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In this session, I want to show 
you from the Word of God the importance of creeds and confessions. Romans 12, I read verses one 
and two, very familiar words. This is Holy Scripture, the Word 
of God written. I beseech you therefore, brethren, 
by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living 
sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable 
service. Do not be conformed to this world, 
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove 
what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. Christianity 
is to penetrate to all of our humanity, our emotions, our will, 
our body. And here Paul says that this 
is to be done through the mind. Now he uses a very interesting 
turn of phrase. If you think about it, it's a 
contradiction. To be a living sacrifice. Usually sacrifices are dead. Their lives are taken away so 
that they can be offered up. But he calls us to be living 
sacrifices and to present ourselves to God in this way. Now there 
are a couple of questions we ought to ask about the text. 
I won't answer them in detail. The first one is, what are the 
mercies of God? And basically, the mercies of 
God are everything that Paul has written in the first 11 chapters 
of the book of Romans. That's to which he is referring 
at this place. So let's take a tour through 
the book of Romans. No, we won't do that. But that's 
what we could do at this point to remind ourselves of what is 
behind his statement. But then he says that this is 
to be done, that we present ourselves by the renewing of the mind. Based on who God is and what 
he has done, his mercies, he calls us to present ourselves 
as sacrifices to the God of heaven and earth via the mind. Paul 
is saying that right living is always based on right believing. Or another way to put this is 
truth must come before actions. When I was in pastoral ministry, 
I learned that when someone came to me with a difficulty, the 
first question or one of the first questions I needed to ask 
them was, what do you believe? Pastor, what should I do in this 
case? Well, what do you believe? What does the Bible say? What 
is the truth? And we talk through those truths, 
and then finally come to a conclusion and recognize this is what I 
ought to do based on what the scripture says. And if we fail 
to understand this point, this will be a terrible hindrance 
in our Christian lives to our godliness. Think about this. 
If we don't know who God is, we worship idols, and we can 
even do this as professing Christians. If we don't have a clear and 
plain understanding of who God is, we worship an idol. And you 
know, a lot of times Christians say, oh yeah, I know who God 
is, what's next? I need to say, no, let's pause. 
Let's spend a good bit of time on this. Let's think about this. 
So that our understanding of who God is reflects what the 
word of God teaches, not cultural mores. If we don't know who we 
are, that we aren't the center of the universe and why we need 
salvation. We will be hindered in our lives. 
If we don't know what sin is, that sin is a violation or transgression 
of the law of God, it's not a cultural faux pas, then we won't be able 
to understand what salvation is. If we don't know who Christ 
is, if we don't know that he is truly God and truly man, two 
natures joined together in one person forever, if we don't have 
that clearly in our minds, we don't have an understanding of 
who the Savior is, of who the mediator is, and we're not trusting 
in the one who has been revealed in Holy Scripture. You see, all 
of these things call us to reflect upon the truth that is contained 
in the Bible because these are the basic facts of our faith. Think about your evangelism. 
When you speak to someone about Christ and the gospel, maybe 
a relative who doesn't profess faith, maybe your neighbor, maybe 
a co-worker, maybe someone you sit next to on an airplane, You 
need to know some facts about what the Bible teaches, some 
theological truths, in order to be able to speak to them about 
these things. When you say the word God, for 
the most part, they won't understand what you mean by God. They will 
think of many other things. I remember having a conversation 
one time with a woman, a young woman who said to me, I said, 
who is God? And she says, God is that tree 
over there. Another one, a conversation, who is God? God is my grandmother. Because that to her was her, 
I can use the words of Alcoholics Anonymous, higher power. We live 
in a North American culture that's all about higher powers, not 
about the creator who made heaven and earth, who sustains life 
on this earth, who is one and who is three. The Christian memory 
of those doctrines is gone. And that's where you need to 
begin when you talk to people. When you speak to them about 
who we are, you need to remind them of the fact that we're not 
the center of the universe, that we're created beings. I recently 
spoke at a conference on the doctrine of God, and I introduced 
my message by talking about one of my cats. A little cat that 
came to our house, a feral cat that we adopted as our own. I 
love this little cat. And I made the point to these 
people, it was in Utah, where the doctrine of God is really 
important. I made the point that I have more in common with the 
cat than I have with God. Because the cat is a created 
being, Kiwi, that's her name, is a created being and so am 
I. And as a result, I'm more like the cat than I am like God, 
even though I'm made in his image. We can't take our understanding 
of who we are and read it back into God, though we are made 
in his image. And we have to teach people this 
as we talk to them. Who we are, we're created beings, 
and the complication that we are sinful. The distance between 
the creator and the creature is great in itself, and add to 
that the complicating fact that we are fallen in Adam. And that 
everything about our being is tainted with the reality of sin. 
