Creeds within the Bible

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All right, we are in lesson two in our study of church history, want to make sure.
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Does everyone have their hand out? Did I pass out the handouts? Cody, if you and Noah would make sure that everyone.
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The title of this series is Church History, examining the creeds and confessions of the church through the ages and why they matter.
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Tonight, tonight we are going to look at creeds and confessions within the Bible.
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So if everyone has their worksheet, we will begin.
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Last week, we began our study of church history by taking a brief glance at the major events of the past 2000 years.
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And I said from the beginning of this series that we're going to look at the major creeds and confessions which have helped shape the church.
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Because I believe that it is within these creeds and confessions that we can see what the major issues were for the church in specific time periods and help us to further develop an understanding of church history and why it matters.
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For every creed, there was an issue that they had to write the creed about.
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Something was happening that they were responding to.
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And that is why these creeds are in existence.
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So as we begin tonight, I want to take a moment to define one of our terms.
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It says that in your notes, I believe that the word creed comes from the Latin word.
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Is that in your notes? I've made sure to put that in there.
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The Latin word is credo.
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The word credo means simply, I believe.
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So a creed is simply a summary statement of what someone believes about something.
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So if we call something a Christian creed, we're saying this is something that someone believes about the Christian faith.
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There is really not a big difference between a creed and a confession.
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You've heard about that.
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You've heard the term confession of faith or a statement of faith.
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Well, it's pretty much the same thing.
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They are both attempts to summarize the teachings of the Bible.
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In regard to specific doctrinal positions, when I mentioned the word creed to some people or confession, I do so realizing that there are movements within Christianity that see creeds as negative rather than positive.
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They see the creeds as bad things, not as good things.
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And in fact, there's an entire movement within Christendom which was begun on the foundation of repudiating the use of creeds and confessions.
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How many of you have ever heard of the Restoration Movement? The Restoration Movement, it began under the leadership of Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell.
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And it held to the belief that denominational names, creeds and ecclesiastical traditions divided the church and should be renounced.
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We shouldn't be Baptists or Methodists or Episcopalian or Presbyterian or Lutheran.
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Those are all wrong.
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The names are wrong.
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And so too are the creeds that are associated with those particular denominations.
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One of the slogans that rose up in the Restoration Movement and is still used by restorationists to this very day is this.
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One of the one of their slogans was no creed, but Christ, no book, but the Bible, no law, but love, no name, but the divine end quote.
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The irony of that slogan is that that slogan is itself a creed.
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So by saying we have no creed, but there's no name, but there's that it's itself a creed.
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So by saying we have no creed, what they actually did was they went ahead and created themselves one and not having one.
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Secondly, it is a meaningless creed because it fails to make any definitions.
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They say we have no creed, but Christ, which Christ? The Christ of the Mormons, the Christ of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Christ of the one that Pentecostals, which Christ is your Christ? They say we have no book, but the Bible.
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Well, which Bible is in the Bible of the Catholics, which contains multiple writings that are not in the Protestant Bible? Is it the one of the Jehovah's Witnesses, which has been intentionally manipulated to change the text so that it doesn't teach the divinity of Christ? They say no law, but love, what love is the squishy love of the liberal, which has no holy standard upon which it rests.
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They say no name, but the divine.
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Well, what divine name, Allah, Baal, Jehovah, which name? You see, by saying we have no creed with Christ, no book with the Bible, no law, but love, no name, but the divine.
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All they're saying is that, well, all they're saying really is nothing.
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Their creed is meaningless, and by saying they have no creed, they have simply said that they have no standard because they say, well, our standard is scripture, but we're not going to define it.
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We're not going to give any definitions.
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That's the problem.
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The purpose of establishing appropriate creeds and confessions is that they allow us to define our terms and solidify our positions on what the Bible teaches.
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The Bible doesn't use the word trinity.
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I don't know if any of you knew that, but the Bible never uses the word trinity, but the teaching of the trinity is in the Bible.
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The creed, which are intended to solidify the doctrine of the trinity, are all simply statements of what the scripture says about God and his nature.
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And that's where we get the word trinity.
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It is a biblical concept, but it is a word that is not found in the Bible.
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It's a word which is found in the creeds.
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Now, I want to add one last thing about creeds.
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It is important to realize that no creed supersedes the scripture.
