Well, we are beginning this evening study of the Apostles Creed, and as you get the handout tonight, you'll see I've got the whole creed printed out at the beginning of the page or at the top of the page so we can look at this together. I'll read it through before we begin the actual study, but you'll see in the title as well. I've titled it The Apostles Creed, Its History and Place in the Church. And and then that's a part one. We're going to take two nights to look at kind of introductory things concerning the Apostles Creed tonight. We're going to focus on the whole question of why. Why would why? Why do we even have written creeds and confessions in the church? What place does a creed and confession have within the Christian church? We're not going to finish that discussion tonight. We're going to actually look at that a little bit next Lord's Day. Lord willing, the same subject as well. And we're going to delve a little bit more next week into the subject as well of where in the world did the Apostles Creed come from? And in fact, as we start tonight, maybe I can give a or ask, does anyone know what council or what event or where did the Apostles Creed come from? How did we does anyone know how we got it? Mike. Yeah, did you already look on there? Good. That seems to be the, we're going to look at more of this next week, but that seems to be the earliest. Does anybody need one? You're probably going to want something in front of you tonight. Yeah. If you need one, hold your hand up and Izzy will get those to you. Um, it's actually unlike most of the other acumen, what we call ecumenical creeds of the Christian church. There is no council that put together the apostles creed. Uh, in fact, it, it came into being over the, over the span of about 600 years. Um, does it come to, it takes about 600 years for it to come to sort of a solid received form, but Mike is right. Um. The first instance of something like it is from the first century, or the second century actually, a baptismal form, a Trinitarian form. I'm going to mention that this evening. Let's look at it together here. I got one other question. This is maybe a little bit for some of those who have not been in this church when you were young. So, was anyone here raised in a congregation that recited the Apostle's Creed each Lord's Day together? Yeah, a few of you. Very, very common practice around the world for churches to confess together the Apostle's Creed. So, a lot of people are familiar with it, sometimes from their youth, from certain churches that they were in, where this is commonplace in the morning liturgy every Lord's Day. Well, the Apostles' Creed, and here's maybe one other thing before we jump into the outline. I know Keith. There is no definitive form of the Apostles' Creed. There are multiple editions of it, and they all have small nuances to them. There's never been kind of an agreed upon, this is it. There's that word can't be there because it's not in this version. So this is this would be my favorite version of it. The way that it's here in front of us and there's there's changes and choices like like at the very beginning where it says I believe in God the Father Almighty creator of heaven and earth that someone know what's what's the traditional way that the maker of heaven and earth. So the creed has actually taken its its remained in substance the same. But it's kind of been modified over the years, depending on what circles it's being confessed in. So the creed is very short. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, our Lord, who was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day He rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He will come again to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. That's the Apostles Creed, and I'm going to produce it again next Lord's Day in the same form, but I'm actually going to number these. You probably don't realize there, but there's twelve lines there, and there's a story behind The Apostles Creed being broken up into 12 sections as well, and we'll look at that a little bit next Lord's Day. But let's go ahead and move through the outline. And if you have any questions or comments, please just raise your hand and or speak out. Call my name if I'm looking down or something. But let's let's go ahead and move through this. The Apostles Creed is one of the earliest and most used confessions of faith in the Christian church. Philip Schaaf, this is an author who wrote a three-volume series, it's wonderful, called The Creeds of Christendom, and it's pretty much the definitive work of the historic Christian creeds all put together in a three-volume work. And he begins this The Creeds of Christendom saying, As the Lord's Prayer is the prayer of prayers, The Decalogue, the Law of Laws, so the Apostles' Creed is the Creed of Creeds. The most outstanding feature of the Apostles' Creed is its Trinitarian structure. It has three main sections organized around each of the members of the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I put those in bold for you and then broke them out against one another so that would become obvious. I might have added here, and probably should have added, its outstanding feature is not only is it Trinitarian, but it also centers upon the person and work of Jesus Christ. He gets the biggest bulk of statements concerning his work, and so it's very much a Christ-centered creed in that regard, and you can see that there just proportionally The Creed's roughly a hundred words and again about half are dedicated to the person and work of Christ. The earliest record of something like the Apostles Creed is an early Trinitarian baptismal confession from about 150 A.D. based on Matthew 28, 19. The Great Commission to go there for and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. So, based