"We Believe" 1 Timothy 3:16 Sunday Evening Worship Service

You can open your Bibles to First Timothy, although it'll be another 17 to 20 minutes before we actually get to this text.

But when we settle on a text, it will be First Timothy chapter 1 or chapter 3.

1 Timothy 1 · chapter mention

Let me pray for us before we join God's word together.

Lord, we do ask for your word to aid us tonight.

Pray that it would encourage us, convict us, mold us into the image of Christ.

We know there's a real sense in which we have continuity with those who've gone before us.

We think of Hebrews chapter 12, which talks about the cloud of witnesses that surround us.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

We think of the end of those witnesses in chapter 11 who gave up so much for their faith.

Some sought in too, some praying for the dead to be raised only to be disappointed, persecuted, afflicted, people of whom the world was not worthy, and yet without us they have not received what was promised.

And so, Lord, tonight, as we look at the creed, at least the opening part of it, we pray that you would foster that continuity, help us see the depth of what it is we profess as Christians.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

As I mentioned, this is the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed.

It was written by really the world's first gathering of bishops and pastors and church leaders from around the Roman Empire, but really the invitation went to the corners of the world, and they crafted a statement about what it is exactly that Christians believe, and that's known as the Nicene Creed.

They met in Nicaea, modern-day Turkey, in 325.

Now, creeds by themselves exist because there is a need for a short description of what it is Christians believe.

I'm often asked why are creeds important?

I don't see a creed in the Bible.

You hear lines like no creed but the Bible, etc.

But creeds are important, and to understand where they come from historically helps you appreciate their importance.

They come from the basic element, the basic fact that people want to know what it is Christians believe.

When I say people, I'm talking about people in the world, but also people in the church.

You have Christians that want to know what it is exactly we believe.

Not Christians who are reluctant or who are fighting against the truth, not Christians that are trying to find an excuse to be a Mormon or whatever, but I'm talking about like just good-willed Christians who are saying, what is it exactly we believe as Christians?

Now, if somebody were to come up to you and say, what is it that Christians believe?

You could hand them a Bible.

I know it's not fair because I'm a preaching Bible with me tonight and it's big, but you can hand them a Bible.

That's not going to be a helpful explanation of what it is that Christians believe.

Some of you are doing a Bible, a read-through your Bible in a year program.

So that's not a short, concise answer to somebody about what it is Christians we believe.

You even see inside of the New Testament this desire to craft a short, succinct answer to that kind of question.

I think of 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 through 5.

1 Corinthians 15:3–5

That's a place where Paul says, I delivered unto you that which was of first importance, and that which I also received.

Notice the way Paul is saying it.

And this little phrase here, it's two verses after that.

That is what is of first importance.

That's what we believe.

He goes on to say, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, in accordance with the scriptures, that he appeared to Cephas unto the twelve.

He talks about the validation of the resurrection.

Paul says that is what is of first importance.

Now he says in there twice, in accordance with the scriptures.

He's not saying you believe that over and against the scriptures.

Some people misunderstand the creeds as if they're saying you can believe this and question the rest of the Bible if it's not in the scriptures.

Of course not.

The creeds are designed to give a short, concise answer of what it is Christians believe in accordance with the scriptures.

Obviously, the Bible is bigger than a creed, so the Bible has more information than a creed.

The creeds don't contain all of the truth there is to believe, of course not.

They are meant to explain and defend and advocate for some of the essential truths, or as Paul says to the Corinthians, that's which is of first importance.

Those kind of passages, 1 Corinthians 15 or 1 Timothy 3, which we'll look at in a little bit, they function as a formula, a basic summary of the facts of the gospel.

Now, in the second century of the church's existence, you know, 100 to 200, let's call it that hundred-year span, there was an epidemic of false teachers rising up.

Now we see some of the false teachers in the New Testament, in the first, you know, 50 years of the church's existence.

Some false teachers called Judaizers that were familiar with Judaism and the Old Testament law and traditions, and they were springing up inside of the church.

Some Judaizers were outside the church and were opponents to Christianity, but some had been baptized and had joined the church.

And they were trying to lead people astray from within, teaching them to obey the dietary restrictions in the Old Testament, to practice circumcision, to read the law of Moses on the Sabbath, on Saturday.