We have to speak to people about this. We're talking about our 
evangelism. And you talk to them about what sin is. You have to 
help them to understand that they're really and truly morally 
guilty before God because they have broken his moral law. Sin 
is not simply guilt feelings. Sin is the reality of having 
violated the commandments of God. And you need to be able 
to understand that and explain it to God's people. Then you 
come to Christ. Because ultimately your purpose 
in speaking to them is to bring them to the Savior and tell them 
that they need to believe in Him. So you need to be able to 
articulate clearly to this person sitting next to you on the airplane 
who Jesus Christ is. Truly God, truly man, two natures 
united together in one person forever. And try to help them 
to understand. You need to speak about what 
Christ has done. that he lived a life of holy 
obedience to the law of God, that he offered himself as a 
sacrifice for sin upon the cross, that he endured the wrath of 
God, that he really and truly died, that he rose on the third 
day, he has ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of 
God, and you must trust in him if you would find forgiveness 
for your sins and receive the gift of eternal life. You have 
to be able to tell people that. You have to tell them what salvation 
is. I'd like to share Jesus with you. I'd like to tell you about 
who Jesus is so that you might have eternal life. What is eternal 
life? What does salvation mean? We have to be able to speak to 
people, define what faith is, define what repentance is. This 
is a lot, isn't it? You see, you can't speak of Christ 
with someone unless you are able to bring them to a place where 
there's common agreement on these things. Francis Schaeffer said, 
when he was thinking about our culture, he called sometimes 
these things pre-evangelism. That is, that we have to begin 
by instructing people and not just say, I want you to accept 
Jesus into your heart, which by the way is not in the Bible 
anywhere. We don't want to say that to people, we need to instruct 
them. Have you ever noticed in reading the book of Acts, that 
there are basically two different methods of proclaiming Christ 
in the book of Acts by the apostles. When we find them in a Jewish 
environment, a Jewish circumstance like a synagogue, they are able 
to assume a great deal of common theological knowledge. And so 
their message is basically, believe in Jesus, he's the one who fulfills 
the promises that were given to the fathers. That's what they 
say. Now you can go back and read the sermons, but that's 
the end of it. What God revealed to the fathers, I'm here to tell 
you about, Jesus Christ is the one. But have you ever noticed 
when they go to a Gentile circumstance that their methodology is very 
different because they can't assume that common system of 
theology that they had with the Jews? They're going into pagan 
environments, idolatrous environments. And so rather, when they say 
God, rather than assuming that the Gentiles in the Mediterranean 
region understand their words, they begin with creation and 
they begin with the doctrine of God. And they speak to these 
Gentiles about the one true God who's very different from the 
gods of the nations around them. But that's the apostolic method, 
that's what they do. Now where do we find these truths 
that are so necessary and so important? We find them in scripture. Is it necessary to know all these 
things? I mean, to know all of the truth 
of Scripture? No, it isn't. What we've been 
talking about are the central facts, and they are the central 
facts that every Christian ought to be able to agree upon. Whether 
we are Presbyterians or Congregationalists or Baptists, these are the things 
that we share in common. Can I use the word? They're Catholic 
doctrines. I don't mean Roman Catholic. 
