The Guardrail of the Creeds with John Samson

Welcome to the Dividing Line. It's a beautiful day in Phoenix which is not unusual and we are excited to be here on the broadcast.

I'm excited and I say the royal we because my wife is with me, Linda, and we're here with Rich.

And Rich, we have some announcements regarding James White's itinerary and what he's been up to and what he's doing.

Well, he's been very busy and the dialogue that he had with Imam Musri on Saturday, I understand, went very well.

And the debate that he had with Greg Strawbridge last night on baptism, as I understand, also went very well.

And of course, as we always have after these things happen, people start clamoring for when will we have the audio, when will the video be available.

That's already started. Was it live streamed? No, it wasn't. And we'll announce at the end of the program when that's no, no.

No, we have some obligations to both

Imam Musri as well as Dr. Strawbridge that we, when we do these things, we have a contract.

And part of how we do it, we believe it's the right thing and the right way to do it.

And that is that we promise our opponent that we will provide them with master quality footage, in other words, identical copies of all of the media that we take from the event.

And we will not release the media. I mean,

I know some pictures and stuff have been, some stills and stuff have gone up. But as far as the actual audio and the video itself, that we will not release until we have provided that to our opponent.

It is simply a matter of our obligation and keeping our good word. And that's one of the things and ways in which we do that.

So for those who are clamoring for the media, we have first obligations to take care of to those we have made promises to.

And then once that has happened, we will then begin processing all of that media and putting it out.

The debates, the videos might take about, I don't know, a couple of weeks to a month.

But as soon as we have audio, we will put that in the shopping cart from both events. And folks will be able to get that from there.

And then if they're willing to wait, once the video is up, we will publish that on YouTube.

That will be what we do with it. And the other side is certainly welcome to do whatever they want to do with it.

But the key thing is that folks remember, this is part of our keeping our word. And we stand by that strongly.

Very good. Anything else? That's it. Wow. So James is going to be speaking in Jacksonville tomorrow morning.

He's speaking in Edgewater, Florida tonight. And that's all up on the blog.

Or if you go down to the very bottom of the main page there, the calendar, just simply hover on the 24th, 25th, 26th.

And you'll see where he's at. And then after tomorrow morning, he flies to Pensacola, where he will be speaking at the

Jeremiah Cry conference starting Thursday. That will go through the weekend.

And then he comes back next week. Very good. So they can just check the blog and get to that. All they have to do is look at that calendar and hover over the particular date.

And it tells him exactly where he's going to be and whatever information, contact information is all right there.

Just the inside scoop is, I know the next 24 hours is very, very, very, very busy. So please be praying for him and his health.

Yeah. The intensity of his trip just skipped up a great bit. And he's going to be doing a lot of traveling in the next 24 hours.

Okay. And speaking in between all that traveling. Yes. Yes. Excellent.

Well, again, we're here on the show and we're excited about bringing something that hopefully will be a blessing to the viewers and listeners.

Who am I? I'm John Sampson. I pastor King's Church in Phoenix, which is a new fledgling reformed

Baptist church on the west side of the valley in the Arrowhead area. I'm just going to put this up.

I don't know if anyone can see this. Perhaps they can. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. This is where we're meeting as from last

Sunday. The Lord's really blessed us with a wonderful location where we're just meeting on a

Sunday and on a Wednesday night. What's the address of that? The address of that.

It's all on the church website, which is kingschurchaz .com. My own personal blog site is effectualgrace .com,

but the address is in the Arrowhead area, Peoria, Arizona. It's the

Palos Verdes Senior Living Facility. We're there and there's elderly people who are going to hear the gospel, which is wonderful.

18441 North 87th Avenue. That's in Peoria, Arizona. 18441

North 87th Avenue. That's just off the 101 freeway at Union Hills.

If you're in the area and don't have a church, then obviously we'd invite you there.

There are other churches that are good here in the Valley and we're all about the King's business. Now, what are your meeting times,

John? 11 a .m. on Sunday and then Wednesday at 7 p .m. So you meet in the same facility on Wednesday nights as well.

Yes. In the morning, we meet in the large hall on the second floor. There's an elevator for anyone who needs it as well as stairs.

Then Wednesday night in the downstairs boardroom area. It's a very professional looking facility and a nice room.

So we're looking forward to that. Excellent. Excellent. I wonder if you've ever been scared.

I remember when I was probably the most scared I've ever been in my life.

It was on a road trip from England to Switzerland.

England is this island you've probably heard of and you can't drive more than five or six hours without falling off it.

It's not a large place and France is 26 miles away from Dover in England to Calais in France.

That's the shortest distance and you can either go by car, by ferry over the water or now there's an underground train system.