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All creeds, all confessions, all statements of faith are capable of erring.
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In fact, during our course, we're going to see some pretty serious errors, especially when we get to the Council of Trent.
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It is filled with error, and yet it was considered to be a creed of the latter church.
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So we understand that the creeds themselves, all creeds and confessions are subservient to scripture.
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When we look at the hierarchy of belief, when we look at the hierarchy, the scripture is the only infallible rule of faith and practice for the believer.
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The scripture that is Sola Scriptura, by the way, if you ever wondered what the definition of Sola Scriptura is, it is that the scripture alone is the scripture is the only sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the Christian.
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Everything comes under that.
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And of course, creeds and confessions would be subservient to scripture, never above it.
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But they help us to understand the scripture and they sometimes deviate from it and where they deviate from scripture, we must deviate from them.
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That's the key to anything some people say, well, you like the teaching of Martin Luther.
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What about when he said this? And I tell people, I say, I really love the teachings of Martin Luther, but where Martin Luther disagrees with the Bible, I disagree with him.
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So that's the key.
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And the same thing goes for the creeds.
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Tonight, we're going to do something very special.
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We are going to look at the creeds and the confessions which actually are in the Bible itself.
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Now, it can be argued that the entire Bible is a creed as the entire Bible is meant to be believed in what we said is credo simply, I believe.
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Well, I believe the entire Bible.
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However, there are passages of scripture which are intended to relay a specific set of beliefs about specific doctrines.
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It's obvious.
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And I'm going to show you as we go through tonight, there are specific passages that are meant to give us specific beliefs about specific things.
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And those we would say are the creedal passages of scripture.
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And we're going to look at them tonight.
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Like I said, I really was excited about tonight.
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I've been thinking about this since for a couple of weeks, actually, because this is one of the things I think a lot of people forget when they're teaching on the creeds.
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They go right into the the extra biblical creeds and they forget to look at what the Bible has within it of actual statements of confessions of faith.
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So you have your notes in front of you.
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I'm going to outline for you these specific creeds.
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We're going to begin with the Old Testament and then go into the New Testament.
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And I want to make one thing clear from the outset, this is not all of the creeds that are in the Bible.
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It can't.
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There's no way in one lesson.
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I'm giving you specific types of creeds from within the Bible where you can start looking for yourself and see what it is and what what constitutes something in the Bible that would be a creed.
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The first one is the Shema, and it is spelled S-H-E-M-A, the Shema of Israel.
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The Shema of Israel is found in Deuteronomy, chapter six, verses four and five, Deuteronomy, chapter six, verses four and five.
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I will read it to you.
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It says here, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
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I mean, you've heard that Jesus called that the great commandment to love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind.
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That is the essence of Hebrew theology consumed in one short creedal statement.
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Yahweh is one, by the way, the word there says here, O Israel, the Lord is one.
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If you notice in your English Bible, the word Lord is all capitals.
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It's it looks like it's L-O-R-D.
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Sometimes you'll see the word Lord is capital L, but lowercase O-R-D.
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Anytime you see that, it is a different it is not the the divine name, the divine name also called the Tetragrammaton because it's four Hebrew letters.
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And we don't know exactly how it is to be pronounced, but it is most people pronounce it as Yahweh.
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Or sometimes a little bit easier, Yahweh.
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There are some who call it Jehovah.
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Jehovah is actually a Germanic mispronunciation of the Tetragrammaton.
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We know it's not Jehovah because the Hebrew language did not have the J-J sound.
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So it's not Jesus.
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It's Yeshu.
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It's not Jehovah.
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If anything, it would be Jehovah, but it's even not that the Jehovah is a combination of two names together, the Tetragrammaton and another name combined makes up the title Jehovah.
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So the Shema is the creedal statement of Israel, which says God is one and you are to love him with everything you have.
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Simple enough, right? As far as statements of faith go, it might seem very short, but it is very powerful.
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The Shema of Israel, it is the prayer of Israel that you are there is one God, Yahweh, and you are to love him with all that you have.
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The second thing after the Shema is the Decalogue of the Torah, the Decalogue of the Torah.
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The Decalogue is the Ten Commandments.
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It is found in Exodus chapter 20, verses 1 through 17.
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It's an expansion.
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We could bring it down to simply saying the Ten Commandments are have no other God before the Lord.
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Do not make any idols.