I mean universal doctrines, and we need to know them. Paul calls 
this, in Romans 14, one, the faith. In Romans 6, 17, he calls 
it the system of truth to which you have been delivered. There's 
a lot of different names for it in scripture. In the pastoral 
epistles, it's called sound words or wholesome doctrine, but it 
refers to the central truths of Christianity. Brothers and 
sisters, this is what creeds and confessions seek to state. They seek to summarize for us 
the truths, the central truths of the faith of Christianity. Now someone might ask the question, 
is there a difference between a creed and a confession? Well, 
I want to suggest to you, not really. The Bible tends to use 
the language of confess or confession Someone has suggested that a 
creed tells us what we must believe, a confession tells us what we 
ought to believe. There's a difference between 
the two. If we look closely at our confessions, when we get 
near the end, we do come to some differences on the way that the 
church is ordered or those who are the proper subjects of baptism, 
but those are at the end. A creed doesn't address those 
things. A creed addresses the most basic truths of the Christian 
faith. The word creed comes from the Latin credo. It simply means 
I believe. It's often a brief statement 
of the contents of the faith. A confession comes from the Latin 
word confessio, which comes from a related Greek word or is related 
to a Greek word homologia, which means I testify or I state this 
truth. Someone says, a creed may be 
more personal, and a confession may be more public. That is, 
individuals believe, and churches testify. But in either case, 
the attention is given to the knowledge basis of Christianity. Our faith is based on facts, 
historical realities that have been revealed to us in the word 
of God, and without them, there is no salvation. Becomes very 
important, doesn't it? Now, in the language that I will 
use now and later on, I may say creed, I may say confession, 
I basically am treating them synonymously. Okay, so please 
hear me do that. Creeds may function both positively 
and negatively. Let's talk about positively first. 
They state the contents of faith so that belief may be intelligent. 
I just said Christianity is an historical religion but it's 
also a revealed religion. Psalm 19 tells us that the heavens 
declare the glory of God, but it's only the word of God written, 
the revealed word of God that tells us who this God is and 
all of his greatness and glory and gives us the words of salvation. 
You won't come to faith in Christ based on what you see in creation. You'll only come to faith in 
Christ when the word of God is proclaimed to you, when it explains 
to you who God is. God acts in history, he creates, 
he sustains, he promises, he fulfills, he saves. And that's 
what a creed states, and that's what the central doctrines of 
a confession of faith will say. I might come to you, I knock 
on your door, and I say, you must believe in my God. Imagine 
sort of a brusque encounter. Door opens. You must believe 
in my God. Who's your God? The God you must 
believe in. But who is he? He's my God. What's 
his name? Well, I call him Uke. What about 
Uke? Tell me about Uke. No, I can't 
tell you any more about him. You just have to believe in him. 
Have I done you any good? The person to whom I'm speaking, 
have I done anything? I haven't given you any information 
except demanded that you believe in my God. A creed or a confession 
seeks to define the various aspects of necessary doctrine. And those 
who receive the statements of the confession, who state that 
they too believe them, may be recognized as followers of Jesus 
as well. That's why we have so much in 
common. Whatever your denominational 
affiliation may be, we have a whole lot in common. We have far more 
in common than we have in different. Secondly, creeds are a defense 
mechanism. They identify error and erroneous 
men. They function the same way that 
a little document that I presented in Vancouver at the airport the 
other day functioned. That was my passport. I had to 
scan it on a machine. I had to give a piece of paper 
to one man who looked at it and sent me on to some more. After 
I got my suitcase, they took that. I met some more men. They 
took away that statement. But that passport was a demonstration 
that I'm a legal citizen of the United States of America. And 
it gave me the privilege, which I believe is a privilege, of 
entering your country. I don't have the right, I have the privilege 
to be able to enter into Canada on that basis. But that's my 
passport, and that's how the officials who represent you were 
sure that I wasn't a nefarious villain who was coming in to 
send a nuclear bomb upon British Columbia. I'm just a preacher. 
Come in to try to help people. They didn't ask me that question. 
I could have said that to them. But you see, that's what a passport 
does. A creed functions like that. It allows us to be able 
to identify each other. A church without a creed opens 
itself to all kinds of doctrinal disease. Thirdly, likewise, I 
suppose I've already hinted at this, a creed or a confession 
is a means of connecting us with Christians of other times and 
other places. Now that's really important. 
When I am in a congregation that uses the Apostles' Creed or the 
Nicene Creed when we come to the Lord's table, one of the 
things that I like to do is imagine that I am standing in a vast 
array of individuals, men and women, of different ethnicities, 
with different languages, who lived in different times, who 
perhaps are dressed in very different ways from my own, and I'm just 
one in that crowd, saying, I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker 
of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord. 
And it moves my heart. to think about the fact that 
the church of Jesus Christ universally involves all the people on this 
earth now who believe in him, but also everyone who has ever 
gone before us, who has confessed the faith of Jesus, and we join 
with them when we say these words. To me, that's a marvelous and 
a powerful thing, because the universal church of Jesus Christ 
is geographical, yes, it extends to the uttermost parts of the 
earth and the islands of the sea, but it is also chronological. 
and just picking up on what my brother has been telling us, 
it starts in Genesis 3.15. It includes all of the saints 
who were believers in the Old Testament era as well as the 
New Testament era as well. What have Christians believed? 