But it's 26 miles and then you get out the other side. Can you imagine going 26 miles in America and then everyone you meet doesn't understand you has a different currency, speaks a different language.

That's what happens when English people go to France and then you travel through France to Germany and then through Germany to Austria and then to Switzerland.

And again, when people tell me that they're driving from Arizona to Texas, for instance,

I think in my mind that's the equivalent of England to Italy and you've probably gone through seven countries in that time and maybe eight or nine languages.

America is just so huge and vast in comparison to countries in Europe. But I remember

I had just got my driver's license in England and my mother wanted to go to Switzerland.

She just loves the place and I do now that I've been there a couple of times. And as maybe a teenager, 18, 19 years old,

I went with my mother, which was the first and last time we ever did such a thing. I went to Switzerland and one of the things we want to do is see some of the scenery.

And there's a lot of scenery in Switzerland's most beautiful place I think I've ever been to.

There's certain places in America that are close to it, but I think Switzerland just is majestic.

And there was this one mountain where at the bottom of this mountain, there's a number of signs that say, drive on at your own risk in several different languages.

And it's very clear that you are taking a risk when you drive this mountain road. It's a road around the mountain that will save you hours rather than going around it in various circuitous routes.

And so we wanted to get to the other side. There were certain things we were thinking of seeing and so we started on this trek.

We had a fairly small car, thought it'd be okay, but this road was absolutely treacherous.

I had no idea what I was letting myself in for. There were warning signs, drive at your own risk, tiny one lane road with a rickety wooden fence on the edge.

It was actually powerless to stop a car. If you can imagine this little piece of wood on two other pieces of wood and then on and on and on we go, it's just it's going to be useless should you ever bump into that little thing.

It cannot stop you. It should have been made of steel and concrete, but it was this little wooden fence.

And we were about halfway around the mountain and still just in awe of the view even from here, but also very scared because this was a very narrow road.

And what should be happening was a bus was coming the other way. And I mean a bus, a big bus.

I had no idea how a bus driver would even attempt to do such a thing. That road was ridiculously narrow and it was all

I could do even in a small car to avoid the drop and how a bus could think of doing this.

I couldn't imagine. So it was hard enough going forward on this road. Now I had to go backwards about half or three quarters of a mile to find a small widening, a very small widening in the road where I could stop while the bus drove around me.

There's no way I could go forward. He wasn't going to move. Scary is not the word.

It doesn't cover it. I was going in reverse, looking at that guardrail, knowing that an inch over just that, that that guardrail is not going to stop me from going over that.

That guardrail became a life preserver to know exactly where the little narrow road ended.

The guardrail actually served a number of purposes. It showed where the mountain stopped and thin air rested.

And I did have a look over at one time and I saw at least three cars down below.

I don't know if the people had died as a result of falling off, but this was a treacherous road.

But the guardrail, although rickety and although imperfect and not very, very strong at all, served a purpose.

It said this far and no further. What am I saying all this about? What's the reason for it?

I want to talk about the guardrail of the creeds, the creeds of the

Christian faith. Many people, when they hear that word, they say, I don't need a creed.

I don't have a creed. We've got the Bible. Except there's a number of flaws with that view.

Let's go to Ephesians chapter four for a moment, where the apostle Paul riding to the church at Ephesus writes in verse four, there is one body and one spirit, just as you are called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one

Lord, one faith, one baptism. Here the word faith is referring to not our personal faith in God, but the faith, the

Christian faith. There's only one. There's not two or three or two and a half or anything like that.

There's one, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all who is over all and through all and in all.

But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. Therefore, it says when he ascended on high, he led a host of captives and he gave gifts to men.

In saying he ascended, what does it mean? But that he had also descended into the lower regions of the earth.

He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, even Christ, into Christ from whom the whole body joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

We could camp out in this passage, as you can imagine, for a lengthy period of time. But some things

I just want to bring out of it is the fact that there's one faith and when

Jesus ascended, he gave gifts to men. Those gifts were people, apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers who were gifted by God to equip the saints for the work of ministries.

Not that these people did all the ministry, but their function was to equip the saints so that the ministry is done through the ministry of the saints.

He equips the saints for the work of ministry, building up the body of Christ. What I want to say about that is some of these gifts, these men of God, these gifts he gave to men are here in the present time, but they're also people that have passed on from this world, but God has especially gifted them.

We're foolish if we don't listen to them and receive them as gifts to us.

They are Christ's gifts to his body. So seeing that and seeing these men in that light means that we're not just on our own with Bibles in hand, having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

No, these men of God have poured their lives over the same scriptures we have, and we're foolish if we do not at least start off from where they ended up in their studies.