upon that subsequent to their baptisms, recipients were required to affirm their faith by confessing that they believed in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. So, before a person would be admitted to baptism, they were required to profess this ancient Trinitarian formula that I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and that was based upon the fact that baptism was triune baptism. You were being baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You better be able to affirm, I believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And so it was a very basic requirement flowing out of and based right upon the Great Commission. So very early, we see the church requiring recipients of baptism to make this kind of Trinitarian confession of faith. The reason why they were required to affirm their faith by way of a standard Trinitarian confession, in other words, they weren't asked to make up the questions, unlike a lot of times today in our churches, honestly, the question in the early church was not, Tell us about your journey. We'd like to hear your story. It was. Are you able to profess this here? Here is a statement of faith. Can you subscribe this? That was more important to to the to the church. So the reason why they required they were required to affirm their faith by way of a standard Trinitarian confession is because we are urged by God, and this comes right out of Ephesians four, to be eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. And Paul goes on there and says there is one body and one spirit, just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all. I'll go on here and we'll look in a second. Indeed, the Bible's full of confessional statements, which establishes the fact that Christianity is a confessional faith. I might back up there a second and say again that the emphasis today, we are all about diversity. And this is also in the church. We don't like terminology like uniformity. We want to be able to maintain pluriformity, we want to be able to do what we kind of want to do and feel is right. The tenor in virtually every single New Testament epistle is seek unity, be of one mind, say the same thing is the emphasis. But see, now it's all about me expressing myself and being able to say and use the words I want to use or something like that. That wasn't the great priority of the early church. It was, can you confess this one holy apostolic faith? And this is what it is. It's not up for grabs. It has nothing to do with your interpretation, what you think it might be. This is the one holy apostolic faith. Are you able to sign on and say, yes, that's what I believe. That was the church's concern there. But this, again, The church didn't just make this up this is flowing out of the very tenor of the New Testament that there's one faith one Lord one baptism one God and father of all we don't have a bunch so this is this is not up for interpretation there is that there is a received faith that we have. Well I just made a statement here the Bible's full of confessional statements and it establishes And that fact establishes Christianity is a confessional faith. It's a faith that is part of its very nature. It is to be confessed. The people of God in the Old Testament were identified by a unifying confession called the Shema. The Hebrew Shema is simply the Hebrew word for here, and you'll see As we look at this, especially when we get into the body of the text of the Apostles Creed, you're going to see that it was commonplace within Christianity to take the first word of the confession or the prayer or whatever it was, and you name the thing after the first word. The Apostles Creed comes from the very first word of the Apostles Creed, which is, I believe, credo. Does anyone under, does anyone know the Latin word for, uh, sorry, Jill, every time I say that, I just, my, my eyes just go right to you. And then it's embarrassing, isn't it? No, this isn't, this is, you don't have to know Latin. You don't have to be a Latin teacher to know this and most and many Latin teachers might not know it because it's not that kind of thing. What is what is the Lord's Prayer commonly known as? You got it. Paternoster. Our father. It's the first words of it. The Shema. Why is it called the Shema? Because the very first word of this Old Testament confession is here. It's the word Shema, and so that's how it gets the name. That's how the church has generally named its forms of creeds and confessions and prayers. It just simply takes the very first word and that becomes its title. So. The people of God in the Old Testament were identified by a unifying confession, a unifying confession called the Shema, which is found in Deuteronomy 6.4. Hear, O Israel, the Lord, our God, the Lord is one. This was a very basic and simple confession, similar to the New Testament confession, Jesus is Lord, as we will see. It seems that it was to be taught to children and recited daily. Deuteronomy six seven. Many people interpret that as referring specifically to the Shema that you are to teach this to your children. You have to bind it on your hands. It's the confession that there is one God. Others interpret that differently. But in Hebrew history, it seems that they understood that to be. You teach it to your children. You recite it daily in your coming and your going. And as God's deliverance of his people continue to unfold this confession, this basic confession would form the basis of more elaborate confessions that the people would ultimately make in response to God's salvation. For instance, why don't you why don't you get your Bibles out and turn to Deuteronomy 26 for a minute. In Deuteronomy 26, and we'll look at verses one through eleven together, we find another more elaborate confession that Israel is to make in the context of