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Do not use the Lord's name in vain.
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Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy.
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Honor your father and mother.
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Do not commit murder.
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Do not commit adultery.
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Do not steal.
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Do not lie.
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Do not covet.
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That is the Ten Commandments shortened.
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But Exodus chapter 20, verses 1 through 17 expands that out.
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And that is a that is a summary of the law where the Shema was a summary of their theology.
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God is one and you are to worship him alone.
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That's the that's the summary of that.
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The Ten Commandments is a summary of the law.
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You see, that's what makes it a creedal statement.
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It's a summarization of the law.
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You know, there are more than Ten Commandments.
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There's like some 600 and some odd number of of precepts in the Old Testament that if you add them all up, you wouldn't just have Ten Commandments.
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But why do we call the Decalogue or the Ten Commandments? Why do we say they're special? Because they're outlined for a special.
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So they were etched in stone, as it were, by the hand of God.
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And then later, by the hand of Moses, when Moses destroyed those that God made and they were a creedal statement.
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Here's your law summarized.
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Don't worship other gods, keep holy things holy and treat others.
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In a godly way, this is the summarization of the law found in the Ten Commandments.
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So it is itself, it's a summarization, it's a creed, a creedal statement.
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The next one is the Trihadeion, the Trihadeion of Isaiah.
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It is found in Isaiah chapter six and verse three.
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This is the creed of the angels, if you want to write that, this is the creed of the angels.
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Isaiah chapter six and verse three, Isaiah sees the Lord in the temple, the train of his robe is filling the temple.
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You remember this scene? Isaiah puts his hand on his mouth.
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He says, what was me? You remember.
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And what did the angels say? Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.
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The earth, the whole earth is full of his glory.
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That is a statement of the nature of God.
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So we've seen the theology of Israel, God is one and you worship him only.
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The law of Israel is summarized in the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, the nature of God summarized by the creed of the angels who repeat over and over and over.
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Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God.
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The earth is full of his glory.
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That is a creedal statement.
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And it's the creed of the angels, if you will.
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Very powerful statement of the nature of God.
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You guys start.
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You see now what I mean when I say creed, it's a summarization of beliefs.
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It's a statement of faith regarding God.
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By the way, why do we call it the trihagion? Trihagion is actually from the Greek language.
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Hagios is holy.
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So trihagion is the three times holy statement.
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It's the thrice holy God.
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We've talked about this before, but when any time something is repeated in the Hebrew language twice, it's meant for emphasis.
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Simon, Simon, you know, Jesus would say somebody's name or truly, truly, I say to you barely, barely I say to thee.
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That was a saying something twice was emphasis, saying something three times was to emphasize it to the highest degree.
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Holy, holy, holy is to say the holiest.
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You know, you have the what is the statement and you have the comparative statement and you have the superlative, you know, this is better than this, but this is the best.
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You know, that's the three times saying it's the best, it's the holiest and that's God.
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All right.
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So that's three from the Old Testament.
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Could we have found more? Certainly we could have found more.
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But tonight is all about showing you how there are creeds in scripture, not necessarily flushing them all out.
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But those are the Old Testament.
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Let's now look to the New Testament.
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But within the New Testament, we're going to look at four different kinds of creeds.
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We're going to look at the Trinitarian creeds that is creeds about the nature of God.
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We're going to look at the Christological creeds.
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That's the creeds about the person, the nature of Jesus Christ.
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We're going to look at the ecclesiastical creeds.
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That's the creeds for the church.
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And we're going to look at the soteriological creeds.
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Soterios is the word for salvation.
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So soteriological is salvation creeds, creeds that have to do with salvation.
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So let's begin back at the Trinitarian creeds.
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The first one is the prologue of John, the prologue of John.
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John, chapter one and verse one.
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In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God.
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He was in the beginning with God.
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All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.
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That's a creed about the nature of Christ.
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And later in that same chapter, verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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And we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
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That's a creedal statement.
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And then, of course, you know, it goes on from there.
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There's more in there, but that those statements specifically speak of the Trinity, the nature of the father and the son and the relationship.
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All that's found in that short statement.
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Now, the next blank that you have.
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Is the from through the from slash through affirmation of 1st Corinthians from slash through, it sounds funny when you say it sounds like you're saying something about a fun from F.R.O.M.
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Slash through T-H-R-O-U-G-H.