Not that they're infallible, but to see them as less than useful is actually very immature and prideful.

For instance, you're reading the Bible and you think you've got a new insight about the

Trinity. I have a problem with that. Why? Because that would infer that Jesus was waiting for you to come along before he could reveal the truth of who

God is to the church. Yep, he was waiting for Brian Patterson of 17th

Avenue in a certain city. He was waiting for him to come along so that the church could be edified.

No, Jesus said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

And when he talked about the church, I believe he was thinking of more than 38 people who were his elect people.

Now, they're such a number that no man can number them out of every tribe, tongue, people and nation.

And God, the Holy Spirit, has gifted men to search the scriptures.

And there is a communal aspect to our walk with God. I'm not into, I'm not after trying to come up with a new concept of the

Trinity. I want to know what is it that the churches believe and why do they believe it?

The starting point is the Bible. It could be that God was waiting for you to come up with a new revelation of the

Trinity, but more than likely, I think you're in trouble if you think God was waiting for you and you've got more insight than other generations.

Why would the Holy Spirit not reveal the truth in the first century, the third century, the 17th century?

And so it goes on. Even in the Bible, we have certain creeds.

The Jewish faith is based on what we call the Old Testament, the

Old Covenant. They wouldn't call it that because they have not embraced the new one. But their own scripture in Deuteronomy, chapter six, is something called the

Shema. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. That is a phrase known by every

Jew. That is, God is one. He's not a plurality of gods.

There is only one God. In Hebrew, Shema or Shema, Israel, Adonai, Eloheinu, Adonai, Echad.

It's a phrase that means exactly what we see in our translations of the Bible. Hear, O Israel, the

Lord our God, the Lord is one. You'll never convince, normally, a

Jewish person that there is something called polytheism. It's born into them as a culture.

There's only one God. Similarly, in the New Testament, Romans chapter 10, verse nine, tells us something about Jesus.

A lot of people say, I believe in Jesus. Well, that's interesting. But what do you believe about Jesus?

The early church affirmed that Jesus is Lord. He's more than a good teacher.

He's more than a prophet. He is Lord, Kyrios. Kyrios Jesus was the cry of the early church in Greek, in that culture, as a counter claim to the emperor who said and mandated that every

Roman citizen said, Kaiser Kyrios, Caesar is

Lord. That was required to be part of the empire of Rome.

You had to affirm Caesar as Lord. And in opposition to that, and in contrast to that,

Christians said, no, we will not say that. We want to be good citizens. We will respect those in authority, but we cannot call him

Lord. Only Jesus is worthy of that kind of a title. But that phrase,

Kaiser Kyrios, was a demonstration of allegiance both to the empire and to the emperor.

And many, many thousands in church history have suffered death, martyrdom, because they would not affirm one creed, but would affirm another.

It's interesting when you look at other scriptures and 1 Corinthians chapter 13 talks of the lordship of Christ.

Chapter 12, I'm thinking of specifically, I think here where it says, no man can say Jesus is

Lord except by the Holy Spirit. I believe it's 1 Corinthians 12 verse 3.

Similarly, in Philippians chapter 2, we have the record of Paul, what many scholars believe to be the case is that he's quoting an early hymn of the church, the common

Christi, where he said, although Jesus, although Christ from all eternity had fellowship with God and existed with God, yet he did not regard equality with God, something to be grasped, but made himself of no reputation, becoming a man, becoming a servant, a man, then even going to that cruel, rugged cross.

And therefore God has raised him to the highest place. And the end of that passage, Philippians 2, 11, it says that every tongue will confess what?

Jesus is Lord to the glory of God, the father. So again, there's an affirmation of Jesus being

Lord as a creedal statement of the early church. And that's the case.

You're not allowed entrance into the kingdom of God unless you are building on the

Jesus of the old and new Testament, the one who was spoken of as the promised one in the old now revealed in the new, the eternal word.

That's so important. We understand that. We recognize even when Jesus turned to his disciples and said, who do you say that I am?

Peter spoke up as he often did for all of them saying, you are the Christ, the son of the living

God. And Jesus said on this rock, I will build my church. Who, what, what is he building on?

Not Peter, but the revelation he gave to Peter, which was Jesus is that rock. Jesus is a certain person, divine person.

He's the son of God, not merely a teacher. And he is the Christ. He is the Messiah on that rock of revelation of who

I am. I'm building my church. I will build my church and no hellish strategy will be sufficient to stand against the onslaught of the church militant.

As we look at that word, kurios, I've mentioned the word Lord in Greek. It meant ruler.

