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Sunday school from May 27th, 2018
All right, let's pray and we will get started. Lord Jesus again, we humbly come before you recognizing that we cannot understand your word apart from your Holy Spirit and so Lord we ask that you would send the helper to help us understand your word convict us of our sin and comfort us of the assurance of our Forgiveness through what you have done for us on the cross.
We ask in Jesus name. Amen. All right, there was a question that came in between the services. I'm going to answer that one first and then we'll ask if there's any questions regarding the sermon. What little time we have today again, I have to catch a plane.
I wanted to dedicate to taking a closer look at the topic today regarding the doctrine of the Trinity but if you remember in the Athanasian Creed a common question that comes up is at the end of the Athanasian Creed in Section 39 says those who have done good will enter into eternal life those who have done evil into eternal fire.
Hmm. Does this sound like the Athanasian Creed teaches salvation by works? On a first look right now. Here's the important thing. What is a creed or what is a confession? Why are these things important?
What makes them important? So what is the reason why the Athanasian Creed is true, why is it true? Why is the church look to this creed to the Apostles Creed in the Nicene Creed and said this is what we confess together?
It's biblical. All right. So here's the idea a confession of faith. Though it comes from the Greek word. Hama Liggett. Oh Hama Liggett. Oh Hama same Leggett. Oh say a Confession is to say the same thing so the reason why confessions are true is Because they say the same thing as Scripture.
So in other words the three ecumenical creeds. For us the Augsburg Confession the small catechism the large catechism and all these other Documents that we have as part of our confessions. The reason they are true is because they say the same thing as the Bible.
They summarize it but we're gonna note something here these words in the Athanasian Creed should Should already be kind of buzzing around in your head because you should be saying that sounds strangely familiar.
Because these words Will rise again with their bodies given account considering their own deeds and those who have done good will enter into eternal life. Those who have done evil into eternal fire. That is almost but not quite word for word what Jesus said in John chapter 5.
So let's take a look at it. Open your Bible to John chapter 5 the verse in question Doesn't come up until a little bit later. But I want you to see it in context because the verse in question is in verse 29.
But we're gonna add some context and we're gonna start at verse 19. Jesus Always having these long-running arguments with the Pharisees and the Scribes and the Jews of his day who rejected him. Jesus says Amen.
Amen. Truly. I say to you the son can do nothing of his own accord. But only what he sees the father doing important note today's Trinity Sunday. You're gonna note that Jesus makes it clear He is not the father.
He's not the father. He's talking about the father is that the father is a different person than he is because the father is. But he's not a different deity a different God. That's kind of the important part.
So he can do nothing except for what he sees the father doing only what he sees the father doing for whatever the father does. The son does likewise for the father loves the son shows him all that he himself is doing and greater works than these.
Will he show him so that you may marvel for as the father raises the dead and gives life to them. So also the son gives life to whom he will the father judges. No one but has given all judges to the son.
That all may honor the son just as the as they honor the father. Whoever does not honor the son does not honor the father who sent him. Amen. Amen. I say to you whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has Eternal life.
He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. So real quick. Would it be correct to say Jesus here is saying that you are saved by faith. Yes, absolutely and by the way. The Greek word the Greek verb for believe here is the same Greek verb for having faith.
The Greek word is Pistou. Oh and it means to believe or to trust. That's what faith is and the Greek word the Greek noun for faith is pistis. So pistis and pistou or kind of like grammatically related they come off the same stems as far as the base Root words.
So the one who believes Has eternal life already. You've got it in the bag. So whatever Jesus says next in this Statement that he's making will not undo what he just said. Jesus is not schizophrenic. He just said the one who believes Has eternal life does not come into judgment.
He's passed from death to life, by the way. If somebody does not come into judgment That's kind of a big deal, right? Whoa, I'm not gonna come into judgment on the day of judgment. Will their sins be brought back up?
No. It's like I got to do Napoleon dynamite. Yes. Okay. This is good news, right? Yeah, you haven't seen Napoleon dynamite. It's a little silly. Yeah. Yeah, you don't come into judgment. At that time that's it.
Exactly, okay, so if your sins have already been dealt with and you're not going to come into judgment. What's the only thing left for you on the day of judgment? Right, okay. Or as I like to point out that God pulls out the Excel spreadsheet.
And he's Jesus is totally cook this the spreadsheet in your favor. It's it's it's scandalous so all of the columns and the rows and themselves that had all of your sins recorded in them. Jesus went control alt delete and You know just flush them.
Actually, he took them on himself put him in his account and he bled and died for them. So the only thing left in your spreadsheet are what? Good works now for the one who doesn't believe they come into judgment.
What's in their spreadsheet? Lots and lots and lots of sin. Can any amount of good works undo evil. No. None, no amount. So here's the idea then Jesus has already said in this passage. The one who believes doesn't come into judgment has presently you it's in the bag.