And the church runs into that in Acts 15, for example.

They're running into that, and Acts 15 is kind of the first church council, and they have a little succinct statement of themselves.

Remember in Acts 15, it says it boils down to this, tell them to do this, and if they want more, go to a synagogue on Saturday.

It's kind of the sincerely Alex Hargrove.

Has a ring of like the executive pastor email.

You want more than this, then go to the synagogue on Saturday.

Peace out.

But in the next century, you're seeing a new kind of false teaching infiltrate the church.

It's not from a Jewish background, but from a Roman background.

The Roman philosophies, again, parts of that enter into the New Testament, like Colossians, Paul says, don't be taken captive by worldly philosophies, vain traditions, elementary principles of the world, etc.

But in the next hundred years of church history, those things are magnified.

And as they come at the church, they're attacking the gospel again from within, from inside the church, but not with go back to Moses, not with the dietary laws of the Old Testament.

They're attacking based upon these philosophical paradigms that the Roman philosophers had.

For example, you've taken philosophy 101, you remember Plato's concept of the cave, and that which has true ultimate meaning is not physical, it's not manifest in this world in a real way.

What we see in this world is shadows of the reality.

That kind of thinking made it into the church.

Where people started teaching that the true God, the infinite God, can't be material.

And so the incarnation of Jesus Christ, that would just be a shadow of the real God, which starts, you start to see a separation here between what the Bible says about Jesus, the exact imprint of his nature, the radiance of his glory, and what these people were teaching about Jesus, a faint shadow.

They went on then to deny the reality of the importance of the life of Jesus Christ.

After all, if he was born with the human nature, his life can't be that significant.

If he had a body, if he could be touched and interacted with as a real human being, that can't be what's important.

What's important has to be what is spiritual.

This is basically Roman philosophy run amok.

It becomes Gnosticism, a deniance, a denial of the significance of the physical world that God made.

And the basic problem with Gnosticism was the incarnation, that Jesus Christ took on human flesh.

And so these people that taught that fought against the incarnation.

They developed a teaching called docetism, the idea that Jesus just appeared to have a human nature.

He looked like a human.

Like we can forgive the apostles for being confused.

Because after all, it was a very realistic show.

He definitely looked human, but he couldn't possibly be.

This led to the Morseons.

The Morseons were teaching that the Old Testament lacked significance for the Christian life.

The God of the Old Testament was a lesser God than the God of the New Testament.

So you see how this is the opposite of the Judaizers.

The Judaizers were putting the Old Testament in the front.

The Morseans were putting the Old Testament in the back seat.

And saying, you know, if you let it off and keep driving, that's fine with us too.

Christians don't need to study it.

And as much as God is displayed in the Old Testament, it's such a lesser vision of God.

It's basically Roman philosophy, run amok, but baptized into the church.

And so the churches start defending against these teachers.

And they defend against them by developing statements of what it is they believe.

The danger with all of these cults, and if you've ever talked with a Mormon, for example, you recognize that you'll use the same language as the Mormon.

You use the same terms, but you mean different things by them.

And that was true in the second century.

They're arguing with heretics that were saying the same term.

So we believe in the incarnation, but by that they meant something different.

A lesser God.

We believe the Old Testament is God's word, but what they mean by that is a lesser form of God's word.

And so the churches began to develop creeds.

These were short, succinct ways to teach people the truth of what it is we believe to distinguish us from all of the false teachers that are running all over the place.

They didn't call them creeds, of course.

They're not going to call it the word creed comes from the opening line of the Nicene Creed.

We'll talk about that in a little bit.

But for the second century, they called them the rules of faith.

That was their name for them.

These are rules of faith.

And there were principles that people memorized.

These rules were almost always in three parts.

They were almost always came in triplets.

The first rule about the Father, the second about the Son, the third about the Spirit.

And so any doctrine that had a rule of faith came in one, two, three.

How the Father interacted with it, the Son, and then the Spirit.

For example, creation.

The Father created the world by speaking it.

The Son was the one, the agent of creation, the Father created through him.

The Spirit is the one who is hovering and building in creation.

Those kind of little rules of faith.

You can see how they're very Trinitarian.