worship. Deuteronomy 26, when you come into the land that the Lord, your God, is giving you as an inheritance and have taken possession of it and live in it, you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground which you harvest from your land that the Lord your God has given you and you shall put it in a basket and you shall go to the place that the Lord your God will choose to make his name to dwell there and you shall go to the priest who is in office at the time and say to him, I declare today that the Lord your God to the Lord your God that I have come into the land that the Lord swore to our fathers to give us. Then the priest shall take the basket from your hand and set it down before the altar of the Lord your God. And you shall make response before the Lord your God. And here's the response. A wandering Aramean was my father, and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in number, and there he became a great nation or a nation great, mighty and populous. And the Egyptians treated us harshly and humiliated us and laid on us hard labor. Then we cried to the Lord, the God of our fathers. And the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. And the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with great deeds of terror, with signs and wonders. And he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground which you, O Lord, have given me. and you shall set it down before the Lord your God and worship before the Lord your God and you shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you and to your house you and the Levite and the sojourner who is among you. So here's a here's a much more elaborate confession of faith. It's it's the beginning of the passage here begins Specifically, that you are to make response to the Lord for what he's done for you, and then you articulate. Ultimately, it's a summary of God's redemptive acts, what he has done for his people, and that's really the most basic way of understanding what is a confession of faith. A confession of faith is the response of God's people to what he has done for them. It's their response to his redemptive acts. The Psalms are also full of statements of confession and response to God's redemptive acts. Psalm 2222 quoted in Hebrews 212 records Jesus saying, I will tell of your name to my brothers in the midst of the congregation. I will praise you. Psalm 145 force as one generation shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty act. And therefore, even in the Old Testament, we see God's people making a public confession of their faith in response to his revelation and salvation. One author has said what God had done in history, his people believed and confessed. And so we see the beginnings of this kind of confessional faith from the people of God already in the Old Testament. Coming into the New Testament, we soon find ourselves at Peter's great confession in Matthew 16. And I'd like you to turn there now, Matthew 16. We'll look at verses 13 through 18. Matthew sixteen verses thirteen through eighteen. Now, when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is? And they said, Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. He said to them, But who do you say that I am? Simon Peter replied, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God. And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." I'm not going to do A large exegetical study of this passage this evening, but there are a few things that we can learn from this, and I have these down at the bottom of the first page of our outline. The four things that we can see here. The first is, is that Peter in the confession is not quoting scripture, but rather he is summarizing the truth about Christ that he has come to know and believe. In other words, prior to this, you don't have any. Um, these words found, so he's not, he's not making a quote from scripture here. He's, he's summarizing what he has come to, to understand and believe concerning the person of Christ. And this is specifically an answer to Jesus asking them, who do you say that I am? You know, what, what do you believe about me? And, and his response is this confession, this great confession, uh, uh, secondly, We see that he is blessed for making this good confession. God's blessing rests upon him. Thirdly, this confession is based upon divine revelation. That's particularly what Jesus is committing him for saying flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you, but my father in heaven. This confession is based upon a divine revelation. You've been listening in a sense. to what God has been saying about me. You've been listening. And so this is your confession is not just what humanity thinks based on whatever it you know. I like to think of Jesus as a good teacher or something like that. But rather this is a response to what God has revealed concerning his son. So his confession is based on divine revelation for we see that Christ will build his church on the solid rock of the truth confessed about him. In a nutshell, we learn from this passage that the blessing of God rests upon those that confess the divinely revealed truth about Jesus Christ. I think that's a fair summary of some of what's going on in Matthew 16 in Peter's Great Confession, and that is that the blessing of God rests upon Those that confess the divinely revealed truth about Jesus Christ and something interesting to remember here is is that this comes after Jesus had said in in Matthew twenty Matthew ten thirty two. Everyone who confesses me before men. I also will confess before my father who is in heaven confessing Christ is a big deal. It is something that we need to know what that's about and understand that Jesus calls us to confess him before men. Any questions before we move on to other aspects of confessions in the New Testament? We're