You've got eternal life. You have it. So what he's gonna say next doesn't undo it if properly understood. You'll see it for what it is. Then he continues verse 25. Amen. I'm in I say to you an hour is coming in is now here when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live for as the father has life in himself.
So he's granted the son also to have life in himself. He's given him authority to execute judgment because he is the Son of Man. So do not marvel at this for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come out.
So everybody Come out of your grave. Those who have done good to the resurrection of life. Those who have done evil to the resurrection of judgment. Who are the ones in the category of having done good?
The ones who believe. Because all of their sin is atoned for bled for died for nothing that you've ever done contrary to God's law. Will ever be mentioned by Jesus on the Day of Judgment. You do not come into judgment.
The only thing left to do is to tally up all those good works. The one who's done evil. Not so much. So now you can see where these words come from. These words come from John 5 and. So we can confess this now in the Athanasian Creed at his coming all people will rise again with their bodies and give an account.
Concerning their own deeds. Well, this is most certainly true. All right, those who've done good will enter into eternal life. Those who've done evil into eternal fire. It's pretty straightforward. Same thing is what Jesus said in John 5 and in the context in which he said it he already made it clear.
Salvation is by faith belief. Only the one who has passed from judgment will not come into judgment. Who has eternal life is one who is counted as one who's done good? Everybody else if there's evil in their account, that's because they remained in sin and unbelief.
So just to get this clear in my head those who believe. Get a free pass in. But those who don't believe. Do any of those so the judgment is? You believe you're in. You didn't yeah. Yeah.
You are either in on Jesus's righteousness and as a free gift given to you. Or you can try to be saved by your own righteousness. Good luck. Because even one sin in that spreadsheet Dams you. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, absolutely as long as you are breathing. Currently today is the day of salvation. Why would you want to wait till tomorrow? Exactly. Yeah, that he his deathbed was upright but yes, exactly perfect example of a fellow who on his deathbed He was nailed to it.
He trusted in Jesus.
All we're doing is talking about the Trinity the Father the Son and that's good. Yeah, and I'm thinking okay in the Apostles Creed and Nicene we talked about the you know, the whole story from birth to.
Yeah, second coming. This has a different purpose. Yeah, but.
Finally, yeah, you know it is in the last little fourth. Yeah at the end get the incarnation. Wondering if we were gonna even touch base. Yeah.
Yeah, we did now notice I'm gonna ask you a question here we confess the three ecumenical creeds. So if your pastor said, you know what hell doesn't exist. I love wins. Everybody gets saved. Could you use the Athanasian Creed to have him defrocked?
Yes. Yes, absolutely. You do know that as part of my ordination vows I promise to only teach what's in accord with these creeds and our Lutheran confessions. So if I denied the doctrine of hell this creed affirms the doctrine of hell.
If I denied that some actually go to eternal judgment this creed affirms eternal judgment. If I denied that Jesus is God this creed affirms that he is. If I denied the doctrine of the Trinity this creed Really hard confesses it and you're gonna note.
It's painstakingly Redundant this creed is why because in the early part of the Christian era it is the doctrine of the Trinity where literally all of the theological blood was shed both in ink and in human blood and The reason why it's named after after Athanasius if you're not familiar with this guy.
He was a bishop of Alexandria and this is a fellow who on multiple occasions nearly lost his life. Defending this doctrine because there was a fellow at the time of Athanasius who his name was Arius. Arius was a smart fellow and he he knew kind of the power of music and He denied the doctrine of the Trinity and he was really good at writing little praise songs that taught that Jesus was Not God that he wasn't eternal that he was one of God's created beings and Denied that Jesus was God and therefore if you deny that Christ is God you end up denying the doctrine of the Trinity itself.
Aries taught that Jesus was a godlike being Glorious in all of its majesty and stuff, but still he was created probably one of the angels. Uh-huh, that's what Aries taught. There's a group today. It still teaches this called the Jehovah's Witnesses.
They teach the Arian heresy. And so that heresy spread through the church in the in the third and the fourth century. Literally there. I mean there were times in Christian history when the majority of churches believe the Arian heresy and At the Council of Nicaea.
It was Athanasius who took a leading role. To get the people to open up their Bibles and look at this and to actually then affirm the Nicene Creed which is Trinitarian and so but even the Nicene Creed didn't get rid of the get rid of the Arian heresy and Athanasius at one point.
One of his opponents, you know met him face to face and said to Athanasius Athanasius give up the whole world is against you and We get this famous famous statement from Athanasius. He says no. No, no, it's Athanasius contra mundum.
It's Athanasius against the world. I'm taking you all on because I know what the scripture says and he stood his ground. Now he didn't hammer out this creed but this creed was written in his honor because he was the Defender of the doctrine of the Trinity stood on the Word of God and refused to literally compromise even one iota and that's literally the case, you know the difference between heresy and orthodoxy is one iota.