Has the content of faith always been the same? Well, Jude says 
that there is a faith that has been once for all delivered to 
the saints. There's no progression of doctrine since the apostolic 
age where new things are revealed to us. All of them are contained 
in scripture, and that's what Christians have confessed. Now, 
we could also talk about the function of a creed negatively. 
It functions to define who is not part of the community. That 
is, it creates doctrinal boundaries both in scripture and in history. I boldly said a little while 
ago that to deny the doctrine of the Trinity, I didn't say 
that you have to understand it, I said to deny the doctrine of 
the Trinity puts you outside the pale of true Christianity. 
Well, that's what a confession of faith or a creed helps us 
to do. It sets those boundaries and 
we're able to say, when I was in Utah a couple of weeks ago, 
The believers there, we had a conference, there was probably 100 people 
from many different churches. They were starving for fellowship 
with each other. And they put aside any differences 
that they would have because they were able to come, but over 
and over they were telling me how difficult it is to be a Christian 
and to have a church in Salt Lake City. Because the population 
of evangelical Christians, broadening the definition somewhat, means 
that there are less than 0.5% of the population in Utah is 
a professing believer. Everyone that you meet is either 
secularized or a Mormon of one kind or another. And so to them, 
this was a great opportunity to come together. Let's put aside 
our differences and let's glorify the God who is being proclaimed 
to us. But at the same time, they know 
that the Mormons are outside the pail. Now the Mormons, or 
the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 
as they want to be called, want to bring themselves into evangelical 
Christianity and be recognized by us. Brothers and sisters, 
we can't do that. We ought to pity them. We ought 
to seek to win them over. We don't condemn them, but at 
the same time we say, you are outside of the pale of Orthodox 
Christianity because of your doctrine of God and many other 
things. But that's where it begins. A 
creed helps us to do that. Likewise, creeds and confessions 
differentiate between truth and error, or between believers and 
non-believers. It is possible to have false 
or erroneous belief. For example, in the ancient world, 
in the apostolic age, polytheism was the rule, the belief in many 
gods. Judaism and Christianity had 
a monotheistic creed. If I had time, I had intended 
to, but I know that I won't have time, I wanted to show you from 
the Old Testament and the New Testament the most basic creed 
of the Christian faith. You know what it is? The Lord 
our God, the Lord is one. Deuteronomy 6.4, the Shema. You find that throughout the 
Old, when Israel got away from that creed and gave themselves 
over to the gods of the nations, they ended up in 70 years of 
captivity in Babylon. In the New Testament, the scribe 
comes to Jesus and says, what is the first and great commandment? 
Jesus answers by quoting the Shema. The Lord our God, the 
Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your 
God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. Teacher, 
you've answered well. Paul, in many places, uses a 
turn of the phrase that refers to the fact that God is one. 
When we say that God is one, immediately we are setting up 
boundaries. There are not a multiplicity 
of gods, there is one. And we worship him and we worship 
him alone. It's really important to think 
in those ways. Now let me ask a question. I've 
been talking about personal faith and creeds. Let me ask this question. Why does a church, I'm thinking 
about a congregation of believers, why does a church need a confession 
of faith? What's the point? Well, think 
about it like this with me. There are three ways that we 
can view the Bible, or three ways that we can read the Bible. 
And I don't mean the physical act of reading. But I want you 
to think through this with me. On the one hand, we could read 
through the Bible chronologically. because as we heard in the last 
session, it tells a story moving forward. That quotation from 
Sinclair Ferguson that everything from Genesis 3.16 onwards is 
simply an explication of what takes place in Genesis 3.15, 
or a footnote, I think was his word, is really true. What is 
promised in Genesis 3.15 in the form of a curse upon the serpent 
becomes the theme of the rest of the Bible. And the Bible from 
that point onward tells a story moving forward. It is all about 
Christ. The scope of the whole is the 
glory of God in Jesus Christ. That's what it's about. So we 
read the Bible as the story of the history of redemption. It's 
true history. Everything that's recorded from 
Genesis to Revelation is true. Those events really happen in 
space and time, but they're a special kind of history because they 
teach us about God's acts breaking into history in order to save 
sinners. You have to know who Jesus is 
in order to be saved. You don't have to know about 
the history of the dominion of Canada in order to be saved, 
right? There's a difference. Both of them true, but one of 
them is revelational. It tells us about God's purpose. 
