This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Ignite the Light Ministry's radio and podcast. It is our mission to help listeners develop a deeper relationship with Jesus by sharing what the Bible says and what it means. We aim to encourage and equip you to serve others, share the gospel, and reflect Christ in every aspect of your life. I'm Pastor Wyatt Cudd.
Thank you for tuning in.
Alright, so today I'd like to talk with you guys about the Apostles' Creed. Most of you guys know it very well. We say it every Sunday.
Now this is something I've been asked a couple times from the questions box. What is the Apostles' Creed? Where did it come from? Why do we say the part about the Catholic Church, is that part necessary? Is that something we could change?
This is what was put in the questions box.
So, all right. Buckle up.
So the Apostles' Creed, it exists for the Church's benefit. Its purpose is to unify and unite all believers under one declared doctrine and to guard against false teaching. We as Methodists recite it weekly to affirm our shared faith. both in this church, in other churches, the global church, and then also the historic church that's come before us, and then the churches that are going to come after us. This is something that unifies all of us.
It is the summation of our faith. Based on the entirety of scripture.
So if we are in a situation where we're struggling to explain our faith, The Apostles' Creed covers all bases in Scripture. that when we share the gospel with people, we're not having to share the entirety of scripture with them. all at once. Could you imagine that? You read the Bible aloud to somebody all in one go.
That would take like 70 to 80 hours to just read through the entire Bible. You know what the average attention span of a person is? It ain't that. You got a good eight seconds. to capture somebody's attention.
You got two minutes in a conversation. For a public speaker or a pastor like myself, I have a good 10 minutes before focus starts to drift, people's heads start doing this number, nodding off like a newborn baby.
So if I'm smart, I gotta take little commercial breaks. I gotta do something to grab your attention and kind of reset that clock again. Pastors, if you're not doing that, we ain't remembering what's in the middle of your sermon. We're remembering the beginning, and we're remembering the end.
So unless we take a commercial break, I mean, go ahead and confess your sins or something. I mean, we're not remembering.
Now for us When we're in a conversation with somebody, if you're going to share the gospel or share your testimony. We got two minutes of somebody's full attention. That's why it's important for us to know and understand the gospel and how do I speak it clearly. God created humanity. Humanity fell from grace.
God stepped into creation as man, died on the cross for our sins, and rose again three days later in victory. That man was Jesus Christ. Can I tell you about him and how he changed my life? That was maybe 15 seconds.
Now you got a minute and 45 seconds to share your story or go further.
Now, if you want to learn how to share your faith, if you want to learn how to speak it clearly, I'm planning to do an evangelism class this fall. I'd love for you to come. I'd love to help every person in here feel confident in your ability to witness.
So, the Apostles' Creed is this: it's a summary. of our faith. To the benefit of the church. It's not a substitution for scripture, it is a summary.
So Where did it come from?
Well, the roots are in the Bible. We see early creeds of the church used in the Bible. You have Deuteronomy chapter 6:4 through 9. It's called the Shema. It's an early creed that the that the Jews used.
It says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These commands that I give you today are to be on your hearts and impress them on your children. 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 4, we have another little snippet of an early creed in the Bible. It says, For what I have received I passed on to you as of first importance.
Christ died for our sins according to the scripture, and that he was buried and raised on the third day according to scripture. Then we see in 1 Timothy chapter 2, 5 through 6, Another little snippet of a cream. For there is one God, one mediator between God and mankind, that man is Christ Jesus. who gave himself as a ransom for all people.
Now this has been witnessed at the proper time.
So there's a couple snippets in the Bible itself of early creeds. and oral traditions. The style of communicating is the core tenets of our faith. It's well documented and it's been used since the beginning of time. And we look at the early Genesis account.
story of creation. It's actually written in the Hebrew in quite a poetic way. It would have been easy for the Israelites to remember and to pass on to their children and to share with others.