It meant Lord, master. At other times it meant owner. But in context, especially with the

Kaiser kurios statement that was affirmed by all of the Roman citizens to say Jesus is

Lord meant something very, very powerful. Second, Timothy one verse 13,

Paul writes to Timothy says, follow the pattern of the sound words, the sound, the healthy words that you've heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus by the

Holy spirit who dwells within us. God, the good deposit entrusted to you, follow the pattern of sound words.

There are things that have to be affirmed. There are things that are healthy to believe, follow after that, instruct that, instruct that in the people, teach the people this.

And in that way, one of the ways you can guard the good deposit is in that very instruction.

Then we look at passages like Romans six, where we find phrases that are very influential in our understanding of what happened in the early church, because Paul writes in verse 17 of Romans six, but thanks be to God that you were who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart.

Now notice this next phrase to the standard of teaching to which you were committed and having been set free from sin have become slaves of righteousness.

There's an assumption Paul makes as he's writing this letter to the church at Rome. He's never been there, but this is what he knows.

If people are in the church at Rome, they couldn't have been there any real length of time without being exposed to a standard of teaching.

People say, what's the biblical basis for a new believers class? I think Romans 6, 17 is exactly that.

It's got implications of that, if not an explicit statement and implication. Paul assumed anyone at the church of Rome was subjected to a standard of teaching.

And he says, you were committed to it. You've embraced it. The entry point into the kingdom of God is not some theological test that is so radical that only a few can make it.

No, it's the Jesus is Lord. It's Jesus is the son of God. And you affirm that. All right, you're in. Now we'll teach you.

We'll subject you now. We'll expose you now to a standard of teaching. And so that is very, very insightful for us and instructs us.

I love looking at some of the creeds of the church historically. I didn't used to.

I was raised in a church that did not speak of creeds or confessions at all. And it seemed that people were trying to find a new definition of the

Trinity. And that was scary to me. I went off to a Bible college and a

Bible seminary, and I was aghast at some of the things that I was told, because what

I had been hearing from certain people made me really think that some of my good friends were heretics.

They spoke as if they had authority and they thought they could reinvent the wheel regarding who

Jesus is. And people say, but I don't need a creed. I've got Jesus. OK, OK, I understand.

But who is Jesus? And before you start answering that question, knowing that you're going to say some words, who

Jesus is, you're not going to say, well, I've got a gardener called Jesus. His name is the same in Spanish as it is regarding the name

Jesus. And but that's not the Jesus of the Bible. You'd agree the Jesus of the cults is not the same

Jesus as the Bible. And that's why they can't save because they don't actually exist. There isn't a

Mormon Jesus. There isn't a Jehovah's Witness Jesus. There's only the Jesus of the

Bible and only he can save. So before you answer the question, who's Jesus? Know that you're going to get into theology and you're going to make a creedal statement.

Oh, no, no, no. I don't believe in such things. Yes, you do. You're going to say something about Jesus. And that is something that you believe about Jesus.

And the word creed comes from the Latin word credo, which means I believe and you and I believe something about Jesus.

We've all got a creed. Hear this, whether it's written down or not. And so if you don't write it down, it's never exposed to the light of scripture by people who can get a

Bible out. Very, very clear what we do with creeds is to say, although only scripture is the word of God, we need to ask the question, what is it that scripture teaches?

Again, some people say I've no creed, but the Bible. OK, I understand where you're coming from.

It's actually a good thing that you hold the Bible up to be the very word of God. The reformers would agree.

I would agree. Absolutely. Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms 1521 sparked the

Protestant Reformation where in his speech he said, unless I'm convinced by sacred scripture or by evident reason,

I will not. I cannot recant for my conscience is held captive by the word of God to act against conscience is neither right nor safe.

Here I stand. I can do no other. God help me. Just an aside,

I remember talking with James White as I was coming to understand the doctrines of grace and I try to impress him, which just take it from me, it's not going to work.

The guy just knows way too much. And I've memorized this Luther speech. And here

I was with my little reformed diapers on saying, unless I'm convinced and went through the whole thing.

And he just shook his head as James can. And he says, can you quote it in the original German, like Luther did?

I said, no, but I went back home and next week I said, here

I stand. I can do no other. God help me. And, um,

I was in, I was in, I was in praise the Lord. I'm in now with the in crowd.

I can do it in German, the original way that Luther would have said it. Oh, how silly we are.

But that's an aside. Only scripture is Theo new stars.

Only scripture is God breathe. And so the man, the woman who says, I have no creed, but the

Bible, I know where they're coming from, except we need to then ask, what do you believe that the

Bible teaches? And when you answer by something other than just quoting the whole

Bible and taking many days to do so, we need to summarize what we believe scripture teaches about who

God is, uh, who Jesus is, uh, the personal work of Christ, how salvation comes to us.