Even in the way I said it, you're showing how the Son himself is not a created being, but was the creator.

By around 300, groups of churches start partnering together.

And I'm giving you this little historical lesson because when you understand where creeds come from, you understand their importance.

By around 300, different churches started partnering together.

In geographic regions, they started sharing their rules of faith with each other.

They started developing that similar language.

Because otherwise, you're just bouncing some heretic from this church and he goes, you know, down the street to Burke community or whatever, and they're having to do the whole fight down there, and they bounce them and he goes at a rest in the Bible, and they've got to do the whole fight out there.

So eventually the churches just get together and they develop rules that they all share with each other.

By the 300s, these rules became tied to baptism formulas because people are coming to faith that weren't raised inside of Judaism.

They weren't raised familiar with the Old Testament.

You look at the book of Acts, so many people who get saved in the book of Acts were familiar with the God of the Old Testament.

They were familiar with the prophecies of the Old Testament.

You think of the Ethiopian eunuch who's reading his own scroll of Isaiah, he's very much familiar with the prophecies pointing forward to Jesus.

You're around 250, 300 A.D., you're not running into those kinds of people.

You're running into people that don't know anything.

And so they profess faith in Christ and they enter into this catechism period where they are taught what it is Christians believe, and they're using these rules of faith to teach them.

It's like in our in Emmanuel, we have the fundamentals of the faith class.

That's kind of what it was like.

Except most of them were given in question and answers.

Who created the world?

God did.

How many gods are there?

One God.

And how many persons does that God exist?

Three persons.

So it's a question and answer, a call and response.

That would be memorized, and when it was memorized, the person was ready for baptism.

Well, by the way, it's called the rule of faith.

That phrase, rule of faith, that's coming, it's a biblical phrase itself.

That's from Jude verse 3.

Contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted or delivered to the saints.

That's what Jude says.

So that was the verse they hinged this on.

That God, through the uh the Apostle Jude, through Jude's scripture, is calling us to defend for the faith with these rules.

And by rules, they don't mean like legalism like we think of, they mean these memorized statements to refute false teachers.

Well, things changed in 312, 312.

All the rules are off in 312 because Constantine is emperor, and Constantine, whether or not he got converted to Christianity, it's a live debate.

I wasn't there.

I don't know.

But what I do know is that Constantine began to attribute the victories of the Roman army to the Christian God.

So he became convinced that as Christianity was splitting in the Roman Empire, the soldiers that believed in the Christian God were having victory, and so the Christian God is good, and so Constantine embraced Christianity in some form, and one of the things he did is he summoned all of the church leaders from around the world to Nicaea in 325.

And he wanted to put an end to all the division and the disputes with false teachers by crafting the Nicene Creed.

Now, the big division at the time was there was a teacher named Arius who was teaching that Jesus was a semi-divine creature, that he was, you know, Jesus was somebody made by the true God, but not himself the true God.

Arius' most famous line was there was a time when he was not speaking about Jesus.

And so Constantine wanted to create unity in the Roman Empire.

He felt like he was a strong Constantine was a strong enough person to unite the Roman Empire, and he would use Christianity to do that.

And so the Nicene Council, I don't know if Constantine was rooting for the Arians or not, but he wanted the Nicene Council to put an end to that kind of division.

I'll save more about Arius when we get to the lines in the Creed about Jesus himself.

But this is why Constantine called the Council.

And I'm telling you this background so you understand.

The Creed doesn't come out of nowhere.

It comes out of 200 years of history of churches saying we have to defend the faith against false teachers who come into our church and tell our people that Jesus wasn't God, that Jesus is not the God of the New Testament, is not the same God as the Old Testament.

The Old Testament doesn't have significance for us.

That if Jesus was incarnate, it was a very poor representation of God.

The incarnation can't have that much significance to it.

And it ends up denying the Trinity, leading you to a point where you say there was a time when Jesus himself didn't even exist.

That's what was happening.

And churches were fighting it, fighting that with this rule and that rule and the other rule, and it was so scattershot.

Now, some people complain about creeds because they say, how can one group of people come up with something that binds all Christians?

But I will promise you this: those same kind of people would complain the other way by saying, How come every church has their own rules of faith about what it means to be a Christian?