Now when I say it's written in a poetic way, that does not mean it's not written with the intention of it being understood as true. God doesn't intend for us to read Genesis and not understand it as true. But in the time of Moses When he did write this, Most of the Israelites could not read. The poetic expression in Genesis, it's the purpose of spreadability. The ability to pass it on.
It has nothing to do with historic authenticity of the events itself. And in that way, the story of Genesis It's similar to that of an oral tradition. or a creed. And we also see it's written in such a way you got elements like The C? The serpent God's relationship with man.
We had other creation stories, other creation myths around this time that Moses wrote this.
So in Egyptian mythology, the place where the Israelites escaped from. They believed in the God Arum. He is the first God, and He created Himself. Not self-existent, he came out of the sea, out of this primordial, chaotic waters. That was one of the other creation myths at the time of this story.
So you read the Genesis account and the oral tradition is like, no, that's not God. God is not a created being. He did not come out of chaos that existed before him. God is eternal. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
My God hovered over the chaotic waters. He didn't create himself. That's literally nonsense. Church, have you ever seen a painting paint itself? It doesn't happen.
Chaos isn't the beginning. My God is the beginning. And he created both the chaos and the order and has dominion over both. He is above it all.
So the Genesis account, we call it a polemic. It is a tool that is being used. uh really to witness to the other pagans around them.
So the Apostles' Creed.
Now each line of the Apostles' Creed It touches on something vital, a vital piece to our faith. Uh our our faith. I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. and Earth.
Well, this is referencing Genesis. This is referencing the Gospels account and our God's relationship to His Son, Jesus Christ. Then it says in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord, John 3:16, God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And that's Jesus. But you also have Philippians 2.
Jesus being on high with God. making himself loath. taking on flesh. humbling himself even to the point of death. on a cross.
so that he could rise up and be forever Exalted. Then it goes on to say who was conceived by the Holy Spirit. born of the Virgin Mary. This part, this is really important to how we understand Jesus. Jesus, the virgin birth was a miracle.
It matters for several reasons. First off, you have Jesus being fully God. and fully man.
Now if you read the book of Matthew starts off with a genealogy of Jesus and it traces his lineage through his legal earthly father Joseph. And it goes all the way back to King David. And then Abraham. This is a fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham, through your descendants I will make you a great nation. But it's also fulfillment of prophecy.
Jeremiah 23, Isaiah 11, the Messiah, the future king would be a descendant. of David.
Now you got Luke chapter 3. It gives a genealogy of Mary, Jesus' biological mother, and it demonstrates the same thing. He's a descendant of Abraham. He's a descendant of David. He comes from the tribe of Judah.
And Luke even traces the lineage back all the way. to add a All these things are fulfillment of prophecy. But with Jesus being a virgin birth, immaculately conceived, you have Jesus stepping into creation from heaven, introducing a new God leaves. Lineage, not from man, but directly from God. And He invites us to be adopted as children of God, adopted into this new godly lineage.
So then the Apostles' Creed goes on to say. Uh Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. Jesus died. He was fully man. And he went to his death on the cross.
He did not swoon. He did not faint. He died. Nexus says, On the third day he rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.
So he didn't just die as a man, he rose from the grave and proved he was who he claimed to be, the divine son of God. And then he stayed with the disciples for 40 days. Showed himself to hundreds of witnesses, and it's their accounts that our gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are based on. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
Well, now we're looking at. Final judgment. Topic of Revelation. Jesus sits on the throne with full authority over heaven and earth. and one day he will judge us all.
From his sacrifice, we have forgiveness of sins, the promise of life everlasting. We will have resurrected bodies. And then he sent to us the Holy Spirit that's going to continue to guide us through life, go before us. And not just only the Holy Spirit, but with the help of the Holy Catholic Church and the communion of saints, that's our fellowship. And that Catholic is a lowercase C.
This is the universal, global, and historical church throughout all time. And we'll get to this part. We'll talk about this a little bit more in a second.