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1st Corinthians, chapter eight, verse five, says this, for although there may be so-called gods in heaven and on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.
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Yet for us, there is one God, the father from whom all things and for whom we exist.
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And one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
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See what that says.
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It says everything is from God through Christ.
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The from through affirmation, it's from God, the father, through God, the son, everything from God through Christ.
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This is how we can say Christ is the creator and the father is the creator.
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Because, one, they are one in essence, but also they have differences in the economy of the Trinity.
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Their actions are different.
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Even in salvation, the Trinity is economically taking on different roles.
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The father is the one who chooses.
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The son is the one who redeems.
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The spirit is the one who seals unto the day of redemption.
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We see each one having a role within the redemptive plan.
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And you see.
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So in this text, it gives us a shortened statement from through from the father through the son.
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So those are two Trinitarian creeds.
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Are there others? Certainly there are others.
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But herein are two very strong statements about the Trinity and how the economy of the Trinity operates.
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Now, the Christological creeds.
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The first one is the confession of Peter.
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I don't think I have to write that one for you.
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The confession of Peter, we sometimes call this what? What is this? What is Peter's confession when he said you are the Christ, the son of the living God? What do we sometimes call that? We call it the good confession.
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Good confession.
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If you if you if you've ever heard me sometimes when somebody comes to join our church, what do I ask them? Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God? Have you received him by faith as your Lord and savior? You know that I'm asking them to affirm Peter's confession that he is the Christ, the son of the living God, that he is who he said he was.
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Remember when Peter said that, because that came as a result of a question.
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Jesus said, who do people say that I am? Some say you're Elijah, some say you're John the Baptist.
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Who do you say that I am? Peter said, you are the Christ, the son of living God.
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And Jesus said to him that flesh and blood is not revealed to you.
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He said, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood is not revealed to you.
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But my father in heaven has revealed this to you.
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That's what we call the good confession.
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This is a confession that comes from the mouth of God to the mouth of Peter, that that's the truth of who Christ is.
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So we call that the good confession.
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Now, the second is the confession of Nathanael, John 1, 49, John 1, 49.
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Nathanael answered him, Rabbi, you are the son of God.
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You are the king of Israel.
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You see, that's that's a confession of faith.
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It's a confession of faith as to who Jesus is.
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You are the son of God.
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You are the king of Israel.
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And it's Nathanael's confession.
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The third one is the confession of Thomas.
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Yes, Thomas, the doubter, huh? Not the gospel of Thomas.
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No, not that false Gnostic work.
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But the confession of Thomas.
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Remember, Thomas was the one who said, I will not believe unless I see the scars in his hands.
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And Jesus said, here, touch my hands and put your hand and feel the scar on my side, feel the feel this and know that it is I.
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What did Thomas say to him? John 20 and verse 28.
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Thomas answered, my Lord and my God.
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By the way, people who want to say that Jesus is not God, people who want to say that Jesus is not divine.
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When Thomas said, my Lord and my God.
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My Kodiath and my Theos is the Greek, my Lord and my God, if he would have been wrong, Jesus would have corrected him.
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No, no, don't worship me.
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No, no, don't call me God, because, you know, we see that angels.
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Sometimes people bow down to angels where the angels do go.
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Don't worship me.
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Get up.
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We all worship God together.
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Don't worship an angel.
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Jesus accepted Thomas's worship.
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Thomas said, my Lord and my God.
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And Jesus did not correct him.
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That's a statement.
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It's a very strong statement.
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And the Kodiath, Lord, Theos, God, those two together.
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One of the I think it's one of the strongest creedal statements in Scripture is when Thomas calls Jesus my Lord and my God.
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Jesus accepts that worship.
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It's very powerful, very powerful.
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So so that's the three.
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That's three that we have from the apostles.
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We have Peter's confession of faith.
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We have Nathaniel's confession.
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You don't have a missing blank.
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Oh, I'm sorry.
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I didn't say Peter's is Matthew 16 and 16, 16, 16, 16, 16.
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And then Nathanael was John 149 and Thomas was John 20 and verse 28, 28, 16 and verse 16.
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Yeah.
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Now, the next one on your list is called the Carmen Christi, the Carmen Christi of Philippians.
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Now, Carmen Christi, a lot of people think is a place in Texas.
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All right.
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Carmen Christi, Texas.