All of these things are vital for us to embrace. Otherwise we're believing something other than what the

Bible says. You see, there are people in cults who say they believe the

Bible. And yet when you ask them, what do you believe the Bible teaches, we end up in very different places.

And there are things called heresies. And usually everyone has one or two or three or 18 of them minor things, but there are what we call damnable heresies, things that put us outside the camp of being

Orthodox as Christians. And, uh, those things need to be addressed and we need to believe true doctrine.

All I need is Jesus. Okay. So who's Jesus? All I need is the Bible. Okay. So what does the Bible teach?

Everyone has a creed, not always written down, but when you write it down, you can then allow yourself and others to look at it and say, is that exactly what scripture teaches?

Which Jesus do you believe in? Let me go to another short, uh, a couple of verses in second

Corinthians 11, where the apostle Paul makes the distinction that I've just already made in a few, in a few minutes ago regarding Jesus, that there are other

Jesus is we must believe in the true one in a second Corinthians 11, verse three, he says, uh, he writes this, but I'm afraid that as a serpent deceived

Eve by his cunning, your, uh, your pure, uh, excuse me, as the serpent deceived

Eve by his cunning, your thoughts will be led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

For if someone comes and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

This was a word of scolding. He's saying, look, I can come and bring the true message of the true

Jesus. And I can bring the true gospel. But what is happening with you in current is someone else can come along, preach a different Jesus and a different gospel and you accept it.

Hey, that's great. Amen. And he's being very, very reprimanding saying that's not right.

You should not put up with false teaching because you get it wrong about Jesus.

There'll be a different spirit other than the Holy spirit present who will deceive, who will cause more and more deception.

There'll be a different Jesus, a different spirit and a different gospel. Here's what I know about the cults.

When you get it wrong about who Jesus is, you end up with a different gospel. It's amazingly uncanny that you can disregard what

Christians through the centuries have embraced about Christ. And it leads to a false gospel as well.

It's not, you get it right on the gospel. You just got it wrong about Jesus. No, there's the spirit that gets involved is not the

Holy spirit. And he leads people into and drives people into more and more deception.

Let's scrutinize what we believe. Let's compare it with scripture. Only scripture has the authority to bind the conscience.

That's really what came out of that diet of warmth for Luther. As he made those remarks in that hall, the diet of warmth, where he said, unless I'm convinced by sacred scripture, only scripture can bind the conscience.

Creeds are lesser. They're like the guardrails. There's no real strength in them, except they tell us what the church through the centuries have believed scripture to be saying.

And we're foolish if we disregard the guardrails and just drive up over where we think there will be terra firma beneath us and then plunge to our death in a spiritual sense.

It is deadly to believe false doctrine about who God is and who Jesus is and how salvation comes to us.

There's been more than 38 Christians down through the centuries. There's been hundreds and thousands of millions of the real

McCoy, the real genuine Christian, because Jesus said, I will build my church.

And he's always had his elect people, those who embrace him because the Holy Spirit comes alongside the people of God to lead them into the truth of God.

And to say, I'm the one with the new revelation about who God is means that we disregard what the

Holy Spirit has been doing all through the centuries. Do you see that? And so creeds are not hostile to the

Christian walk. They're actually like guardrails. They have they help us. I can say after much struggling and striving and coming, as some of you already know from one of the shows

I did last year, I was a pastor in the Word of Faith movement. And I now I'm just so grateful to God for bringing me out of what

I now consider to be gross deception. I believed in the true

Jesus as far as I know, haven't changed my mind regarding him.

He is the second person of the Trinity. He is one person with two natures.

He's fully God, fully man. And I have always believed that as a Christian, yet leave some strange things.

Now I embrace the London Baptist Confession of Faith, 1689. And Dr.

James White is on the same page with me. I'm on the same page with him. And I guess that's why he lets me loose here on the broadcast, because God has been very gracious to me, to lead me over a period of time into what

I now believe is the truth of God, according to the scriptures. This is not infallible, and yet it's not negligible either.

Why would those of the Christian faith embrace such a creed? At the Westminster Confession of Faith, it's similar for Presbyterian brothers and sisters.

But why would we regard this as just useless when, again, people have poured themselves over the scriptures for many centuries, these gifts of God to the church by Christ, and then say, we don't need them.

No, I think that's actually pride. Some people say, I don't want theology. I just want

Jesus. Theology just means the study of God or the word about God, theos and logos, two words sandwiched together, logos meaning word or the study of, and theos meaning

God. We all have a theology. Even atheists have a theology. Their theology about God is that they say there is no

God. That's their theology. And so you can't avoid theology. It's like going to a restaurant and saying to the waiter, you know,

I'd like some water, but can you hold the wet? I really don't like wet. No, no.