So the Bible can be described in terms of creation and the 
fall and redemption. And thank you to Dr. Barcelos 
for reading the texts in Luke 24 that I have in my notes. I 
don't have to turn you there. We've already heard them. But 
that's the goal or the purpose or the theme of the Bible. So 
when we read the Bible in this way, we ought to be asking the 
question, what is God doing here? If we're reading in the Old Testament, 
we're trying to discern what is the forward movement at this 
point in anticipation of the coming of Messiah? Why is this 
happening here, and what's going on, and how does that prepare 
for the coming of Christ? And when we read the New Testament, 
we're able to look back on the things that God has done and 
say, here's God's purpose and how it's fulfilled. It also points 
us forward to the end and makes us realize the glory of God in 
the end. That's the first way to read the Bible, historically, 
redemptive historically, chronologically, to see God's purpose. The second 
way that we ought to read the Bible, we might call the ethical 
way. Because the Bible describes to 
us God's righteousness and the obligations that we have to obey 
God's commands. Now, the first way, I want to 
say it's all about Christ. The second way, I want to say 
the Bible is all about holiness. It's all about teaching us how 
to live a life to the glory of God. Even the most minute things. In Luke 17, where the Lord Jesus 
is speaking to his disciples about holiness, he uses three 
words. Remember Lot's wife. All of a sudden, that incident 
from Genesis 19, or is it 18, 18 or 19, becomes very important 
because Jesus says it has something to do with the way that we ought 
to live. Don't look back. Take God's word seriously and 
pursue it. And this is a very important 
way to read the Bible. When we read the Bible, we ought 
to ask the question, what should I be doing And what does God 
want me to do? That's the ethical way of reading 
scripture. There's a third way to read scripture, 
and that's the theological way. It tells us what we are to believe, 
because the Bible is all about godly knowledge. All the Bible 
is about this. The word of God, pardon me, is 
the mine from which we collect the raw materials to build a 
systematic theology. This is one of the reasons why 
the Puritans at the Westminster Assembly put the chapter on scripture 
first, because we need scripture as the building blocks from which 
we are able to erect a structure of our system of theology. And 
this is what the Bible is all about. So when you read the Bible, 
this is the third way, you ought to ask the question, what shall 
I believe? Or what does God want me to believe 
based upon what it says? Now, sometimes that's going to 
require of you a great deal of searching in many places of Scripture 
to bring the fullness of a doctrine together. I'm not arguing for 
simply reading a verse and drawing from that verse a particular 
idea. Rather, I'm saying that that 
verse fits into the entirety of the Bible, and the rest of 
the Bible helps to interpret that verse so that you draw out 
theology. So there's a chronological way 
of reading the Bible, there's an ethical way of reading the 
Bible, and there's a theological way of reading the Bible. And 
that's what a creed or a confession helps us to be able to do. Because 
it doesn't simply use the plain text or the words of the Bible, 
but rather it collates and it summarizes all the teaching of 
the Bible. Did you ever run into someone 
who says, we're having a Bible study, We're not intending to 
study doctrine. We're just going to study the 
Bible. I would suggest to you that you cannot study the Bible 
without studying doctrine, without coming to conclusion. It's not 
about what it means to me or what it means to you. It's about 
what God says. So what is God doing here? What 
does God demand of me here? What is it that God teaches me 
here? I like to tell my students in my preaching class that they 
need to let the text of scripture govern the way that they preach 
the word. If it's a text that is primarily redemptive historical, 
preach it that way. Show God's people how it is pointing 
to Christ. If it is an ethical text, preach 
it ethically. If you're dealing with something 
about the Ten Commandments, preach them as commandments. And if 
it's a theological text, let's say you're in Isaiah chapter 
40 or the latter part of the book of Job or anywhere in the 
book of Romans or Galatians, then preach theology to God's 
people. That's what you need to do because that's what the 
text of scripture warrants for us to do. Now it's at this point 
that I wish I had time to show you how confessions are embedded 
into scripture. We start with the Old Testament, 
and the place to turn would be Deuteronomy 6.4. You know, we 
teach our children Bible memory verses. Wouldn't surprise me 
if many of you, the first verse that you taught your children 
was John 3.16. That's just common practice. But if you were a little 
Jewish boy or girl growing up in an observant Jewish home, 
a believing home, prior to the coming of Christ, the first verse 