Now, how did we get the Apostles' Creed? Where did it come from? Well, we're going to have to go back a few years. Before Eisenhower, before John Wayne, before the founding of America. We're going back to 325.
AD, the Council of Nicaea.
Now, this is where the church defined the doctrine that would lead to what we understand as the Trinity. and how it functioned as orthodox belief. This was important because we had a lot, at this time, we had a lot of heretical beliefs and interpretations of scripture being taught in the church. See, Satan is always keen. To be wedging himself into the church and gradually bend our doctrine away from truth.
He's always keen to be doing that.
Now heresy plays a very important role in the church and where we stand today. Heresy, false belief. causes orthodoxy, right belief, to define itself. For example, something we got today. Mormonism.
Mormonism is a Christian heresy. And in order for us to combat it, we have to define what is right belief. We say God created the world. And Mormons say, yep. We say Jesus is the only Son of God, and Mormons say...
Yeah. We say we like coffee and Mormons say well I don't know about that but We say Jesus died for the world's sin. And to get into heaven, you have to have a relationship with Jesus. And Mormons say, yep. So what's the problem?
We have different definitions. Of who Jesus is. When we say Jesus is the Son of God, what we mean is that Jesus is the heir to everything. He will inherit everything, the earth, everyone in it, will be given to him. By the father.
Father and Son isn't stating chronological order of when they came into existence. The Father and the Son is talking about the relationship between the two of them. John 1.1, Jesus is eternal and existed with the Father since before time began. When we say Jesus is the Son of God, that's what we mean. When the Mormons say Jesus is the Son of God, what they mean is that Jesus is literally God's offspring.
He was a created being. Satan is Jesus' brother. They came about from God and one of his heavenly wives. God and his wife conceived Jesus and Lucifer. That's right, one of his heavenly wives.
Joseph Smiths was big into polygamy. And it's striving to be like Jesus. The Mormons believe we can literally become gods ourselves. The God who created us was at one point an imperfect man. He ascended into perfection with his wives.
They would say that we are in the same position. We can ascend into Godhood, and then we can create our own worlds. That's Mormon doctrine. It's heresy. But it forces orthodoxy, right belief, to define itself.
When we say Jesus is the Son of God, what do we mean? We have to clarify.
So, the Council of Nicaea, it's this. It's this same situation. You have a heresy called Arianism. That's taking the scene. I think they also had white button-down shirts and ties, and they came and knocked on your door riding on bicycles.
I think they also did that. That's a joke. It's been 10 minutes. We need a commercial break. Anyway, 325 AD, you have a schism between East and West in the church, and in the middle of that, you have this cat Arius.
And he's arguing. Once Christ was not. At one point Christ did not exist. He taught Jesus the begotten Son means he was literally born from God. He is a created being.
It's actually very similar. to Mormonism. And this is not what the Bible teaches. John 1.1, it teaches that in the beginning was the Word. Jesus was in the beginning.
eternally existing.
So, the bishop Alexander, we got this heresy that's going on. He sends a letter to all the bishops to deal with this. You got 250 to 300 bishops all across Europe that come together to this council to debate this.
Some are in favor of Arianism, some are in favor that Jesus is eternal, the begotten Son of God. What does that mean? We have to define it.
So, from this council, they'd find it. The Bible teaches Jesus is fully God, in some way sharing the same likeness, the divinity, and nature of the Father. Not just similar. The same. Divine nature, not created.
He is eternal. Frankly, we see that come out of Jesus' mouth. himself. John 8, 58. Jesus is telling the Jews, he says, before Abraham was.
I am. Who's claiming to be God? And we know that's what he's saying, because verse 59, the Jews pick up stones to stone him. That's heresy. Nobody claims to be God.
Only God can claim to be God. And Jesus is like. Yeah, I thought I was clear. I am God. I thought I was clear on that.
