ died for our sins

Did Christ die for his own sins No Okay. Okay.

He didn't he was sinless He died for our sins and that he was buried and raised on the third day according to the scriptures

So he died for our sins. He was punished for our sins. And this is the good news in a nutshell So then coming back to the

Galatians 2 passage that you had brought up that then unpacks this So the idea is if you take the gospel and you put it in a nutshell

This is like a super compressed file and you can unpack this thing But this then is one of the first creeds in Christendom and this creed

Ultimately when you read the really really really early church fathers the early church fathers

They talk about what's called the rule of faith and the rule of faith sounds like kind of like a rough draft of the

Nicene Creed and so This idea then of creeds is an important thing because In let's talk about the nature of these things is that you know here we've got it like an early

Christian creed, but the reason why creeds are important is because Creeds the the right ones.

They actually say the same thing as scripture So when we confess the creed what we're doing is we're confessing what the scripture says and this kind of gets to an important thing

We'll talk about this. We're on this bunny trail Me let me go here and we'll we'll get rid of the

Hebrew Okay And I'm not going to use the Latin phrase.

I'm going to use the I'm going to use the English translation norming norm and the normed norm

When we talk about the importance of creeds, we're talking about Scripture and creeds understand this no creed is scripture

Scripture is the norming norm. It's the norming norm. Everything is normed against scripture

But a creed If it's true is a normed norm it

Synthesizes and says the same thing as scripture. This is the difference between if you were to use highfalutin theological language norma -normata versus norma normans

So when we confess in the creed, I believe in God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth

Does the scripture teach that God the Father Almighty is the maker of heaven and earth? Yes, is the creed scripture?

No It's not the creed says the same thing as scripture.

Does that make sense? So when we confess these creeds and keep this in mind then when we when we confess the

Nicene Creed this morning The Nicene Creed the reason why it's so important is because it's a normed norm that says the same thing as scripture

If it didn't say the same thing as scripture, it's a false creed does that make sense and Everybody even the person who says we don't need any creeds.

I don't I have no creed but Christ That's a creed That's kind of the funny thing about it is we live in a day where the idea of creeds is is

Kind of fallen out of favor, but I think it's falling out of favor because people just don't understand what they're saying okay, so Credo The Latin phrase, what does that mean?

I just means I believe so we'll put dots after credo dot dot dot if I said

I believe that God Lives on a little spaceship that hides inside the rings of Saturn and that his favorite food are grilled cheese sandwiches

That's a creed right Now it's a bizarre creed

It's kind of loony it's not what scripture says but it's a creed if somebody says

I believe in No creed, but the Bible That's a creed

You can't get away from creeds no matter how hard you try and see every one of us because we're not

We're we're not actually the ones who authored scripture every time when we describe what our faith is

What we believe who we believe in what Jesus has done for us every time we open our mouths and say

I believe dot -dot -dot You're saying a creed No matter how you slice it it comes up creed remember the old

Snickers commercial, you know, I slice it. Never mind. Yeah Comes up peanuts as I think is how that went.

So when we look then at the Nicene Creed Notice the Trinitarian shape of the of the

Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed first article I believe in God the Father Almighty second article and in one

Lord Jesus Christ third article. I believe in the Holy Spirit Notice the Trinitarian shape of these creeds same with the

Apostles Creed. There's a reason for this is that this outline makes it clear that we believe in one

God in three persons and When the Nicene Creed was finally hammered out

No, Arian could confess it Because it says that this regarding Jesus.

I Believe in one Lord Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God begotten of his father before all worlds

God of God Light of light very God of very God begotten not made and here it is being of one substance homoousius with the father

No, Arian could confess this and this was on purpose

This is what we believe teach and confess. Now. The question is does Scripture teach this?

The answer is yes The Aryans refused to confess what the scripture said so they were outside the church

So the importance of creeds then is it gives us a kind of a rule if you would a way of measuring

Whether or not what somebody is teaching is what the scriptures say So it's kind of like a rule of thumb.

It's a it's a crib notes Those are you in college, you know, you got cliff notes the on a book

It's not the same as reading the book But hey, it says the same thing as the book so you can still know what you know What the book is about by reading the cliff notes, but it's not the same as reading the book, right?