going to move to some other things here in a sec, but anybody have any thoughts at this point? I'm going to take a drink because I'm dry. OK, I scanned while I drank, I multitasked and I saw no hands, so I'm going to move on. Moving on in the New Testament, we come to the often repeated early Christian confession. Jesus is Lord and it comes up in numerous places throughout the New Testament. I've listed a few here for you. Paul, so we come to this Jesus is Lord confession. Paul says in Romans 10 9 confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord. Why would Paul say that? Why is Paul saying this is required of you? This is required of believers that you must confess with your mouth. That's a verbal one. You must take on your lips this confession. Jesus is Lord. Why? Well, because this is a quote straight out of Philippians 2, 9 through 11, because God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. to the glory of God the Father." In other words, we confess because it's an act of obedience. The whole world is required to confess that Jesus is Lord. And so, Paul says, this is an integral part of your faith. With the mouth, we confess that Jesus is Lord. And basically, I guess I would say it's either now or later. You will bow the knee. You will confess him as Lord when we stand now and voluntarily confess him as Lord. We're being obedient here, but we're told here that there will come a day when every tongue will confess him as Lord. Everybody will make confession in one sense, we could say. It's not just Christianity as a confessing faith, a confessional faith. Humanity is a confessing breed. That's the way God made us. Yes? I think there's a point you can bring up when you talk about that theory that you see in everyday life is that the Bible also says that without faith, we cannot call Jesus worthy. And I think it's interesting to see when you talk to people in the book, they do talk about God. That's a great point, Nathan. I don't know if you've had the experience either in your own life, if you can remember that. where you're literally your lexicon changed. You went from talking about God generally to Christ as Savior. It's an interesting thing. I still remember a very long ago at Elka's in my life. We had a young couple that was coming over right after we got married and they wanted they were scared. They thought they were going to die and go to hell and they didn't know they didn't know anything. They didn't have faith. And they talked all the time about God. And we began this sort of evangelistic Bible study with them. And there was this distinct change between one week to the next, where they went from talking about, oh, yeah, well, we believe in God to the next time they were talking about Jesus as their Lord and Savior. And it was just a massive change in what was coming out of their mouth. was totally indicative of what had happened in their heart. He's now a deacon in the OPC, serves in the OPC. I still remember that distinct difference and it was just exactly what you're saying. There's a huge thing that you see everywhere. It's okay to talk about God nebulously and generally, but you talk about the incarnate God and no way. I think that's a really good point. So, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Let's move on to the second point on the second page. As Paul commends Timothy for doing. When we confess with our mouths, we follow the footsteps of Christ himself. Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. I charge you in the presence of God who gives life to all things and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession. I mean, Paul saying he's commending Timothy. You made a good confession in the presence of many witnesses and I'm charging you in the presence of God and of Jesus Christ who himself made the good confession before Pontius Pilate. This is something Christ has done in a sense we say why do we care about confession of faith. Why do we care about a confessional Christianity. Well because Christ was a confessor himself. He was commended and shown as the ultimate. one who made confession. Indeed, Cornelius Venema says, this is somewhat dovetailing with Nathan's comment. Venema is, if you don't know who is this guy, he's the president of Mid-America Reformed Seminary. Really solid Reformed guy. He's written some just wonderful books and just a great brother in the faith. We might get him out here sometime for a reform conference. He wrote when a good and true confession is made upon the basis of the word of God, it is also said to be the fruit of the revelation of the father and the operation of the spirit through the word. Thus, the apostle Paul can identify the confession Jesus is Lord with A speaking by the Holy Spirit, that is a speaking, which is the fruit of the Spirit's testimony through the word. And let me stop there for a second. And we might, I think, even say and also the fruit of the Spirit's work within the confessor. Because it is, it's something that's made by faith, not just anybody can confess Jesus as Lord. And so not only is that a fruit of the Spirit's revelation of Christ in the word, but it's also a fruit of the Spirit's work in the individual. So, this is a very powerful thing that's going on when someone makes confession of their faith. It's not unsupernatural. The Spirit is clearly involved in this. And so, the confession of Jesus as Lord, The Apostle Paul can identify the confession of Jesus as Lord with a speaking by the Holy Spirit, that is, speaking which is the fruit of the Spirit's testimony through the Word. Or when Christ posed the decisive question to the disciples, but who do you say that I am? Peter responded with the confession, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. What is striking at this point is how Christ identifies the source