Uh So the council, they reject Arianism and they define Jesus as being the same eternal nature as God the Father. From this we have the beginnings of the doctrine of the Trinity. The Nicene Creed is very similar to our Apostles' Creed. Just to read a snippet of it for you, it says, We believe in one God. The Father, all-sovereign, maker of all things, visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten by the Father, only begotten that is of the substance of the Father, God of God, light of light, true God of true God, begotten. Not made. I won't read the whole thing for the sake of time. But this is an important moment in the church history. And it's the beginning of our Apostles' Creed.
Alright, now we jump forward a little bit. 381 AD, you have the Council of Constantinople. Again, we have heresy going on. And heresy False belief forces right belief orthodoxy to define itself. Same situation.
You got some other heretical beliefs, interpretations of scripture that are leading to some pretty outlandish things. You have one heresy, it's called Apollinarianism. And essentially, they say, oh yeah, well, God is man, but that's because he or God is uh Jesus is man, but that's because, well, Jesus never was I mean I'm butchering this. Jesus is God. But that's because Jesus never became man.
They were claiming Jesus was God, but that he never really was man.
So you got this going on, and we have to address this one, don't we? We have to. We have to define right belief.
Now they rejected this. Nicene Creed is further edited to address these things. And this is where we get the section in our Apostles' Creed. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. From the Council of Constantinople, they're like, well, we have to define he was a man and he did die.
God didn't just disguise himself in flesh. He became man. Heresy forces orthodoxy to do what? to define itself. Oh, well, you know, the Bible's written so long ago.
There's so many different interpretations, and no one's more right than the other because we can't ask the author.
Well, not in this church. The believers that came before us have fought for 1,500 years to guard us from the lies of the devil, and the Apostles' Creed is this summation. of this.
Now church history is not everything. The authority of Scripture comes first But you got thousands and thousands of people, church leaders, giants in the faith, that have poured their lives out. to give us guidelines. And if it's even a consideration in our minds, To depart from this or to adapt this We have to be very Very slow. considerate and waiting on the Holy Spirit to lead us.
And understand deeply: well, what is it that we're changing? What is it that we're letting go of? And why are we doing it?
So, from the Council of Constantinople, this is where we see the addition. In one holy Catholic Church and the Apostolic Church.
Now, I believe I was asked to preach on the Apostles' Creed largely because of this one line in there, the Holy Catholic Church. Why is that in there? I thought we were Methodists. I'm not saying that. And I will say, if you have conviction about reading that line aloud, You ain't getting any pressure from me.
Follow the Holy Spirit as He leads you.
Well, this is the big thing I want to talk about. When we say the Holy Catholic Church, what are we saying? What does it mean? But at the same time, we also have to consider how has that term taken on different connotations From when it was written, because language and symbols change over time. Great example of that, the Confederate flag is a great example of how symbols can change over time.
Here in the south, you got a symbol of southern pride of heritage and family roots. But that flag has been waved around in US history for some very racist ideologies.
So you take that thing, and if you go to upstate New York and you wave the Confederate flag around, it's not gonna matter what the symbol originally meant or what it means to you. The only thing people are going to see is the baggage and the connotations that it has taken on. Nobody cares what it means. All they see is the baggage. It's the same thing with the word Feminism.
First wave feminism, we're aiming for getting equal legal rights like the right to vote for both genders. Great. Men and women should be afforded equal rights under the law. Second wave feminism, I don't really know much about that, so I'm not going to speak on it. But you got third-wave feminism, what we see today.
Well, now the banner of feminism is being flown to advocate for abortion and the complete deconstruction of gender. Not so great. Hey there. I hope this sermon has enriched your day. If you like this message, I want to personally invite you to join us for Sunday worship.
We have two locations in Virginia, Trinity Methodist Church in Concord and Mount Comfort Methodist Church in Appomattox. Come join us Sunday morning at 9.45 and we will help you get connected. As always, I'm Pastor Wyatt Hudd. Thank you for tuning in.