You know I'm saying so the creeds are you know, if you would you know shorthand compressed

Summary of Scripture and what I found fascinating is over the years over the decades of kind of dealing with different heretical teachings

Is that every heresy in one form or another goes after one of the major statements in?

The Nicene Creed those who embrace evolution deny that God is the maker of heaven and earth

Those who are Aryans deny that that Jesus is of one substance with the father, you know

Then you you know, so it's funny Satan always seems to be attacking these main things and I don't know why that is

But you look at the the big battles that have taken place through the millennia within Christianity theologically

It's always kind of at one point or another and on these issues And and the reality is this is that even if you didn't have a

Bible if you confess if you you know Confess the Creed the Apostles created the

Nicene Creed you have the basic outlines of the entire Christian faith You actually have the Bible in its total compressed format and it's fascinating how that works

But the other thing is is it gives you a it gives you a measure To test my teaching by to test the teaching of anybody's teaching by there's a reason why we confess the

Creed after the sermon that's fact -checking and Listen to me when I tell you this If I ever get up on a

Sunday in the pulpit and I say something that contradicts the Apostles created the Nicene Creed you had

Better take me aside and say Chris you have some explaining to do What you said is not what the

Creed says. It's that simple Okay, listen, don't ever trust

Anybody who's a Bible teacher not not even me Never ever come to this class into this church with an open mind.

Never you always come with an open Bible because I can tell you this with certainty,

I'm a sinner and Sinners sin in all kinds of different ways. I am capable of deceiving.

I'm capable of being deceived. So are you and I never ever want to hear you say.

Oh, I believe that because pastor Rosebarrow said Mm -hmm I'm just a servant.

I'm the water boy here My job is to preach the word And if I ever say anything that contradicts the

Word of God or contradicts the confessions that we hold then you know that I'm not rightly handling

God's Word and I have some explaining to do and The next thing I've got to do after you confront me is

Clean it up And if I don't and I persist in my false teaching you need to get a new pastor

So the idea is this is that we're all sinners The Bible is true

Then the creeds give us a summary of Scripture and what it says There's a such thing as true doctrine and sound doctrine is the right way in a wrong way to handle somebody who believes or teaches falsely but the the idea here is this again is that I'm a human you're a human and False teachers.

What did Paul say they draw away disciples after themselves? True teachers are not going to point you to themselves.

They're going to point you to Jesus False teachers are going to point you to themselves so that your loyalty is to that person not to Christ That's dangerous sign.

And this is the reason why Historically heresies are always named after the person who taught them

Right Yeah, the Aryan heresy was named after Arius the Pelagian heresy named after Pelagius They draw away disciples after themselves and this this is kind of an important thing here

Is it the the name on the sign says Lutheran Church? We don't teach Luther's theology

We don't teach Luther's theology We confess along with Luther what the

Bible teaches Then this is kind of in fact, let me demonstrate this using a quick Idea here that you can get let's pretend this circle represents true sound biblical doctrine this circle

Represents how somebody would believe as a Christian and you'll notice that there's there's an overlap, but Here's the idea

When somebody believes something and there's stuff that's outside of the circle That's unique doctrine

You don't want that You don't want unique doctrine. You don't want to be able to point to any

Theology and say oh that's Rose Brogan theology Because believe me when

I tell you if I got any of this I need to repent of it over here This side is the stuff that you should believing that you're not

That's the stuff. You won't believe because your sinful nature is bristling against what God's Word teaches and you have to repent and believe correctly

So as Lutherans, we don't want any unique theology Our goal is to say we believe teach and confess what

Scripture says and what the church has historically always taught and confessed We don't want anything that we can say that's a uniquely

Lutheran Doctrine if this if it's uniquely Lutheran then it ain't true

Okay, because the old word is we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic

Church Catholic doesn't mean Rome Catholic means universal. So in our hymnal when we confess the creed it says one universal church.

Well, that's the idea Christianity is the faith once delivered to the Saints. That's all of us

Christianity is a universal faith Which means that all Christians in all times in all places are to believe teach and confess the same thing

And if we're teaching unique doctrines or that are peculiar to us

Peculiar isn't Catholic peculiar is peculiar It's it's anti Catholic if you would so in a very real way think about this.

We are Catholic Okay, and if we're not

Catholic in the right sense we're doing something wrong How's that enough mind -bending theology for a weekend good.