I can't do that, sir, because wet comes with the water. If you're going to love Jesus, you're going to need to love the

Jesus of the Bible and get it right regarding who he is, or you don't have a relationship with Jesus.

You may say you have, but only the Jesus of the Bible is the real Jesus. And the

Jesus of the Bible is fully God and fully man. Hmm.

Before you move a fence, someone said, make sure you ask why it was put there in the first place.

Why would those through the centuries write creeds? Because they said, this is a line, this is a fence we dare not cross because there's a precipice over the other side of this fence that will lead to damnation.

R .C. Sproul wrote this one time, no Christian can avoid theology.

Every Christian has a theology. The issue then is not, do we want to have a theology?

That's a given. The real issue is, do we have a sound theology? Do we embrace true or false doctrine?

He also said this, although tradition does not rule our interpretation, it does guide it.

If upon reading a particular passage, you've come up with an interpretation that has escaped the notice of every other

Christian for 2000 years, or has been championed by universally recognized heretics, chances are pretty good that you had better abandon your interpretation.

That sound, that's healthy. And some will hear that and say, I don't care. I've got my walk with Jesus.

And all that is, is pride. All that is, is arrogance. We need to understand the

Holy Spirit has been present with the church since the day of Pentecost. He's been leading his people into his truth, the truth of God.

And the same Holy Spirit who has inspired the text is leading the people of God into understanding and interpreting the text as well.

The big standard for us is the Bible, not the creeds. Scripture alone is the word of God, but never, never negate the value of the guardrails.

To go beyond them is to go beyond what the Bible teaches. That's because the creeds are short and precise summaries of what the

Bible teaches. Let me give you two or three quotes that I think would be helpful at this point.

First is from C .H. Spurgeon. I've learned in life, if you find a Spurgeon quote on a particular subject, you've basically found the pearl and anything else is downhill from there.

Hear this. It seems odd, Spurgeon said, that certain men who talk so much of what the

Holy Spirit reveals to themselves should think so little of what he has revealed to others.

Short, precise, stinging, but absolutely true. J .I.

Packer in a book, Upholding the Unity of Scripture Today, writes this, tradition is the fruit of the

Spirit's teaching activity from the ages as God's people have sought understanding of scripture.

It is not infallible, but neither is it negligible, and we impoverish ourselves if we disregard it.

I believe that's a faithful summary of what I've been trying to say as well. Michael Horton in What Still Keeps Us Apart wrote this, the best way to guard a true interpretation of scripture, the reformers insisted, was neither to naively embrace the infallibility of tradition or the infallibility of the individual, but to recognize the communal interpretation of scripture.

The best way to ensure faithfulness to the text is to read it together, not only with the churches of our own time and place, but with the wider communion of saints down through the age.

Again, to ignore those kind of understandings, to understand this and then reject it,

I think is a foolish course. One man said, if it's new, it isn't true, and if it's true, it isn't new.

Take me to the old past. What is the Christians through the centuries believed? You see, Christian, you're not alone.

It's not just you and Jesus alone in the woods, you're on your own. God has given gifts to the church, and hear this,

God has given gifts to you. These are gifts to the church, gifts of the ascended

Christ to his people. Some of these gifts are men who have died centuries ago, gifted teachers who themselves are

Christ's gift to us. So creeds are like guardrails.

They're not infallible. We do believe, though, that creeds are authoritative insofar as they accurately summarize the teaching of scripture.

In fact, if you read the creeds, and this is one of them, the London Baptist Confession of Faith, it talks about the fact that it itself is not the word of God.

Only scripture has the authority to bind the conscience. It speaks in that way, but then says, if you see what we're writing and what we're writing isn't true according to scripture, you go with scripture, and that's written in the creed.

But again, so many Christians in our day just think it's an individual, what we've got, and yet we've missed the corporate nature of God's guidance to us in terms of doctrine.

Let me give you another quote. If it is the Christ of the

Bible who saves us, we must affirm the one true Christ of the Bible in order to truly possess the salvation of the

God of the Bible. I'm not exactly sure who wrote that, so I'm saying this is anonymous, but if it's the

Christ of the Bible who saves, we must affirm the one true Christ of the

Bible in order to possess the salvation of the God of the Bible. Some people say, oh, the creeds, they get in the of my walk with God.

Let me quote Spurgeon again. To say that a creed comes between a man and his God is to suppose that which is not true.

The truth, however, definitely stated does not divide the believer from his

Lord. So far as I am concerned, that which I believe, I am not ashamed to state in the plainest possible language and the truth

I hold, I embrace because I believe it to be the mind of God revealed in his infallible word.