You can argue it both ways for sure.

Constantine wanted a rule of faith for the whole church, and I don't think he knew what he was signing up for.

The leaders of the church came, they did respond to Constantine's invitation, and they crafted what is known as the Nicene Creed.

Now I'm not going to put the whole creed on the screen or any of it on the screen.

You received a bulletin if you came this morning, and it's got the creed printed in it for you.

And we'll go through it passage by passage over the next few months.

But I do want to just start with the opening phrase of the creed.

It says, we believe.

We believe.

And in Latin that's credo.

And that's where the word creed comes from.

We believe.

The creed starts with a declaration of our belief.

Now this phrase we believe is from 1 Timothy.

And you're seeing creed language in two places in 1 Timothy 3.

First of all, verse 16 great indeed we confess is the mystery of godliness.

He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in glory.

This is one of the first creeds.

It starts with the language, we confess.

But then it has, at the end of it, the second to last line there, believed on in the world.

The creed represents not just merely a set of facts that Christians believe in the abstract, but a set of facts that Christians adopt as their own.

That's why it starts with we believe.

By the way, 325 was the Nicene Creed.

It was updated in 380 or so.

You know, in those, what, 55 years, one of the main changes they made is they changed we believe to I believe.

They made it in individual statements that it fit better at baptism.

But you can see how in 325 it functions almost better as we believe.

I like the we believe better because it's got this corporate element to it.

We believe this.

A book that I've been reading recently about this, Jared Ortiz and Daniel Keating wrote a book in the Baker Academic series called The Nicene Creed.

And they have an observation that I want to share with you.

They point out, quote, the word belief means almost exactly the opposite today than what it meant in the early church.

Today, belief is generally understood to be a personal assertion of what is true, a strong feeling about what should be, and something that is held tenaciously in the face of contrary evidence.

On this account, belief is a private choice.

It's intention with reason and resides almost exclusively in the subjective realm.

Belief and faith are related words in the Greek, and you can see how they're related in English too.

I believe, I put my faith in.

Both of those in modern day English are wishy-washy terms, aren't they?

You know, somebody would say, I don't know, who won the sports game last night.

And if you said, I believe, that Boston won, you're prefacing it with I believe would imply you don't really know who won.

I don't have a particular sport in mind, so I don't have no idea what sports you're even playing right now, but I know Boston has lots of teams.

If you were to say, I believe they won, that means you don't really know.

That's the way the word is working in our language today.

That is not the way it is working in the Creed.

Nancy Pearcy has a wonderful explanation in her book on Worldview of the Western worldview, which she describes as a two-story house.

Nancy Pearcy explains the Western worldview by using the analogy of a two-story house.

The ground floor of the house is for facts, things that are established by science and reason, things that not only are true, but must be held true by everybody in our society.

That's the ground floor.

The second floor of the house is belief, preferences, you know, your food choices.

I like pizza, other people don't.

That's second story stuff.

You don't bind other people to your food choices.

Romance, second story floor.

And Nancy Pearcy talks about how one of the great triumphs of the Enlightenment was getting religion onto the second story.

That it removed religion from the public sphere and what bounds people to the second story, where it's an issue of preference.

And that leads to the kind of world where you can say, Oh, you believe in Jesus Christ in the Bible?

That's good for you.

Doesn't mean that it's true for me.

Carl Truman took Nancy Pearce's two-story house and elaborated on it in his book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.

And he talks about how the triumph of the sexual revolution was getting sexual preferences off of the second story and onto the first floor, where they have to be universally agreed upon by everybody, your own preferences.

So a huge flip.

Religion, second floor, sexual preferences, ground floor.

Many people have pointed out that the result of COVID has been burning the whole two-story house down.

You know, science says at the start of COVID, scientists say that the dirty rag on your face will keep you safe.

Science says, so it must be true.

And how dare you question it?

You can't question the science.

Leads to a point in our society where I do agree the house itself has been burned down, but that could be a different sermon sometime.

For now, though, understand that in our world, belief is considered a second-story thing.

Richard Dawkins, define the you know, the atheist philosopher, defines faith this way quote, faith is belief without evidence or reason.

Then he goes on to say, which is also happens to be the definition of delusion.