of this confession upon which he will build his church with the father who has revealed it from heaven. No one who is a Christian can escape this call to confess his faith in response to the word of God. It's a lot to chew on there and to think about. And I think I think there's some helpful comments there in understanding what Paul means in 1 Corinthians, that no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Spirit of God. What does that mean? I think Venema gives us some helpful comments on understanding that in a biblical way. This then brings up the very nature of a confession or creed. Many would eschew creeds and confessions, saying I have no creed but Christ or I just believe the Bible or those are just the words of men. Let me stop. Am I making words up here? Have you ever heard these things before? Or maybe what is the way that you've heard of it? If I didn't hit it right, how have you heard that? You've heard that, so. OK, what? Yes, yes, we have. Thank you. That's what I need. I need that. Yes. Okay, this idea, specifically, those are just the words of men. But these common sentiments seem to miss the fact that, in a sense, I should say, that is exactly what a creed or a confession is supposed to be. Namely, man's answer or response to God's Word. Creating confession is supposed to be man's word. It's our response. God has spoken and we're saying, here's what we've heard you say. And that's precisely what it is. We hear the voice of our shepherd and we follow him, we listen to the word of God and we respond in belief and confession, articulating what we have heard him saying to us. In this regard, Philip Schaaf has written, the value of creeds depends upon their measure, depends upon the measure of their agreement with the scriptures. So a creed is derived from, but different from the word of God. And their value is how much this is in comportion with. The word of God, the merit of a creed is how much it conforms to the word of God. But listen to what he says. He further adds, For this reason, a creed ought to use language different from that of the Bible. A string of scripture passages would be no creed at all. A creed is, as it were, a doctrinal poem written under the inspiration of divine truth. And you, I think you might hear his word carefully there. He's not saying it's a, it's written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Like scripture is creeds are not scripture. They're subordinate to, but they are written what we would call under the inspiration of the truth. Uh, this, this should be, if this is the creed, this should be the product of this. that that ultimately this has become a reality because of what said here. This has inspired this product and you should be able to see a clear lines between the two. That's what a creed and confession is in the church and that's that's how we judge its merit. Luke Timothy Johnson has said some truths are so critical that they must be repeated over and over again. Confirming this sentiment are the various statements that Paul says are trustworthy and worthy of all acceptance. First Timothy one fifteen and you'll find these throughout Paul's epistles. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of all acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. That's that can be understood as that's a creedal statement right there in the New Testament. This is a trustworthy phrase that's worthy of all acceptance that Christ came into the world to save centers. That's one you can just repeat and bank on and continue. It needs to be repeated all over and over again. Or the confession he repeats in First Timothy 316. This is a I mean, I actually turn there. Let's let's turn there real quick. First Timothy 316, it's written there, but Most of our Bibles, although it's not in the Greek text this way, broke out this way. I think our Bibles naturally recognize there's a special syntax and there's something special about this, the way Paul breaks out these phrases here, and that's why people in the translations have actually set it aside like a confessional creedal statement in our text. First Timothy three sixteen great indeed, we confess is the mystery of godliness. Let me ask is, does anybody not have it broken off kind of in its own little bracketed line by line thing? Does everybody's text have it? Yours doesn't. It's just it's just ran straight through. OK, it's in most a lot of the modern translations. It's broke out into these kind of line by line confessional statements. He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory. We're going to continue this next Lord's Day and see a few more things like this, but what I'm hoping is, is we're seeing that being a confessional church is being a biblical church. In fact, I would argue that a church that is not confessional is not biblical. And it's kind of a turning of the tables because oftentimes when someone finds that we have a fairly elaborate confession of faith that, well, we're just a Bible church, you'll hear the response. Well, we're just a Bible church. We just go by the Bible. I think that what we're seeing in just this isn't everything at all that could be said about this is that being a confessional church is being a biblical church throughout the history of Christianity up until relatively recent years. The church has always confessed its faith by way of creeds and confessions. The church simply has not been enamored with your story. Not saying that that's a bad thing. But that's just not been the priority of the church. The church has been more interested in the faith once for all delivered to the Saints. And the bigger question is how do you fit in with that story? But things have changed. We are. Someone said one time we're not we are no longer a or we are not a creed writing age. You can take that one more. We're