How can it divide me from God who revealed it? It is one means of my communion with the

Lord that I receive his words as well as himself and submit my understanding to what

I see to be taught by him. Say what he may, I accept it because he says it, and therein pay him the humble worship of my inmost soul.

I'm unable to sympathize, he goes on. I'm unable to sympathize with a man who says he has no creed because I believe him to be in the wrong by his own showing.

He ought to have a creed. What is equally certain, he has a creed. He must have one, even though he repudiates the notion.

His very unbelief is, in a sense, a creed. Interesting.

Where do you and I come in regarding this? I think we should study the creeds and we should study our

Bibles to see if the creeds agree with the Bible, and here's what

I found. They do. The church has labored in the word of God more than six minutes, more than six weeks, more than six years through the centuries, and through the centuries the church, oftentimes in countering heresy, came up with creeds.

In the early church there was a heretic by the name of Marcion. He had an idea that based on the thinking of the

Greeks that matter was evil and non -matter was good, that the

God who interfered with the world, God becoming a man, none of that could be true because matter is evil.

God would not become that which is evil, and so he hated the God of the Old Testament who got involved with man as he was, and he came up with an idea of books that he would approve as a teacher, and very little of the

Old Testament remained, and very little of the books of the New Testament that mentioned the Old Testament remained, and so he didn't like books like Matthew that was every three or four verses quoting the

Old Testament. He had his own canon lists of what he believed were inspired writings, and this began to circulate amongst the church and it began to have an effect, and so the church hadn't ever thought of putting a list together, to this point they hadn't really done that, but in opposition to Marcion they said, you know what, we need to straighten this out so that the people of God know exactly what we as the church have always seen as the

Word of God, and it wasn't like they were trying to come up with new books and inserting them. No, they understood the four gospels were never in question,

Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, Paul's writings, we receive them, even

Peter in Paul's own lifetime recognized Paul's writings as scripture.

He says some things are hard to understand which the unstable and the unstought twist to their own destruction as they do with the rest of the scriptures.

Again, definite, explicit message there that Paul's writings, though some of them are hard to understand, don't mess with them, don't twist them, you'll do that to your own destruction, you'd be messing with scripture.

And so the early church began to say, what are the books that we have received that are circulating in this city and that city that the churches are reading in their worship services, they're reading

Matthew, they're reading Romans, there's no question about these things, there was a question about a couple of the books, but basically it was a very short process.

Once they said, we need to have an answer to Martian's list, we need to come up with a list that everyone is already embracing.

And when they did, they came up with this little phrase, recipimus, which is

Latin for we receive, not we're lording it over and making our decision known to all that we have the authority to say what is scripture.

No, they were just simply receiving something that God had authored and we recognize it as his word, as his

God breathed revelation. Recipimus, it's not we're standing over the

Bible and giving our view on it. It's we're submitting to the

Bible, we receive these books as sacred scripture. And there's just a wealth we find in the creeds.

I just want to take a few minutes in the time we have left to quote some of the creeds and the confessions of the faith.

And I believe they will be instructful, insightful, and they will instruct us starting with the apostles creed, which was not written by the 12 apostles, came sometime later, but again, one of the earliest confessions of the church.

Again, they wanted to say, this is what we believe as Christians. I remember a local outreach taking place here in the city of Phoenix, and I met with the pastor who was organizing it and he wanted to bring churches together in the gospel, but he didn't want to allow those who did not embrace the gospel to be part of this event.

He didn't want any converts going to false churches. And so what did he do?

He said, let's just make it as broad as we can to include people who might have a disagreement on water baptism or this particular aspect of church government.

And so what he said was, if you're a church wanting to participate in this evangelistic outreach that we'll do downtown, and you want to be part of this, please affirm that you as a church embrace the apostles creed.

And some churches wrote to him and said, well, that's not fair. You know, we can't sign that. And he says,

I'm sorry, but we have to draw the line. This is basic Christian doctrine that Christians have embraced through the centuries.

And so certain churches weren't able to participate. And rightly so. What does the apostle, the apostles creed say?

I believe. Again, the word credo in Latin is

I believe. I believe in God, the father, almighty maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, our

Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried.

He descended into hell. The third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God, the father almighty.

From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the

Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.

Amen. Scholars tell us that there is that phrase he descended into hell and most would say most scholars would say that that is a phrase that has been added to the creed that came some time later rather than the original.

There's many manuscripts of the apostles creed in play and the earliest versions don't include that phrase he descended into hell and some churches when they read the apostles creed in their services do not mention that particular aspect or phrase in the creed.

Also, when you come to that little word Catholic, the word Catholic is a problem to some people because they immediately think of Roman Catholic and yet the word

Catholic simply means universal. There's one universal church and we would agree with that even as Protestants.