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Isn't that a city? Corpus Christi.
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Oh, my bad.
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I'm sorry.
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Well, the Carmen Christi, the Carmen Christi of Philippians is a very common verse.
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Many of you probably heard this.
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Listen to this.
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Philippians 2, 5 to 10.
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Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men and being found in human form.
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He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
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And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the father.
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That is the Carmen Christi.
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That is the statement regarding the nature of Christ.
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It's saying that he was he was in heaven, that he was in the form of God.
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But even though when he even though he was that when he came to the earth, he didn't accept that he didn't he didn't demand that people treat him as God.
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But he humbled himself, became a servant to go to the cross.
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And in doing so, God exalted him to where his name would be the name that every knee should bow, every tongue confess that he is the Lord.
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Here's what's amazing about that.
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Most well, I hate using the term both scholars because that doesn't mean anything.
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Scholars err a lot, but I will say many scholars who are conservative would say.
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That the Carmen Christi, this portion of Paul's writings was actually an early Christian memorization creed, that there is evidence that this was something that Paul is actually quoting, which is already going around in Christian circles, that the Christians, because remember, when was the first book of the New Testament written? Does anyone know? Well, we don't know for sure, but you may know the approximate the earliest, the earliest that I've ever seen anyone date any of the books of the New Testament is in the mid 40s.
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So you're looking, Jesus is dying on the cross, death, burial and resurrection sometime around 30 to 33 AD.
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The earliest New Testament book, which is probably first Corinthians, it could be James.
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There's some argument about who's who came first, but in the mid 40s is the earliest, probably later than that.
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But the mid 40s has been earliest.
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So you're talking about a span of at least 15 years, possibly 20 years between the resurrection and ascension and the first person to put pen to paper to write about the life of Jesus Christ.
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You don't think there was already some creeds going around? Absolutely, there were certainly there were statements of faith that people had already begun to believe and trust.
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And it is believed that the Carmen Christie was one of the earliest ones that the people believed and recited.
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There is a poetic nature to it that would have made it easy to memorize in the original language.
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So this is not only is this a creed which is in the scripture, it is a creed that likely predates the scripture that is written in, which makes it even that much more interesting when studied.
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All right, now the next one is the mystery affirmation in First Timothy mystery, First Timothy 316, First Timothy 316, the mystery affirmation in First Timothy.
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I'll read it to you.
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Great indeed, we confess is the mystery of godliness.
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He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up into glory.
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That sounds like a creed, doesn't it? I mean, that's that's that is a very clear summarization of Christ.
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It says he was manifest in the flesh, doesn't say he was just born.
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It says he was manifest in the flesh.
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In fact, there's argument because the King James Version says God was manifest in the flesh.
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The modern translations say he was manifest in the flesh.
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And the reason for that is there is there is disagreement as to whether or not the the nomena sacra is used at this point.
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The nomena sacra is the is the single letter name of God.
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Normally, God is theos, but they would sometimes use only the theta letter to reference the name of God.
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And the difference between theos and hos, which is he who, he who is manifest in the flesh or God was manifest in the flesh.
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The difference is one line.
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It would be the difference between an O and a Q in English.
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It's literally one line.
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And there's differences of opinion as to which it was supposed to say.
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But either way, whether it says God was manifest in the flesh or he was manifest in the flesh, it referenced the fact that he was manifest in the flesh.
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Not that he just was born, but that he came from outside into by way of the flesh.
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So that's the important part of this creed.
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It's saying we confess there's a mystery of godliness.
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And you could say God was manifest in the flesh, he was vindicated by the spirit, he was seen by angels, proclaimed by the nations, believed on in the world and taken up in the glory.
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What a short, concise statement of faith.
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About who Christ is.
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All right, the next one is one you're all familiar with, I'm sure, especially if you've ever been to church on Resurrection Sunday, and that is the resurrection affirmation of First Corinthians, the resurrection affirmation from First Corinthians, which is First Corinthians 15, verses three through eight.
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First Corinthians 15, three, the Apostle Paul says, for I delivered to you as a first importance what I also received.
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Anytime you hear that phrase, I delivered to you what I received, that's an important statement.
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That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time.
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Most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
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Then he appeared to James, then all of the apostles.
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Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
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What is Paul doing here? He's summarizing the resurrection events.
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He's saying Jesus, he died for our sins according to scripture.