And that pretty much captures it.

But that is not the way the word belief or faith is used in the Bible.

The word for it in the Bible means something that is true because God is a source of truth.

And I want you to understand that when Paul says, Great indeed we confess is the mystery of godliness, that Jesus was believed on in the world.

In the scripture, when the Bible uses the concept of faith and belief, it's using God as the fountain of truth, the source of authority.

And you believe something when you take in that revelation from God.

So you almost need to start at the beginning.

God creates the world and walks on the world with mankind.

That Adam and Eve could walk with God in the garden.

They had, in that concept, belief and faith are not the most helpful terms because Adam and Eve, in their sinless state, are relating to God immediately.

Without sin in the world, without the fall, belief and faith are immediate.

Life is lived in a condition of faith and in a position of righteousness, with the ability to see and perceive and interact with God face to face.

But sin enters the world.

And remember, when sin enters the world, Adam and Eve hide, and people have been hiding ever since.

Sin blinds us to the truth of God, it obscures God's revelation to us, it makes us enemies of truth.

Jesus says it this way: that because of sin, people in the darkness hate the light.

It's not that they can't see the light, it's not that they don't believe the light, it's that they hate it.

That's the nature of sin in the world.

And the only hope for eternal life is to repent from sin and be reconciled to God through faith.

That reconciliation to God, as I said, comes through faith.

It's placing your faith in the truth of the divine revelation that comes from God.

It's not that belief is secondary or subjective, it's that God is the fountain of truth and that sin separates us from God.

Belief puts us back into the stream of truth, so to speak.

We announce through our confession our own inability to perceive and receive spiritual truth.

We are dependent upon God.

And then through our confession of faith and our baptism and our life in light of the truth of God, we are declaring to the world the ultimate truth is found in God and God's word.

That is what is meant by beginning the creed with credo.

We believe that there is a truth that comes from a God of truth, and that the only hope to understand that truth is to turn from your sin and receive it from God.

Great indeed, verse 16, we confess, is the mystery of godliness.

In the Old Testament, the word for faith is amuna, which is developed into the word amen.

It can mean faithfulness or trustworthiness or steadfastness.

In the Hebrew dictionary, my favorite of all of the, you know, the word umbrella, the semantic domain of the word is the concept of allegiance.

That by receiving belief and faith, you're declaring your allegiance with God.

And that is probably the most common way you see it played out in the Old Testament.

And the Israelites exercise faith by putting their allegiance with God.

So the opposite of faith in Israel is serving other gods.

Turning your back on the true God and serving other gods.

So it's a it's a contest of allegiance.

True faith and true belief is putting your allegiance in Yahweh.

The Hebrew word for faith and belief, it is related to the word for truth because God is a God of truth.

It's related to the word for righteousness or uprightness, that God is trustworthy.

In the New Testament, the Greek word for faith, pistis, gets translated to faith or faithfulness, but it also has a different word umbrella than the Old Testament word.

It can include in the New Testament the concept of obey.

In the New Testament, it's often used passively, like in this passage, believed on.

How is it passive?

How can believe be a passive verb?

It sometimes gets translated to be persuaded.

That's belief in the New Testament.

The evidence of truth, the river of truth, hits you so hard, you're carried along by it.

You're persuaded.

That's why Romans 1.5, Paul speaks of the obedience that comes by faith.

Romans 10, 17, another passive use of it.

Faith comes from hearing, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ.

That faith comes to you by hearing about Christ, and the hearing you're hearing about is the words that Christ Himself spoke, delivered through the Word of God.

So in the Old Testament, faith is contrasted with chasing after other gods, but in the New Testament, faith is contrasted with just simply knowledge.

Faith is the evidence of things unseen.

In your blinded, sinful state, you see so much of the world, but you don't see what is true.

That's why Paul can say in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 7, we walk by faith, not by sight.

2 Corinthians 5:7

They're contrasted.

It's a contrast between living according to man's wisdom or God's revelation.

1 Corinthians 13, 12, now we know in part, but then when the perfect appears, when we see the Savior face to face, I will understand fully, Paul says.

That's faith.

I know so little now.

Because I don't see the Lord face to face now because of my sin.

Do you remember those 3D drawings?