I would say of myself, I'm Catholic, I'm just not Roman Catholic, but most people wouldn't understand what

I mean by that so I don't go around saying it. But I believe in the universal church and I believe what has been universally accepted by the church, including the creeds of the church, like the apostles creed, the

Nicene creed, the Athanasian creed, these creeds that affirm who

Jesus is, who our God truly is. And so don't be upset by the word

Catholic, it's not referring to the Roman Catholic church. When the apostles creed was written, the

Roman Catholic church didn't actually exist. The Nicene creed, we believe in one

God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

By the way, I'm reading from the Reformation study Bible that has just been produced.

It's in the ESV, which is the one Jesus used. Just joking. The English standard version.

You know I'm joking. I hope. And at the back, it has many of the great creeds of the church.

London Baptist Confession is there, the Westminster Confession, some tremendous insights regarding salvation found in the

Heidelberg Confession, the Belgic Confession. In fact, let me, I'm getting a little bit distracted, but the

Heidelberg Catechism. How about this on justification? Question 60 of the

Heidelberg Catechism. How are you righteous before God? Listen to this. Again, you can hear in this statement the fact that scholars have poured themselves over the scripture to come up with a simple and yet precise and concise definition.

How are you righteous before God? Only by true faith in Jesus Christ. That is, although my conscience accused me that I have grievously sinned against all the commandments of God and have never kept any of them, and I'm prone,

I'm still prone always to all evil, yet God, without any merit of mine, of mere grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ, as if I had never committed nor had any sin and had myself accomplished all the obedience which

Christ has fulfilled for me. If only I accept such benefit with a believing heart.

You can pour over those words and each word is pregnant with meaning. Talks about the passive and active obedience of Christ and the fact that Jesus not only takes away our sin, but gives us his perfect righteousness as a gift.

Again, from the Heidelberg Confession, but Catechism. But again, we're reading the

Nicene Creed. He is creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of his Father, before all words,

God of God, light of light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the

Father, by whom all things were made, who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the

Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary and was made man and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate.

He suffered and was buried. And the third day he rose again, according to the scriptures and ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the

Father. And he shall come again with glory to judge both the living and the dead, whose kingdom shall have no end.

And we believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the

Son, who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified, who spoke by the prophets.

And we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins and we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.

Amen. Chalcedon, the Heidelberg Confession, so many good things.

The Canons of Dort study these things. Again, these are not infallible, but they're not negligible.

The Westminster Logic Catechism. So we go on. I just encourage you as a lover of God and a lover of scripture, love the

God of scripture and see the hand of God in providence through the ages in giving his people gifts, gifts that search out the scriptures.

These are men of God who have gone to the text and sought to find out what it teaches us about the

Trinity. You're interested in further material. There's a book I'd recommend called

The Apostles' Creed by Stuart Briscoe, another one called Know the Creeds and Councils by Justin Holcomb.

Karl Truman writes a recommendation on that book as well. His book, Karl Truman's The Credal Imperative is a recent book, again, telling us and instructing us as to what it is we should believe and why.

And if you're in any way in doubt about the Trinity, here's a book by a guy called

James White. Ever heard of him? Forgotten Trinity. Very, very wonderful book.

Starts off with that wonderful phrase, I love the Trinity. Does that sound strange to you?

For most people, it should sound strange. Think about it. When was the last time you heard anyone say such a thing?

But then he goes on to say, but I love the Trinity because that is who God is revealed in scripture.

He's one in essence, three in personality, that's the God of the Bible. We're out of time.

My name is John Samson. Well, before you sign off, Karl, I'm going to interrupt you here, and I do want to remind folks, got your website up here.

This is the kingschurchaz .com. You really need to get a .org

address, by the way. But this works, and it's got a picture of your new meeting location and some address information there as well.

It says bring a friend, but I think you can bring enemies too. Well, whoever, there's the address.

Essentially, you're at 87th Avenue and Union Hills. You say Arrowhead area, but I know that area really well.

You wouldn't call it Arrowhead. Arrowhead's a little bit further east, really, but you're right smack in between what we would call the

Sun City area, the Arrowhead Mall area, the Lake Pleasant area. So if folks are in that vicinity, you're really in a central location there.

Westbrook Village is right across the street for seniors who live in that area. I don't know of another

Reformed Baptist church anywhere near there. No, I don't. The 101 freeway, it makes it easier on a

Sunday, less traffic. So just wanted to let folks know there, and they can go to your website and find that information.

Thanks so much for that, Rich. You bet. Pray for Dr. James White. He's got a very rigorous 24 hours.