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He was buried according to scripture.
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He was raised and seen by over five hundred people.
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Even me, but this is a short summarization, and by the way, first Corinthians was written prior to any of the Gospels, that's something we are pretty certain of, that first Corinthians was written before Matthew, Mark, Luke or John.
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So this would have been the codification, the first writing of what Christians believe about the resurrection.
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This would have predated the stories that come to us in the gospel, at least in written form.
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Certainly those stories were known among the Christian people that the women went to the tomb first and later Peter and John came and those things, you know, they would have known that.
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But this is the first written account and it's a summarization of it, Jesus died for our faith, he was buried, he raised and he was seen by all these people.
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It's a summary account, it's a creedal statement.
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All right, so those are the creeds that we call the Christological creeds.
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Now let's look at the ecclesiastical creeds, the ecclesiastical creeds, the ones that deal with the church.
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The first one is the Trinitarian formula of baptism, Trinitarian formula, Trinitarian formula of baptism.
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This we find in Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 and 20, Matthew 28, 19 and 20.
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Most of you, if you've ever heard me do a baptism, you've heard me say this.
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Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
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And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age.
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This is Jesus's confirmation of how baptism is supposed to be stated.
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This is a big debate, by the way.
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This is a big debate.
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There's argument as to how to baptize someone.
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Not only is there argument about what baptism means, those from the historic Church of Christ, the restoration movement, they believe that baptism actually remits sin.
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That when you're baptized, that that's when you receive the Holy Spirit, that's when your sin is remitted.
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They base it on what I consider to be a misunderstanding of Acts 238, but that's what they base it on.
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And they they believe that that's when salvation actually occurs, is when you are baptized, which is why if you go forward in a church that believes that, they won't let you wait a week or two weeks or make you go through a class to be baptized.
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It's immediate because they believe that's essential.
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Not really wanting to get into that debate now, but one of the debates I will mention is the debate they baptize in the name of Christ.
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I baptize you into Christ and they're very specific and they use references in the book of Acts where the phrase baptizing into Christ is used.
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And they say that's the proper formula.
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And they actually contend that the Trinitarian formula is wrong, that the baptism is baptism into Christ.
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Again, I think, number one, it's wrong to try to divide the Trinity.
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Secondly, I think more importantly, is that the words of Christ tell us the formula for baptism, that we're to baptize in the name of the father and of the son and of the Holy Spirit.
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This was so well understood by the early church that in the didache, which is the next thing we're going to study the next time we come together, in the didache, which was one of the earliest writings of the church outside of scripture.
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The way that they baptized was they would actually immerse you three times.
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They would immerse you on behalf of the father, on behalf of the son and on behalf of the spirit.
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You went down and up three times.
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But I'm saying, though, that's that's demonstrative of the fact that they truly believe that this formula of Trinitarian words was important, that it was the father and the son and the spirit.
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And you're baptized in the name of all three, not just the singular name of Christ, but in the name of the Trinity.
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Yahweh is the Trinity.
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So that's an important the Trinitarian formula is to me, it's a creedal statement.
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It summarizes the Trinitarian baptismal formula.
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Next is the consecration of communion.
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The consecration of communion is found in 1 Corinthians 11, verses 23 to 26.
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Now, if you've ever been to our church on a Sunday and you've ever sat through one of our communion services, you have heard this statement.
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For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night that he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, this is my body given for you.
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Take and eat this in remembrance of me.
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You know, you've heard me say that.
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And he goes on to say that 1 Corinthians 11, 23 to 26, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you to do this in remembrance of me.
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Verse 25.
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In the same way, also, he took the cup after supper, saying, this cup is a new covenant in my blood.
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Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.
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For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
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Now, what did I say about 1 Corinthians earlier? It is probably one of the earliest books, which means this is the earliest statement that we have written of what Christ said, consecrating the elements of the bread and the cup.
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So, again, why is it credo? Paul is writing so that they will understand.
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I received from the Lord.
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I give this to you.
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Then the night that he was betrayed, he took bread and this is what he did with an ancient cup.
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And this is what he did with it.
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Here's the reason why.
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So it's a short summary of the communion and its purpose.
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All right.
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Let's move now to the soteriological creeds.
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What is soteriological means? Salvation creeds about salvation.
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Let me erase.
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All right.