They used to have books of them.

You have to get cross-eyed to look at them.

Do you remember these?

And for the longest time I couldn't see them, and I thought, I thought I was being pranked by my friends.

Like it's a giraffe eating a hippopotamus or whatever.

And I'm like, what is just dots?

I don't know.

But then you finally figure out how to see it, and it's like, phoom, pops alive.

That is an image of faith.

The world's looking at the same dots, but they don't have faith they cannot see.

It doesn't mean that those with faith are seeing something that's not there.

No, of course not.

It means those with faith are seeing the truth of what's there and it pops off the page.

That's faith.

Faith is then believing God and seeking understanding in light of what God says.

This is why faith without works is dead.

True faith is seeking understanding.

Faith without works is dead because true faith would be looking for God, searching for obedience.

So to say you have faith and not works is to deny the reality of faith.

Galatians 5, verse 6 says, faith is always working through love.

Galatians 5:6

This leads back to 1 Timothy 3, 16.

Great indeed, we confess.

That word confess is a wonderful word.

Homologomen, it means to say the same.

We say the same thing.

Homogeneously.

We're speaking the same truth.

This is the only time this word is used in the New Testament.

But it is a very common word in the Greek world in which the New Testament is written.

It's a legal term in the Greek world.

And I asked a lawyer friend who told me, so this is secondhand lawyer information for me, so don't sue me for this.

This is not my own legal opinion.

This is secondhand.

Told me that same concept lives on in American jurisprudence.

The phrase we use in English now is judicial notice.

And judicial notice is a phrase we use in the court system when a fact is so widely attested to or so commonly argued, you don't have to argue it every time before a judge.

If a judge sees eight cases about the same kind of crime, you know, eight guys robbed a store and some facts were established in the first and the second case, he can just accept them as true in the next six.

Judicial notice.

Greek, there's a word for that.

That's the word that's used here.

Like I said, it's the only time it's used in the Bible.

But it was a common Greek word.

When something is so commonly testified to that it's your duty to accept it as truth.

To say it the same way every time.

It's brought into English here as we confess.

The ESV, or maybe not the SV, but uh some other translations will add, it is beyond question or a phrase like that.

I think the NAS has adds that.

The SV just goes with we confess.

It is something that we are testifying to because it's been testified to so many times.

It's our duty to believe it.

Now, what is it exactly that we confess?

What is it that we believe?

Well, here this little tree just goes very quickly here.

That he was manifested in the flesh.

Manifested is another one of those passive words that is, you wouldn't expect it to be manifested.

You would expect it to be, you know, he's revealing himself, but it's manifested, he was made manifest.

Jesus was acted on to be brought into the world.

This is a Trinitarian passage.

Because for the Son of God, the Word of God to be revealed, to be acted upon, who can act on the eternal Son of God?

Well, only God Himself.

How is He acted upon?

Well, he was revealed in the flesh.

The eternal Son of God was taken from outside of time and put into the world in flesh.

He was then vindicated, again, acted upon, this time by the Spirit.

The Holy Spirit who falls upon Mary so that he can be conceived and born.

The Holy Spirit who empowers him, the Holy Spirit who settles upon him at his baptism, the Holy Spirit who sustains him in his temptation, the Holy Spirit who guides him and directs him, the Holy Spirit who raises him from the dead.

That's what it means.

He was vindicated by the Spirit.

He was justified, he was proved to be the Son of God by the Holy Spirit.

He was seen by angels.

Angels saw him in his temptation.

Angels could have come to him, they were waiting for his beck and call at the cross.

The angels were perched upon the empty grave.

And he was proclaimed around the world.

Not just to Jews, but to Jews and Gentiles alike.

He was proclaimed among the nations.

Nations themselves don't believe, but people in the nations believe.

That's the mystery, it says in verse 16.

The mystery of godliness.

Mystery is what was prophesied in the Old Testament, revealed in the New.

This is the prophecy of the Savior, that the Son of God would come.

The mystery of godliness is that God reconciles people to Himself.

There are terms with God's reconciliation.

And this again is the mystery of godliness.

God sets terms about who you can be reconciled to, it requires a sacrifice, a sinless life.

And then God meets the terms himself.