that you would have learned is Deuteronomy 6.4. That would be 
your first memory verse. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our 
God, the Lord is one, and you shall love the Lord your God 
with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind. If we were to turn 
to that text, we simply don't have time, but I would urge you 
to look at Deuteronomy 6 later on. It tells us, following the 
language of the Shema, that's what it's called, it simply is 
the Hebrew word for hear. Hear, O Israel. Shema, O Israel. It tells us that the Shema is 
the means by which Israel will be preserved. You know, someone 
pointed out that the exile of the Jews to Babylon, prior to 
the exile they were polytheistic. They had been attracted to the 
gods of the nations around them and that's why ultimately the 
Lord sent them into Israel. But someone pointed out that 
after the exile they became intensely monotheistic. that pulled their 
idolatry out of their hearts and they began to worship God 
alone. And you see in the post-exilic, the time after the exile when 
the Jews returned to the Holy Land, you see the importance 
of the Shema in their lives. The Jews were required to recite 
it twice a day, morning and evening. And they would attach to it benedictions. So it would go something like 
this. Bless the Lord, O my soul, benediction one. Bless the Lord 
with all my heart, benediction two. Hear, O Israel, the Lord 
our God, the Lord is one. Bless the Lord, O my soul. There'd 
be a third benediction that followed. In the evening, there would be 
two benedictions before and two benedictions afterwards. But 
the idea was that this was so central in the minds of the Israelites 
that they were to recite it and remind themselves daily of the 
fact that the nations have many gods, but Israel has one God, 
and we serve him alone. You know, it wouldn't be a bad 
thing for us to do something like that ourselves. in the morning 
and in the evening, take some verses of scripture that remind 
us of the central truths of our faith and confess them. There's 
so much more we could say about the Shema. He had to skip through 
five pages. I have to skip through even more 
than that. I wish I could take you to the 
New Testament and see how many times. Let me get to the end 
of this, just give you a summary of what we have. If you were 
to scan through the pages of the New Testament, You would 
find that there are many words that it uses to speak about the 
way that we confess our faith. There is confession itself, homologia 
in its various forms. There are some antonyms to confession, 
for example, to deny. or to renounce the Christian 
faith, or to apostatize. We find in the New Testament 
things of denials of Jesus as the Son of God, or the Master, 
or our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, a denial of his name, 
a denial of God, a denial of the Christian faith. We find 
all these kinds of examples to say, this is bad. But what is 
good? To confess is good. Because to 
confess is an open declaration of Christian's relationship to 
Christ. It means an intelligent commitment 
to Christ, a submission to his lordship. The word implies that 
one's life must be consistent with his words, not just a bare 
statement, rather an agreement of lips and life, words and walk. 
To confess with the mouth is to devote the life to Jesus. 
So many other words that we could look at. There are a couple of 
doctrines that I want to highlight. that becomes central to the Christian 
confession. You know what the most basic 
one is? Jesus is Lord. That's the most basic one. You 
know Romans 10, 8, and 9. If you confess with your mouth, 
Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God has raised 
him from the dead, you will be saved. Well, let me ask you this 
question. Who is Jesus? And what does it 
mean that he is Lord? I recorded a podcast while I 
was in Utah. We were talking about the doctrine 
of God. And the fellow who was interviewing me said, you know, 
it's not unusual for a Mormon to say, I've accepted Jesus as 
my savior. But the question is, what do 
they mean by Jesus? Now, I was in a little bit of 
a wise guy mood. And I said, well, I know Jesus. I've accepted 
Jesus. No, what they say is I have a 
personal relationship with Jesus. And I said to this guy, well, 
I could say the same thing. I had a personal relationship 
with Jesus. He used to cut my lawn when I lived in California. 
His name was Jesus. Every week I had to pay him. 
So I had a personal relationship with him that doesn't do anything 
except make my lawn short and give the guy some money, right? 
To say I have a personal relationship with Jesus is meaningless if 
you're not able to say that he's the eternal son of God who assumed 
to himself humanity, who lived a life of holy obedience to the 
law of God, died the death of a sinner, rose from the dead, 
ascended into heaven, will come back one day. When we say Jesus, 
that's what we mean. And so when Paul says, if you 
confess with your mouth Jesus, all of that is brought together. 