simply not a creed age. We're an age that's just, I think, drunk with individualism. It's just all about us now. We want to hear ourselves talk. This is a difference. This is a different kind of thing that we're looking at here than what we normally think about. Let me, though, put in there. I think that the modern sentiment and I would say if we read it in its best light the modern shift away from sort of an established received faith that you join in and you confess along with others. That's probably been a right impulse that the individualism has risen up because many people simply were mouthing words with nothing in the heart. Many of you talked about how you attended churches, you grew up in churches where you recited the creed every Lord's Day. Did it have meaning to you when you were doing that? And it's that fact, the reason why it can so often be simply recited with no meaning, not out of the heart, that's why There has been a shift of emphasis I think that's the best way to read it I think are the in the with the greatest charities that people say we've got to get away from just simple dead dry wrote form confessions and to recognize that God's doing an individual work within us. I'm going to address a little bit next Lord's Day when we talk about creeds it's interesting. I mean think about you got to think about even the terminology when we pray the great form prayer. How do we pray. Give me the pronoun. Our. We pray together. But when you confess, you're confessing as an individual. I believe. Nobody can confess for you. No one can make a statement of faith for you. People can pray for you. They cannot believe for you. But see, if we understand the way that the church has understood its creeds and confessions all along, we would have never fallen into that dead rote thing. It was intended to be, this is an individual profession of faith. And it's something you must make. Somebody else cannot believe on your behalf. But being a confessional church, as being a biblical church throughout the history of Christianity up until recently, the church has always confessed its faith. by way of creeds and confessions, and thus will be studying this most ancient and most universally used Christian creed, which articulates the basic truths of our faith. And as we proceed in our study, our aim will be to show how it rises directly as a response to the truth of God's Word. And so we will be endeavoring to show that this is an accurate echo of a response to the Word of God. It's not just a set of things that we say we believe. In fact, if you're, and I'll just wet your whistle on this one, if you're thinking ahead, just that, well, this is just simply a checklist of the things that are right to believe. That's not even the right understanding of, I believe. That's not the way credo is to be interpreted. It's not merely, these are the right doctrines to believe. That's not what you're saying. when you confess the Apostles' Creed. We'll get more into what you actually are saying when you confess it in the upcoming studies. Just a minute for any questions or comments or concerns. Yes, Kim. What does it mean to be a professional church priest if all you did is the Holy Church order something and you never opened it? That's a great question. We'll actually talk about that more, but I can tell you this. In past generations, and I can talk just a little bit about the RPC&A. There was basically when we came to the Lord's table we would reaffirm our confession of faith it would it was our terms of communion and we would say this is what we believe and we would in a sense re re establish those vows and together and it was it was much more regular and so it's it's probably something we should take internal inventory of and say what what are we missing in this is this just are we implicitly saying this is irrelevant to our daily Christian walk by sticking it in a book and not ever utilizing it. So I think it's an excellent question with a good challenge on that. But in just a few generations past, it was much more in front of us more regularly in the life of the church. So probably something we've lost. When the parents of the communion were devised to the covenant of church membership, part of the wording, it was worded in such a way that not only can you propose the questions that you did this morning, but you simply change the use of the title. And it was written for that very purpose, to use that special title. Do you hear that? And we underscore that in the final vow, which is, do you make this profession of faith or confession of faith? And so we understand this to be a biblical profession of faith. That's what we're asking in that. Can you affirm these terms? This is what we understand a Christian would hold to there. But there have been changes in stuff. Jill, you were going to? I was going to say, too, and I don't read as much now, but I've been encouraged that when I became a community member, I was given that good term of membership. And encouraged, I think, in terms of how I would make a catalogue. And I should look at those and say, well, thank you for holding me up. I appreciate that, what you said at one time, and I appreciate what you're doing here. You know, and I'd have to ask Sean, it was years ago, I had him order a bunch of those. I have the same thing inside my Bible as well, and I do think it's an important thing to have there, just another way to keep those before us. Yeah, Jackie? There is. Okay. Jackie saying there is a stack of those and they're made. I think they have a wet them and they stick inside your Bible. But that would be a great thing to do. And I'd come in that to you. Let's go ahead and break now and then we'll gather in a few minutes for prayer. Andy Leone is going to be leading us this evening. So let's take a break at this time. Thank you.