God says, if you want to have a relationship with me, it has to come through the death of a perfect sacrifice.

A sinless person has to be the mediator between God and man.

And then God meets the requirements himself.

That's the mystery of godliness.

And notice how the mystery of godliness is received at the end of verse 16, proclaimed among the nations.

It's preached by believers and then believed on in the world.

That's the response, is you believe it.

So to read this, to see the ministry of the Holy Spirit in Jesus' life, the proclamation of the angels, the eternal Son of God becoming a human being, and rising from the grave and say, oh, belief is subjective and it is secondary and it works for you, but not for me.

It's a lack of confidence or surety, it's believing something without evidence, is to just totally murder this word.

That's not at all what this word is doing here.

It doesn't mean in light of the evidence of the Holy Spirit and angels, I guess you can kind of assume this might be true.

No, it's this overwhelming cascade of evidence.

That God is the source of truth, and God revealed not just truth, but Himself in Jesus Christ.

Proclaimed by the Holy Spirit and by angels, and now by preachers themselves.

How do you respond?

Well, you believe on it, is how you respond.

You believe.

This is the ultimate response to the gospel.

And notice that this just kills the works righteousness person.

It's not that you believe and keep the law, not you believe and do this, do that.

No, it's you just believe.

Period.

What do you do to be saved?

You believe.

You don't work, you don't earn it, no list of do's and don'ts, no character qualities to have, no political positions to adopt, no social activism, just believe.

It starts and ends with believe.

This verse starts and ends with belief.

We confess it and we believe it.

When you believe, you have forgiveness of your sins and you're reconciled to God because belief is just the adopting of all of the fountain of truth that's coming at you.

It's one thing to say the incarnation was mysterious, which it most certainly is, but it's another to say that you can believe the mystery and be changed by it.

When the first preachers took the news of the gospel to the world, there's no way they could have imagined what would happen.

I'm sure they expected persecution, that's why they were afraid to go into the world.

It wasn't just persecution they met, which they did meet, but they met an explosive church movement.

All kinds of people getting saved.

Peter's first sermon, thousands come to faith.

This is what happens.

And they believe in the world, not just in Israel, not just in Jerusalem.

It goes Jerusalem to the nations, individual hearts.

This belief is not adopted by families or cultures, it's adopted by individuals.

God makes peace with people through them confessing their sins and believing the gospel.

Jesus came to the nations.

You know, Muslims make pilgrimages this day, Muslims make pilgrimages to Mecca.

Many Catholics will go to the Vatican, go to Rome.

Hinduism is very much an Indian religion.

But the gospel does not bid us to come to Jerusalem or India or Mecca or Rome.

The gospel is a light that goes into the nations and is believed on.

And so when a person believes it, they are baptized into it, submerged into it.

This is why the creeds were a baptismal formula.

What a picture of it.

There's an ocean of truth.

You don't understand all the truth.

You don't understand all there is to know in the Bible?

Of course not.

Especially not when you're baptized.

My goodness.

But you understand that there is this ocean of truth that you believe even if you don't know it all.

You're submitting yourself to the word of God.

And so what is it exactly you have to believe to call yourself a Christian?

That's what the creeds attest.

That Jesus Christ is who he says he is.

He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations.

And so to start tinkering with that and saying, I believe some of it, but not all of it, puts you at loggerheads with 1,700 years of church history.

And common confession, that word again, we confess, homologemon.

We say the same thing that has always been said.

The truth has been handed to us once for all, delivered to the saints, and we contend for it.

And we contend for it by calling people to believe it.

Lord, we're so thankful that you have given us your word, which contains these little mini-creeds in it, like we just read in 1 Timothy 3 or 1 Corinthians 15.

But more than that, it contains all kinds of truth.

Because you're the God of truth.

We're grateful for how you've revealed yourself to us.

I pray for anyone here tonight that has never trusted in you or believed the message of the gospel.

I pray that you would open their hearts, open their eyes spiritually speaking, help them see the truth and submit themselves to it.

We give you thanks for the preciousness of the gospel.

It is the mystery of godliness preached among the nations, believed on in the world.

Ultimately, you were taken up in glory.

And we long for your soon return.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBC.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, DC, please go to TMS.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.