And then when you say Lord, do you ever think about how striking 
it is that Paul writes to the church at the heart of the empire, 
where the citizens of the empire were required once a year to 
make a sacrifice and say the word Caesar is Lord? You see, 
it's not in Philippians or Corinthians, it could be. Wouldn't be bad 
if it were there. But it's especially striking 
that Paul says these words in the book of Romans, written to 
a church at the heart of the empire so that they are reminded 
and every Christian is reminded that there's no other authority 
over us but Jesus Christ our Lord. We bow down before him, 
we worship him, and we reject every other claimant to lordship 
because we are committed to Christ. All of a sudden those words become 
full and rich, don't they? But in order to become full and 
rich, we must have an understanding of what is intended by Jesus, 
what is intended by Lord. Philippians 2.11 also speaks 
about this in terms of eschatology, when it points to the day when 
all humans will understand and acknowledge the Lordship of Christ, 
even the Lord. Every knee will bow. and every 
tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Let me summarize 
for you. If we were to collate all of 
the texts in the New Testament, we could see that just embedded 
within the New Testament, we have a confession that goes like 
this. God is one. Christ is Lord. He is truly God and truly man. He died. He was buried. He rose from the dead. He was 
seen by many witnesses. That's 1 Corinthians 15. He ascended 
into heaven. He will come again. And this 
is the apostolic faith that we are to preach. Now you see, all 
of a sudden, all of a sudden, from the scriptures, we're seeing 
the importance of not just saying Bible verses, but bringing together 
a whole series of propositional truths to say, this is our faith. I believe in God, the Father 
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, our 
only Lord. Well, this evening, God willing, 
we'll look at the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Chalcedonian 
definition, and see how the church took these truths that are embedded 
in the New Testament and expressed them as over against the heresies 
that were developing in the first century. But we'll stop right 
here. Thank you for your time. can use all of his notes. We're 
not up against the clock on that one. I forgot to make an announcement 
prior. When you do go to the building, 
the Free Grace Baptist Church building, if you're eating there, 
just be mindful that we're having some work done, some construction 
on the roof. So when you come around the corner, 
there's a bunch of things. Don't hit them. for your car's 
sake. And yeah, hopefully we'll all 
have a wonderful dinner. I just want to say something 
by way of a personal observation. I never thought we'd be here. 
I don't mean here at the Free Reform Church in Chilliwack, 
but in terms of our church, We have a blessed group of people 
that gather together, as does the Free Reform Chilliwack and 
Abbotsford and the other churches represented here. But it's a 
very emotional thing to look out, to see the brethren here, 
to see what God has done, that he's preserved us. And it's just 
great to meet all of you that are here with us. I would encourage 
you during dinner here and there to enjoy the fellowship of the 
saints. It's not often you get this kind of a kick at the can, 
so take advantage of it and enjoy the people of God. But we do 
want to be back at seven. We want to make sure that Dr. 
Ranahan gets the entire time allotted to him, and he can go 
right into midnight if he so chooses, because we're not up 
against the clock. So I'll go ahead and thank God for the food 
that he has provided, and then we will adjourn. Our gracious 
God and Holy Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you 
that you have blessed us richly in the Reformed community with 
sound doctrine. We thank you for these creeds 
and these confessions. We don't look at them in the 
same way we look at the authoritative and infallible word of the living 
and true God. We see them as helps. We see 
Christ ascended on high. We see that he led captivity 
captive. And we know that he gave gifts to men. And those 
men have served the church well throughout the generations. They 
have penned good things that protect what we find in Holy 
Scripture. So God, give us an appreciation 
for these things, whether Presbyterian, whether Baptist, whether Congregationalist, 
whether the three forms of unity in the Reformed community here. 
We just pray God in heaven that we would use these things for 
your glory, that we would be well instructed in the faith, 
that we would be faithful evangelists and apologists and all that you 
call us unto, and may it be for your praise. We thank you as 
well that you provide food. We thank you for all of the labor 
that has gone into the preparation of this meal. May you bless our 
time of fellowship as we gather together for this blessing, and 
may it be the case that you would encourage each of our hearts, 
continue to build us up in our most holy faith, and give us 
a genuine and a true appreciation for the Church of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. We know that the Church is made up of the excellent ones 
of the earth, and we thank you for that participation that we 
have with one another. We ask for your blessing now, 
and we pray it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.