An iota is a small little Greek letter and the Arians would say Jesus is God like Home boy who sees and the Trinitarians would say no, he is of the same substance of God home. Oh who sees. See and there's literally between those two words.
The only difference is one iota. So have you ever heard the phrase? I'm not going to budge one iota. That goes all the way back in Christian history. So, all right mark you had a question. John yeah.
Okay Jesus is talking to Nicodemus. No one has ascended into heaven except he was descended from heaven the Son of Man. Yeah, right away.
Yeah. Now I would recommend for a more satisfactory answer on this look at the book the encyclopedia of Bible difficulties. And you can find that online. It's you can find it online. You're gonna get a better Thing here.
Jesus isn't referring in the same way that you're thinking. Okay, and so you could say Elijah and Enoch both. Well, they ascended into heaven. That's that's actually kind of not the point that Jesus is making theologically.
It's ascending in the sense of having come directly from the Father. It's not talking about the heavenly abode as it is so much talking about the very presence of God. So there's where you're gonna make a distinction and you have to pay close attention to the nuance that Jesus is making there.
So this is this does not negate Enoch. It does not negate Elijah. That's not really the point at all. Yeah. When Jesus ascended, where did he ascend to? Okay. Now God the Father is spirit. Where's his right hand?
Right. You see what I'm saying? So right hand in that sense is not talking about the father physically having an actual right hand. It is a it is an idiom referring to the place of power. Okay, Jesus is in the very presence of the father in the right hand in the sense He's kind of in the driver's seat.
Think of it this way if you want a picture of it in the physical realm when Joseph ascends and think what think with me here. Joseph is in prison for 13 years. He has this Pharaoh has a dream two dreams.
Joseph interprets them. Joseph ascends from the prison to the right hand of Pharaoh and nobody is greater in all of Egypt except for Pharaoh than Joseph, but who's running the show? Joseph so that you kind of have to pull in some other analogies here to pull this together.
And here's the reason why because in order for us to understand things of heaven we need a touch point in earth to kind of grasp it because it's Always kind of by way of analogy or metaphor, you know, because that's how we operate.
We need something we can kind of grasp so I point you back to Joseph and that's what that's that's referring to and so Christ has descended and He also now has ascended. Okay, descended and ascended talking about right hand of the majesty at the position of power running the universe kind of thing.
That's that's what he's referring to not just merely going to heaven. You know as if heaven and this is where it gets a little weird to talk about heaven spatially may not make sense. I'm not sure because I'm not sure how things work in eternity in a time-space continuum like here that makes perfect sense.
But get me outside of the time-space continuum and I'm totally lost. I don't even know how it works. So yeah. Yeah. Right, so if I were to say this back in two years ago Donald Trump ascended to the presidency.
Am I telling the truth? How much higher did he go? In physical feet. Zero, he's still like he's right. You see what I'm saying when we say in that sense ascended is talking about ascension in authority offense.
Is this you see what I'm saying? So you have to kind of watch the context on these things, but it's a good complicated nuance. It really is but you know, you know, I again and that's the Aland book on the Encyclopedia Bible difficulties helps with that and this is funny thing is is that this is kind of the atheist game.
They always look for these, you know. These these ways in which the Bible appears to contradict itself and they totally disregard context. You know, what is Jesus meaning in this text is a better question.
So you kind of sometimes have always said in the past, you know. Look at the coronation in the Old Testament, you know, the red cord and all that. Okay. Question. And I'm thinking I know the answer, but I just want to make sure John 3 16 and verse John 3 16.
Is there? Oh, I want to see first John. Is there?
There is similarity no doubt.
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of interesting. A God thing. Yeah, so so here's the thing, okay. So first John 3 6 by this we know love that he laid down his life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers now.
Here's the thing is that the the number system is not inspired. This is you know so so this has been put on the text and what's fascinating what I find helpful is is that I personally believe the Providence was involved in putting some of this together because there's certain ways in which.
Mnemonically that is really easy for me to know where to go in the scriptures to teach the gospel to somebody and I find it Fascinating that it may not even be a coincidence that John 3 16 and first John 3 16 are covering the same topic.
But that may be intentional by the people who put the system over the text. Okay. But for instance you want to know if you want to be able to prove to somebody salvation by grace through faith alone. Are you ready?
Romans 3 Galatians 3 Colossians 2 in this case, but there's certain things that you just kind of work it out in this way and this is how it works. It's wonderful how that how that plays out but Romans 3 Galatians 3 those are your go-to texts and It's fascinating to me that they're both in the threes.
So now I hate to say this I really am not satisfied with this fact, but I Literally have a plane to catch so I have to end here today.