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The first one is the grace slash faith affirmation of Ephesians grace slash faith affirmation of Ephesians, Ephesians chapter two, verses eight through 10.
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Every pastor has certain passages which mean a lot to him.
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Every Christian certainly probably has those things.
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But the difference for pastors is we have those that we preach in an instant.
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You know, if we were invited somewhere and say, hey, we'd like to get up and speak for a few minutes.
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There's a few passages that you'd go to automatically.
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Mine are Romans five, one.
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Therefore, I'm justified by faith that peace with God, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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That's another good one.
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I could have added this, but I didn't.
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But that one and Ephesians two, eight through 10.
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This statement tonight, for by grace, have you been saved through faith? And that is not of yourselves.
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It is the gift of God and not of works, lest anyone should boast.
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For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
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That is a statement of faith as to how a person is saved.
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We are saved by grace through faith, not of works.
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Our works are simply to testify.
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Of God's works, he saved us for what for good works.
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And that's what Ephesians two, eight through 10 teaches us.
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And it's a short affirmation of our faith, of how a person is saved.
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The next one is the confession, faith, the confession, faith affirmation of Romans.
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Most of you are probably very familiar with this.
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If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
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Simple summary of how a person is saved.
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They confess Christ.
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They believe in their heart and they're saved.
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And that is what I what I what I like with the confession, faith affirmation of Romans.
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So we have the grace, faith affirmation.
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That's how a person is saved by grace to faith.
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That's from God's perspective.
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It's his grace which leads to our faith from our perspective.
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How are we saved? We confess and believe, you know, if you ever have trouble with that, if you ever wonder, I'm trying to tell somebody about Jesus, but I don't know how to tell them how to become a Christian, confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus Christ, believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead.
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That's that's the starting point.
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Repent and trust Christ as your Lord and Savior.
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That's how I would continue.
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But these statements are in Scripture for us.
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They're they're they're foundational.
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These these credo statements are there to to help us.
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Now, let me finish by saying this, and I know we're we're about the end of our time.
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The entire Bible is meant to be believed and confessed.
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But what we have seen tonight is that there are a few passages which have the quality of being credo in that they specify what the Bible teaches about certain things.
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In fact, while we were going through this, I bet you thought of a few of your own.
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I imagine some of you were sitting here thinking, what about this one? What about this one? There's a lot.
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The whole Bible is meant to be believed, but not the whole Bible is said, as I believe thus and so about Jesus or I believe thus and so about salvation.
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One of the one of the things I think is is leads to bad theology is people who try to make statements credo in the Scripture that aren't meant to be credo.
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For instance, they will take something from a narrative and try to make that part of the salvation.
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For instance, the Pentecostal movement who make speaking in tongues a part of becoming a Christian.
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They say, well, it's in the narrative in Acts, when the people in Acts received the Holy Spirit, they spoke with tongues.
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So that means when I receive the Holy Spirit, I must speak with tongues.
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Well, that's not what the text says.
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It's not meant to be read like that.
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It's not meant to be understood that way.
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But they try to take these statements of which are narrative and turn them into didactic credo statements, which they are not.
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So that's why I think this is an important way of understanding and looking at the text.
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These internal creeds of the Bible aid in the development of the later creeds, which we're going to start studying next week.
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We're going to be looking at.
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From the very earliest ages of the church, what the church taught about certain things that come from the Bible, and as I've already said, we're going to say from the outset, there are errors in these creeds.
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There are things where we'll say we don't necessarily believe this, but this is what it was taught at this time and understood at this time.
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But what we must understand from the beginning and we will continue to say throughout this course is that the scripture is the sole infallible rule of faith and practice.
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And as such, every creed that we have is subject to the creed of the Bible, the statements that are in the text of the Bible.
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It is our ultimate.
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Let's pray.
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Father, thank you for your word.
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Thank you for all that you give us.
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We pray, O Lord, that you will help us to understand in the weeks to come what it means to believe in the scripture and how to understand its infallibility and how to understand how our forefathers in the faith looked back at the text of the Bible, looked back at the scripture and wrote their statements of faith, their creeds and their confessions based on the scripture.
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I thank you for this group of people who is so desiring to learn your word and comes faithfully to learn about it.
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And I pray that you would use me to help minister to them and ultimately that your Holy Spirit would teach us all through this course.
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In Jesus name we pray.
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Amen.